An Awesome Week!

New Jersey was great! Good to see family, and first time having Thanksgiving with the familiy as well! On Friday I went to the Bronx to Fordham University to visit my friends from Budapest. One of them goes there and there we like 6 of us that came to visit him. Everybody was sleeping over for two nights but I couldn't even sleep over because I had to leave the next day back to Boston. It was still amazing to see them though, I had so much fun. We hung out in my friend's dorm, played some Halo for old times sake, got lunch at an extremely cheap lunch place, and hung out more in his dorm. Anyways, the Bronx was really sketchy. Lots of mofo people as my me and my dad put it.

The drive back from Boston was good. We picked up my friend Johannes in West Jersey and after that I slept for the rest of the 4 or 5 hours or so. It was definitely nice...

Being back at Olin...it's good to see everybody again, but I'm going to miss being on break. Well, it's not like  I'm in study mode. Today, with the exception of an hour to do some work and maybe 30 minutes to eat dinner and some other breaks, I've been playing or waiting for a turn to play Rock Band since 12:30 pm. It's 3:45 am right now. I've never played this game before, but it's so much fun! I've played Guitar Hero (similar game) twice before, but besides that, no experience and I'm already playing some Expert songs! Oh, my right arm is exhausted, and I have a blister on my right thumb. But it's so much fun!

Well, school starts again tomorrow....Goodnight!

Thanksgiving Break Shenanigans

My parents are here! On Friday, I went to Boston and met up with my dad. I had an amazing steak dinner, and we stayed at a hotel right next to Quincy Market. Unfortunately, the weather turned out to be paaaaainfully cold. I never want to have that again. The next day, we woke up, got some Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast (no wonder America’s fat), and then headed out to the airport to pick up my mom. Didn’t take us too long, the T goes right to the airport (well, there’s a free shuttle that takes you from the T stop to the terminals), and we went to go look for the rental car counters because we had a reservation for one. We were standing at the info booth, probably 15 or 20 minutes after my mom’s flight landed, and I heard an “oi!” from behind me. I look around and it was her! Gotta love how small Logan International is…

Then we drove off in the rental car to Olin, I showed my parents the room and the campus, packed my things for NH and NJ, and we drove back to the hotel in Boston. They were pretty impressed with the campus, especially that I felt comfortable with leaving my key in the door for a week of being away with all my valuables in them (steal my monitor, I dare you).

So we got back to the hotel and rested a bit, then went out again in the f-f-f-f-f-freeeeezing cold to have dinner at King Hall (a restaurant) right in Quincy Market with my dad’s old friend from high school and his wife. It was a lot of fun, and some good food once again…

Yesterday morning we woke up early (7 am) and headed out of the hotel by 8 am to New Hampshire. Up in New Hampshire, we know a family from our Tokyo days (back when I was two). The dad right now has the worst form of Alzheimer’s disease, where something like his front part of the brain is deteriorating. Basically he’s lost a lot of his short term memory. Last year we saw him during Christmas and he was able to carry out conversations and reminisce the good ol’ days in Japan with us, but this time, there was no such thing as a conversation. When we saw him he was at the end of the hallway in the nursing home, his wife called his name, he turned around and raised his hands when he saw us! He walked over, said heyyyyy but then turned around and walked away. We did get some words and sentences out of him, and we were told that this was the most he’s ever said in months, which was pretty nice. It was really sad to see such a great guy turn out like this though.

On a lighter and happier note, I didn’t know it until we were there, but we were actually about two miles away from Dartmouth! And I didn’t realize it until I got a Facebook message back from him, but my best friend Alex from the California days was still there for another day or two before heading back to California for Thanksgiving! So we went to see him, and we watched his sister’s swim meet. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to say hi to her. Anyways we also picked him up for dinner, and we went to a really good Japanese/Korean food place for dinner. I had really good tonkatsu (one of the best kinds of Japanese foods there is!).

