Caltech

A fun visit

So this weekend happens to be the weekend of ALL my concerts. Two band concerts and a chamber music concert, and I'm just plain freaking out.

But luckily, before all that, I had a really, really fun weekend--a friend of mine visited California all the way from New Jersey, and she and I spent the day visiting some of the more unique areas of Los Angeles.

One of the great things about being at Caltech is the proximity to Los Angeles. Now, to be perfectly honest, I'm an East Coast New York City girl at heart, but LA has been growing on me. How could it not? I definitely manage to go into LA about once or twice a term--for example, I went and saw Chicago the other day with the Caltech Y at the Pantages Theater:

 But my friend, Maria, isn't really into the typical tourist scene. So we decided to forgo Hollywood (that's the street above, and there you can find pretty much everything you think about when you think "Hollywood") and instead wander through the Los Angeles area.

Our first stop was the Alhambra Certified Farmer's Market, one of many in the Los Angeles area but one of the only ones open for the day. You have to wake up pretty early for some of these markets--during spring break, there's always a trip to the largest in the area...which opens at 1 am. The fruit here in California is simply to DIE for, and this market definitely did not disappoint. The best was this random stall selling amazingly sweet oranges for $.75/lb.

Next, we decided to head up to Griffith Observatory. It's a functional observatory overlooking LA, so you can look over the city on a nice day. Of course, it happened to be overcast all morning up until the minute we were pulling out of the parking lot to leave...but we got some good pictures anyhow. First up, the super typical picture in front of the Hollywood sign:

Full disclosure: I totally photoshopped this. The actual sign is tiny, even from this close. But if reality's no fun, we can always change it up :)

There observatory itself is very pretty.

I even got a picture with Einstein inside!

Afterwards, we decided to follow Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and hit up Rodeo Drive. Unfortunately, as New Jersey girls we got sticker shock at the 9.75% sales tax...even on clothes! That being said, we did see a totally awesome car:

I wish I'd worked up the nerve to actually sit inside! Maybe take it for a test ride...

We also found this highly rated cupcake store nearby and decided to pop in. We decided to split a pistachio cupcake, because there'd just been so much good food all day (and more to come!). It definitely lived up to the hype...I have no idea how on earth they managed to get their cupcakes so sweet and moist. Massively jealous!

We finally trekked back to Caltech, very tired, in time to head out for a Mother's Day dinner with Maria's family.

I had a lot of fun showing Maria my new hometown! There's definitely a lot to see in the surrounding area...I mean, for every place we decided to see, there were at least three that we ended up dismissing for lack of time. And, of course, it was great to see a friend.

So now it's time to get ready for my weekend of music. I'm especially excited for my chamber music concert--my trio has put in a bunch of extra time practicing, and I think it really shows. 

I'll be sure to take pictures...maybe even a bit of video.

Until then,

Mythili.

Rosebowl!

Probably the most well-known landmark in Pasadena--other than the illustrious California Institute of Technology, of course--is the Rose Bowl, the gigantic football stadium that hosts the aptly named Rose Bowl Game every year. 

It's a massively famous landmark (a National Historic one, too). Tickets to the Rose Bowl Game sell for $300 apiece if you're lucky enough to get one first hand. Numerous organizations--the UCLA Bruins, amongst others--vie for space and time to use it and call it home.

We simply think of it as our playing field one Saturday in the spring.

Fleming house has a tradition of going to the Rose Bowl to play football in the spring. It's one of the most popular social events of the year--there's no excuse for missing Rose Bowl! Alums show up, too, to get in on the action and dominate the current undergrads. Last year, when we also organized a reunion dinner, we had alums reaching back to when Fleming was barely a house.

All day, all I could think about was ROSE BOWL ROSE BOWL ROSE BOWL. The sentiment was pretty common, I think...normally, if we're supposed to gather at 4 for an event, people start showing up around 4:15. For Rose Bowl, people were waiting around at 3:50.

We start out in the parking lot, hanging around and waiting to be let into the Rose Bowl itself. Everyone's just massively excited, getting some food, and letting off steam. 

