I will soon be halfway around the world

On Monday morning, I'm leaving for Shanghai! I'm going with my family, and meeting up with my extended family on my mom's side. I haven't seen them in a few years so it'll be fun.

I'll be sure to post a few choice photos once I get back. Happy holidays, everyone!

My laundry waits patiently to be folded

Normally I don't experience strong emotional connections to places. But today when I arrived in cold, rainy San Francisco, all I could think was thank god for northern California. After enduring miles of walking, awful convention center food, and NHRA enthusiasts for three days, all I wanted was to be able to look around and see a mountain somewhere in the horizon.

I went to the PRI Tradeshow in Orlando with Ted & Nancy, which was a huge amount of fun (although the broken blister on my foot doesn't agree). One of the highlights was tracking down Claude to ask him a suspension question, which resulted in him learning my name (or at least my face) and promising me that he would remember me at comp. This may or may not be a good thing.

David talked to a whole bunch of people and got us tons of new potential sponsors, which is good because I'm not exactly the best at trying to convince people to help us out. We also went around distributing thank you cards to our existing sponsors, which they all seemed to appreciate.

Then there were the interesting people. At one point I was talking to somebody about possible sponsorship, and a few random guys overheard me and were very interested in learning about the FSAE program. So I ended up talking to them for a while and giving them my business cards. It was totally unexpected, but pretty cool.

Some of the guys from Auburn's FSAE team were there, and I ended up hanging out at their booth more than a few times. They were all really cool and super sweet. Nihal and I hung out with them after PRI yesterday night.

And of course I can't go without mentioning Pinstripes Guy. He was one of Claude's interns at OptimumG, and David was complimenting/making fun of his pinstriped pants after Claude's Thursday seminar. While it was mildly awkward and I didn't really participate in that conversation, Pinstripes Guy apparently remembered my face, because he said hi to me every time he saw me after that. It's one thing to smile, but it totally threw me off guard that he actually asked me how I was doing each time. It didn't help that his French accent was extremely attractive...

Now I have stuff from PRI strewn all across my bed, and a basket of laundry that needs to be taken care of. Time to get to work.

Taking a break from studying

Tomorrow (today?) is my thermo final (or rather, half of it... it's a complicated story). I am very much not looking forward to it.

Today (yesterday?) my parents came by and we went to lunch at La Med for my birthday. It was really good and I enjoyed it a lot. Then they dropped me off at the garage (of course) and I finalized the geometry of the front rocker, which was satisfying.

But by the time I got home, took a shower, and actually started studying, it was 11pm. Ugh. I've finished my cheat sheet, but I still need to look through the practice problems and midterms.

I've been feeling kind of out of it lately. I don't know if it's end-of-semester stress, or my crazy dreams involving my best friends hitting on me, or the weird feeling that I'm being stared at, or some combination of the previously stated. All I know is that I've been waiting for this semester to be over, and I only have two more weeks.

Heh, it didn't take long for me to come back

You'd think that after a month of posting daily, I'd be ready to take a couple weeks' break (especially with the semester wrapping up). But I just watched Juno and I have to say that I loved it oh so very much.

That is all... Now onto MATLAB.

Oh my, last NaBloPoMo post...

It's the last day of November, which means the last day of NaBloPoMo... I know I haven't exactly been the most diligent when it comes to posting on time, but at least I got my 30 in! Woohoo!

I feel like I've moved on to a new stage of my life over the past month. It's funny, last November when I was doing this, I think I had a similar feeling. Oddly enough, it was also due to a relationship that had recently ended, although I was in a different post-breakup stage at the time. Maybe next year I'll actually meet someone during November. ;) Although now I've probably jinxed it.

I don't know if it's amusing or depressing that neither of my past relationships survived long enough to make it to my birthday, although they did make it through my boyfriends' birthdays. Actually, this is kind of disturbing... I think I'm going to stop thinking about it now, haha.

In any case, November has been a good month overall, and I am happy.

Yay for a real post!

I am back in Berkeley! Hooray! So here is the story of my Thanksgiving break...

On Thursday we went to one of my aunts' house in Redlands for Thanksgiving dinner. It was good, although I decided not to eat excessively much. Then I went back to one of my uncles' house in Camarillo for the night.

Foodz, before being arranged nicely:


One of my cousins is a dessert chef and she made this:


On Friday morning, I was waiting for Eahab to pick me up, and I was playing with one of my cousins' dog. His name is Milo and he is SO CUTE!








So then we went to the LA Auto Show and met up with Chris and Nihal. It was fun, but it got boring after a little while. We did see the car from Cobra, though.



