Cell Phone Faces

Since fall, I've taken a few face photos with my cell phone when my camera wasn't handy. I should really start carrying it with me more frequently again. These will suffice for now.

On one of those self-checkout machines at Albertson's (another reason to love them!)

Kush's inadvertent fruit placement at dinner today:

On Joseph's cooler:
Oven mitt burns:

On the back of a shark-themed bottle opener: (don't ask me)On the side of Gayley Avenue:

My phone is also home to a bunch of pictures of other interesting things. But these will have to wait until I'm feeling a bit less lazy.

Winter Concert

Tonight was our winter concert, so I figured I'd write my thoughts on each piece as usual as a means to procrastinate on writing a real entry:

Copland - An Outdoor Overture
Such nostalgia from freshman year of high school, when this was the opener to our marching band field show. It doesn't have the greatest cello part - we don't even get to play at all during the gorgeous middle section. But I love this piece, its driving rhythms and subtle transitions.

Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364
This was probably the first time that I have actually enjoyed performing Mozart - thanks mostly to our phenomenal soloists. Virtuosic violinists are a dime a dozen, but rarely do we hear a good violist, especially when their solo repertoire is so small. But even the music itself stands out to me among Mozart's other work - the first movement in particular seems more passionate than your typical Mozart (aside from works like the Requiem).

Bizet - L'Arlésienne Suites 1 and 2
Bizet is gorgeous as usual - but I'm a little unimpressed that the work's transition of choice seems to be to stop and then resume again with completely different material. I can understand not wanting to drastically alter the original music in creating suites, but there have got to be some leitmotifs or something that could be used to bridge the gaps between sections a little.

Zut

At some point last week my very French math professor said "Zut!" which basically means "Damn it!"

Last Monday I got a jury summons. Luckily I got plenty of reassurance from my sisters and friends that you can definitely get out of it by proclaiming you are a full time student. So I logged onto Orange County's fancy eJuror site to see if I could escape - and by "fancy" I mean horrendously flawed. To make a long story short I hit a misleading button that effectively confirmed that I would serve on April 3. So I had to send a "whoops!" email to them and explain the situation and now I am basically guaranteed to have to serve sometime this summer. Zut!

The top three other things currently wracking my nerves:

1. The second Math 115A midterm, which is tomorrow night. I honestly considered studying this time only to discover again that I don't know how.
   
2. All of the classes I want to enroll in filling up before I even get my first pass. All of them.
3. An "experiment" for Psych 15 tomorrow morning which involves a "head brace" - sounds a little sketchy to me. But really the only problem is I have to find some obscure computer labs in the oh-so-ugly Franz hall.

My other classes just seem pitifully easy and unworthy of attention in comparison to Math 115A. Physics in particular - calculating things! Ha! I just can't take it seriously anymore. Remember in high school when we read All Quiet on the Western Front and talked about desensitization of soliders returning from the war? It's kind of like that. Not to diminish their struggle or anything, but this metaphor has been developing in my head for a while now. A great example: On Friday we had a review session, but our TA failed to reserve a classroom (I don't think she actually tried). The net result was about 20 of us huddled in a tiny office barely large enough to accomodate 5, for at least twice as long as the session was intended to last. And that office was deep in the bowels of Math Sciences, where the air is literally thinner. It was our trench.

The professor of the 2nd half of Psych 15 is frightening - he stands completely still, statue-like, yet he has a tremor in his right arm. And I love him for the irony. But he talks so quietly that I spend most of each class asleep, which is lamentable because he seems pretty interesting.

Stars: 18
Do dats: 45
Lies to Calpirg people: 3

Of course

Monday was my first upper division math midterm, for Math 115A, which as you might expect, was soulcrushingly difficult. The exam rendered me hopelessly desolate; my only consolation was a classmate telling me she "wanted to cry." All was repaired however, when we received the results:
My favorite midterm grade distribution ever - especially the part where I am rank 4 in the class with a 55%.

Unfortunately the professor decided that we should have another midterm to improve our scores - which would clearly have the exact opposite effect on mine unless I somehow manage to be 20% above the median again. To make matters worse the midterm takes place right when my first enrollment pass starts, so now I have to get someone to sign up for classes for me. Of course. Further proof that anytime something good happens, something irritating has to come along and ruin it. And whenever bad things happen they take advantage of as many unfortunate coincidences as possible.


Other recent thoughts:

I love rain. If you know only one thing about me, it's probably this. But what surprised me recently is how much more tolerable the cold is when it's not windy. Cold in itself doesn't bother me at all, but wind makes me miserable. I guess windchill is responsible, and I knew this intellectually, but it still is quite a shock to actually experience.