 But we're all just waiting for the moment when we can get into the Rose Bowl. It's really somewhat breathtaking the first time you walk in. There are SO many seats and the emptiness is rather eerie.

But we take care of that pretty quickly. 

The games are class v class--freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and alums all form teams and play each other in round robin format. Plenty of friendly rivalry, especially the braggarts of the junior class who, I believe, are STILL undefeated at Rose Bowl : ) 

You might notice the predominance of testosterone in the above picture. It's no problem, though...much more exciting is the concurrent girls game. It's lots of fun and lets everyone get a chance to play. Last year, we even went against the older alums who didn't feel up to playing with the younger set. They found out the hard way that we don't play nice.

How cool is it that I can say that I've completed a pass (or two!) in the Rose Bowl?!

The sense of camaraderie and house spirit is really amazing throughout the entire event. Rose Bowl is definitely one of my favourite memories...and I can't wait for next year : )

Mythili

The best stress relief? SUGAR.

Last year, my roommate Renee and I discovered, amongst other things, that we shared a love of baking. Cakes, cupcakes, cookies, tartes, pies...it didn't make a difference, it just had to be sugary. And interesting. Every so often, when we found a recipe that spoke to us, we'd walk on over to Pavillions with an ingredients list, grab whatever we needed, and make something.

Surprisingly, it's hard to get rid of food when you walk around asking people if they want some. Even when the food consists of a double layer devil's food cake with peanut butter chocolate ganache and reese's peanut butter topping.

People are so weird sometimes.

But this year, all of our problems vanished! Our Resident Advisor (RA), Aadel, hosts these dessert nights for different alleys/hallways in the house every 6 weeks or so. They're generally some weeknight at 9 or 10pm, and it's a chance for us to relax and catch up with him. Aadel, however, has no baking skills whatsoever. Last year, he had the help of a senior in the house, but this year he was at a loss for what to do.

Enter us!

People always ask us why we do dessert nights--since we're both equally insane, we end up baking for 4 - 6 hours, oftentimes doing a problem set while whipping cream (which we can both do in our sleep by now). It's really quite simple, though...for Dessert Nights, someone else pays for our ingredients, we get to make a bunch of stuff, and there are always people around to eat what we make.

The last Dessert Night was officially made for Alley 2, but as always it was opened up to the entire house after about half an hour. The menu for the night consisted of:

• Caramel Chocolate Brownies with Nutella and Walnuts
• New York Style Cheesecake with Raspberry and Blueberry Topping
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
• Dulce de Leche Sandwich Cookies
• Butterscotch Pudding with Fresh Whipped Cream

We also helped make a belated birthday cake--Funfetti, of course:

 
Renee just bought a set of icing tips, so she was super excited to use them to ice the cupcakes. Since I don't have even a tenth of her artistic skill, I gave her the honors. They turned out really, really good--each had a small surprise of edible cookie dough (i.e. no raw eggs) in the center.

As always, despite having started at 2 pm, we were making cookies up until 9. The dulce de leche, which we attempted to make from scratch, never really wanted to properly solidify. Oh well.

And, as I've said before, there's something highly satisfying in seeing people appreciate what you've made. The food was completely gone in about an hour, which is always nice.

Of course, we're already planning the next one :) Raspberry and Chocolate Ganache Cake with White Chocolate Buttercream, anyone?   

Mythili. 

Los Angeles Festival of Books

This past weekend, my friends Jennifer, Renee, and I managed to visit the Los Angeles Festival of Books. It's an annual convention/fair/outdoor thing filled to the brim with book sellers, authors, panelists, book signings, presenters...it's sort of like your average anime/car/tech convention, except all about books.

You might think, erroneously, that just because the word 'Technology' is in the name of our school that we all shun the humanities. Of course, that couldn't be further from the truth. There's a great humanities (and social science!) program here at Caltech, filled with interesting, engaging professors who happen to also be prolific researchers. Where else could I say that while reading William Blake I got a chance to see the original book? That's right, nowhere else.