Then we went to Jared's house and hung out/BBQ-ed for a few hours.

All in all, it was a good trip.

:)

Text message post #2

Ok so I fail at posting before midnight once again. Ugh whatever. I'll write tomorrow when I actually have internet.

Text message post #1

Woohoo my first post via text message! I am currently at my aunt's house waiting for dinner to commence... In the meantime I've been steal

Farewell, Norcal

In an hour or so, I will be on my way down to southern California for Thanksgiving break. It is sure to be eventful. On Friday I'm meeting up with Chris and Nihal to go to the LA Auto Show, and then heading over to Jared's house for a barbecue.

I probably won't have much access to the internet, but never fear! I've figured out how to post to this blog via text message. The only thing is that I can't title my posts, so I'll have to go back and title them after the fact.

Now, time to take a shower before the 6-hour car ride.

Last minute post!

Oh no, I almost forgot to post!

Today I was cramming for my controls midterm, which turned out to be an hour and a half's worth of neck craning, hand straining hell.

Tomorrow I'll be heading down to southern California to visit my relatives for Thanksgiving.

One more week of NaBloPoMo to go... for some reason I'm feeling very unmotivated today. Oh I remember why now. It's because today sucked.

Last week of NaBloPoMo

It's the home stretch! Normally I would think of something creative and insightful to say, but since I have a big midterm tomorrow, I will delay the spectacular post until tomorrow. Peace out.

Life is painful

So is my mouth, currently. I have a wicked canker sore and it hurts like hell.

I have two midterms in the next two days. I'm going to go and die now.

Why is life so complicated?

*sigh*

Ugh. I think I've really dug myself into a deep hole this time. I'm crossing my fingers that I can figure out a way to climb out.

Mad dash!!!

Ha made it before midnight! We all went down to San Jose State to listen to a talk by Mike O'Neil. Then we were just hanging out with the FSAE guys at SJSU for a while. Argh I'm tired. Goodnight!

I have nothing interesting to say today

One small thing though... A couple weeks ago I randomly bid on some fabric on eBay. It was a leftover scrap and I bid a dollar on it, figuring what the hell. I actually won the bid, which was cool. So today I got it in the mail!



The spots are about 3/4" in diameter. It's super cute, but it's polyester which means it'll be hard to work with. I haven't decided what to do with it yet...

Are you kidding me?!

Today I was randomly browsing news articles about Formula 1. I was reading some boring article about Lewis Hamilton on the Times website when I spotted this little sidebar blurb:

What the hell, Ed Gorman (whoever you are)! I could probably think of five reasons why anyone would dislike him, just off the top of my head.

Here I go:

1. He's... um, how shall I say it... arrogant as fuck?

2. He is all but surgically attached to his father.

3. He has the most vomit-inducing winky face ever.

4. ITV insists on making their cutscenes before/after commercials out of his face with a tiny F1 car driving around it. (Ok I admit, that's more directed at ITV... But still. Wtf.)

5. Nihal likes him.

Hahaha ok that last one is just a display of my belligerance.

At least in that first picture he appears to have a 5 o'clock shadow. We were all convinced that Ron Dennis was putting makeup on him 24 hours a day so that he could maintain his perfect complexion.

I apparently have lost all motivation

Two years ago I was so on top of my shit, it was ridiculous. Even one year ago, I did all my homework for one of my classes a week in advance (although this was so as to avoid having to go to class). Now look at me. I waste all my daytime messing around on Facebook or reading random articles, and then end up staying up really late to get homework done.

I came home between classes today fully intending to get some homework done in my 3-hour gap. EPIC FAIL. I am so not in the homeworking mood. Argh. I'm going to die from homework overload tonight. Well, I have another hour before I have to leave... I think I'm going to watch some Top Gear now.

My moods are oscillating like an underdamped mass-spring system

In my previous post, I vented some strong emotions. I would just like to say now I have mostly recovered from yesterday's anger. Still, I don't think that my emotions are going to reach steady-state for a little while yet.

On Friday, I went with a bunch of FSAE people to see the new James Bond movie. It was pretty cool and I enjoyed it, although IMHO it was more of a general action movie than a slick Bond movie. After that, we went to a house party at Brian's, which was huge and crazy. It was also extremely awkward, as there were way too many people getting into my personal space. (Nihal later coined the term PSV - personal space violation.) There was also a guy there who kept hitting on me all night, which was extremely weird seeing that I was in no way remotely interested. Jaya seemed to get a huge kick out of it though.

In other news, I am incredibly stressed out. Although I guess that's not really news...

