summer!!

yay! it's finally summer! the first couple of days were pretty hectic, what with not just moving to summer housing, but helping three other people move as well. moving is a real pain! this is when you hate being the one with the big fridges, tvs or whatever. thankfully, i didn't have to worry about carrying any extra-large stuff. the only good thing about moving is, you find stuff you had totally forgotten about. like i found these nice hand-made calendars from back home, and other stuff.

anyway, the dorm i have moved to is way better than the one i've been living in. it's big, spacious, carpeted, has AC, attached bathroom, a common room and the dorm has an elevator! so living on the third floor is not as bad. it's also close to the engineering building, so i don't have to walk too far for summer research.

speaking of research, it's begun already. monday was a drag, but the work has gotten more fun. like today i voluntarily stayed in the lab from 7 am till 7 pm. I was allowed to make some really big decisions by myself, which was really cool. I even got to cut thick steel today, in addition to drilling, tapping, priming and painting metal! This is the first time they let me touch that stuff, let alone handle them myself! eli is a great lab partner. he's fun to work with.

and umm.. we had a barbecue today! only one cafe is open on campus during the summer, and it is expensive, so free food is always great! and the barbecue at the dining hall was great! it was meant especially for the seniors, but of course, everyone on campus joined in.

then, i took a little nap on the couch in our living room because i was too lazy to walk the few meters down to my room. then finally when i was about to go to bed at like 11, daisy im'ed me asking if i had any movies. i told her i had 'lion king'. so yea, i ended up watching that with her and connie in their room. it was fun! who doesn't like lion king??

and now i'm really sleepy and need to go to bed. dunno if i'm goin to the gym tomorrow. oh yea, i've planned to go the gym everyday if possible. I went on tuesday. today i went to the lab early so couldn't go. maybe tomorrow if i'm not as sleepy in the morning since i've been up late, i'll go.

alrighty then. i'm off. take care, world!

end of a great freshman year!!!

Oh wow! Finals are over.. three and a half months of stress-free time to look forward to! Freshman year is over! :D

It's been a fun year, not so great in terms of academics, but whatever. it's been fun, and i think i learned a lot more second semester, especially in engineering design and robotics!

and i created a website when studying for my finals!! http://www.murkha.com! hehe.. it means stupid in nepali, btw! i shoulda been studying though. i coulda waited a few days for this kinda stuff! anyway, the site is up and i will be workin on it over time. the exams didn't go too shabby either.

Last night was crazy! After helping connie move to summit for the summer, and hanging out with jesus playin pool, I went with him to this party. It was kinda slow despite having a lot of alcohol and flashing lights! I already had some alcohol in my system when i went with daisy to get corey. however, we ended up goin to corey's place because pike was closed. and then some more alcohol in his place. daisy said she would match what i drank. and she did! she chugged it faster than me.. but well she hadn't drunk any before that! anyway, was a lot of fun! i passed out though, but i was able to get back to my room by 3.

woke up really early today. people are packing and emptying their rooms all around. everyone's leavin. i helped vinit pack too. seein him go, i kinda wanted to go back to nepal too. but oh well, i'm goin during the winter.

i'm just sittin in my room now while people are leavin all around me. i move into summer housing tomorrow. should be fun. oh and i just bought a flight ticket to san jose, CA! i'm stayin at jesus's place for like a week before i fly to florida for the rest of the summer.

alright. i'm headin out again. i don't really want to stay in my room.

Finals!!

Well, finals began today! I was up for most of the night studying for it because I am a procrastinator like that! I get distracted too easily. I was up on the internet for most of the time anyway. The Calc III final itself went alright though. When I first got the paper, it felt like I knew absolutely nothing! But the longer I stayed the more I knew. And by the end of almost three hours (most people had left by then), I had solved all the problems. It remains to how many of them I solved correctly, but I am satisfied with how I did. I miss too many classes so I generally cram everything into the last night. Needless to say, not the best strategy!

Anyway, I came up with some cool ideas as I was 'studying' for the final. I need to build a website this summer. It will be like a portal, but also specialize in a few areas. I also want to put in t-shirt ideas and stuff. It will primarily be targeted to Nepalese students like me. Will I carry my plan through to execution like I don't most things? Again, remains to be seen.

Alright, I'll get back to writing my paper due tomorrow at noon. Less than 11 hours to go and I haven't begun yet!

And I forgot to mention, today has been an unlucky day for me, burning my finger in an idiotic incident involving me, a lighter and a soda can, and then getting another finger wedged between the door and the frame at the library! Both hurt really terribly.. though the former one lasted way too long than I would think such pains lasted!!

the bank, the mall and spiderman

I think I should use a normal-sized font instead of the small one I used in my last two posts. It is easier on the eye when I read my blog in my little Macbook.

Oh yea, have I mentioned that I got a Macbook? Well, I had always been a PC user before college. I had barely seen one Mac computer back in Nepal, but I firmly believed that PCs were far superior, given Microsoft's fame and the popularity of PCs. However, when I came here a lot of students seemed to have Mac laptops. The library too had quite a few of them. I still only used PC, but one day I decided to try the shiny iMac! It looked great but the software was confusing. I played around with it while I searched the internet for a PC laptop I would like. Slowly the Mac began to grow onto me, and I enjoyed working on it a lot more than PCs... and that is when I made the decision to get a Macbook.

