Caltech

Coffee Shops of Seattle Part 2

Part 2! Here we have 5 more coffee shops located in Seattle. 

Cascade Coffee Works
Location: South Lake Union. This place is really cute and aesthetically pleasing, but I honestly didn't like this one. This coffee shop is probably the only one I didn't like in Seattle, but maybe it was just because the drink I got wasn't good. I got a cassava latte, since I'd never had that before. I'm not sure if this is related, but it gave me headache and I had bad headaches for the following few days/weeks :( 

Herkimer Coffee
This place has a few outlets around Seattle, but I went to the one in South Lake Union. The coffee shop is fairly small and has two floors. I got a drip coffee here, and I thought it was pretty good! I was considering buying some of their beans, but I ended up deciding against it since I don't actually own a coffee bean grinder or a V60 or anything. 

Moore's Coffee
Location: Downtown. This place has amazing waffles. Also the cutest latte art ever. I got a taro latte here, and it came with a cute lion design. The waffle was prepared so nicely, and it just brightened up my whole day. Would definitely recommend coming here, at least for the waffles and the latte art. My friends got bear and cat patterns in their drinks!

 

Fremont Coffee
Location: Fremont. This place also has really cute latte art -- I got a cat! I was studying here for a bit, and I think it's a pretty nice place to hang out. The layout might be a bit weird since it was converted from an old house, but I don't think it's too off-putting. I did notice that the people before me didn't get special latte art (just the standard rosettas), but maybe the barista could sense I was here for the latte art :P I'm super happy I got a cute drink though!

Kakao
Location: South Lake Union. This place specializes in chocolate and sells hot chocolate and mochas. You can choose the darkness of the chocolate in your drink, which is so nice! I think their mochas are delicious. This place was really close to my workplace, so I came several times to get yummy chocolate drinks :)

Overall, I'd say my favorite coffee drink in the Seattle area was the lavender mocha from Zoka Coffee Roasters (from Part 1 of this post!). I would definitely recommend going to Moore Coffee Shop for the waffles, and Moore and Fremont Coffee for the latte art. Kakao is also great for mochas, and I really enjoyed going to Cafe An'Clair for their bulgogi sandwich and the orchid breve. Herkimer also has great drip coffee. One place I wanted to check out, but didn't have the chance to, was Slate Coffee Roasters. I'll just have to wait till next time!

Learning to Drive in College

I got my learner's permit when I was 15, but I procrastinated for a whole five years before I got my actual driver's license.

In high school, when most people learn to drive, I lived two blocks away from school. The lab I did research at and the center where I did out rigger canoeing were both a bus ride away. I was fortunately enough to be around a very well maintained transportation system in that the bus came every 15 minutes and bus passes could get reimbursed by the government at the end of the fiscal year. My parents also set a car-free example as they bused or biked to work. Our family car was only used for grocery shopping and road trips. When I came down to Caltech, I realized that LA's transportation system is completely different. While there are several subways lines, the station is a whole 20 minute walk away from campus and the subway comes once every 16 minutes (Back home, the subway came every 3 minutes and I lived 5 minutes walk away from a station). Furthermore, Southern California is much more sprawled such that even if you do take the subway, you'll have to Uber from the station to your final destination since it would be a ~1hour walk otherwise. Hence, I suddenly felt the need to learn to drive again.

I had to get my learner's permit again, which was possibly the most painful part of the process. Anyone with a car will cringe at the syllables D-M-V. The Pasadena DMV is supposedly better than most, but when I got my learner's permit, I lined up for a whole three hours and they sent me back because because one of my documents was a photocopy instead of an original. When I came back, I had to line up again. I guess it was my bad for not having the right pieces of ID, but waiting in line with a bunch of agitated people really threw me off.

I started taking driving lessons during the summer before sophomore year, during my SURF. After lab, I would take 1-2 hour lessons and drive around the community. Some people are naturals, but others like me took slightly longer. I think it's because I am used to sitting in the passenger's seat so my depth perception on the right side is off. I was really good with left turns and always cut it close on right turns. I probably spent most of my SURF savings on driving lessons because they are not cheap. In the area, it's around $60 per hour with a 2 hour minimum per lesson. Most people take 8-10 hours of lessons to be prepared for the actual test.

