Happy 4th of July!!!

So, I got a day off today. What did I do? I managed to finish up a book, Fortune's Formula, kinda an interesting book for a Math/Econ geek I should say. Not too technical, but good enough with all the ideas and all.

Then, at about 9.50am, I left my sublet for Brandeis University. According to Google Map, it will take me about 50 minutes for the 42.3 miles journey. It took me probably about 45 minutes, and I didn't get lost at all. The traffic was surprisingly good, and wow, I was there to meet up with Sher Mern (after 1 and a half year), early, at about 10.35am.

Brandeis University is kinda small, but it's a pretty good location, I mean, less than 30 minutes from Downtown Boston, how bad could that be? I'm such a sucker at taking photographs, maybe next time. Or, maybe when I get a new camera, my passion for photography will be revived. I'll see. I've been eye-ing for a superzoom camera for quite some time now. Panasonic FZ8 looks like a pretty good deal to me. Might be getting it tomorrow actually. I'll see.

So, after that, his friend, Daniel picked us up to his church's 4th of July picnic + volleyball, on a field at MIT. It was fun. I got to meet with too many people with names that I couldn't remember now. (not really, but I probably met like 30+ people, if not more), and I think I can remember like maybe 15 of them. (thanks to daily training on BrainAge, my memory is getting better.) :)

So, after all that, we had dinner, and then, after some rest, Daniel took us back to Brandeis, and I drove back, in the rain to my sublet. The drive back was even easier, just I-90 all the way, and i'm back in Worcester in no time.

So, that's pretty much it. Even though I missed the live-telecast of Nathan's Hot Dog eating competition, well, I don't have a tv at my sublet, so, I would have missed it anyway, but, finding out that Kobayashi's loss wasn't that surprising, since his domination had been 6 years, and people were trying hard to knock him off.

So, happy independence day to all!!! And to my bro, happy birthday!!!

A weekend wasted or a wasted weekend?

As last Saturday was St. Patrick's Day, initially, I planned to get wasted, but somehow, maybe because of a previously unmentioned encounter that enlightened me, I was able to control my drinking, and was as sober as a judge for the entire me. Pats on my back from myself. I'm kinda proud of myself for doing that actually.

But, it was still a really fun day. On Friday, bunch of us went to TK Wu for dinner, for my birthday. Thanks guys! Thanks for the birthday card too. I love it. And the Coldstone coffee ice-cream cake, oooh... delicious.

After that, I went to Mitch's and had a 'quiet' drinking with Ethan, had 1 pitcher each. It wasn't really quiet as it was karaoke night at Mitch's. Gosh, it was bad. Nevertheless, it was still great to catch-up with Ethan after a long while, last day of exams last semester.

So, I went back to my room at about midnight and tried to bank up some sleep as I would need it for St. Patrick's Day.

Next morning, I woke up at 5am, and went to Ashley's at 5.40am. Damn, the line outside Ashley's was insane. The line must had been 200 ppl strong. Seeing that, I walked to Buffalo Wild Wings aka Bdubs instead. I was like the 10th person in line at about 6am. I gave Quang multiple wake-up calls. He came at about 6.30am. My toes were numb by then. It was below freezing point by maybe a 4-5 degrees.

So, I was at Bdubs until 10am. Had 3 green beers, and green wings, and some onion rings with green ranch. As Quang refused to eat anything that wasn't green, we requested Bdubs to dye the ranch green. Genius!

As Quang was in a bad shape, kinda drunk/hungover from last night, we decided to split and get some sleep, and meet up later, and see how things go. I got few more hours of sleep, and even spent an hour on writing my econ paper. Then, I went to Alex's place and just watched March Madness there. From like 6pm til 11pm. Had few more Guinness Draught while watching the matches. Nothing much. At about midnight, I went to grab some food. Ended up at Pancheros, and dang, there dyed their tortillas green. So, I actually had a green burrito.

So, it was quite a safe but still fun St. Patrick's for me.

That was Saturday. On Sunday, I woke up at 9ish, and started working on my paper at 10am. At about 1pm, I kinda got stuck, writer's block i guess, even though I'm no writer. So, I decided to check out the Honors Convocation. It was a really grand event.

The speeches were great and inspiring. Hope I'll get the link of the transcript of the speech and put it up here. One of the more sticky lines is about whether you challenge your classmates and impress your professor, or you impress your classmates and challenge your professor.

So, after the Honors Convocation, which was only 1 hr and 15 minutes short, and compact. I got back to my room, rested awhile, and after dinner, I continued to battle with my paper. And, before I knew it, it was 2am when I finally gave up. Left with 1 paragraph. As I still need to read a paper for tomorrow's discussion, I slept at about 3am. Woke up at 7am, and re-read the paper.

Went to the discussion, and got back at about 10am, and started the final battle with my first draft. At about 12.15pm, I finally got sicked of the paper, and decided that I did enough for a first draft of the paper and submitted it.

Still not feeling so well, I called in sick for my work in the afternoon. So, that's pretty much it. I still have several posts about my trip to Europe. So, do check back soon. Really soon!