Caltech

Hope You Like Potatoes

No seriously.  I really hope you do.

One of the first things to do when you arrive in a new place is to make sure you have your essentials down.  Of those, it's usually good to have at least a rough idea of where you can get food, water, or preferably both.  Being the paranoid little blogger that I am, I took my time to take a leisurely stroll through the wild woods of Google to make sure I could get some form of sustenance from my trip to Cambridge, and frankly, take a good look at my fare.  After all, this is a new country, a new culture.  Despite the UK probably being the closest to the United States in terms of a lot of things, there are some decent differences in cuisine, so you do learn a few things coming here.

Here's an example: let's say you arrive, bleary eyed, at 8 in the morning at your college, which in my case is the fabulous Corpus Christi College (more on the collegiate system later; you can tell I have my priorities straight when I talk about food first).  You've red-eyed your flight, the food there wasn't that great so you just sort of nibbled at it, you're all around grumpy.  First thing you're going to want to do is find some breakfast, which in Corpus's case can be found in the relaxing bar connected to the college.  You'll notice some differences already: tomatoes will be present in your meal, since apparently that's just a thing you eat with breakfast.  Baked beans are a breakfast staple, so you shrug and dig into that too.  You push around your oddly shaped bacon and regularly shaped eggs to find this blackened disk.  Oh, what's this? Oh, it tastes good!  So you timidly make your first interaction and ask what this stuff is, oh black pudding, what's that?

It's pig's blood.  Congealed pig's blood.

So yeah, stuff's different here, ranging from eggplant being called aubergine all the way to the existence of pate as an entire subsection of meat.  Almost everyone eats almost everything with a knife and fork, even the things you'd usually use hands for, like hot dogs.  More things will be in pies than you can imagine.  AND POTATOES.  POTATOES WITH EVERY MEAL.  I HOPE YOU LIKE POTATOES CAUSE YOU GET A NICE MASSIVE COOKED PORTION FOR ONLY 70p ($1.12) IN HALL ITS RIDICULOUS.

Overall, though, I'd say the food's pretty good at hall, even with the transition.  Cambridge also has formal dinners once or twice a week, depending on college, and those are EXTREMELY good, several course meals that run the gambit.  It's definitely worth visiting several times while you're here, so long as you think you can afford it.

Eating outside's great too.  Indian food abounds easily throughout, and small food stalls exist throughout market square, including food trucks.  Search for a bit and you'll find your Starbucks, your Subway, your McDonalds, though you'll have enough options that you can pretty much ignore that part of America for a little while.

Its an easy transition.  You occasionally ignore the pea mush, grab your oddly cooked beef, shrug and take a raspberry tart thing for dessert and really, its mostly the same.  The little tiny differences, though, they're sort of exciting; you have all this cuisine you're familiar with, but just a tiny bit of new to explore and have fun with.  None of its essential, really.  Establishing your survivability essentials is incredibly easy in Cambridge, even if you want to stick to food you know.  I think you'll have fun if you just go out and try some stuff you haven't seen before.  The rewards worth the risk.

Even if that risk is congealed pig's blood.

Cheers,

Aditya

 

P.S.  Rain!  Rain and cobblestones!  Rain and cobblestones and street stores! It all comes together, really

JTree

Having survived the week as a human (and not yet a zombie), I have found that a dominant survival strategy during the missions, set up by the game moderator so that zombies would have a chance to attack and humans would have a chance to obtain food codes, was to form a small group with a few other humans and act in pure self-interest to go into the missions as early as possible, pick up all of the supplies available, escape, and hoard. It turns out that this game, which was in its beta phase with the food code requirement, is actually very exploitable as a human to act selfishly, since if humans die of hunger, they cannot become zombies, so it is even more so in a human's interest to hoard food codes. Despite having to carry a loaded Nerf gun to Ph 11, the research tutorial/freshman seminar headed by Professor Tombrello, to neutralize a zombie who was taking the class, I look forward to playing this game again, because nothing is as de-stressing as running around Sloan stealthily or storming the Student Activity Center and busting into every room looking for clues.

With the game ended, on Saturday after SURF presentations, a number of Darbs and I rolled out to Joshua Tree National Park (JTree) for a night of scrambling, stargazing, and freezing. 

 I guess you could say this place...rocks.

