Shooting Star Without A Scar

Hey check this out!

This is so cool! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-mvfjyiao

That's such an amazing product. According to the video, the rider can also filter water with the bike in a stationary position. This means it would save natural resources from being burned to boil the water. Great!!!

Okay, I'm done nerding out.

Hey all!

A Happy (belated) New Year to all!
Sorry that I've been so MIA the past quarter, and probably for these next quarters as well. EAST is just soooo far removed that my efforts to make it out to east (haha) campus only succeed once every so often.

I was just about to write a lot of Facebook messages to you all when I remembered this blog... so, here it is:
You have a standing invitation to come over to EAST House for food. (Though, please give me at least a day's notice so that I can sign you up. - I gotta follow the rules, too.) Come eat good food!

All right, hope everyone's quarters are off to a great start!

Hanoi

Trevor's birthday is tomorrow!

I'm in Hanoi right now. My family was one of the first to get off the plane, so when we got to immigration in the airport, a curious thing happened. It was really quiet, and we thought nobody was behind the counters, but suddenly heads started popping up, one by one. The people behind the counters had all been sleeping and were just waking up! In addition, none of them spoke English, and would even yell at us in Vietnamese, while fully aware that we couldn't understand them.

Traffic is even scarier than in Bangkok. The driver who took us from the airport to the hotel kept honking every three seconds, and I thought he was mad, until I realized that everyone else was doing it too - there literally isn't a second without honking here (I'm still hearing it outside our window). I guess since nobody follows traffic laws, they need to hear the sound of honking to know if cars are near them - almost, but not quite, like sonar....

I miss you guys! Helen's right, we should see each other more next quarter. And I'm frustrated that I'm in the same country as Tina but not the same region...

guitar hero and other signs of winter break

I came home at 7 pm and my brother and sister were both playing Guitar Hero III (which we just got a few days ago). Now it's almost 10 pm and they're still playing. Oh boy. I have to admit I played a few songs in there too though ;)

Home is home! We got a new fridge and new sofa so the look of our house is changing as always, but everything else is pretty much the same. I'm looking forward to shopping for a new watch, and putting up Christmas lights, and seeing home friends once they get back to Austin (mostly sometime next week?).

This quarter was decently good. We didn't see each other enough! :( we should hang out more next quarter. Watch movies in the history corner. I apparently am deficient in the movies I've watched in the first 20 years of my life.

While putting off studying...

Almost done with finals! I'll be glad for Secret Santa later today as a study break.

I'm really glad I took bio this quarter. Trevor's taking Math 51, and we've agreed that we have more respect for bio and math after struggling with them ourselves. :P Well, I had respect for biology as a field, but not really any understanding of what studying biology in class was like. "It's just memorization," people claimed. Lies! Genetics was really cool. I had no idea it would be so similar to engineering problem-solving. And even though biochemistry may be mostly memorization, it's a staggering load of it, at least for me. I still can't believe that we have to remember all of the steps in glycolysis, the TCA cycle, and who knows what else (hmm, the "who knows" part is probably something to worry about :P). I certainly wouldn't tell someone that it's "just memorization," as if anyone could do it... it's not easy for people like me.

Congrats to everyone who's already finished! And good luck to those of us who haven't -_-

Going Abroad

WOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This one's for the Fracis