the eXternal mind

So days 2-4 were spent at Lake Arrowhead Resort which was part of our frosh camp/orientation. That is the reason why I’ve been so busy these days: It’s still orientation here for me (until Saturday) so there is always something to do or something I have to attend.

Well, I’m not really in a mood to write actually. The problem with blogging is that it has to be “in the moment.” Once that moment is lost, you can’t capture it again. So I’m all apathetic now to write about the past.

Pretty much though, it was packed days with talks about the Honor Code, Core courses, bonding games, etc. I met quite a lot of people, but as time went on, I seemed to be seeing the same people a lot despite knowing that there are still many people I still didn’t meet yet. For some reason, people have already been split up into groups! Fortunately (or unfortunately), I didn’t happen to belong in any group so I hung out with various people. The disadvantage of that is I didn’t really get to know anyone that well, but then again, that’s me.

One of the activities was a design contest where groups were given “trash”–cups, rubber bands, bottles, plastic dishes, and the goal is to make a aquatic device that moves some toy figures across 10ft the fastest. The group I was part of disagreed over concepts and split into three sub teams. One of the subteams worked on “jet” propulsion using air and water in balloons to move the figures. However, they failed. Another subteam was working on elastic propulsion using the rubber bands. However, their concept was becoming extremely complex and unfeasible. That was when I and another girl decided to branch off on my own with a more simple design. We actually built something that moved 5 ft in , about 15 minutes: The best in our group so far. There was this really awesome design by another group using a different elastic concept that worked really well however.

The next day, I joined my group late and found that they and just about every other group copied off of the design by this other group! Talk about violation of the honor code (well, I’m not actually sure if it is a violation or not technically)! But nevertheless, my group was doing pretty well with this new craft so the craft I was working on yesterday was scrapped. In the end however, we only made it past the first elimination rounds but lost in the semifinals to much faster crafts. The winning design was even more awesome than the design everyone copied off of. Well, it was the same concept in design, but much, much more improved.

I roomed with two other kids at the hotel. Surprisingly, they shared the same mentality as I did. In fact, they were even worse off being social. They were pretty much in the room whenever they had free time sleeping or something. I roamed around and tried finding things to do. During the night times though, we had really good discussions about people and houses at Caltech. That was nice finding two other people thinking the same way I did.

There was also a talent show with a lot of talent in it admittingly but boring much of the time. One kid summarized the point: “Sure a talent show is for talent, but this isn’t a prim and proper instrumental concert.” I was just about to kill myself when some of the performances had repetitive tunes looping for about 20 times. There were some good performances though. One student did the techno glow sticks twirling to music, and it was awesome. He could seriously make the sticks go in just about any direction he wanted to. It reminded me of rope martial arts so I noted to myself to seek out the guy and get him to teach me his skills since they might come in handy for using a rope as a weapon.

Hum, lots more things happened, but they are boring and you wouldn’t be interested in hearing about them (and I wouldn’t be interested in writing about them).