Unlike parks I am accustomed to, JTree is mostly dry, sandy, and shrubby, with strange-looking trees dotting the landscape, which makes for a very quiet and serene night. We had not bothered with bringing tents (there really is no need for them at JTree), so unlike last time I camped here, we needed to make only one trip to the campsite with our belongings and did not have to struggle with setting up a tent.

However, since the region is practically a desert, the night time temperature drops very low, and many campers including myself found it difficult to sleep and instead went for a stroll under the full moon. While out on a trail, we discovered that there was noticeable geographic variation in temperature within approximately a mile of the campsite, but despite the abundance of moonlight, we could not identify exactly what warmed that area while the campsite was still frigid. On the other hand, inadvertently staying awake the entire night allowed us to watch the sunrise behind the rockpiles and mountains, for which I probably would not have woken up otherwise.

 

After a night of sleepless fun to conclude the week, I feel some strange combination of excitement and dread at the thought of this coming week's workload, as I have an extra set due this week for Ph 219 - Quantum Computation taught by Professor John Preskill, who also taught Ph 12c - Statistical Mechanics last year. This class is especially neat because, as it is not offered every year, many professors (including my option adviser) are taking the class in addition to undergraduate and graduate students at Caltech--a testament to the small size of the Caltech community. 

Of course, following the wise words "work hard, play harder", I expect that some entertaining hijinks will arise that make the week more enjoyable and less stressful.

Pre-Midterm Productivity, i.e. Hanging Out With the House

Hellooooo! And welcome to the first installment of Adventures of an Ex-Prefrosh!

As you can probably tell from other sources of information, my name is Anita and I'm a freshman here at Caltech. This is the weekend before midterms, when we frosh are supposed to be stressing out. And stress we do! So I’ve been a good kid and had a nice, productive weekend so far:

After going with 24 other people in my house to see "Despicable Me 2" yesterday, I made an autumn offering out of fruits that I obtained from parental visits and open kitchen, as well as a pumpkin my roommate acquired at the Frosh Women lunch this Thursday.

 

I drew a mini-mural of San Diego and some of my favorite haunts on our whiteboard that hangs on the door. I’ve spent (ahem, wasted/procrastinated) about three hours on it so far. Since I’m working in the hallway, everyone comes by to chat and either see my work or admire the fact that I’m using dry-erase crayons I borrowed from a friend. (They are really good for color manipulation and I recommend this to anyone who is a kid, or at least partially a kid, on the inside.)

 

We had Zombie Night tonight, during which Ruddock House dresses up as zombies and tries to break into Dabney. Of course, we did a house tour first of all the houses minus Avery, and banged on people’s doors and made dying cat noises for the fun of it. The Darbs’ effort was impressive--one door was barricaded by a line of tables that extended all the way to the wall on the other side. Eventually we broke in successfully and ate pizza together.

 

Now, for me, it’s back to math instead of going to the Hollyween party. Call me a spoilsport...but midterms are calling first! (Terrible pun, I know.) I guess that’s why we have the party and celebrations on the 26^th rather than the 31^st because midterms fall right along then. It's good that Caltech keeps us entertained, though. Otherwise we frosh would have a much harder time adjusting to the workload than we already did.

The consequences of not being able to play in the orchestra due to night classes are already showing up in my math homework:

 

Thanks for reading! Till next time--

Anita

Greetings from the Isles!

Allo there chaps!  Or something.  I don't even.  

My name is Aditya and this is my humble blog, a little place where I can share my experiences over the next term as a student at Cambridge University for the fall term.  Join me in my wacky, zany adventures involving cobblestones, odd accents, and cars coming down the wrong side of the road (70% of the world's road traffic is on the right, for pete's sake, and the only ones on the left were once part of the British Empire.  I call shenanigans).

I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to toddle through these ancient halls of learning thanks to the Caltech Study Abroad office, which offers terms or semesters abroad at quite a few universities, including but not limited to places such as Edinburgh, Copenhagen, and even Melbourne.  Myself, I chose the Cambridge scholars program, so here I am, quietly sipping tea at what the States would consider a completely unreasonable hour.

Far be it from me to tell you how to experience your college life; in the end, it’s up to you to decide what sort of experience you want to pull out of your four years as university.  Studying abroad, however, is truly a once in a lifetime possibility, a possibility that Caltech will gladly support.  I’m still receiving financial aid all the way through this term; it costs the same to study here as it does back home, barring the differences in food and so on (btw, fish and chips? Two thumbs up.  Just saying).