This morning, we left NH at 7 45, drove down to Cambridge, looked at some properties with a real estate agent (parents are moving here in the summer), and then we went to the North End to grab a bite to eat before we head down to New Jersey. This is where it got pretty hilarious. The North End is basically the Italian district. Need I say more? Well, not really, but I will anyways. We went to a little Italian Deli shop, we ordered some food, and sat down. Then walks in a relatively big guy with sunglasses on and another woman and a little boy. They’re speaking Italian, they say hi to the people running the shop, and sit down. The guy leaves his sunglasses on, and acts in such a stereotypical Italian way. He’s having fun with the little kid, saying “bello bello,” all while being like a wannabe mafia boss wearing all black with black sunglasses and a black fedora. Me and my parents nicknamed him Uncle Dominico…

Then all of a sudden, right outside the shop, I see a good old fashioned Italian parking battle starting to take place outside the shop. There’s an open parking space on the street in front of the shop, and there’s a car that’s lined up to get the spot but behind the actual spot and in the intersection of the street. He starts pulling into the spot, but then all of a sudden, a guy (I’ll call him Davide) comes and completely cuts him off and shoves his car into the spot. Too bad for Davide, his car is in the spot, but it’s almost perpendicular to the actual side of the street. This created a complete gridlock, which included the other cars around them because Davide, who stuck his nose in the spot had his butt blocking the street lane as well. The best part then, was seeing inside Davide’s car. Davide was doing the whole Italian gesture thing with his thumb and two fingers and yelling at the other car to get out of his spot. In the end, Davide left, but it definitely took about ten minutes.

Oh, Italy. What fine people you produce.

So now we’re on the road to New Jersey! And we should be there for dinner…Yum, pasta and chicken at my grandma’s. It’s her surprise meal that she makes us every time we arrive at her place. The surprise factor is wearing off after the 18^th year, but we still love it.

Wow, I just passed a sign that said “Exotic Dancers.” On the other side of the highway, “Exit 69.” Hahahahaha. 

Au Contraire

Watched all three Matrix movies last night starting at 10 or 11 or something...We finished at 4:30. Woke up at 8. That's 3.5 hours of sleep.

That's 2.7 times less the amount of sleep I got the night before.

or

That's 0.000399 years.

or

In my sleep, a cheetah could have run 245 miles.

I'M SLEEPY!

Oh well, no homework really for tonight. I'm going to 7/11 now I think...Gonna hit it up with my Indian friend Said who works there late nights on week days...

Cheese! Peace!

Sleep!

Sunday night I went to bed at 12:30 am, and last night I went to bed at 1 am! World Record!!  That's a whopping (each night)

8 hours of sleep

or

480 minutes of sleep

or

28,800 minutes of sleep

or

9.4 times the length of the shortest baseball game
or

96 times the time it takes me to walk from my room to the farthest classroom at Olin

Oh how I feel so much un-sleepy. Very nice.

I'm pretty excited about the documentary final project that we have for Seeing and Hearing. I get to use the nice HD hard drive video Canon, rather than the 10 year old pieces of junk, thanks to some clever planning on my part of getting my camera (instead of going up to the front to get a camera like everybody did when the teacher said to, I waited until there were no crappy ones left, so she had to give me the nice camera).

Anyways, I'll be bringing that back to New Jersey so that I can get some footage for my documentary in NY.  Speaking of New Jersey next week...New Jersey next week!! YES! Thanksgiving! Dad arrives in Boston 6:30 tonight, but I don't see him till Friday. Then my mom comes in on Saturday, we go to New Hampshire to visit friends, then on Monday we head down to NJ! I'm really excited! Then after Thanksgiving break we only have one week of classes left, and then final exams (which I don't think I really have any...if I do it's only one or something), and then back to New Jersey!

Sweet sweet hot dogs, I'm excited and not sleepy!

Busy week this past week...

SERV auction was this week. We had the silent auction running in the dining hall all week, and the live auction was on Friday. This means a lot of preparation and organizing things. Overall the auction went really well. We made 7400 dollars total! For a school of 300 students, I'd say that's not too bad...I ended up winning a lullaby or something donated by the singing group here...for three dollars. The live auction went well...We had two auctioneers 

taking turns with each item, and I was up on the stage with my laptop, which was connected to my monitor, which was facing the audience. I had the monitor have the current bid price and the total money donated so I was up there constantly updating it. Worked really well though...

Swimmer project CAD model is also almost done! We also had a team motion illustration assignment...check it out.

And here's the almost final CAD model...still have a ton of issues to work out though.

Anyways I have a flying lesson tomorrow, hooray! And it'll be my first time using my new headset that I got this week, so I'm definitely excited about that.