Anyway, to get back to the subject of the post then, yesterday was eventful in some ways. We normally stay inside campus so any visit outside is certainly an event by itself. For most of the morning I was at work. अिलसा was working with me and she is the most amiable person so it wasn't bad at all. Then I went to the bank with ओर्को as I am running low on cash and we had planned to go to the bank later in the day. And like always on our visits to the bank, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for sandwich and donuts (what else?).

So we went to the mall and I got quite a few t-shirts! I find it difficult to choose and so taking them all was the easiest solution, though a little denting on the wallet. Then we went to watch Spiderman 3 that only came out today!! अङ्िकत was paying since it is his birthday today. But we got there late so we got seats all the way at the front! Well.. it was an interesting experience watching it from below the screen, that is all I will say! The movie had a lot of intense action and was enjoyable but wasn't the best movie ever or anything.

Although the trip to the mall or the bank seems to have been boring, it wasn't! I cannot possibly right everything down. That is it then. I am at work at the library. I should start studying for my finals soon!!

Crrrazy day

Yesterday was one crazy day!!

We were at the engineering lab all night since Tuesday evening for the engineering project (Robot Olympics) due yesterday. It was fun with so many teams working on their separate robots; there was an almost party-like atmosphere in that small room in the engineering building basement complete with food and entertainment in the form of witty comments!

But we did take breaks, at 9pm on Tuesday we went to watch a hilarious improv comedy show by the comedy group here. Then played some made-up ball game in the engr building corridor at around 1 in the morning. Then at 7.30am yesterday morning, we went for breakfast. But since it's exam review week, the dining places only open for brunch and dinner! We had to wait until 8, and me and my teammate fell asleep in the couches on the lobby.

The Robot Olympics went great. We scored a goal in the soccer event, our robot was the second best in tug-of-war and we took third place in the art competition. Overall, we were tied at first place with some other team. So it was a successful competition for us. The all-nighter certainly paid off!

Immediately following the Olympics, I had to attend the Research Symposium here to present my poster for the research I'm currently involved in. It was tiring having to stand beside my poster for a couple of hours even. Then at four I had to attend the Robot Team meeting. But I accidentally fell asleep so I ran late. I am glad I made it though because we took team pictures, that meeting being the last one for the year.

The day was far from over. After dinner, we went laser tagging with my seminar class. This was my first time so I was really excited. The game involved wearing more gear and carrying a larger laser gun than I expected, but it was a lott of fun... and very tiring too!

The next few hours were spent at Crazy-Mike's place, and I'll only say this, it was wild! He's known as Crazy-Mike for a reason!

It's the next day.. and I feel really good. We only have a few days until our finals now but I don't feel like studying yet.

Alright then, that's it for today. I really don't think I captured the crazy day that was yesterday quite so well in this post. But I'm no writer, so forgive me!

Update!!!

I somehow stumbled upon my blog again.. and reading the past posts brings back some memories! I'm so glad I blogged.. and I wish I had continued but well, I had a lot going on, and of course, I'm lazy!

I thought I would start writing my blog when I wrote my last post but that didn't work out as planned either. I won't make any promises anymore!

Okay then, let me give you an update of what's going on with me. Freshman year is almost over now! Frighteningly quick, I must say. I remember thinking "there's still four months still college begins... it'll take forever!!" And now here I am, with only one more day of classes remaining for freshman year! I don't want college to be over too soon!

It's been a fun year. Not too fun academically though. Personally I don't feel like I'm doing too bad but then my grades say otherwise and I'm forced to believe I must not have done as well as I thought. Why do I screw my exams towards the end of the semester? I procrastinate too much I think. No wonder I end up staying up all night before every major assignment or exam. I should develop a better routine... but of course, that is very unlikely to happen.

In any case, my grades aren't that bad either.

Oh and yea.. this gone weekend was spring weekend! I only went to two events: the comedy show by Leo Allen and the concert. Leo dissapointed with his comedy despite his seemingly great credentials. The concert was fun though. G-punch the school's band was amazing.. and Kevin Lyttle was great as well, quite an entertainer. T.I., the supposedly big hip hop artist was liked by many, it seems, but I'm not too much into hip hop so it was ok for me. Simply feeling the music vibrate through me was awesome though!

Umm.. I am really tired right now. Stayed up all last night working on a take-home quiz. With a little help from Matt at 8 in the morning, I was done with it by 9. It was a very frustrating quiz as I was stuck on one for hours!! And I hate being stuck on a math problem... it's super frustrating when you know you can do it, the book is right there, but for some reason it just doesn't work out! I'm glad it's over though.

I've work at 8.30 tonight so I've set up my alarm for 8pm. Hopefully I won't sleep through it.

And oh yea.. I almost forgot about the poster presentation we did in the ISP class today for practice before the symposium on wednesday! I finished preparing mine like minutes before the class and was almost delayed by people who were printing out pages and pages of what-not at the library printer. And when I finally got my turn, it printed double-sided!!! But I was late already so I ran to class with those... thankfully we did the peer-review thing rather than having Prof. Draper look at it.

Alright then.. I better get some rest. I'll try to post updates at times... if i remember that is!