Campus

Today I was walking to class and took a moment to appreciate the clouds. Blue skies are fine and dandy, but clouds have so much more drama to them. The way they play with light is especially pleasing as well. Here is an especially dramatic picture of some clouds with the Campanile in the foreground.



I force all sorts of metaphors when I visit our huge, subterranean library complex. I like to think of it as a sort of Hades-type underworld, a place not necessarily bad in-of-itself, but where you'll end up sooner or later. It helps that there's a huge spiral staircase, which adds nicely to the "descent into the underworld" effect. Transitioning from studying for two hours on the bottom floor of the pit to going outside is something overwhelming. It definitely feels like re-entering the realm of the living.





There probably won't be so many school groups roaming around campus once the rains start, but they still make me smile whenever I see them.

Day 120

Pooping on campus can be something of an ordeal for the uninitiated, but follow these helpful hints, and you'll be on your way to mid-day gastro-intestinal relief in no time!

Step 1: Find the right building. Ideal buildings are new or have been recently renovated. It helps to think which departments get funding for those sorts of things. For me, that would mean going to the engineering/business/biological sciences buildings. I tried using the bathroom in the Anthropology/Art building (Kroeber) once, but there was a hobo taking a nap in one of the stalls. Like, a real hobo, with a bindle and everything. Traffic is also an important factor to take into consideration. Always choose graduate student/professor bathrooms over undergraduate bathrooms.

Step 2: Find the bathroom. Some floorplans are less intuitive than others. A rule of thumb I like to use is to follow the plumbing. If I can spot a water fountain, that usually means that I'm pretty hot.

Step 3: Check cleanliness. A visual check of the toilet seat is pretty important. My general criterion is for moisture/liquids. I like to avoid public toilet seats with foreign moisture/liquids on them. When this happens, I go to the next stall over. If I exhaust all the stalls in a given bathroom, I go to a harder to reach, less accessible (and by extension, cleaner) bathroom. This usually means climbing some stairs to a spot directly overhead the bathroom on the lower level.

Step 4: Poop!

Day 103

Remember the days when science was fun? When candles sucked boiled eggs into jars and food coloring turned carnations blue? Well, you can live through those days once more! Behold the penny-cleaning powers of vinegar and salt on oxidized copper!

Before:


During:


After:

(Fun fact: Note the penny on the far left, which has a small "s" beneath the date 1970. This mint mark indicates that this penny is from San Francisco, just like me.)

My college-level understanding (supplemented by Wikipedia) of what happens runs something like this: salt (NaCl) dissolves in vinegar (which is already a solution of acetic acid, CH3COOH). Both acetic acid and salt dissolve in water, creating sodium (Na+), chloride (Cl-), acetate (CH3COO-), and hydrogen (H+) ions in the solution. Dull pennies, coated with copper oxide (CuO), get thrown into the mix. Chloride ions bond to the copper to make copper chloride (CuCl2) and hydrogen ions bond to to the oxygen to make water (H2O). If we had added our pennies to a solution of hydrochloric acid (HCl), we would have had the same outcome, since hydrogen (H+) and chloride (Cl-) ions were the main actors in removing the copper oxide (CuO).

It sure is reassuring to know that my college education is arming me with the tools necessary to understand an eight year old's rainy day science project, or an entire episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy, for that matter.

Well, that sure was fun.

Day 62

I must admit that I feel a bit defeated. Maybe the "no studying" strategy wasn't the best one. About an hour and forty-five minutes into my physics midterm, I called it quits and turned in my test half-completed. I couldn't hold thoughts anymore. I would see the green floor, think "green," remember that I was taking a test, try to think about solving a physics problem, get overwhelmed on how to approach it, and then get distracted again and start the cycle all over.

This went on for a good ten minutes before I realized that I wasn't making any headway. Actually, that's not true: I was perfectly aware that I wasn't making any progress the whole time. I just didn't want to admit that I was beat. A lot of those last minutes I spent in a personal struggle trying to decide whether I should keep suffering or turn in my half-finished exam.

I guess it didn't help that I was backpacking all weekend and pursuing, ahem, extracurricular activities in the days leading up to this test. But I guess I learned my lesson. I can already hear my inner Asian right now: "Work harder!"

Right after I finish reading just one more chapter of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Day 61

Green Eggs and Exams

Dave I am, I will not study for these exams.

Oh chemistry and physics, the facts galore;
Both these subjects I've learned before.
In high school dutifully I drilled away
Doing my homework nearly every day.

Dave I am, I will not study for these exams.