Someone please explain life to me

I am in a really frustrated/depressed/stressed-out mood today.

I'm not going to say who this is addressed to, but you can go fuck yourself. I know you're probably not doing this intentionally, but it hurts me nevertheless. I should probably man up and get over it, but I tend to not be fully rational in situations like these. I don't know why things haven't clicked yet, even though my logical side tells me that I'm a fucking idiot. However, I feel like I have a right to be mad even if you've done nothing technically wrong. And I will exercise that right by ranting to a blog that you will probably never read. Ha I win, you fucking selfish asshole.

This post is pointless.

My weekend posts always suck

Random hi from the garage! I'm always at the garage all weekend so I never have good posts. I will write about last night's craziness later.

A fake letter

Dear boy who tends to sit behind me in class,

1. You are cute. You are also shy, so maybe you don't have a girlfriend.

2. I'm sorry that I've forgotten your name. I know you told me in the beginning of the semester, but I can't remember it for the life of me.

3. I would sit next to you in class, but I feel obligated to sit with my friends.

4. I will attempt to talk to you before the semester is over.

5. Maybe you've gotten into grad school here. That would be cool.

-R

I have no idea how to go about writing a music review

I've just stumbled upon an awesome new band, called Jukebox the Ghost.



They have kind of a similar sound to Voxtrot (one of my favorite bands), but ten times sillier. Actually, they're kind of Weird Al Yankovic-ish, except with semi-serious lyrics. I think I read somewhere that they're very Bohemian Rhapsody, which makes sense when you realize the huge range that Ben Thornewill's voice has.

(By the way, don't be deceived into thinking that I'm so cool that I know names of indie band members off the top of my head. That's what Wikipedia is for.)

Their debut album, "Let Live and Let Ghosts," has a pretty ridiculous title. However, I can forgive them that since the contents are flippin' sweet.



Here is their music video for their song "Victoria":

There is hope left in this world after all

Today after my staff meeting, one of my staff was telling us about this guy that she's had a crush on for a year and a half, since high school, and how they finally started dating. It was possibly the most adorable story ever.

It's interesting how some people can hold on to these crushes for so long, whereas I tend to get discouraged after more than a month or so. (Or that's what past experience tells me, anyway.) I think it's just a consequence of my inner cynicism.

Random thought of the day: Being single means that I still have a chance to accomplish my goal of marrying a businessman who will do all my taxes and investments and live in San Francisco with me. :D

And the lightbulb comes on

I think I've pinpointed the cause of my recent gloominess. The revelation came about when I was lying in bed wondering why I seemed to be much less happy during the week than on the weekends. I realized that I feel better on weekends because I would be at the garage all day, with people I enjoy hanging out with.

And then I realized that I'm just lonely. Now, I'm not the kind of person who needs to be in a relationship to be happy, but I have to admit that it's nice to come home and have someone to talk to (even if only over the phone).

Six weeks and counting...

Toasty peanut butter sandwiches are oh so tasty!

I bought a new loaf of bread today, and my, is it delicious!

I was in a really weird mood today. Some odd medley of sleepiness, stressed-outedness, restlessness, lackadaisicalness (is that even a real word?), and pensiveness. Here is the playlist that I just listened to... note the common themes of minor key and/or electronica:

"Short Skirt/Long Jacket" - Cake
"Do the Whirlwind" - Architecture in Helsinki
"Aerodynamic" - Daft Punk
"Never Win" - Fischerspooner
"Under the Gun" - The Killers
"Wake Up Call" - Maroon 5
"Help, I'm Alive" - Metric
"Take Your Mama" - Scissor Sisters
"The Comeback (Big Slippa Remix)" - Shout Out Louds
"You Me and the Bourgeoisie" - The Submarines
"Kids" - MGMT
"One More Time" - Daft Punk
"Dante & Corey War" - Social Studies
"Phenomena" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Siamese Cities" - Metric

I'm really glad we have the day off tomorrow.

I have chips and salsa once again!

Now I just need to buy some bread, get my tortellini from my parents, and buy another lasagna, and I'll be set for the rest of the semester!

One of my staff asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him. I have to admit, it's pretty cool to be asked. (Jaya: "That's how you know you've moved up in the world.") On the other hand, I really don't have any good idea of how to go about writing a good one. Oh well... time to get started.

I should probably post something before I run past midnight

There is probably going to be some sort of movie night tomorrow and if I don't post now, I won't be able to until it's too late again.

I am extremely excited about the new album by Metric, which is due to be released in early 2009. One of the tracks, "Help, I'm Alive," is freaking awesome!