So what sort of advantages do you get to studying abroad?  You get to experience an entirely different culture, and not just for some one week visit; you get a minimum of 10 weeks with the Cambridge program, and up to 14 depending on the term length of the college you go to.  You get to take classes that Caltech doesn’t offer, either because of curriculum differences or just because Tech is tiny.  You get to meet new people all with different perspectives, and oftentimes with majors you wouldn’t normally see, such as history or theology.  Finally, you have an excuse to travel, and if you want to see the world as much as I do, you get to do it in a time of your life where you normally just wouldn’t have that much time.

Time is another thing I currently lack, to be frank; there is work to be done and tea to be sipped, and I’m all done with my tea.  Expect a bunch more posts from me soon, there’s plenty to talk about here!

Good Day and Whatnot,

Aditya

 

P.S. Each post will probably come with some cool completely unrelated photo.  Here's my courtyard!  Its sort of nice, I guess...
 

Looks Like the Carnival is in Town

Each year, Caltech hosts a small carnival on the Beckman Mall with some of the standard carnival attractions: a rock climbing wall, a dunk tank, a money booth, a wrecking ball, a bouncy house, an assortment of small games with prizes, student bands, a cappella groups, dancing, and, perhaps the most attractive feature to a college student, lots of food. The carnival was decked out with snow cones, pretzels, popcorn, nachos, burgers, hot dogs, and more, and our new freshmen received their gifts from the Caltech Alumni Association: a Caltech Blanket, which students laid on the lawn in front of the "wedding cake".

Bands such as Twin Peaks and solo artists from Caltech performed throughout the day at the carnival as well as Fluid Dynamics, one of Caltech's four a cappella groups (the others are Out of Context, Keytones, and Harmonic Motion). The festivities concluded with a fireworks show at approximately 7:15 pm and were followed by a showing of Pacific Rim. 

 

In other news, zombies are invading Caltech, and the remaining humans must defend themselves at all costs! Well, something like that; after all, with enough sleep deprivation, students can start to resemble zombies. Caltech's Nerf Club has begun yet another Humans vs. Zombies game, in which among the participants, one has been secretly designated a zombie whose goal it is to tag human players and convert them to zombies, while the humans can temporarily neutralize zombies by shooting them with Nerf guns. Of course, there are certain locations, such as Houses and bathrooms, that are safe for all players, but humans cannot hide in a safe place forever, because they must go out and acquire food codes each day through missions in various buildings (made known to the zombies as well) to survive. As a human, for now, I anticipate much tomfoolery over the next couple of days as many of the new freshmen (who are on pass/fail) start staking out classrooms and residences waiting for the perfect opportunities to convert upperclassmen into zombies. With that said, though, it looks like my roommate's arsenal of Nerf supplies should suffice for this game:

 

For a game like HvZ, living off-campus has another benefit to it: freshmen typically know less about where things are off-campus, so the number of people who might be hiding outside my room is significantly lower. If I survive for a week, expect another post about how I did it, and if not, expect a picture of me gnawing on flesh. As I intend to wield no gun larger than a Triad regularly, it is going to take some time for me to flesh out the details to build a truly airtight defense.

Regardless of my classification as a human or zombie next weekend, I have Dabney's trip to Joshua Tree National Park to look forward to, which, for a former East Coast-dweller, is a very different take on a national park than expected. Since the park is essentially a mixture of desert and chaparral, there are no densely packed stands of trees or large waterfalls everywhere: just near emptiness as far as the eye can see. Having camped there for a night during spring break last term, I have found a new appreciation for "J-tree", which originated from scrambling up a rockpile next to our campsite at midnight and looking out for miles only to see and hear nothing but the lights and voices of our fellow campers at the base. 

Top Five

It's around the time of year when students have to start thinking about applying for study abroad programs. If you're a prefrosh and you're reading this, it's never too early to start planning! Here are my top five reasons for why I love Denmark, and why I would definitely recommend looking into Caltech's Copenhagen Scholars Program:

5. Biking culture

Okay, this might sound trivial, but biking in Denmark is a huge thing. Back in California, I never touched my bike, but here in Denmark I'm totally in love with it. The city is quite small and quite flat, so you can get anywhere quite easily. Being in the fresh air and feeling like you're being environmentally conscious is awesome, and not to mention you'll get in pretty good shape!