As for the test itself, you have to schedule it 2 months in advance. At least that's hour far out the DMV was completely booked the two times I tried to schedule mine. Yes, two times. I failed on my first try for not "checking enough at intersections". I was docked a whole 9 times (-9 points) for that one thing, and failed with -16. It was so close because you can pass if you get above the -15 threshold. Well, I guess I got unlucky.

The second time around, I was much more prepared. One of my good friends has a car and she let me practice a few times before my exam which is super valuable. I ended up passing with only -3! There's nothing like the feeling of having a real driver's license. I understand the hype now. Unfortunately, my parents were not around to celebrate by giving me a car, which is apparently very typical around here. Actually, even if they were around, they wouldn't get me a car.

As of today, I still don't have a car and probably will not get one until I graduate. However, I am glad I got the license sooner rather than later because it is always nice to have an additional piece of government issued ID, and if I ever need a lease over the summer, I have the ability to do so. I guess the take-away is that, it's not too late nor too difficult to learn to drive in college, but Pasadena is an expensive place to learn, so if you can do it for cheaper at home, go with that instead.

Succulents with SWE

Conveniently, on the same day that CNN released an article on Millennials driving up sales on house plants, the SWE club had a succulent potting social. I guess we are those very millennials contributing proudly to the cause. Succulents with SWE is the first club social of the year and it was very well attended by both current club members and new frosh who just joined. The event was primarily organized by our event coordinators and secretary and it's pretty impressive that they pulled it all off given the inception of the idea was only two weeks ago.

The event itself was pretty free form: come-in, grab a pot and start painting, then grab dinner whenever you please. There was plenty of succulents, pots, soil, paint and supplies as well as food to go around. For me, the highlight was to see everyone's creative designs and to meet so many new club members. There was a girl who tried to make her pot look like a can of la Croix. Going off of that idea, I wanted to make mine look like a pint of ice cream. However, I am not nearly as skilled, and ended up painting my pot mint green with a white rim and a dark stripe. Unlike most artists, there is no significant to the design except for the fact that I like the color and thought it would blend into my bland-looking room.

Since I chose a green palette for my design, I decided to go with the least green succulent, because otherwise it would just be camouflaged. I used to think that all succulents were green, but apparently there are red, orange, yellow, and even purple varieties as well. Now, the hard part is actually keeping it alive. You may think I am crazy since the succulent family is the easiest to care for. However, I am just so forgetful and unlucky with plants that two of my previous cacti died from dehydration. Hopefully, this time around will be different.

I looked up some tips to care for your succulent to educate myself, but wanted to share them incase any of you are interested as well:
1. Water succulents during their resting time in the evenings
2. Never mist succulents as it will cause them to rot
3. They need 4-6 hours of sunlight a day. If they get less sunlight, they need less water.
How do you know if your succulent is getting enough water? If their leaves pucker, they aren’t getting enough water. If their leaves are soggy, they are over-watered.

Perhaps, succulent-care doesn't sound all that easy... However, it doesn't hurt to be more educated about them. If you want more information, Country Living has a good post about them.

Journey Around San Francisco: Boba Reviews

Perhaps others cannot understand, but as a college convert to boba, I absolutely adore the chewy balls of tapioca. I have a very specific consistency that I like: not too soft that there’s no bite to the balls, but not too hard that I get an uncooked tapioca center. However, I would rather get squishy boba than undercooked boba. Getting that perfect goldilocks consistency is typically about cooking time - and depending on the place, it’s really hit or miss. Even my favorite places in the San Gabriel valley - which has the highest frequency of boba places ever - can sometimes disappoint. Although, take this with a grain of salt, because I will sometimes go near closing time - when it’s more likely that boba has been sitting around for longer.