The Festival of Books is held in UCLA, near Westwood Village. We decided to head out at a leisurely pace and stop for lunch ahead of time. A quick search of Zagat ratings turned up an interesting little vegan cafe called Native Foods very close by. You might scoff at the vegan-ness, but most of the reviews were along the lines of "I love meat but this place is AWESOME!" I have no relation to the first part of that sentence, but I can attest that the food was pretty great. I got a 'Greek Gyro' bowl, with hummus and roasted pepper seitan, a wheat gluten-based meat substitute.
I sort of want to go back there and be a little more adventurous...fake meat always puts me slightly on edge, so I stayed away (seitan is not marketed as 'fake chicken,' just a 'protein substitute'). Not only was it tasty, but I felt rather healthy after eating a bowl full of green things and quinoa and all that other stuff that your parents tell you to eat.

From the parking structure we needed to take a shuttle to get to the main part of the UCLA campus. Which is E-N-O-R-M-O-U-S. I know that Caltech is somewhat on the smaller side as far as college campuses go, but UCLA might possibly be a city in and of itself. The entire time, we kept imagining what life would be like if it took more than 5-10 minutes to walk anywhere on campus. The horror...

Our happy faces en route to the festival (that's Renee closer and Jennifer sitting next to her).

We decided to start in the East Side, where all the children's stuff was. Renee and I recently discovered that our childhood reading cannons were more or less the same, so we basically wandered around alternating between "OH MY GOD do you remember these?" and "Wow I don't recognize any of this we're so old..." We even stopped by the Target-sponsored book store, which was more of a large tent.

We even ran into a small Magic School Bus section. Personally, MSB got me through almost all of middle school science. Human biology? The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body, a fascinating trip through Arnold's body. The workings of a power plant? The Magic School Bus And the Electric Field Trip. Aside from the fact that it was the only show I was allowed to watch as a child, Magic School Bus was definitely one of my favorite shows...I guess it makes sense that I ended up at Caltech :)

After exhausting the entire children's section, we transitioned into the 'adult/YA' section. I don't know if I'm supposed to recognize the illustrator who did this poster, but that kid's teeth are scary.

There were a lot of...interesting stalls on the grown ups side. From the Ayn Rand Institute

To the RAND Corporation:

From $2,000 first editions of Catcher in the Rye:

To giant coffee machines that resembled a bug:

Even a random lady in a wedding dress drumming up publicity for a publisher:

The world of the literati is varied and strange.

There were a LOT of people at the event, and we even ran into fellow Techers.

One of my favorite sections was the 'graffiti wall' on the side of the LA Times tent, which simply asked "What are you reading?" Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get to the library in a while, so I wrote down the title of the last book that I read--Heat Wave, by the (fictional) author Richard Castle, co-star of the popular ABC show Castle, about a writer who is shadowing an NYPD detective to research his latest (fictional) character to write a book called Heat Wave. So, basically, I just read a work of fiction written by a fictional author based off of a fictional representation of a fictional character.

It's amazing the things that people read, the sorts of trends you see...for example, around knee height were a lot of Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief, while higher up you saw some more popular NYT bestsellers.

There was even a 'Cooking Stage,' which we stumbled upon just in time to see Alicia Silverstone, of "Clueless" fame, talk about her book The Kind Diet, about her experiences being vegan. I have to say, celebrities should maintain their aura of mystery...

That's not actually my picture, but of course she had to turn the other way right when I took mine. Boo. 

It was a fun day devoted entirely to our right brains, which welcomed the distraction. It's nice to get away from campus every so often. There's tons to do in Los Angeles, and being so close is definitely an advantage. Of course, there's always the infamous Los Angeles traffic to contend with...

It's already midterms week for us, so I'm glad I enjoyed myself before having to buckle down and do some hard core studying :(

Mythili.

A Taste of the World...

On Friday, the Caltech Y and International Student Programs teamed up for "Caltech World Fest." For a mere $3, all members of the Caltech community could sample food from Brazil, Central American, China, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Romania, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and Turkey...and maybe some more that I've forgotten, because there was just SO much there.

The event was held in and around Avery house--here's part of the courtyard, decorated with flags from different countries.