4. Unpredictable weather patterns

This also might be another surprising one. But as an aspiring planetary scientist, atmospheric dynamics fascinate me, so I could watch the Scandinavian sky all day. In the last three month's I've seen everything ranging from sunshine to storms, and snow is soon to follow! The chance of rain at the drop of a hat keeps you on your toes, and what's life without a little unpredictability? :)

3. Learning Danish

This is the only program where you can actually learn a different language. Yeah, Danish is ridiculously obscure—it's spoken by only about 5.6 million people, so you might think you're wasting your time learning a "useless" and challenging language. But I think learning languages is a really fun exercise for your brain! Not to mention, the Danes will think you're instantly adorable for trying.

2. Coffee and cafes

It seems like Copenhagen has a different cute hipster coffee bar on every corner. Most of them serve really excellent coffees, sandwiches, and cookies (albeit quite expensive... Starbucks prices look like a piece of cake compared to places in CPH!) and they're always a great place to go chat with friends. Which actually brings me to my number one reason I love Denmark:

1. Hygge

Hygge is a Danish word that doesn't quite translate directly to any particular English word. It's used to describe relaxing and cozy times, always with friends and good food or drinks. It's essentially an absence of stress and a very warm atmosphere of friendship.

 

So there you have it, and if you have any more questions about the particular things I love in Copenhagen, please feel free to coment!

Hello, World

As a supposedly seasoned Techer who has returned for more learning/pain (they are inseparable), I am now back at Caltech and once more piled higher and deeper in work and waking up early (8:30 is early) for class, which for an off-campus student is a more difficult test of his interest in the course material. Not to worry, though, for my newest friend craigslist linked me to a gentleman who sold me a very good mountain bike for just 85 dollars!

With this, I no longer have to choose between eating breakfast and sleeping an extra 15 minutes, and standard grocery stores are no more than 5 minutes away--the world is my oyster. Going to campus? No problem! And just in time for the end of Rotation, too, to bounce with the newest Darbs!

 

Having reduced the effective distances to grocery stores, I have found that the other blessing and curse of living off-campus--cooking for oneself--has shown itself to be almost entirely a blessing. As much as I appreciate the ease of CDS-prepared food, I recently discovered that preparing food for myself has proven approximately 20 times cheaper than following the Board plan, which is not mandatory for off-campus students. Moreover, I can control the nutrition and freshness of the food I eat, to which as a freshman I did not pay too much attention since I was not in charge of preparing the food.

Still, there is nothing quite like the simple deliciousness of a grilled cheese sandwich. In light of this fact of life, yesterday my roommate and I bought whole grain bread, ciabatta bread, sliced pepper jack cheese, sliced cheddar cheese, a block of parmesan cheese, and spiced apple cider from Trader Joe's. Retrospectively, I realize that these ingredients do not exactly embody "simple deliciousness", but sometimes the inner engineer cannot be stopped from rehashing a relatively simple recipe. With that said, here is our recipe for a fantastic (and mildly pretentious) grilled cheese sandwich:

Ingredients: Whole grain bread or sliced ciabatta bread, cayenne pepper, oregano, thinly sliced tomato, and at least one of the cheeses I mentioned above in slice form (the more the better).

Instructions: Place a slice of one of the cheeses on one slice of bread. If it does not cover the bread entirely already, break up the slice and spread it out on the bread. Sprinkle cayenne pepper and oregano (to taste) on the cheese. Add a layer of thinly sliced tomato if you like tomatoes. If you have another cheese to work with, add that layer and add another slice of bread. On a hot pan, spread a very small amount of butter and place the uncooked sandwich on the pan and cover with a lid. When the cheese starts to melt, flip the sandwich, and press down on it with a spatula for about 20 seconds to make sure that the sandwich does not fall apart because of ingredients like tomatoes inside. When the slice of the bread on the pan is crispy on the outside, the sandwich is ready.

With spiced apple cider, these grilled cheese sandwiches make for a perfect "high-class" meal that one can use to impress friends without having any actual cooking skills or knowledge, and we all know that after a long day of being questioned about cross-disciplinary research, a grilled ChE/ESE major could use a hot grilled cheese sandwich.

What's Cooking in Copenhagen?

(Please ignore my cheesy blog titles, I have WAY too much fun making them)

Something I’ve noticed about the Danes—that I think is culturally different from the Californians I know—is the social role of cooking. Usually, if I want to hang out with friends back home, we’ll go out for lunch, or coffee. Or, if it’s someone’s birthday or another special occasion, we will most definitely go out to dinner. But here in CPH, staying at home and cooking is an essential part of hanging out with friends.

