New semester, same pathetic diet

Yes, after a winter break filled with deliciously genuine Chinese food and homecooked meals, I have no shame relapsing back into my lazy eating habits...

(This post also doubles as an online rebuttal to all of Chuck's food posts.)

Here are some of my favorites:

Three Cheese Tortellini from Costco
You can get a double pack for seven bucks, stick it in the freezer, and it'll last forever. Well, more like three weeks when you eat it for every other meal. Buy a jar of your favorite $3 pasta sauce, and you are totally set. Takes 7 minutes to cook, and even less time to devour.

Cereal
Perfect for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or anything in between.

Frozen Pizza
Bake at 400 degrees in the oven for 15 minutes and satisfy those pizza cravings without having to leave the convenience of your apartment or dealing with weird pizza delivery people.

Toast and Peanut Butter
The peanut butter will fill you up, and the toast will give you that toasty goodness that is oh-so-satisfying.

Saltines and Peanut Butter
A variation of the above, but with the added benefit of getting rid of those saltines that you took home after the staff meeting.

Lasagna
A family size Stouffer's lasagna costs about ten bucks. Let it bake for three hours, cut into 8-10 servings, and store them in individual tupperware containers in the freezer. Then microwave each serving for five minutes to defrost. The perfect food stash for finals.

Grilled Cheese Sandwich
One of my all-time favorites. If you have a toaster oven, you can make one by putting a slice of cheese on a slice of bread, then toasting the entire assembly together. Make two slices and combine to make a sandwich. If you don't have a toaster oven (perhaps because your parents stole yours back after theirs caught on fire), then you can make one in a frying pan. Take two slices of bread and butter one side each. Place your slice of cheese in between so that it's contacting the non-buttered sides. Then pan-fry it over low heat until the bread is browned and the cheese is melty. A 5 minute recipe to yumminess!

Here is a fancy version of my frying pan grilled cheese sandwich, made with Jewish rye and pepper jack:



w00t

I'm back and kicking (literally)

I think the 10 days of walking, followed by the 10-hour flight home during most of which I sat in the same position, followed by the time zone change which I was not fully prepared for, have done something crazy to my leg muscles. Now I can't sit still for more than a few minutes without moving something or it will move itself. I also get involuntary full-body twitches when I'm trying to fall asleep.

Shanghai was, need I say, an amazing experience. The fact that it was overcast/rainy the entire time was the only thing keeping it from being gorgeous.





That, and the fact that it was dusty as fuck. After the rain, all the dust went on the ground and it became muddy as fuck. I think it must be from all the construction. They're doing a lot of renovation in order to get ready for the 2010 World Expo. This blue guy is Haibao, the mascot:



The night scenery, though, was more than spectacular. Because there was so much moisture in the air, my attempts to use the "nighttime" scene mode on my camera always resulted in little round blobs of light as the flash reflected off of the water droplets. So whenever I could find somewhere to rest my camera stably, I set my ISO to 80 or 100 and reduced the exposure to -1. (I don't really know why this works, it's just something that has worked for me in the past.)



Then of course there was the food! The previous time I went to China, we were on a tour, and for some reason they only took us to places that served food that wasn't much better than Panda Express. This time, thanks to the guidance of my aunt (who had been living in Shanghai for the past four years, although no longer) and the ubiquitous nature of street food vendors, I think I gained at least a couple pounds from stuffing my face.









That last picture was taken at the deli in a supermarket. Pretty awesome, even though I didn't actually eat any of the stuff there.

Anyhoo, now I'm back and I need to get back to FEA-ing and designing stuffs. I don't really feel like doing any work though. This trip has really gotten me into non-engineering mode. In fact, for the past few days I've been thinking about writing a short story. About what, I'm not sure yet.

I think I'll start working tomorrow.

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