Here is a "video" of the song (i.e. a photo slideshow on loop).

A successful afternoon at the machine shop never fails to make me smile

The machine shop was pretty quiet today, which was nice. Mick and Gordon were also being really funny as they were trying to figure out the best orientation for the new horizontal mill. There was one point where Gordon walked in pretending to be a visiting professor. I made two little brackets for the front pullrod mounts, the first of which took about an hour and the second of which took 15 minutes.

Later, as I was walking home, there was something burning in the middle of the street on Telegraph. I'm not entirely certain what it was, but I saw a fat red stripe so maybe it was a flag. I'm also not entirely certain why it was being burned, or why it was in the middle of the street. I saw a couple drivers switch to the other lane, but there were several who just drove over it. I have to believe that they're either oblivious or extremely confident that they don't have any leaks in their lines.

Today our head GSI in thermo gave the lecture. I don't know how he does it, but he manages to speak monotonously enough as to make any remotely interesting topic instantly sound boring and routine. He showed us a cool video of an 4-cylinder engine, but described in perhaps the dullest way possible. It's a good thing that I like animations.

Here are the videos for anyone interested:

Meh is hem backwards

Today was a pretty blah-boring day. I wish I had more interesting things to write here.

Is it sleepy time yet?

I feel like all of my stress is self-inflicted. Like the fact that I have two homework assignments due tomorrow (and I've only glanced at one of them) is because I decided to waste a whole lot of time on Monday, and then decided to not use my time between classes yesterday to do anything productive. Way to go, me!

Random thought of the day: I find it sad that I know not one, but TWO very awesome, funny, adorable guys... and both of them have girlfriends.

Today was an interesting day, I think. Berkeley is of course a liberal city, and so I shouldn't have been surprised by the number of conversations I overheard regarding Obama winning the election. And yet there was definitely an air of excitement buzzing throughout the campus. Maybe it's the nature of a university (and Berkeley in particular) to be politically charged. As a apathetic-leaning engineer who doesn't keep up with current events as much as a good citizen should, I'm more emotionally detached from things like these. And even I was feeling a bit of the tingle as I walked around campus. Or maybe that was just my toes being pinched by my new boots.

I conclude this post with something that everyone can love:



November has been a good month so far. :)

Today shall be known as the day that Raechel used a Mac

Yeah, I have to admit, I'm not sure why I'm using a Mac... Usually the only reason I use the Macs at work is when I'm trying to get some homework done. This works because (a) the Macs don't have a tower (everything is integrated with the screen) and thus have more open desk space, and (b) I can't use the freaking things and thus have less desire to go interwebbing.

Today, for some reason, I decided to use a Mac just for the hell of it. Maybe it's because the screens are so huge and gorgeous, or maybe it's because I've subconsciously decided to go against all the principles I've striven for in life. I'm leaning toward the former, but it's entirely possible that I'm subconsciously leaning toward the latter.

All this talk about my subconscious is a little too liberal artsy for me, so I will segue smoothly into my next story... I voted today! This was the first time I had voted in a real election (since I didn't vote in the primaries). It was entirely uneventful, except for the part where I tried to feed my ballot into the electronic voting machine. Hellooo! I am officially a retard.

Today I'm going to a Sharks game! Woohoo! Jaya convinced me, Chris, Todd, Justin, and Tyler to go with her, so we're all going down to the HP Pavilion (apparently also known as the "Shark Tank") in San Jose. Also, on a random side note, I had to break out my extra blanket last night because it was so freaking cold. I believe this marks the official start of winter.

This is a long post to compensate for my lame previous posts

This weekend has been crazy. Here I tell all...

Friday (Halloween) was relatively uneventful. My dynamics professor dressed up as Super Frat Boy, complete with beer bottle and musical bottle opener which played "Fight for California":



Jaya and I also invited the FSAE crew over to have an FSAE movie night. It was one of the better ones, particularly because we watched both Le Mans and Days of Thunder. Also from the fact that Chris got twice as drunk as Tyler, who had possibly twice as much alcohol.

On Saturday, my parents came by to bring Geoff and me to Kaiser to get flu shots. I then went to the garage in the midst of the rebuild of the rear subframe.

That night, I had one of my strange illogical dreams. I tend to get such dreams when I sleep more than ten hours. This time it involved Wendy (who works in the pro machine shop) leading a committee to relocate the waterjet to England from its current location somewhere in continental Europe. Then me going to a darker and more European version of the Unit 1 Academic Services Center, only to witness the shooting of three men. I'm not sure exactly what is going on in my head, but it certainly is something disturbing.