Cooking as a social activity is sort of a new concept for me, and I love it. So naturally, this post is just going to be a bunch of pictures of food (click to see them in all their enlarged pixellated glory)! Also, I’m definitely a breakfast person, so there’s a heavy overrepresentation of that kind of food.. I promise, I do eat lunch and dinner. Sometimes.

 

Apartments in CPH are rather small compared to LA, but the few that I’ve been to have these amazingly cozy balconies where we can sit and eat on nice weather days.

 

 

TIETGEN TACO TUESDAY

 

 

Kickass omelettes with a melted green pesto cheese. NOM

 

 

Blueberry pancakes!!

 

When I do go out, there are plenty of places to choose from. Copenhagen has a countably infinite amount of creatively decorated cafes and coffee bars. (But of course, just like particles have antiparticles, for every amazing coffee place there is an equally terrible coffee kiosk—usually located at DTU or KU, when I need caffeination the most. UNIVERSE, WHY YOU GOTTA PLAY ME LIKE THIS)

 

Cappucino from The Coffee Factory, Gothersgade, KBH

 

 

Tranquebar, a bookstore/coffeebar (my two loves!!!!)

 

 

Studying for my Danish exam at Paludan Bogcafe, another cafe/bookstore combo.

 

 

One of my favorite cafe/bars, called Tjili-Pop in the Nørrebro neighborhood. It has incredibly quirky decoration and really good food and drinks. It also has a small outdoor area where you can sit and watch people coming and going on the street in front.

 

Aaaaaand now it’s time to go exercise off all these calories of deliciousness. If you are a sucker for good coffee, like me, Copenhagen is THE PLACE TO BE.

Premed Life at Caltech

Hi! I'm Caroline and am continuing Yang's blog from last year about being Premed at Caltech. Medical school admissions are a challenging process in general, but are particularly so at a small, engineering focused school such as Caltech. However, don't be discouraged, many of my premed friends have done very well and have matriculated to top medical schools. Over the course of the blog, I'll discuss topics such as studying for the MCAT, writing the personal statement and many other big parts of applying to medical school.

I'm currently a senior majoring in Biology and minoring in English. I just recently finished the application process (phew!). The whole process took me from around May to early August, but I'm still participating in interviews and waiting for results. It's a pretty expensive process and can be stressful at times (Not going to lie, waiting to hear back from schools is terrifying), but, overall, it's an exciting time!

Ask me anything and let me know in the comments if there's anything you'd like me to cover. Otherwise, best of luck to you all!

An Introduction to Denmark — Part 2 feat. Pictures!

Having now lived in Denmark for three months, I feel pretty comfortable with the swing of daily life. However, I still don't think I'm used to it!

First of all, I am staying at Tietgen Kollegiet, which, a friend once told me, looks like Architectural Digest and an Ikea catalog had a baby. That pretty much sums it up. It’s a gigantic torus-shaped dormitory with a large grass area on the inside. All of the student rooms face outward toward the surrounding area, and all of the common rooms like the kitchens and patios face inwards. The ground floor has a gym, study rooms, laundry rooms, etc. It’s ridiculously pretty, and quite surreal.

 

View from the inside

 

 

 

View from the outside!

 

Something random I learned about Copenhagen livin' is that during the summer, the spiders become radioactively sized:

 

SOMETHING DOES NOT BELONG HERE...

 

And aside from the view of the spiders, the general view from my room is pretty incredible:

 

During the summer, the sun rises around 4am!!

 

We are twelve rooms in a hallway and we all share a really nice and fancy kitchen. The kitchen is our common area, and there's usually people hanging out there at any time of the day. (Sort of like the Ruddock lounge... oh wait hahaha no)

Another thing crucial to daily life in Denmark is having a BIKE. I have a Danish friend who is currently studying abroad in Belgium, and she is graciously letting me borrow her awesome bike. I used to suck so hard at biking (and I still do, actually) but I'm totally addicted to it here. There are specific lanes in the road for bikers, and the city is small enough that you can whiz around it quite quickly. Plus, it's more entertaining than taking public transportation :)

 

Those are some of the basics of Danish daily life! Keep following for the next post, which is all about everyone's favorite topic: FOOD <3