Last night was a pretty kickin' party. It was a two story party. Both Man Hall and Metro Hall combined (2nd floor and 3rd floor) hosted the party, and they had a few bands come in to play which was pretty cool. At the end of the night I was exhausted and my voice was pretty much gone.

Oh, and I ice skated this past Friday and today as well...I'm getting better and better at crossover turns! Did some speedwork on ice on Friday which was really good but really exhausting for my legs.

And my butt still hurts from falling last week.

Stop with the amazing iPhone commercials

Stop it Apple, your commercials are too good it's just not fair.

The Seige of West Hall 312 and History

Oh man, what a week it has been.

So on Monday, I was in my room with my roommate, and all of a sudden three people storm into our room (we leave the key in the door) and cover us in nerf darts with nerf machine

 guns. Now this isn't anything tooooo surprising, as Olin has a club called OWW (Olin Weekend Warriors). This club basically has huge nerf gun wars in the academic center...and they have an immense amount of nerf guns. And yes, they have nerf machine guns.

Anyways they storm in and shoot us and ran out of the room. I think to myself...hey...they did something to us...let's do something to them. So I simply took the key from the door and closed it. And now we had their nerf darts! What do you know, after a minute or two they're banging on our door asking us to let them in but we don't respond at all. After a while of laughing at them, my roommate and I start drawing things and putting it under the door, such as a beautiful drawing of them banging on our door with us laughing in our room. The picture says "SUCK IT" in big letters.

Stuff like that. Just to play with them. Then next thing we know they go outside and start shooting our 3rd story window from the ground with nerf gun darts but they never actually hit our window. Haha.

Now it's time for revenge. Last week was halloween, and as you read in the last post, I made a huge pacman costume. This left a lot of extra cardboard in our room, so I proceeded to make us two shields and two swords out of cardboard for the counter-battle. We both dress up in full suits, I put my aviators on, he puts his sunglasses on, I tie my b

ig Japanese flag around my neck so that it's a cape and my roommate puts on a....a....oh wow. I don't know the word in english. Hachimaki. A bandana that's folded over so it's a stripe that goes around the head.

Anyways, we look absolutely badass. From the inside of our room, I yell in my deep samurai voice that I do, "What the hell are you guys doing!!!!" and we both storm out and start whacking everybody outside of the room with our swords.

In the end, we defended the room successfully, and the Seige of West Hall 312 failed.

---------------------

So next - Tuesday night. Everybody knows exactly what happened on such a historic night - and I know that I won't forget what happened anytime soon.

Now I want to say, I'm an Obama supporter. But I also do want to mention that I'm not an Obama supporter because it's the hip thing for young people to do. I have watched all three debates, I watch a ton of the news every day, and also read the news online. I have my reasons for liking Obama, and one of them came through on Tuesday.

Here at Olin, we watched the election coverage on CNN, and there were probably about 20 or 30 people in the room. When we saw that Obama was elected the next president, the entire dorm went wild. People running around, hi fiving, cheering, and hugging. It was amazing for everybody....

The real celebration came after Obama's speech though. His speech was absolutely amazing. He definitely saved the best for last, and it was especially something to see Jesse Jackson crying. Obama hit the key points he needed to hit, and he did it in a presidential style.

Well, I definitely wasn't the only one who thought so. After his speech we all cheered and hugged and ran all around. It was the first time I truly felt euphoric since the Sziget music festival in Budapest in August.

I do have several things to say as side notes before I end this post. 

• First - congrats to CNN, who was the first news network to put a hologram of a person on live television. I can't tell you enough how pointless this was, but I do have to admit, it was kind of cool. On the other hand the hologram of the Senate diagrams and all that...that did have some purpose in adding to the news experience. Kind of like the CNN Magic Map. John King loves that toy...
  
• Second - I frown upon you Stewart and Colbert. Indecision 2008 was not nearly as funny as I hoped it would be.
• Third - Honestly, I'm not really against McCain so much as I'm absolutely against Palin. We can't have another Bush for this country. We can't have somebody who doesn't know the difference between slang and formal speech. I applaud her for having the highest approval rating of any other governor in the US, but I'm going to say it right out. She makes herself seem like an idiot. We can't have somebody who seems like an idiot as the Vice President of a world superpower. Maybe she's an extremely intelligent woman deep down inside, and she most likely is - but it's disappointing to see that the McCain camp chose Palin.
• Fourth - McCain's a decent man. His concession speech, I have to admit, went well in my view. Of course, it's all politics, and a concession speech will always have a set structure. "We lost. I congratulate Obama. Thank you. Bla bla bla bla bla..." But it was still a pretty good speech. The only part of the speech that saddened me was not in the speech itself, but in the response to the speech. When McCain said that he phoned Obama and congratulated him, the crowd actually booed. I don't remember exactly when else, but the crowd booed several times for Obama. I guess this is somewhat natural, but it just made me feel saddened that this national hero was being surrounded by people who were this shallow.