Given my high standards, it’s laughable that I expected boba to be just as good in the Bay area. I visited a few stores (two of them chains), and I have a very clear ranking of what comes where. Of the chains, I’ve been to Boba Guys in two locations (one on Filmore in SF and the other on the Peninsula), Teaspoon in three locations (SF, Redwood City, and somewhere else). I’ve also been to multiple non-chain stores, including Plentea (SF), Tea Era (Mountain View) and another place in Mountain View. Although I really enjoyed Tea Era’s boba and tea, I only went there once, so I can’t give a review based on consistency.

In terms of boba quality, Teaspoon was certainly first: not one of my drinks from them had boba that did not meet my standard. Plentea was a very close second, because one of my drinks had a squishier consistency - but was still within an acceptable range. Boba Guys had consistently squishy boba, something that I couldn’t get used to given their more out-of-the-way locations and the availability of other good boba.

In terms of drinks, Boba Guys probably had the largest original collection. With Horchata, Matcha, classic Hong Kong Milk Tea, and many others, they had a great selection. They even offered mixes such as Machata - a mixture that I thoroughly enjoyed. However, I think that although Plentea did not have such a wide collection, it also had very good choices. Although I am usually a black fruit tea person (largely lychee), my favorite here was the Matcha Latte for the aesthetic color gradient and the fun mixing. Teaspoon had similarly interesting drinks - but nothing quite caught my fancy like Plentea and Boba Guys. Probably because I’m partial to matcha. Very much so.

In all, Plentea was my favorite place to go. I managed to go about 5 times in the 12 weeks I was there - and consider that they only had one location - near Union Square and next to Chinatown. And they’re in SF, while I was on the Peninsula the whole time. If that doesn’t tell you about my obsession for this place, let me add that they serve their drinks in glass bottle to reduce plastic waste (although they still have plastic straws). I brought home 2 of the bottles I got from them - although they also offer a 50 cent discount if you bring back a bottle to reuse. Next time I am in SF, I will definitely go to Plentea again. I hope you do too!

We Have A Potato Cannon

When I say we, I mean Blacker. At some point in the past that I have no knowledge of, some members of Blacker decided that it would be a great idea to build a potato cannon. And it was. It’s used for shooting out many different things at high speeds. However, potatoes seem to fit the best in the canister and are both cheap and plentiful. Hence, its name was born.

The way it works is a little beyond me. I haven’t taken the time to learn anything about it other than we use an air pressurizer to put said air into a small tank which is closed off from the mouth of the cannon. When the tank is sufficiently pressurized - we don’t usually do too much - there is a release lever to allow the air to rush through the cannon to spit out the potato (or whatever else) in the canister.

More recently, we have had new frosh that are excited to try fruits on our cannon. A pineapple was our most recent idea. However, the pineapple didn’t fit in the canister. So, they just put it on the front of the cannon. It was very amusing. Check out the video to see what happened (and spoilers underneath it)!

Twisted

Got my first ever parking ticket this week. And second. Yikes. The first was for parking in an (unmarked) street sweeping zone next to a park. The other was for parking overnight on property that I thought Caltech owned (obviously they did not). Either way that wasn’t exactly a fun start to the week.

Anyways, to assuage my ticketed woes, I decided to go and cook instead of doing my homework. Again. This actually is starting to be a bit of a trend, me cooking that is. It’s very nice to have that manual labor release to experience flavors, and to escape the monotony of Caltech sets as a whole. Especially when I was in the middle of what ended up being a 16-hour math set, cooking was a much-needed release. This time around we made foods from Philadelphia. Obviously, we made Philly cheesesteaks, but that’s not the real point of this blog post.

We made soft pretzels! This was actually very exciting for me as I had just recently watched every single competitor on the Great British Baking Show mess up their soft pretzels. And you know that I had a strong desire to one-up whatever mediocrity was left over from their technical challenge. Luckily the dough was fairly easy to make – that’s a real perk of having a bread-maker. But the folding pretzels was a little rough. We started off without doing a twist in the middle, as amateurs and Great British Baking Show people both do, but them I remembered the lessons of my dear boy Paul Hollywood. And I remembered that pretzels were defined by their signature twist. So, my ex-roommate and I started rolling out our pretzels a bit thinner and twisting them like the pros.