Caltech has a lot of international students who all bring their own experiences to campus. There are a ton of student organizations on campus dedicated to students from Hong Kong, Taiwan, South East Asia...the list just goes on and on. My friend Renee, for example, is part of both the Taiwanese and Hong Kong Associations. She thinks it's a lot of fun...because a large part of any good event is food.

The event was obviously exceedingly popular.

There were so many delicious things to eat! I tried to take pictures to show you guys, but after a while I just couldn't help myself; I had to start eating. Here's my plate about halfway down the row of countries:

That top layer is...an egg tart from Hong Kong; parata (flat bread), and curry from Malaysia; chapchae (glass noodles) from Korea, soda gembira (happy soda!) from Indonesia, and a bit of brie and gruyere from France.

I thought this was rather clever--the International Spouses Association had a 'fusion' stall going on, with interesting things like chocolate dumplings, Nordic-style nori (seaweed) salad, and (my favorite), a hummus kimchi sushi:

Kimchi is a fermented/pickled dish (usually cabbage based) that is VERY popular in Korea. It's impossible to underestimate the importance of kimchi. When I went to Korea, every single meal I had included kimchi. A Korean friend of mine, when he first came to the US in 5th grade, didn't realize that what he was having for dinner was, in fact, dinner because there was no kimchi. This was definitely a GREAT combination, and I'm eager to try and find some way to integrate it into my weekend meals...

This was the Romanian stall, which we sort of hit up before they were ready (that's them cooking furiously in the back). The dish you see is filled with 'Salam de Biscuiti,' or 'sweet salami.' A larger picture might convince you of why it's called so; it really does resemble thickly sliced salami. Except with raisins and nuts instead of, you know, meat. It's also a no-bake 'cookie,' and we were told that it's a popular children's treat.

In any case, the whole event was a lot of fun and filled with great food. I wish I had a larger appetite...after one round I was so full I could barely move. I passed into a blissful food coma afterwards :)

(obviously not me).

Nom nom nom,

Mythili. 

Fake Ditch Day

So I did this weird thing the other night...I went to sleep early, because I was feeling a little tired. I was asleep before midnight (gasp!), and my alarm was set for 9 (because if I sleep infinity hours on a school night my sleep schedule gets very messed up).                                                                                                                  

Turns out that I didn't need to bother with the alarm because at 8 am on the dot I was woken by the cries of the seniors yelling, "WAKE UP FROSH IT'S DITCH DAY!"                                                                              

For anyone who isn't aware, Ditch Day is the hallowed Caltech version of Senior Skip Day. Back in the days of yore, seniors would skip class. This would make the underclassmen very upset, because they were still in class. So, to take their revenge, underclassmen would break into the seniors' rooms and prank them in some way. Seniors, then, to avoid having to clean up 400 small paper cups of water senior spring, started blockading their doors. The more common technique would be to stack an obstacle--like bricks--in front of your door. Underclassmen responded with pickaxes.                                                              

Ditch Day has evolved today to a less destructive, more creative form. Seniors spend varying amounts of time (i.e. all of spring term, of all of senior year, or random day dreams from the day they receive their admissions packet) setting up these elaborate treasure hunt/scavenger hunt/puzzle-type things. On Ditch Day (which is always tomorrow), underclassmen sign up for one of these 'stacks' and spend the day (an Institute Holiday!) completing their puzzle. It's always a lot of fun--you see students wandering around all day in matching shirts, overcoming bizarre obstacles, and just enjoying what the seniors have put together.                                                                                                                                                  

But it was Ditch Day! So I ran around the house and found a perfect stack:

Finding Nemo the stack! I love Disney, so this was perfect.                                                                     

We signed up as various characters. I was Dory...I think...

Our first clue was accompanied by a highly detailed map.

 

Which led to our second clue...

 

And first obstacle.
 

Getting five goldfish over the jellyfish-filled abyss into the plastic cup. Needless to say, many poor fish were sacrificed in our pursuit of our goal.                                                                                             

Then we were led to our next stop...

Donuts in the lounge, because it was just a Fake Ditch Day in preparation for the real thing :)

So, in conclusion...

GO TO BED FROSH, DITCH DAY IS TOMORROW!