Well let me get back to my original point. This week, one of the reasons I support Obama really came through.

Obama has the unique ability to unite, excite, and inspire. Everybody knows this. The media reports it. We all talk about this. But what happened this week went beyond my expectations. On Wednesday, CNN showed many video clips of people celebrating and partying in the streets of the United States. But no, this isn't the kicker. The kicker is that people were also celebrating with America, for America, outside of America.

I lived in Budapest, Hungary for the past five years, so I have hands on experience with people who hate America. There are people who are truly racist against Americans, and it's really unfortunate. I think one of the biggest reasons for that is the image that has been thrown upon George W. Bush during his controversial two terms. But that's life, and I personally had to deal with the consequences.

But seeing people - not Americans - celebrating America, was very emotional for me. I rarely see the American flag outside of the US without it being burned on television.

So I look forwards and hope that these next four years will be the years to remember for America.

Halloween Weekend

Woohoo Weekend!

Friday was Halloween (if you didn't know that already)! This was my first Halloween in 5 years (since they don't celebrate in Budapest) so I was pretty excited! I was going to go ice skating from 7-9 and then a dance party in the dining hall from 10 -1.... 

Anyways in the end, ice skating was cancelled because the rink was closed for Halloween. So in the end I went with Roland (14 years old) back to his house and me him and his sister Rachel went trick or treating in his neighborhood. It was tons of fun! Funniest thing...Rachel is 2 months older than me, but a senior in high school. And then there's Roland who's 14 and is a freshman in college. And I'm in the middle! Shouldn't it be flipped?? Well that was tons of fun, it was 

good to go trick or treating again.

Went back to Olin for the party after that...I made a huge pacman costume, which unfortunately didn't end up drying (paint) completely. It was still a bit sticky at the party so I only wore it for 5 or 10 minutes, but it was still tons of fun!

I also went over to Roger's Pub (Bab

son College campus) with my friend Johannes but we didn't 

go in because nobody was there.

So that was Friday night. It was surprisingly fun. Somehow...

Saturday included me flying....It was fun, flew 1.1 hours, practiced stalls and all that....Then later Saturday night I worked as an Air Traffic Controller for Flight Simulator Multiplayer....So not a real ATC controller but just for people playing online in flight simulator. I was controlling about 10 people but it was still crazy hectic. Anyways I did this ultimately to improve my radio skills for in the airplane and it definitely helped.

Then I went to a Man Hall party...fun stuff!

Today I flew again....Our ELT (Emergency Location Transponder) went off at cruise climb for some reason. Didn't realize it for like 2 minutes. The ELT sounds an alarm in the Tower, and they usually ignore an ELT for the first minute or two and then they'll start to dispatch emergency services if it isn't shut off. Anyways they were recording the ATIS informatioon at the same time (ATIS is a radio frequency where they record information about the air

port such as wind and altimeter setting and play it back on a continuous loop for usually an hour or so), so you could hear my ELT going off in the ATIS recording that all other pilots in the area listen to. That was pretty funny to hear....

Besides that flight went well...no emergency dispatched luckily.

Then after flying I went straight to ice skating which was tons of fun! Well, honestly, I only know how to turn left, and at the rink, they were having everybody going clockwise. So I completely had to relearn turning...and learn how to actually turn right haha. I'm still not good at it but oh well.

So that was my weekend. I should be getting my security badge for the airport soon, and I also bought my own headset for the airplane which are supposed to be amazing. Exciting! And my surround sound speakers which I bought for cheap on eBay are coming Tuesday. So I'm going to be kicking it with music a bunch this week!

Well I should go now, it's getting late. I still have yet to go to sleep before 2 at Olin. I'm not kidding. I literally haven't been to bed before 2 am since I've been at Olin.

Oops.