I’d say they turned out pretty well, but I’d be lying. They turned out REALLY well. And they went over very well too. This was for the Women’s soccer orange out game (which they won, by a lot!!!) and yeah, it was a good time all around. Cooking, and baking especially, is a very rewarding process. And the cooking crew went out for hot pot later that evening. Tom Mannion is truly a god when it comes to hot pot broth preparation.

And luckily, CDS pays me enough to cover those pesky tickets and then some ahaha. And we’re blending our own tea. But more on that later.

Find yourself a job like Caltech dining services!

-- Chandrew

School Rocks!

Just kidding.

Aha, actually I love school, but it’s been a long week. Work at Tech is often something that comes in waves and when it’s high tide it’s all too easy to become washed away. My math homework took an absurd amount of time last week and more or less ruined my entire sleep schedule, but we complained to the professor, he’s making the sets more reasonably difficult – which basically means that he isn’t going to throttle us with complex analysis proofs. Which I guess is nice but a little too late in my personal experience.

Anyways, the point of this post is not to talk about that, but to talk about rocks, at school!

I’m in Ge 11A right now which is everyone’s favorite introduction to geology class. And as you would expect, it’s a swell time. We’ve been learning all about the earth, earth processes, planet formation, rock formation, and everything else geologic that you could imagine. But today I’m going to talk specifically about our geology labs. In lab we get to look at rocks, draw rocks, and then solve a few pretty easy questions about rocks – or more specifically the things that we went over in lecture the past week. Also, these labs substitute for having problem sets, and there is no way that I would be unhappy with something substituting for a problem set. Also, we get to do a fun field trip in a month to Death Valley, but I’ll talk about that when I get to it.

The labs that we have in Ge 11A are actually pretty similar to Ge 11B which I took on pass-fail last year (Woody and Joe if you’re reading this I miss you and I love you!) where we would spend our lab periods sketching fossils and then answering questions about the organisms that those fossils came from. Only now, we have cool minerals (maybe not as cool as some of the fossils and other rocks I saw last year in lab but still pretty cool). The highlights so far have been the very creatively named magnetic magnetite, the cool-patterned meteorite (which has an actual name that I’m currently blanking on) and some of the mica specimens. The different part of these is that we’re examining all of them under hand lenses. But being the crafty man that I am, I remembered that one can take an iPhone picture through a hand-lens and save oneself much effort in the sketching of the minerals.

Don’t take anyone’s schist!

-- Chandrew

Retail Therapy (!!!)

Yep. Rough week three here at Caltech too. Started off with the career fair at 10 AM. Which seems totally reasonable until you realize I’d been up until 7 AM the night before. But hey, I’m loving every minute of it. Honestly. I’ve been working coffeehouse, developing the tea menu, fencing, and living my best life. This week was only really rough because of the career fair, job interviews, and a fencing tournament. All stacked together in one tidy little bundle of absurd busyness. And it’s been an amazing time.

That’s not to say it hasn’t been super stressful though. Actually, I honestly haven’t felt the stress, just the effects of one too many late nights catching up to me. There’s been a lot more work than last year. My biggest struggle in terms of time management is that I don’t’ really start being productive until about 10 PM. Which is great in theory, but realistically leads to me taking a large number of naps, missing classes, and staying up late listening to my sad country music playlist. And if that isn’t college, I don’t know what is.

Anyways. It was a Friday afternoon. I’d actually gotten enough sleep the night before this which didn’t account for much because one night of good sleep doesn’t fix a week of bad sleep schedules. And so, in my loopy state I decided to buy 15 cans of Chinese soda (and 6 bags of butter honey chips for Derek Terrell, the senior associate director of admissions) from a slightly sketchy online website. Although admittedly a less sketchy website because I also ordered 5 cans of the same soda Monday after another rough night.

I think I’ve already talked about Ice Peak soda before on this blog. But here we are again. It’s orange. It’s delicious. And It’s very hard to find in the USA. In-fact, it’s almost impossible to find. My mini fridge has 25 cans which is probably the largest stored amount of Ice Peak in the US right now.

