lastlee

As Shane deserted me to pursue his own desires in Utah, I have been found partnerless in climbing, hiking, slacklining, and world domineering. Without the natural incentive to get outside and see the light of day, I have been mentally imprisoned in my solitary confinement. So, I decided I will set forth a new training regime: hike at least once a week, preferably on a new trail, no matter the weather conditions. Last week I decided to do a familiar route just to hone my navigation senses up rattlesnake canyon. Instead of the three hours it took Mom and I (including the slight detour), I did this one in an hour and a half. Not too much of an improvement, but I did it without trail running.

Anyway… That’s what I’ll be doing.

Ah yes, this is the first round of actual college finals for me. Today I had both Computer Science and Political Thinking finals today. Doing absolutely no studying for the Computer Science final, I did an outstanding job at finishing the 100 [ridiculous] question exam in 660 seconds, or 11 minutes. My original goal was to finish in 1000 seconds, or 16.66 minutes, but I never really took into account the amount of duplicate questions. And no, Jackie (the instructor) doesn’t have the capacity to put in trick questions that are worded with slight differences that turn the meaning backwards. Nope. She had the exact same questions repeating over and over in different places in the test–probably to make it look like it was unintentional. And yes, there were a few Google questions on there. I really wish I had a copy of the exam so I could word everything verbatim, but when you are doing 6.6 seconds per question, it is quite hard to remember the questions verbatim. Here are a few common questions that kept coming up:

The following is an example of a search engine:

a) Newspaper

b) CPU - Central Processing Unit

c) Google

d) HTML

e) ARPANET

or

Something that specifically tells the program what to do is called a(n):

a) bug

b) implementation

c) instruction

d) remote

e) calculator

and so on… I’m pretty sure the latter question was repeated at least five times in the exact wording.

On the subject of the Political Science final, I had a large gap from 11:11 AM to 2:00 PM, so I studied a bit, walked around for a while, studied a bit more, walked a bit more, until it was time for my doom. This final required two blue books, and the subject matter was not discussed at all in the lecture, so we had to know everything about everyone we studied. Luckily for me, I articulated Aristotle and Plato while writing my 9 page paper last week, so I had a decent amount of knowledge on the roots of political thinking. Anyway, unlike the CS final, it took me nearly the entire allotted two hours to write about both prompts. But, in the end I managed to survive, though I actually had a better feeling on this final than on the midterm, on which I got a 95%. Assuming I get at least 85% on my paper, I will need to get 70% or better on the final to get a B. The rest is up for speculation I suppose.

Now I only have three midterms left. Whee.

It has been an interesting week (and a half) with all the traveling, events, and what-not. Here’s my recapitulation:

Journey One: San Diego - Tune Up

So I decided to go to San Diego the Saturday before last to check out the Tune Up–a concert lineup with local and Minnesotan bands. It sounded like fun, so I went searching for a ride down there (even though my trusty car would have done just fine). Originally, Christianne did not know if she was going, but at last minute she decided for it. Unfortunately, I was obliged to go to a funeral down in Newhall for… Bethel Murray? I didn’t even know who she was. Rather, I still don’t know who she is. We got on the road at around 2:30 PM (mostly due to funeral, partly due to free lunch), but hit traffic on interstate 5 all the way through North Los Angeles to Irvine or so. We arrived at the Reed’s at around 6:30 PM. The event was almost over, but at least we got to see the last two bands. Oh, and I was dressed as a Saudi.

Journey Two: Los Angeles - Los Angeles Auto Show

This was just last Friday when my friend Colin and I decided to go to the LA Auto show on opening day (his car… again, my trusty car would have done just fine). The drive down was good, though I was very hungry, having breakfast cut short in order to leave on time. I couldn’t take the starvation any longer, so I let Colin pull over in Las Virgenes to get a foot-long subway sandwich. We arrived at the convention center five minutes after the opening, which meant very long ticket lines and inexperienced/nervous show girls. I must say, the show girls are a lot more friendly before they realize how boring their job actually is. Like always, I had to check out every single exhibit, which is actually quite exhausting. At the Subaru exhibit, an overly friendly Subaru credit card offering girl stopped both Colin and I for about five minutes. She initially commented on his custom shirt (containing the logos of Ferrari, Porsche, BMW, Lotus, Lamborghini, all in the Aston Martin wings), and she continued to repeat, “you should really think about advertising”. She was too clingy.

We saw some pretty cool cars, such as the new Lexus F series–they had the IS-F on a dyno where anyone could get in line and test their acceleration skills. Unfortunately, it had a long line, and it sounded like it had some form on non-standard transmission (DSG or whatever they call it). Next came the exotic room… Lamborghini, as usual, had all their cars in flat black, and all their ridiculously blond girls in satin white. And yes, they had the Reventón. Porsche has always had the best exhibit–this time they had a 360 degree video room with the sounds of Porsche engines in full surround. They also let you sit in a few more models of cars, such as the Cayman, Boxster, Cayenne, and even 911. Oh yes, I want to get a 911.

Journey Three: Los Angeles - Clinton’s 60th Birthday

Just the next day, I had to go down to LA for uncle Clinton’s surprise birthday party. It was… quite Asian. We stopped by Marukai, picked up Grandma Lee, then to the Hawaiian restaurant. I think I only remember two other non-Asian people there. Well, the free food was good, I suppose. Though, Grandma’s repeating stories are getting worse. She kept telling the story of when Dad fell out of the window when he was a child about three times in one long sentence.

Journey Four: San Francisco - Thanksgiving

Leaving the next Wednesday, we (the parents and myself) went up to San Francisco for our annual anti-thanksgiving dinner.  We had a delicious Peking duck along with fried crab and many other delicious Asian foods.  Oh yes, the setting for this anti-thanksgiving is in China town.  Being a trip based on cuisine, we headed up to Berkeley to eat at the renowned Chez Panisse.  It is a quite fancy place, so I felt under dressed in my jeans and TMBG shirt.  Anyway, It was all good.  We made several trips to China town–and passed by this creepy apothecary that sold deer tail, sea horses, medicinal twigs, and various Chinese oddities.

I made it home safely–but now I must write a paper.