But there comes a point where enough is enough,
And really, I don't care about this stuff.
The pre-med students only worry and fret;
The thought of testing makes their pants wet.

Dave I am, I will not study for these exams.

Newton and Lewis you've discovered so much,
About atoms and motion and the world and such.
With knowledge and concepts you've invaded my head,
Despite the handicap of being long dead.

Dave I am, I will not study for these exams.

I will not study in the stacks; I think I'll sit here and relax.
I will not take the practice test; I'd much rather sleep and rest.
I will not live in constant fear; Instead I'll keep on sipping beer.
I will not use my GPA as a measure; Finishing a novel gives me much more pleasure.

Dave I am, I will not study for these exams.

Here are some photos I wasn't able to include in yesterday's post. They are pictures of the old observatory.

Day 60

Today I was exploring a part of campus known as Observatory Hill, where the ruins of a century-old observatory remain (a few bricks from the foundation and some boards that are now a beehive are all that's left). It's nice there, full of shade and oak trees and tranquility. I must have spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes during my break just watching the birds and squirrels going about their business in the oak grove. There was a really high density of life in there. The sensory of all the activity and commotion was almost overwhelming at times. There was the jay at the top of the canopy working on its nest. There was a woodpecker that stayed to watch. There was the chirping of chicks in the nest. There were the robins rooting around in the grass for grubby things to eat, and occasionally they'd squabble over territory. One bird would make an alarm call, all the birds would go quiet, and an accipiter (1) would pass overhead. There were the cute, little, round, sparrow/finch-type birds looking for seeds. There were the tree squirrels doing acrobatics in the branches. And then there were all the birds chasing each other around because it is spring and that is what birds do when it is spring.

I found a nice spot to take a nap and I woke to the sound of the Campanile's bells tolling on the hour.

Day 55

Photos from the past couple weeks in no particular order.


The cement belly of the beast that is UC Berkeley.


Sather Gate at night, walking home from the library.


Goats! Near my parents' home in SF, the City sometimes uses goats to clear out the bramble bushes.


Campus landmark: Bronze statue of "The Friendly Football Players."


A critter cohabitating with some modern art.


One of the perks of working at the Tilden Little Farm: eggs.


Spring is here. It's been wet, but the blossoms are coming out and it's gorgeous.


Oh, the joy of collecting GPS data.

Day 54

So, I've been doing some planning. Nothing much, just my usual feverish bout of shuffling through course requirement sheets and the like. I'd say this happens every semester or so. I spend two hours thinking I'm recharting the course of my life, only to change it about three months later.

Well, on this current tack, I've got some goodies lined up for myself. For example, one of the classes I plan on taking is simply titled "Trees." Then there's "Wildland Fire Science," which involves a field trip for a proscribed burn. But right now, I'm pretty stoked at the prospect of going abroad. It seems to be all the rage these days, and I sure as heck don't want to be left out of the fun (my brand new passport is just itching to get its first stamp). Specifically, I really want to go to the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, which oddly enough has a UC Berkeley field research station there. Basically, the deal's like this: I go to French Polynesia, my school gives me units.

The decision was not a hard one to make.

But before any of that fun stuff happens, it seems like there's still a formidable amount of drudgery left to slog through. I still have a good deal of weeder courses left: classes engineered to destroy the human soul. The current gameplan involves me staying in Berkeley over the summer to learn all that there is to learn about organic chemistry. Carbon is such a wacky element.

Day 36

Went to the Morrison Library during my one-hour break. It's quite nice, the Morrison. There are large armchairs with ottomans. I didn't manage to snag one of the leather chairs, but I still got one with a footrest. The lighting is soft enough to take naps, and bright enough to read. The room carries the feeling of a kind of victorian sitting room, with its wood paneling and bronze busts of men with imposing facial expressions. Additionally, scattered through out the room are turntables and there's a big bin filled with classical music on vinyl. I think I'll bring my headphones next time and have a listen.

East of Eden completion: 24%

Day 28

Went running this morning. I felt pretty great going in to my first class. The pre-class run, shower, and oatmeal were definitely the deciding factors in my feeling like a million bucks.

Tonight I said goodbye to one of my friends from high school. He's going away to do missionary work for two years, as is mandated by his church. It just made me think about all the other people I knew in high school I haven't seen since graduation (which was about two years ago), and wonder how much their lives have changed. I felt kind of eerie thinking about these people I had almost completely forgotten about; it was kind of like raising the dead from their graves. My mind was filled with strange apparitions of ghosts of schooldays past.