Mythili.

The saga continues...

So the saga of revenge continues in Alley 3 of Fleming...

To recap: 

1. Kwok smushed a sugar donut all over Thimal's room.
2. Thimal locked Kwok in his room with a bucket of water (and I somehow got drenched).

SPOILER ALERT: if you're squeamish about things that are creepy and crawly, I'd selectively read the post below.

During lunch, we sit outside in the courtyard of Fleming. Now that it's warmer outside, there are a lot more little critter-type things that are dying to get a piece of fettuccine or the ever-popular breakfast burrito. One such creature, trapped, became the catalyst for the latest attempts at revenge.

We're all friends here in Fleming and live by the Honor Code. Therefore, people tend to leave their doors open when they leave--like when they leave for an hour to go to office hours. During this hour, Kwok recruited help to carry out some nefarious deeds:

First Step: Thimal's room.

Success!

Step Two: take photographic evidence and post on Facebook (warning: clicking on picture not for the faint of heart).

Step Three: wait and relax

Now it's again Thimal's turn to make his move...I'm curious to see what results...

Mythili.

More Prefrosh Weekend Fun!

So Prefrosh Weekend is winding down now, which is very sad. I've enjoyed meeting you guys over the past few days!

On Friday I was in charge of the Concert Band's booth at the ASCIT Club Fair. ASCIT--the Associated Students of Caltech--is our student government, and they help fund a large number of the clubs on campus. Therefore, for the prefrosh, they organized the fair so that all the interesting organizations on campus had an opportunity to present themselves to a new generations of impressionable Techers.

Here's a shot of the Olive Walk with all the tables set up at the start of the fair.

The Shotokan club did a few demos. They also demonstrated how easy it was to block an oncoming attack.

An impromptu tango (salsa?) demonstration by the Latino Students Association booth.  

So if you were around for Prefrosh Weekend, you know that there was some confusion as to how long the weekend's events were. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of prefrosh left early on Saturday morning...but for those that stuck around, there was a full day of events planned. I know about this from emails; I spent almost the entire day getting dinner ready for pretty much the entire campus.

Winter term my freshman year, my house president approached me and asked if I'd be interested in taking a special vegetarian section of the popular cooking class. While at first I was hesitant, I soon realized what an amazing opportunity it was and joined. After having taken the class, I was completely hooked, so now I am a cooking class TA.

It's my white TA chef's jacket with my name, year, and house crest :) 

Being part of the cooking class means supporting one of the most popular classes (if not the most popular class, Bi 10 lab notwithstanding) on campus. Cooking class is always filled to capacity and then some--Tom Mannion, who runs it (and is also a student life administrator) just can't seem to say no to people who ask to be in the class.

Being a cooking TA also means I get to help provide food to my fellow classmates. Why is this at all fun, you ask? Why slave over a hot grill for 6 hours cooking ears of corn? Call me crazy, but it's a great feeling to know that you're partially responsible for bringing people together over the most universal interest: food.

For this dinner, the menu consisted of oven-cooked-then-flash-grilled chicken legs, ears of corn dipped in butter, cornbread, and brownies--pretty much a typical Tom Mannion meal, except that nothing of this scale had ever been attempted before. Tom cooks for weddings and student club meetings, but at most that encompasses a few hundred people. Here, we were expecting upwards of 500-600 people.

It meant using the industrial kitchen that Caltech Dining Services uses to feed the entire campus. Here we are tying closed 90853097640982359 ears of corn (on the order of...10? 15? boxes).

Some of the seasoned chicken legs waiting for oven time. A rough estimate counted approximately 1,000 legs.

We had four grills going with corn for about three hours. As I mentioned above, the proper way to eat said corn is fully immersed in butter, a technique that was explained by some of the cooking staff to the students who came to eat. You might cringe, but there's nothing quite like it. That being said, if I never have to see another ear of corn for as long as I live I would die a happy woman.

But when all was said and done, it's a great feeling to see people lining up and ready to eat what you've made.

Of course, post-dinner is my absolute favourite part of cooking...clean up. It was made slightly more enjoyable by the music and comedic stylings of Grand Buffet, making their reappearance at Caltech after opening for Third Eye Blind earlier this year.

