Caltech

Shaved Ice

This weekend I went out with a bunch of fellow Pageboys :) Jeff, Rico, and Ying drove 11 of us (including them) to Guppy House, which is around 45 minutes away. There, we got two enormous shaved ice, two brick toasts, and two chickens.

Massively huge strawberry shaved ice with creeper Jeff in background

 Strawberry and mango shaved us. Rebecca looks very ready to eat :P

 Chicken! Which was nice to have when you needed a break from the coldness of shaved ice

 Bahahahaha, we managed to finish it all @____@'' 

By the time the two brick toasts came I think I was far too full to eat anymore @___@

Hmmm, anyway, the shaved ice was really good, but it had too much condensed milk, oh well. This one also had not enough other toppings. The other place I went to a couple weeks ago with Jeff, Kelly, and Ben had lots of toppings like boba and mochi and red bean. I left feeling far too full x___x;; But it was definitely an interesting experience eating from such a huge bowl of shaved ice o___o

San Gabriel!

On Saturday, Sarai and I walked for 2 hours to San Gabriel! It's a town close to Caltech (if you drive) that's full of Chinese shops. Fun fun. We always talk a lot during the time it takes us to get to places (on the metro, bus, walking, etc.) I think the first time I got to know Sarai well was during the day we took the metro to L.A. and went around a lot of places until dark. Yay. Anyway, after 2 hours we arrived at a small cozy and cheap Chinese restaurant! And we had very cheap wonton (yum yum) noodle soup with various yummy meat and veggies in it for only 7.5 dollars including tax and tip :D And the lady was very nice too, although I didn't really understand her because she was speaking in canto so I only caught some snippets, yup. Anyway, after that we got coconut milk tea boba which was...kinda bad because it was far too sweet and the boba wasn't that soft. Oh well!

And then we made our way to 99 Ranch, which was supposedly 10 minutes away, to buy groceries. So after looking at the map, Sarai directed me in a direction and we started walking until we saw a stuffed animals store! Sarai bought a cow for Michael! AND IT MOOS AND SINGS. LOL.

 

Michael admiring the cow he got. The cheek is red cuz it's singing haha

 

So then we leave the shop, ready to keep walking towards 99 Ranch. After 10 minutes, we still haven't reached our destination. Suspicious, I took out the map and examined it. Turned out Sarai is a fail and we were going in the wrong direction x___x Anyway, so then we turned around and walked another 20 minutes to 99 Ranch. And then...it turned out that neither of us actually wanted anything there -____________- (more fail! ) So then we left without getting anything...and hopped on a bus and came back. Yeah, we were too tired to walk another 2 hours back xD;;

Fake Ditch Day! (take two)

We had another fake ditch day this morning :) The seniors walked past our doors banging on pots and pans to wake us up at 8 AM. (Oh man so early @_@) Somehow, I managed to get up and walked into a crowd of underclassmen around Albert Ho's door, which they painted yesterday. Our stack this morning was Curious George! We also got awesome Curious George stack shirts :)

Our first hint was enclosed in a huge rubber band ball. It took Stephanie a while to undo all of the rubber bands -- it must've taken the seniors a long time to wrap all of them around. The clue told us to head over to Winnett, where we found a clue floating near the ceiling, tied up with balloons. There were also a bunch of forks on the ground, meant for us to throw them to pop the balloons. It was pretty hard to pop them -- most of the forks just bounced off the balloons. After a while, we managed to get 4 of them popped, and then Hanna found a mop and nudged the balloons towards us, totally not cheating at all ;P

The new clue that we found told us that the wind was blowing southeast, so we walked over that way and found a big bucket with soapy suds in there. We also found a few sets of two wooden sticks connected with a string to make a circle, which we could use to dip into the soapy suds and make big bubbles! There were also two wooden fans to fan the bubbles to "transport" them. Our task was to make 5 bubbles travel across the Olive Walk. A lot of the bubbles that we made fell to the ground before they got across, but James, who was amazing at fanning bubbles, apparently, managed to get five of them across after a while :D

For our "prize", we got a Curious George stuffed animal and donuts for breakfast :) And now I'm too awake from the stack to fall asleep. xD

I know my description of some of the tasks was a bit hard to understand, I'll try to find some pictures later. I was too sleepy when I left my room to remember to bring my camera, but luckily some people did xD

Clippers vs. Mavericks!

I came into Caltech not knowing anything about basketball, but my roommate, a huge basketball fan, has been influencing me quite a bit. In fact, I even agreed to go to the Clippers vs. Mavericks game with her! Sarai, Erica, and I rode on the bus for an hour and got there a bit before the game started at 7:30.

People crowded outside the Staples Center

Teams practicing and stretching before the game

First, they introduced the starting lineups, and the fans cheered really loudly when Blake Griffin, pretty much the star of the Clippers, was introduced. Even Sarai, who is a huge Mavericks fan. She spent quite a bit of the game cheering for them and telling me how awesome some of the players are, especially her favorite Jason Kidd. I know a lot more about NBA players and teams than I ever did.