Day 27

I suppose there are several things to remark upon today:

First. This morning I had theatre class, and we focused on sensory experiences, in which we paired up, with one person blindfolded and one person leading the other around campus to show the blindfolded one "snapshots." Walking without sight is pretty daunting at first, but I got to trusting my guide pretty quickly. The snapshots I got to see were of birds and squirrels hopping around campus, doing their business, along with a really green patch of ivy. I suppose the sense deprivation made the colors pretty vibrant, because I don't recall ivy ever being quite that green.

Second. I have a lot going for myself: not only do I eat three meals a day, but I also have access to hot and cold running water. Additionally, I live with four walls and central heating, I have a soft bed, and I receive a heavily-subsidized public university education. Things are going pretty awesome by global/historical standards. That said, I still kind of want to live in a yurt on the steppes.

Third. Today I added a friend. No, not on The Facebook, but in The Reality. Julie the Marine Scientist will be there for me in physics lab/discussion when I need to talk to someone about the geomorphology of islands or NPR. Which is pretty freakin' sweet, because those two-hour long labs/discussions sure get awful lonely when I only have my old pal, Newtonian physics, to keep me company.

Day 23

I had my first theatre class on Friday, and I have to admit that I'm pretty pumped for the coming semester of acting. For a long time, I was pretty apprehensive about the whole idea of acting, taking an even puritanical view in thinking that it was a form of fakery or deception. I thought that it would be insincere, fake, and, worst of all, phony, to pretend to be anyone but myself.

I've come a long way since then in terms of how I define "myself." In my Tibetan Buddhism class last year, I even toyed with the idea of tossing out the whole notion of self altogether. I've evolved my definition of self to encompass a wider range of personages and identities, each with an appropriate application depending on my company, the weather, my mood, the alignment of the stars, and so forth. So I'm a whole lot less troubled these days by the fear that I might be that dreaded word: phony.

I'm looking forward to discovering and developing new selves, as well as meeting all of the other interesting sorts of characters in my class.

Day 21

I don't really have anything all that interesting going on right now. I'm still adjusting to this new semester that so far has had an uncanny resemblance to my high school experience, where I was surrounded by some of the hardest-working people I've ever met (our unofficial school motto was "Lowell: Where You're Best Hasn't Been Good Enough Since 1856"). Because I'm enrolled in two "weeder" courses (introductory chemistry and physics), a good deal of my classmates are freshman with medical aspirations. Some words I might use to describe the way that this species of student approaches academics include mercenary and self-flagellatory (not an actual word). Basically, these kids want good grades and the odds are against them (my physics professor gives A's to the top 25% of the class).

I've more or less succeeded in this sort of competitive environment before, and I'm not super worried about it, especially since I'm not worrying about ever applying to medical school. But it's still pretty annoying to run into these competitive-types that work super hard and hate every minute of it; it's like there's a vortex of misery swirling around them (don't get sucked in!). I suppose it's a good reminder to not take things too seriously -- one of my lab partners was practically flipping out with stress during our first lab (baking soda and vinegar volcanoes, yay!).

Wow, I can hear the train from my apartment. Toot toot!

Day 19

Today I ventured into the strange eastern lands known as the College of Chemistry (pictured below). Starting at my native College of Natural resources, I journeyed far across campus, from the land of the redwoods to the west, to the library stacks of central campus, and finally to the mighty cement edifice that is Latimer Hall.

There I found a land peopled by inhabitants clad in strange foot coverings, for it is the custom of many of my fellow Forestry majors to go about their business bare-footed. Additionally, these quaint folk have yet to discover the utility of glass mason jars as suitable drinking vessels, instead opting for woefully opaque plastic mugs that bear the logos of their favorite corporations. Instead of using these queer vessels to hold the cup of tea that is customary in my homeland, these odd beings consume a dark, aromatic liquid known for its psychoactive properties that increase their ability to pay attention to the classes they don't enjoy. What a strange land indeed.

Dollars spent: $3.53 (chili and cornbread for lunch)
Currently reading: Circle of Reason by Amitav Ghosh (it's about a phrenologist!)
Miles ran: 0

First Day Back

The freshmen in the back were exchanging names of residence halls. The sophomores just yawned. A nervous person asked, if indeed, he was in right classroom for College Writing R4B. Indeed, he was. I was sitting next to the nervous boy. He reminded me a little bit of myself, so I tried to distance myself from him as much as possible. So I played it cool. I cracked my knuckles and put on my most impassive stare, a look I wear in crowded buses and movie theaters before the lights go down. But his anxiousness was contagious, and I started shaking my leg. Students continued to trickle in at eight past the hour. Finally the teacher arrived, and the class went through the rituals of handing out the syllabus and culling the waitlist.