Now, more than ever, I miss actually TAing the cooking class--I did it first term, but since it changes days (from Tuesday nights to Wednesdays and then Thursdays), I haven't been able to TA since. I've hear along the grapevine, however, that there might be enough interest to have another vegetarian section--and that I'd love to TA!

In any case, it's going to be hard to go back to normalcy after the excitement of Prefrosh Weekend (of course, that's also what I said after going to Disneyland last weekend!). I hope that everyone who came got to know all about Caltech and is psyched to be part of the class of 2014. And, of course, if you were unable to make it, please give the admissions office a call, make an appointment to spend the day here, or just ask your questions in the comments.

A bientot,

Mythili.

Rehearsal and Prefrosh Weekend.

Before last Thursday's rehearsal I received a very sad email:

Hi There,
As Zhaoying can't be there for both Bandorama concerts, Mythili, would you please play piccolo on both concerts, and the two of you can both play the pic parts on the first concert.
Thanks.
Bill

Aside from being slightly confusing, the main point--WARNING WARNING MORE DEAFNESS AHEAD--was not lost on me. Ergo I went into rehearsal slightly anxious...to discover Zhaoying very confused, because she wasn't aware that she was unable to make both of our Bandorama concerts; it was only the Disnleyland concert for which she was busy. With much pomp and circumstance, I returned her music to her and gave the school piccolo back to Bill. Adieu!

So before rehearsal started, we had a special masterclass hosted by a member of the band, Lynne Snyder. For those who have never had the pleasure, a masterclass is when you take a class under a guest instructor, but it's meant as sort of a 'everyone learns together' sort of thing. Whereas in a normal class you just have you and and your teacher, in a masterclass there's generally more people observing.

 She brought with her sound clips to use as examples of the techniques she was trying to get across to us--proper warm up techniques, blending vs balance, the 'pyramid of sound,' and more. I'm most excited to try out the page of warm up exercises she passed out--I'm getting rather tired of the ones I've been doing for the past...7 years.

We got slightly distracted towards the start of rehearsal by something big. And shiny. I.e. a contrabass clarinet, also known as a BB^b clarinet:

Bill purchased the instrument for the band, and Jeremy had the privilege of playing it. It plays an entire octave lower than the bass clarinet, all way down to some sort of low D. There are even contrabass clarinets that go down to a low C, but they cost slightly more than a brand new sedan. -_-;;

This was supposed to be a breathing exercise--since you shouldn't be using your stomach as breath control, you should be able to play with a full grown man standing on your stomach. And I can attest that in this situation it worked. Not sure if I want to try this myself...  

In any case, we added a new piece to our repertoire for the next set of concerts--the "Caltech Medley," a series of Caltech melodies strung together by the composer brother of an alum. The songs are very pretty, if oddly named... my favourite is the "Gnome Sweetheart Song," after the last fraternity at Caltech, pronounced "nome-EEs."

So it's also PREFROSH WEEKEND! It's so much fun to be on the other side for a second year. For example, dinner during PFW is a riot. There are SO many additional people, and of course none of them know the 'rules of dinner.' In Fleming, for example, breaking any of the rules leads to a penalty of a pitcher of water dumped on your head. Since it's not fair to penalize prefrosh who don't know the rules, the nearest most-junior Fleming upperclassmen gets the punishment for a bad prefrosh. And there were many. -_-;;

We also had Fleming's Casino Night yesterday, with a full set of tables and custom made milkshakes (any flavor you wanted as long as it was vanilla, oreo, strawberry, or chocolate). 

The room full of people trying their luck.

In any case, it was lots of fun even if I have no idea how to work any of the tables. Except for blackjack; it's a game on my phone.

If you couldn't make it to PFW, I hope you get a chance to visit anyhow :) We'll be doing a mini-encore next Saturday, so maybe we'll see you then!

Mythili.

Interesting Night...

So yesterday was pretty exciting...not that I could have known that when I first woke up or anything. Tuesdays, in general, are pretty empty part of my week. I have very few classes...except that every Wednesday I have a difficult applied math set.