They also provided a bunch of entertainment during time outs and half-time. They had the dance team come out and dance. During half-time they also had "Junior Clippers" come out to play, which was basically 2 teams of kids around 10 years old playing for 5 minutes. They also had shots of people in the stadium, and some of them were quite entertaining...

Awwwwww

Since the Mavericks is one of the best teams in the NBA, and the Clippers aren't, most people pretty much expect the Mavericks to win. The Clippers did very well though, and they were leading for much of the first half. About halfway through the fourth quarter, the Clippers were down by about 16 points, but they had managed to bring it close and the final score was 106 to 100, with the Mavericks winning.

The game ended around 10:15, and we took the metro back to Lake Station, where we got picked up by a nice friend of Erica's, and finally got back to Caltech just before midnight :)

Waiting at the metro :]

A Walk to Arcadia!

So being crazy kids like we are, Sarai and I decided to walk to Arcadia yet again during Spring Break! It took us around 1.5 hours, and we ate again at Din Tai Fung, the international dumpling restaurant chain. Again, we got xiao long bao, which are Shanghai steamed soup dumplings:

Hmmmmmmm. Omnomnom

We also got spinach! So nice to finally eat Chinese vegetables again! We also got some taro buns to finish up our meal.

So my favorite part actually wasn't the food, it was the crane machines in the shop nearby. You know, those machines with awesome things in it that you can try to get with a totally rigged hook that loosens up once it grabs something. There were about twenty of those there, filled with things like doraemons, chococats, mini tofus, mini potatoes, mushrooms, bread (all stuffed, of course.) It cost a dollar to try just once (argh! aren't they usually 50 cents?!) So...I wasted 3 dollars :( I think the next time I go I'll try again...ahaha. Those things usually cost at least 10 dollars anyway, since they're all branded.

Omgosh so many happy things

I wanted a tofu...:( But the hook didn't like me

Ridiculously cute milk cartons!

Chococat! Which are so much better than Hello Kitty (which are too overrated.)

 

Huntington at last!

So Sarai and I had planned to go to Huntington Library and Gardens since almost two months ago, but somehow something came up every weekend and we never made it. Finally, we got around to going there during Spring Break!

On Friday, Sarai, Carrie, Albert, and I walked to Huntington. We were greeted by beautiful trees and flowers as soon as we walked past the entrace. All four of us brought a camera, and I took quite a few pictures. First we checked out the gardens with a lot of sculptures, trees, and flowers (not quite sure what it was called.) I realized on the trip that these are my favorite flowers (unfortunately I don't know what they are called -- anyone care to enlighten me?):

They also come in white :)

Next, we went to the Conservatory, with the Rain Forest, Cloud Forest, and Bog. You can actually see mists and clouds in the Cloud Forest:

It was around then that I started getting ridiculous allergic reactions to the pollen thoroughout the Gardens. I'm sure that my sniffling provided my companions some great music as we headed towards the Chinese Gardens. The view was absolutely amazing, and I feel in love the white bridge:

They did quite a good job replicating the Chinese Gardens -- I've seen bridges like these in China.

 
I think that this is called a pagoda?

I love willows!

We went along the path to the Japanese gardens. They had a replica of a Japanese style house, complete with a traditional tea room. There was also a nice bamboo garden and bomsai garden. I never knew there were so many different types, shapes, and sizes. We also stopped by the lily pond, but it wasn't the season for lilies :(

Our last stop was the desert garden. It was much larger than I expected. I loved the cacti! There were so many different types, some tiny, some huge.

A snippet of the desert garden

We left after looking around the desert garden. We actually only visited around half of the gardens Huntington, haven't seen Jungle Garden, Subtropical Garden, etc. We also didn't look at any of the galleries or the art collection. We'll probably go back some other day and visit more :)

Spring Break [at Caltech]! (Part 1)

A lot of my friends left Thursday or Friday, but there are quite a few who still stayed. It feels quite strange to have the house so much quieter, and have less people wandering into our room at random times. It's also a lot less convenient since we have to find food for ourselves for the next 1.5 weeks since we don't get dinner or money to use at the convenience store. Sarai finished up her last final on Thursday, and we went with a couple of our friends to Tea Spots. It's a rather popular place that Caltech students go to for boba or shaved ice since it's only a 10 minute walk away. There are better boba places around, but not within walking distance, and unfortunately we don't have a car :(

Another popular place Techers go to would be Cherry on Top, an awesome frozen yogurt place. It's like Pinkberry except cheaper and better. They always have a large variety of flavors which change every week. A group of us went over on Friday, and they had flavors such as Pineapple tart, cake batter, pecan praline, as well as more original flavors such as tart and vanilla. I always go for the tart flavors, flavors like chocolate and cake batter are more befitting for ice cream...

A bunch of people next to the flavors. You can kinda see Sarai and James at the left edge of the photo trying some out.

They also have a lot of toppings. They have things like chocolate and syrup, which, again, to me, are more for ice cream than froyo, for which fruit toppings are a lot better!

An extensive selection of toppings for froyo fans! There are more but I didn't quite get a picture of them.

