A belated Happy Valentine’s Day (or Singles Awareness Day) to everyone! Forgive me if I have a lot of bad puns throughout this blog, but Caltech can be quite the “romantic” place because of all the types of bonding that occur between different subsets of the population.
On Tuesday morning I woke up to find a really sweet gift near my door (and there was one for my roommate, too). The Avery guys made cards and cookies for all the girls and delivered them in the morning.
The card and the cookie. I am happy they spelled my name correctly.
Signatures and notes from various guys in the house!
At Caltech we uphold the concept of an “n+1” table. This idea comes from proof by induction (every Ma1a student knows this technique on the back of their hand), where you prove the base case, then assume the statement is true for a generic “n” case, then prove the assumption is sound and true for the “n+1” case, therefore proving the statement true for all integers. At Chandler, based on the n+1 concept, we managed to fit 12 people on a round table for 5.
How many people, at minimum, are sitting at the table at Chandler?
At dinner on Valentine’s Day, we let Patrick sit with us because all the other tables were pretty empty, as lovers decided to skip the CDS dinner.
Later (at around 11:30 PM) that night, I was working in the SAC on my Ph8 lab. I was working on my circuit earlier in the week, but I needed clarifications that I couldn’t clear up until 10:40 that night (I had returned from symphony practice at Occidental, and office hours for Ph8 sadly are from 8 to 11 PM). I had to also finish a couple questions on my physics problem set (Tuesday nights are notoriously known as late nights at Caltech). I even managed to burn myself with the soldering iron.
Ouch! The scars are healing after regular application of Neosporin.
Kevin decided to patiently wait for a few of us finishing our circuit in the student workshop before making a Chouse run to work on physics and computer science problem sets. I guess a little Java is motivation to get work done!
Every other Thursday, the Center of Diversity holds lunches for freshmen females to bond and talk with special guests. Two lunches ago we met with an administrative official about declaring our options (majors) and seeking advisors. They also hold fun events. We were supposed to have a girls’ slumber party, but that got canceled because of other campus events. This last lunch (on 2/16) we had a special chocolate-tasting lunch. It was great to taste chocolate from different parts of the world (I loved that Caribbean chocolate).
Chocolate galore! To quote Macbeth, Act 1, scene 6 (and out of context) “The balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course.”
My schedule this quarter was extremely forgiving to me. I have free Friday afternoons, so I decided to relish the warm California sun (after a few anomalous days of rain) and work outside!
Some Valentines that undergraduate admissions will be sending out to early-action acceptances, a few written by yours truly.
Friday afternoons are also the beginning of seeing random people wearing tuxedoes and prom-like dresses. The Athenaeum, Caltech’s fancy club where professors dine (the food is really good, by the way) and celebrities host posh events (like NBC Universal had a night a few weeks ago, where celebrities like Maya Rudolph came, the press was flashing their cameras, security and colored lights were abundant, and Blacker students—called Moles—left with an NBC ice sculpture), also hosts weddings because of Caltech’s picturesque campus.
Last quarter I was wedding-stalking after class, which ended at 5 PM. This was when Millikan Pond was dry.
The little boy in the tux was extremely cute! I took this picture while taking a break from writing.
Quote of the day: This was quite popular on Facebook. Several kids were asked about topics of love. The purest ounce of wisdom I got was for the question “What do most people do on a date?” The answer came from eight year-old Lynnette, who said “Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen to them long enough.”