SO long story short Tuesdays are normally just boring days. But not this past Tuesday!

I have my second lab session of the week on Tuesday from 1 pm - 4 pm. It's for this class entitled "Introduction to Synthetic Chemistry," and it's basically "Let's Put Into Practice All That Stuff You're Learning In Organic Chemistry." We're really left to our own devices, albeit with a lab manual and at least 3 TAs at every session. Our first experiment is synthesizing and characterizing a type of molecule known as an oxime. We're been working on the various aspects of the lab for about two and half weeks now, which works out to roughly 15 (!) hours.

I still remember when I first saw a 'lab setup' when I was younger...it was in Flubber, the rather silly Disney remake starring Robin Williams as an absent minded professor who manages to invent this anthropomorphic green goo with fantastic, Newton-ignoring properties. Robin Williams' character had this awesome set up with test tubes and pipes and Erlenmeyer flasks and things that spun and lit up and let off steam and bubbled and turned lots of different colors and EXPLODED.

Lab is nothing like that.

Lab is more along the lines of "sitting and waiting for your hot water bath to boil" or "waiting for the NMR machine to take your readings" or "watching little capillary tubes to catch a melting point." It's probably the saddest part of becoming a 'real' scientist...certain magical aspects go from being science to science fiction (or just redundant).

But there's one thing that still looks really, really cool and VERY mad scientist-y. It's a little thing, but yesterday in lab we had to bring out the big, smoking guns:

 Dry ice! 

...okay, that's sort of really nerdy, but I thought it was cool : )

More amusing, however, was what happened yesterday night (as noted in the title of this post). So as I mentioned above, I, along with many people in my house, have a large ACM 95c set due on Wednesdays. Ergo, Tuesdays generally consist of people diligently working, trying to finish the set before breakfast. Deep down, we're all dedicated students.

That being said, we're also all very resourceful and have fined tuned senses of humor. And revenge. Sometime last year, our house bell went missing. The thing is ancient and a pretty integral part of our house culture, so when word got around that the citizens of F8 had taken it, the upperclassmen decided that this would not do.
So they went and reassembled F8 in the courtyard.

Of course, it turned out that F8 had been set up by another student, and revenge was carried out in the form of shoving the offender into the nearest shower, fully clothed (and then we all helped put the room back together).

So finally the point of this post...yesterday night was a similar night of revenge and mayhem. I'm not quite sure how things really began, but sometime around 00h00 hours a room was bombed with sugar donuts, leaving its occupant, Thimal, less than happy. In retaliation, the attacker, Kwok, was chased back into his room and trapped there with a precariously balanced bucket of water, set up so that opening the door meant a certain deluge into the room.

It was at this point that I first ventured upstairs with some inconsequential question about transformations of partial differential equations. A sort of stalemate had settled in--Kwok couldn't leave his room, and there's not much you can do to get revenge on someone trapped inside his own room.

When I left and came back about an hour later, a daring skirmish had taken place. The door had been cracked open enough for a water balloon to be launched. Unfortunately/Fortunately it bounced and did not break, allowing Thimal a chance to try and retaliate:
That's Thimal on the left and Nick on the right, waiting for another opportunity--coincidentally, these are the two occupants of the pranked room from above.

I finally came back half an hour later, almost done and with just a few more questions. I remarked, 

"You know, if it were me, I'd have tried to escape by now. How much water would spill before you could grab the bucket?"

And literally JUST as I said that, the unmistakable sounds of a desperate escape were heard from down the hall. Somewhat curious, I stepped out into the hallway...

...and discovered that the answer is "quite a lot of water," because the next thing I knew I was drenched from head to toe with what remained in the bucket.

Needless to say, it was highly amusing once I got over the shock. Of course, a few minutes later I realized that half of my set was completely illegible and I went back into shock, but overall it made for an eventful Tuesday night.

So the entire campus is getting ready for Prefrosh Weekend--hopefully many of you are planning on coming and getting ready to fly out tomorrow morning. There are even brand new umbrellas for you to recline under:
Aren't they pretty?

Until next time,

Mythili.