Spring break is a great time to make trips to places that you don't quite get to during the term. On Friday, Sarai, Carrie, Albert and I went to Huntington Library and Gardens, a beautiful place! I'll write more about that later. Since we have to fend for ourselves for food this week, Sarai and I walked to Arcadia again for 1.5 hours. More on that later too... :)

Spring Break is awesomely relaxing! (but also a bit boring at times, especially since most people are gone.) James got a new computer and spent quite some time on Thursday building it, and was so excited when it finally worked! He was especially happy because he could play Minecraft and League of Legends on high settings now. And then he was quite devastated when the computer gave him the blue screen of death a day later, and everything started lagging...

While James built his computer, Albert, an awesome photographer, set up his pro camera to take a picture of the building every 10 seconds and then put together the pictures into a video which you can watch here. It's pretty amazing :D He spent quite a bit of time on it, and you can see a lot of people walking in and out of the room to watch him work.

James looking super attractive while building his computer!

(Please don't kill me if you read this, James :P)

Me photobombing :D

You can also see Sarai in the mirror, lol.

Oh, and there's an High Expectation Asian Father picture on the door that says:

"Got into CIT? What about AIT?" Ahahaha...xD

Yup, that's it for now :) I'll post about Huntington and Arcadia soon. I don't know if I'll be out much next week since it's going to be rainy :(

Random // Photo Dump [Part 1]

So I have a lot of pictures that I've randomly taken but don't quite merit a blog post. Therefore, this is pretty much a photo dump of random things I've done at Caltech, many of which are actually from first term.

Avery House Pumpkin Carving

I have quite a few friends in Avery, and I went to the pumpkin carving event at Tom Mannion's house! He supplied us with a lot of food...

 Pumpkin pie!

Our dead pumpkin :]

 On fire!

Rest of the pumpkins:

 Panda!

 Mario!

 Penguin and mini-pumpkin!

 Ahhh...this is Charmander but you can't really tell :(

This witch was awesome.

 

Chemistry Explosions!

Many of you have probably seen videos of explosions of elements when thrown into the water. In Ch1a, the chemistry TAs did those experiments here at the Millikan Pond.

 

 Sodium

Potassium

Cesium which reacted before it even exploded into the water!

Random stuff!

So on most Fridays, a bunch of people set up DDR and play. There are some people here who are really amazing at DDR. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I have yet to play a round where I do not fail...sigh. And I usually play on a very easy level...

 
A bunch of people sitting around watching Albert and Katherine play DDR.

LOL Gee

 Thanksgiving

Most people stayed at Caltech over Thanksgiving, during which we cooked!

 

  Yay cooking. 

 Lots of awesome Asian food that we cooked :]

Ok that's it for now :) I'll put up some more stuff later.

Help Japan! Charity Event at Little Tokyo

One of my friends from Virginia came to visit Caltech this week, so Michael, Sarai, Ben, and I decided to take him to visit Los Angeles. First, we stopped by Chinatown, where we found a random restaurant to eat. We were sitting next to an aquarium with fishes, two of which were kissing...a couple of us found it rather amusing, but I didn't get a picture of it. Anyway, the food was also amazing, it was nice to get some Chinese food once in a while.

Afterwards, we made our way to Little Tokyo, where I've been to many many times. They have a lot of stores. Some sell cute Asian mechandise, such as totoros and domos. One such store have new things every time I go -- they sell out so quickly. This time there were awesome hamtaros that vibrates when you pull on their tails. There are also stores that sell more traditional Asian things such as fans, etc. For anime lovers, there are two stores that sell imported anime and manga merchandise from Japan. Finally, there are also a lot of Japanese restaurants and snack places. The street side snack shops are especially awesome, they sell snacks like takoyaki and mochi ice cream.

All of you probably know about the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan recently. To raise awareness and funding to help Japan, there was a charity event on Saturday. There were performances throughout the day and many volunteers walked around with boxes getting donations. I'm proud to say that we contributed :)

 

A singer performing for the charity event

There was an adorable green bird walking around raising funds!

Formal Dinner / Book Night

Last Tuesday was the second term formal dinner for Page House! Of course, like most dinners, you don't have to be part of the house to attend, a bunch of people from other houses came too. Since it is a formal dinner, most girls come wearing dresses, and guys suits or dress shirts. Of course, if you don't want to, you don't have to dress up. One of my girl friends came wearing a polo shirt and nice pants. One of my guy friends decided to dress up like this:

Very...classy ;P

There were a lot of pictures taken during the 30 minutes of reception before dinner. Albert took a lot of awesome pictures which can be found here.

Formal dinner, as usual, is much better than regular dinner. However, the best part of the night wasn't the scrumptious meal of soup, croissants, steak, and dessert, it was the signing of the Page Book! First, it was signed by the old and new ExComms of Page House. After that, it was signed by all of the freshmen in Page, our final induction into the house. Every freshman was introduced by an upperclassman who knew him or her fairly well. Most of the introductions involved inside jokes known by most people in the house, which brought on a lot of laughter. We're now officially pageboys :)