Well, I’ve put this off for a long time but I don’t think I can delay anymore. This long update corresponds with the launching of the blog portion of absolutgcs.org. So I’ve told a few people about my registration of the domain and they’ve asked me why I did this. Well… I got the domain for a few reasons. The most compelling reason was that I wanted to have POP3 email accounts like I had with Stanford. (My Stanford account expires at the end of October since I graduated…) Webhosting and all this other stuff that I’m doing with the site is just for kicks. I found a good deal online for my hosting and it isn’t costing me much to do this… so why not?
This does mean that I will not be posting to Xanga anymore… I spent too much time configuring this blog tool to go back to Xanga.
Ok, ok, so enough with the reasons… people have been asking me what’s been going on in my life the past 3 months or so. I feel like I’ve fallen out of touch with a lot of people lately so this will be my attempt to fill everyone in on what’s been going on with me (albeit, in a very impersonal way…).
since my last post here, i’m happy to report that everything went well with my uncle in india and he’s back to normal. things were pretty scary for a while, but he’s in the clear now.
finished up my senior project with Ramesh quite nicely. i’ll be posting information about it soon so that anyone who’s interested can take a look at it. we’ll eventually be making it an open source project whenever we get around to that. the senior project faire was an interesting experience and it was really cool to see everyone’s creativity and expertise in the various projects out there. i felt like we had a really cool project too, at least from a technical standpoint, but it was hard to get across all the underlying complexity in our presentations. we didn’t take home any of the awards (like i was hoping for) but i walked out feeling satisfied that our project shined pretty well. ramesh and i put in a significant amount of time into it, and i’ll never forget the night-before stretch where i had my first taste of red bull while downing chinese take-out and contemplating huge architectural changes to our project. =)
Right, so you know I finished off that senior project class… I was only taking one other class, a political science class on terrorism and counterterrorism. As Ken and everyone on Burbank’s first floor knows, I took it for interest… which somehow translated to me attending exactly 2 lectures, only to fall asleep in both of them. Not having read a single page for the class, I bullshitted the midterm paper and the final paper and walked out with a pass. After emailing the TA to find out what my grade would have been if I had taken it for a grade, I realized I should not have P/NC’d the class (TA guesstimated I would have received an A-). Damn. Oh well. All that matters to me is I finished up my classes well and walked out of Stanford June 15 with my diploma in hand.
So yeah, most of May and half of June was preoccupied with finishing up classes and stuff like that. Graduation was fun, I had a good time and I was really happy that Ben, Mike Tuan, and Dave all came out to see Peter and I do the Wacky Walk. I’ll be putting up some pictures from the shindig. Our commencement speaker, the President of Peru (Alejandro Toledo), was ok. I was a bit disappointed initially that we got him, and I tried to keep an open mind before he gave us his speech. He came during a very difficult time for his country where there wasn’t much confidence in his abilities to improve Peru’s conditions. As a result, his speech seemed to be focused around that issue and he got a little political in talking about why he was a good leader and about how his roots made him the man he is today. He also spoke a lot about poverty and social welfare issues which just seemed WAY out of place for a commencement speech where (I think) the speaker should present an uplifting speech full of humour and advice.
My parents also made the trip down and they seemed really happy to see me graduate. Final culmination of a huge investment on their part. Parted on so-so terms… all I can say is I think things are getting better, slowly but surely.
So after graduation, Katie and I moved all of our stuff into our apartment @ Blackwelder in Escondido. Living in a big ass 12 story highrise. Too bad the only big thing about the apartment is the building itself. The apartment is decently sized though, big enough to enjoy. Took me over a month to finally get my own desk, but I finally managed to so I finally feel like I’m moving in. Still have to pull some books out of boxes and organize my desk, but I feel like I’ve got space now.
After getting the ton of stuff into our apartment, we took off for Milwaukee the same day for a weeklong trip to Katie’s house. I had a pretty good time there. Played golf twice… after not picking up a club since going to the driving range with Chris sophomore year of high school. Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty at first, but I soon got the hang of it and had a few nice drives. The week was pretty chill and I managed to get a lot of rest. Oh yeah, we watched Bend It Like Beckham. It was a good movie, but the ending was a little to picture-perfect for my liking. Pretty funny through a few scenes =)
Flew back to Stanford on June 23 and spent the next 3 days setting up the apartment nonstop. We did crazy amounts of shopping, unpacking and moving. It was ridiculously hot too… in the mid 90’s. It was fun getting everything setup though and I’m glad we got so much done in so little time.
That Friday, June 27, Peter came over and we drove down to LA to visit Ben. This was our economy graduation trip (we were contemplating Hawaii, Florida, and Alaska) and we hung out there for a week. I had a lot of fun down there… I remember watching a few movies, eating some really hot wings, going to a lot of beaches and tossing the disc, driving around semi-lost in San Diego, gambling in a casino, and visiting the awesome san diego wild life park. Oh yeah, and lots of good food.
Returned to Stanford July 3. At that point, I felt like I had done a lot of driving… down to LA, down to SD, around SD and LA, and back to Stanford. I somehow managed to miss the smelly part of the drive where there are a ton of cows by the freeway. Independence Day weekend was a mix of stuff… mostly shopping for pants, shirts and shoes for work. Took advantage of good sales at Macy’s, and you wouldn’t believe it but I wear a buttonup shirt, tucked in, and slacks to work everyday. Business casual culture here @ my employer.
Ok… that catches me up to the beginning of my summer so far @ work and domestic living! Enough for now… I’ll fill in the holes for July and August in later entries…
Hope everyone is doing well! Drop me an email.