Yesterday Chris and I had a lengthy discussion of how the car was roughly a month behind schedule, and how we could easily be screwing ourselves unless we picked up some serious pace. A mildly depressing conversation, to be sure, so we followed up with our classic Sunday night dinner at Picante with the only people who were ever still at the garage on Sunday nights: me, Chris, Jaya, and Tyler. (We were missing Mark because he was studying for a midterm and/or writing a term paper.)

We then proceeded to invade Neil's apartment to watch the Brazilian GP, the last race of the season. It was by far the most exciting, boring, and heart-in-your-mouth thrilling race I have ever watched (in that order). My favorite part was when Neil threw off his sweatshirt to reveal his bright red Ferrari shirt, and Chris jumped up in excitement at the possibility that Lewis Hamilton just might lose the championship because of Robert Kubica randomly passing him.

Today I got my lovely boots! Here are some poorly taken pictures, mostly because of the low light in my apartment. Forgive my sweatpants... it was raining pretty hard today and I didn't feel like changing into jeans just for photos.

Side view:


Front view:


Back view:


Nifty side access panel... err, zipper:


I am quite happy about them, although I would have preferred a square toe. Still, I can't complain much since they were only $50.

That was my long post... It wasn't exactly a Pulitzer-worthy post. But I promise I'll have more enthralling ones this month. Tomorrow I'm voting and going to a Sharks game. Woohoo!

Argh, clearly I fail at life!

OKOKOK... I know it's technically past midnight, i.e. November 3rd... but I haven't gone to sleep so this still technically counts as Sunday! Suck it people. Ok well I am once again tired, so I will once again have postpone my exciting stories. Plz 4give.

On a minor note before I shower and pass out, I just watched an incredibly boring/epic F1 race in which Felipe Massa won the Brazilian GP but Lewis Hamilton won the championship by 1 point. In the last corner of the last turn. Craziness!

Quick quick, before the day's over!

Seeing that I'm writing this minutes away from midnight, this is a pretty lame start to NaBloPoMo... but I'm going to run with it nevertheless.

NaBloPoMo stands for National Blog Posting Month. Basically for those of us who are too busy/lame to participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The point is to post a blog entry every day.

Clearly today has been quite busy, and I am quite tired. I will write more tomorrow.

I feel like this accurately describes my current state of mind

From "The Show" by Lenka

I'm just a little bit caught in the middle
Life is a maze and love is a riddle
I don't know where to go
I can't do it alone, I've tried
And I don't know why

I'm just a little girl lost in the moment
I'm so scared but I don't show it
I can't figure it out
It's bringing me down, I know
I've got to let it go
And just enjoy the show

Listen to it here: http://aurgasm.us/2008/09/lenka/

Things About Which I Am Excited

(The convoluted grammar and proper capitalization indicate that this is Serious Business, indeed.)

1. Halloween! This is the first Halloween that I've had at Berkeley where I have not have a midterm or paper the following day.

2. S-video cable! Coming soon in the mail!

3. New laptop battery! Because my current one is dead.

4. A-arms! FSAE nerdiness ensues.

5. National Blog Posting Month, aka NaBloPoMo, aka November!

6. (Maybe) seeing Nihal over Thanksgiving break!

7. (Maybe) taking the welding class this summer!

Fabulous Quotes, Part I

"Materials which have extremely high strength also tend to have very low toughness. They're brittle and they fail catastrophically. What you want is a material that has high toughness and takes a lot of energy to fail. All these people who are pouring their time and effort into researching super high strength materials are just shooting themselves in the head!"
- Professor R. O. Ritchie

"How many instruments are playing in this piece? Four? Five? Your ears are not trained... Probably because you listen to crap music."
- Professor F. Borrelli

And so it begins (again...)

Hello, world!

I originally started this blog as a replacement for fanfiction.net and fictionpress.com, where I had posted several parodies and a couple original fiction pieces during high school. I stopped posting there because (1) the moderators apparently hated me, and (2) I ran out of time to write once I started college.

However, it is pretty clear that I haven't exactly been active on this blog for the past two years. Until (very) recently, I posted sporadically on my LiveJournal account. But I have decided to set that behind me and move on with my life... to yet another blog! (Oh wait, did I say I was moving on with my life?)

In any case, here I am. I've always liked Blogger better. The only reason I didn't use it was because it didn't have some sort of bullshit "friend network" associated with it. Well, I'm here to say SUCK IT to everyone. No more secret hidden posts, or "mutual friends" with "mutual interests". (I didn't really have many LJ friends anyway. The bitterness here is strong, clearly.)

This is my opening statement.