into the lair

last night was the first night i've ever been to a professor's house. who knew ann arbor had nice houses to live in? i rubbed elbows with some profs in my department as well as their kids. i think i need more practice with grownup talk. i'm not sure that complaining about classes/professors and talking about paris hilton's video escapades are quite appropriate topics for conversing with adults.

leaving was a rather lengthy ordeal, as always is the case with this professor. the conversation is alway so engaging that there is never a break in the conversation where you can just say "all right then, i guess i'll be heading off now". and even when we say that, and stand up to go, there is always some other tangential topic that we go into right after standing up or making our way towards the door. as a result, leaving consisted of several 15 minute conversations separated occasionally by us taking several steps towards the door. so i was a bit late in getting to my roommate's birthday celebration, but was compensated with engaging conversation. life is about trade-offs i suppose.

papers

writing papers for class is a lot more fun when you're talking to a friend who is also in the same predicament as you. especially if you're talking about having multiple partners in one night.

iron chef

today was the day of the epic battle. man vs. woman; engineering vs. arts and sciences; axis IOE vs. axis U-towers. the competition began with chairman doug taking a bite of a pepper and then unveiling the theme ingredient, chocolate. as the cooking commenced, tensions ran high as our kitchen was a "one fanny kitchen" and four chefs were quite crowded. the entire cooking process took seventy minutes as both teams agreed to have a ten minute extension in order to complete the dishes.

a reminder of the teams:
axis U-towers consisted of maggie and carrie, roommates who live in U-towers
axis IOE consisted of patrick and myself (yao), also roomies who also share the same major, industrial and operations engineering (IOE)

axis U-towers was the first to present their dishes which consisted of the following:
1. a yogurt based soup with pieces of mandarin orange and pineapple, topped with bits of chocolate
2. lasagna, with hershey bars and kisses and chocolate cherry mice on top
3. banoffee, a graham crust followed by a layer of banana toffee mix and then finished with a layer of fresh whipped cream. chocolate mice again made an appearance to complete the dish.

axis IOE presented their dishes second, again with a lineup of three dishes:
1. chocolate chip cheese balls, served with a graham cracker and a toasted bread cracker and several sprigs of mint
2. cocoa curry chicken, a subtle reminder of chocolate's bitter origins.
3. half of a pear poached in a red wine sauce, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and topped with a secret chocolate rum sauce and dusted with confectioner's sugar

after a hard fought battle, the judges had quite the dilemma of deciding a winner. chairman doug congratulated the contestants on a hard fought match and proceeded to announce the winners. who will take it? whose cuisine reigns supreme?

(click and drag)

axis IOE!

it was a close victory. scoring was 2-1-1 for axis IOE (with one judge unable to choose a victor)

(click and drag)

the entire ordeal was quite exhausting, but we were able to record the ordeal to inspire future iron chefs. we even got each team simultaneously taking a bite of of their team pepper and smiling. chairman kaga would have been proud.

checking out hill

tonight i went to the newly renovated hill auditorium for collage. collage is a performance put on primarily by music students from various genres of music, all played one right after another. there were a lot of very cool performances, including ones by the university symphony orchestra, the university choir, and individual students. the new hill auditorium looked quite nice with the renovations. very classy.

while walking to hill auditorium, we witnessed a commotion with drivers at the parking structure. one guy was trying to make a right turn into a parking structure. however, several cars driving from opposite direction of the street were cutting him off, going into the parking structure first. after a lot of honking and cursing, the guy was able to get his car in front of one cars. at that point, he opened his door and started yelling. then he went and stomped on his gas pedal, shooting his car forward, past the line of cars, and into a brick wall. needless to say, the brick wall won that battle. so the moral is: don't get too excited while driving. you just might get into a fight you can't win. brick walls don't say sorry to anybody.

afterwords we threw a football around. it's perfect football weather. i can't believe how beautiful it is outside. it's like one of those artificial snow scenes you see in department stores--only it's real.

poker

this past night, like so many nights of this school year, i spent several hours playing poker with some friends. for whatever reason (but certainly not because i'm good) i've been winning money the last few times. the thing is, i don't like winning. it's not that i don't like getting money, it's just that i don't particularly like taking money from my friends. while playing, i've found myself purposefully making bad decisions. i'll allow my friends to stay in to play rather than push them out or i'll call a bet just to play with them. it's only fifty cents once in a while, but hardly the mark of a good poker player. on the other hand, losing money in poker isn't really fun either. i guess i just don't have the killer instincts to play poker. or maybe i do, and simply choose to ignore them.