I will never pledge Calpirg. Over the past two weeks they have returned in full force, coming to classrooms, stopping you even late at night. One of them was dressed up as Batman (I don't know either.) As much as I probably agree with what they believe in, it's terrible how even people who have pledged are stopped by dozens of Calpirg people over the course of a week. This goes for all of you who solicit us on Bruinwalk: If you want money or something, that's fine, but don't waste our time making us fill our forms, don't make us give you contact info, don't make us dismiss you awkwardly.

You will be missed

"You" refers to my physics professor for the first 3 weeks of the quarter, who left us to write some proposal for the physics department. He was a welcome contrast from my Physics 1A professor last winter, who droned on and on and always managed to stand in such a way that we couldn't see what he had just written on the board.

Bruinsma was different - I felt I was actually learning, rather than just taking the equations and running with them, as we often get away with in physics classes. His most memorable quote occurred during the review session before the first midterm: "One thing I have learned as a European in the United States is that modesty gets you nowhere."

Alas, physics has regressed. Now I spend most of the time napping or counting how many times my new professor says "how you do dat." Farewell, Bruinsma; you will be missed. Even though I didn't understand 40% of your midterm at all.


Do dat: 9
Stars: 11

Miscellanea

Vivid descriptions of recent happenings:

Tuesday morning I attended the first lecture of Asian Am 10: History of Asian Americans. I decided to drop it immediately afterwards. It wasn't so much that the professor was bad - he was just a bit too lively for my tastes. At least, that's the excuse I'd give if I were ashamed at all to admit the following: (1) I was still on the waitlist, (2) I don't want my professors to call on me, (3) I don't want to be forbidden to doze off, (4) I don't want to be in an 8 AM discussion on Thursdays, (5) I don't want a class in ugly ugly Bunche Hall, and (6) I don't want to read six novels.

Speaking of dozing off, I have decided to draw a star in my notebook upon awakening from each of my inadvertent classroom naps (It helps to keep track of when they occur). Plus the lectures of Psychology 15 are videotaped (Is that still the right word if no tape is involved?) so I can go back and review the spots I missed; I only hope now that my lethargy is not caught on film.

I entered MS 5147 on Wednesday just as the previous class was finishing up - and heard a familiar voice explaining something to a student. I looked up and saw that the professor of the previous class was none other than Shifty Ifti, looking just as he did before the incident. Needless to say, I avoided eye contact.

Houdayer used a smiley face to denote a set that were vector subspaces and unsmiley faces to denote set that were not. I am a math person and I like smiley faces, Weisbart does too, and now Houdayer. I thought to myself, "Math people like smiley faces." Then I felt immediately guilty because I was sititng in Math 115A, a class in which we have to explicitly prove virtually everything. Speaking of proving things, I hate it. It's one thing when you're proving something advanced and exciting. But when it takes 5 lines to show that if x + z = 0 then z = -x then it seems to me you are looking at things in a little too much detail. Proving things in this level of abstraction is like the math version of being politically correct - what you're used to saying is totally fine except in that it upsets the old math dudes. This is why my major is a variety of Applied Math - I'll leave this crap to the theorists. Alas, 115A is a prerequisite to most other upper division courses.

I previously mentioned PAB 1425, the large lecture hall in the Physics and Astronomy building, unquestionably the nicest building on campus. One of this building's perks is its amazing chairs, which swivel around in a way I can only describe as sitting like I've never sat before. Tragically, Wednesday's lecture left me conflicted upon the discovering a fatal flaw in this revolutionary chair design: if two people seated next to each other try to exit their seats simultaneously, legs will collide. And I don't mean just brushing up - it's more of an intersection.

Walking to lunch on Wednesday I saw a guy with a spiked backpack, which made him look as if he were Bowser. Or a stegosaurus. Laugh all you want, but you don't mess with someone with spikes on his back.

Day One, Winter 2009

The obligatory first impressions post:

Psychology 15 - Intro to Psychobiology: The syllabus says to read not for memorization, but for understanding. Online study questions, multiple choice, graded leniently. Only 3 hours of lecture per week, with no discussion. In other words, the perfect class for me.

Math 115A - Linear Algebra: My first upper-division math course, which has been worrying me. Even though the class has only 35 students, it feels as impersonal as ever (this is a good thing for me.) I'll have to wait for a few more classes before I can determine whether or not I like the pace. And I have to open that tiny but terrifying textbook to humble myself to mathematics once again.

Physics 1B: The professors name is Bruinsma - how perfect for a UCLA. I still hate the four-lectures-per-week setup the 1 series has, and how discussion is ALWAYS on Friday. But apart from that it's hard for me to worry about this class. All the homework is online, and I'm familiar with most of the material from high school. Plus it's in PAB 1425, which would make any class good.

And of course, 2009 has begun. Let's hope it's better than 2008. That year sucked.