So yeah. I bought a lot of it. I love this stuff. Like way too much. And it’s always out of stock – hence my impulse purchasing of more cans than I reasonably should. I should also mention I had to place 3 separate orders as they limit you to 5 per order (and I triggered their human authentication protocol, so I had to verify my ID with them the next morning). But it all came in today. And I feel better about life and late nights. Retail therapy.

Sleep and schoolwork are the best two on the triangle (and ice peak soda)

-- Chandrew

 

Rotation's Finale

As I have mentioned in the past, one of my favorite roles at Caltech is my role as Interhouse Committee (IHC) Chair. One of the main responsibilities of the IHC is to carry out Rotation, the process by which frosh get into their houses. This year, I'm very proud and excited with how Rotation went!

At 8pm on the last Friday of Rotation, the entire IHC met with Felicia Hunt, the director of the Office of Residential Experience and Antonio Rangel, the Head Faculty in Residence and the Chair of the Advisory Committee on Residential Life. We ran the algorithm with all of the frosh and house data, and had many thousands of results. The team then went through the results by statistics to determine which was the best result. After the night, when all of the Presidents got their lists of frosh, I could see how excited they were! 

Statistically speaking, out of all students who came in as a frosh, exchange, or transfer, 76 percent of students ended up in their first choice house, higher than ever in Caltech history! These numbers are likely due to a new algorithm, which takes in the preference of incoming students first and foremost. We also had 30 students rotate in Bechtel, the school's newest residence that opened this year. The vast majority of students, regardless of where they lived, ended up affiliating with a house as well (students can live in Bechtel but still be a member of another house). 

Though we are very proud of the results, the IHC and I will continue working to make the Rotation process better for students. We will work with the Advisory Committee on Residential Life to survey both the frosh and upperclassmen on their feelings about the Rotation process. Using this data and data from past years, we will judge the happiness of frosh going through the process, the success of each event each house holds, and the stress levels of everyone involved. With all of this information, we can hopefully make next year even better than this year!

Besides Rotation, the IHC is also taking on issues with student board, Interhouse party registration, and other house-related conflicts! I'm super excited to see how the year unfolds!

The Interhouse Committee and Felicia Hunt going ziplining to bond before Rotation. It was definitely great to spend time with the team before our final meeting.

 

You’re my type (writer)

This post is an ode to my typewriters.

Yep, you read that sentence right. I have not one, but TWO typewriters. And also, I didn’t do anything too exciting this week and so I’m writing about them to give you all dear writers a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Caltech writer.

Funny enough, I don’t have the most typewriters of anyone on campus. Albert, a dud who was in my North American environmental history class last year has like 4 and actually knows how to fix them and deal with their regular maintenance. I go to him by default for all my typewriter related questions because somehow, he learned all of this and is now a pro.

My first typewriter is a Smith-Corona Coronet XL electric. This one gets the most use – mostly because I haven’t had the free time to fully fix up my manual. I’m the third owner of this typewriter. It was Marilyn’s (mom’s friend), before it was my mom’s, and now it’s mine. It’s a beautiful creamy blue color and it works like a dream – or a least it does now. I spent a day taking it apart and troubleshooting it because back in his childhood days my brother pressed a few too many keys at the same time and unhooked a lot of the keys. The shift-lock button was also stuck. I don’t really know how I fixed that one but I’d all but given up when someone suggested hitting it with a hammer. Shockingly enough, guess what worked. But yeah. That’s my main typewriter and I love it.

The other typewriter is something my dad gave me when he dropped me off in Pasadena this year. It’s also a Smith-Corona. It still needs some work, it types a little slow right now and needs a new ribbon most likely, but it’s far artsier than the electric (which, by the way, is pretty artsy). Unfortunately, though, until it gets that maintenance it gets to live in its perfect little carrying case that it latches in to.

Either way, having typewriters has made me appreciate the art of writing a lot more. I’ve been working on more poetry and chapters for my book, aided by the inspiration of metal keys hitting the page. Oh, and parents on admissions tours think it’s amazing.

Typewriters are an amazing investment.

--Chandrew