the inreach

once in a while (or long while), i like volunteer and work for free. today was one such day and i participated in an inreach organized by the society of physics students, of which i am a part. the inreach is a day of us college students showing middle school students various physics demonstrations to get them interested in the sciences. and even after all these years, playing with spring oscillators, forming sugar patterns on vibrating metal plates, and shattering glasses with their natural frequency never ceases to be fun.

for this particular inreach, i was assigned the optics demonstration with two other students. my particular demo was an example of the human eye. so i explained how an eye worked and what happened in near/far sightedness. my demonstration was shining a beam of light through a lens and a spherical beaker of colored water to simulate an eye. the beaker's water had particles of latex suspended throughout to show the light's path of travel. this would allow you to see the lens would focus the light too early (near sightedness) and how lenses (glasses/contacts) could be used to correct this.

the entire ordeal was quite taxing for me. we had to meet at 8:45am, which meant that i had to get up at 8am (very early in college student time, especially for a saturday). we arrived at the building we were meeting in only to find that the building was locked. waiting outside on a michigan morning is quite chilling. when we finally got in, we found that due to weather conditions (snow), the children would be arriving over an hour late. on top of that, one of my demo partners decided not to show up and i felt like the kids were bored out of their minds by our lectures. at the end of the inreach, i was quite cynical.

as i was walking home, i happened to pass by the same group of children walking around on a different part of campus. one girl instantly recognized me. her eyes lit up and she exclaimed that i was the one who taught them about the eye. perhaps the inreach wasn't such a waste of time after all.

theme ingredient

If memory serves me right, winter is a time for self reflection and rekindling of the soul. In many places winter brings deep cold, harsh travels, and draws us toward a fireside. For the theme ingredient, what better than one that sweetens us to a smile and stirs the heart than....

CHOCOLATE!

For this battle I call upon:

AXIS IOE: Pat, Yao

vs

AXIS U-TOWERS: Maggie, Carrie


I entrust upon you to collaborate on setting a time, location, and the choice of 4 total judges.

ALLEZ CUISINE!

Chairman Doug
**** *** ** * ** *** ****

if you haven't seen iron chef before, you might not understand what's going on. basically the gist of it is: the two competing axes each have to create several dishes with the theme ingredient (chocolate) and present them to a panel of food experts (one of whom must be a ditsy actress and another, a fortune teller) who then rate the two sets of dishes to determine a winner. so if you know of an entrée type dish involving chocolate, please let me know!

doing it in a tube.

yesterday i played in my first ever inner tube water polo game. i had a bit of trouble getting onto the tube to begin with, but once i got on, it was a blast. inner tube water polo is basically water polo, but with everyone sitting in an inner tube. people who fall out are not allowed to touch the ball until they climb back into their tube. this means that if you have the ball, it won't be long before you have to pass it away, or you'll be dumped into the water. i felt kind of bad, tipping girls out of their tubes, but i guess it's all part of the game.

stepping into the future

i have decided to follow in the steps of nerds everywhere and electronicize all of my contact information. so if you please, email me the following information:

name: (first and last if you please. and a nick name?)
phone number:
email address:
real address: (as in via post)
AIM: (or any other messaging thingy)
birthday:
what you want for your birthday: (or anything else of interest you want me to know)
how you met yao:

i haven't decided whether i will store this in excel or a database. any suggestions? if you don't have my email, leave a comment so i can email you.

hey, it's like one of those internet quizzes, but shorter!

back in town

so i'm back in michigan, getting into the swing of classes and looking for a job. the break was okay overall. got spanked by USC, but got to see some pretty awesome bowl games with hawaii and cal. i also got to see the cousin in LA who was rumored to: 1. do nothing but party all the time and 2. had partied all of her money away. i'm not really in a position to comment on the rumors, but if you ever want to go clubbing in LA, check out www.lushentertainment.net so you know where to go.

michigan is pretty cold now. a word to the wise: don't go out into sub-freezing temperatures with your hair wet. not that i would do something so dumb as that or anything. and to think, i was actually looking forward to some cooler weather during the break.

apparently i could be pickier (33%). i'm not sure how i could be picker than sushigirl though. i'm guessing there is at least a 4% margin of error.