the eXternal mind

At the end of last term, my Ti-89 calculator suddenly disappeared and I had to resort to a mix between Mathematica, vTI, old school (paper and pencil), and borrowing other people’s calculators at various times. It was very strange since I remembered that I had it in my room and then suddenly it was gone the next day. I asked people who I normally came into my room if they knew anything about the calculator and they didn’t. Sighing, I camped out a bit on eBay and got myself a used Ti-89 for pretty cheap, and all was well.

Well, until just a few days ago when this girl (who I know) who stops by my room a lot to ask my roommate questions about problem sets suddenly pulled out a calculator and asked: “This doesn’t happen to be your calculator, does it?” And then noticing that I had a Ti-89 on my desk, said: “Oh, nevermind, you already have one.”

Intrigued, and my brain suddenly piecing together all of the facts clearly, I asked to see the calculator anyway. Already I knew this had to be my calculator because it was so ovbious now how this happened (that she took my calculator). But bringing up the VAR-LINK confirmed my thoughts. The calculator was mine since it had a gameboy emulator and a bunch of early gameboy games, etc, that I used to use to pass some time in high school…

She was kind of startled when I told her that my calculator was missing since last term, but I found it much more amusing that this happened. I admit I was kind of annoyed last term when I had to take quizzes and work on problem sets, but I’ve gotten over that. Moreover, I think I was kind of amused that I overlooked her when I was thinking of the list of people who could have accidentally taken the calculator. In retrospect, it’s all so clear: She frequently stops by my room, and I recall now that on the day my calculator disappeared, she asked to borrow my calculator for a second to make a quick calculation. Unfortuantely, she ended up accidentally taking it with her.

So that’s the end of the boring calculator story and how I suddenly have 2 Ti-89 calculators. I can make calculations twice as fast now (maybe not)! Irony strikes me again!

I haven’t been posting much lately for some reasons:

1. I work full time.
2. I use the computer a lot at work so when I get home, I tend to do non-computer stuff like play the guitar and piano.
3. The recent rainy days serverely hindered my attempts at getting online though my dial up connection (I can’t connect since my phone lines are messed up).
4. I’m reading Bleach manga.
5. When I’m on the computer, I get kicked off, because, well, “my eyes need to rest for being on the computer all day.”

Blah. Enough with the poor excuses. So there were some stub posts I wrote and saved as drafts but never released them because they were not finished. So I decided not to make this camping trip post a draft and just post a fraction of how it was. Instead of recapping the whole trip, I’ll just write what I thought about it. If you want a recap from Eugene’s point of view, just head over to his site.

So I got back four days ago from a camping trip with Euge, Steve, Dave, Ricky, Christina, Ally, Carli, Leah, and Ashley. It was exactly what I needed to regain my energy. Too long have I felt very listless, bloated, and tiresome. I wasn’t in balance, my energy was low, I felt weak, and my body was always tense and stressed. After coming back from the camping trip, I feel very relaxed and like I have more energy than before.

I think being in nature gives one a higher sense of connectivity to the ambient energy that exists around the living things of the forest (according to Eastern thought). I don’t think this kind of energy exists around the city of the suburbs. I was very impressed by the waterfall we visited. I don’t know why, but I got this feeling that the water carried strong chi with it, and so when I placed the palms of the hands on the surface of the water, I felt like I was absorbing energy. This feeling also occurred when I was walking around in the water. I imagined that the chi from the ground and water flowed through Kidney 1 (Bubbling Spring) which is a point about an inch above the center of the bottom of the foot. It was very cool. There was this spot around the center of the waterfall that was dry so I sat there and tried some meditation. It was a perfect spot. In stories and legends, there is this stereotype that the martial arts masters meditated around waterfalls. The sound of water combined with the crisp air and cool water adds a spiritual element to meditation which goes back to my point about accumulating energy.

Saturday was great. Besides the waterfall, we went to Boulder Field which was a very strange field covered maybe for 1/2 sq. mile with round large rocks. The way to navigate the fields is to hop from rock to rock. Almost immediately, I was reminded of this being a great training ground. Imagine post training but with tons of rocks instead! Also, as we followed each other hopping around, I amused myself by having flashback to Naruto where the characters hop from tree to tree. I was very happy with the two places we visited. Even the rain didn’t get me down! Also, there’s nothing like the heat of a self-built wood fire!

So, I got some energy back. I did rock training, and balance training (by standing on logs and rocks whenever I got a spare chance). I practiced a few katas with Dave and meditated at night. I think I improved a bit. Oh, I also tried to practice throwing sticks, but I didn’t advance much in that field.

The people there were, of course, awesome. The girls seemed to know everything and put together a fine camping trip. It was fun to be around them. Us guys had a good time joking around. It’s too bad we might not all get to hang out much longer.

Yesterday was senior appreciation day where the seniors implicitly get a break with the dress code, are entertained by peers through a talent show, and fed by an outdoor barbecue which ideally would have taken place with an outside picnic.

Unfortunately, the weather yesterday was just all around bad. The skies were dark in the morning which quickly led to moderate raining throughout the rest of the day–completely destroying any idea of a picnic. Therefore, after the talent show, there was a frenzied rush to obtain food in a small crowded space which resulted in huge lines and hungry seniors.

That was when a group of my friends and other groups of friends decided to eat at Friendly’s instead at Granite Run Mall. But first, I would like to comment on the talent show.

There were many great performers in the talent show including singers, dancers, musicians (of the instrument type), and anything-goes-non-classifiable performers. Being slightly biased in my preferences, I liked the bands (like Fed’s band) and Tom and Thaddeus’ dance off at the end. But I enjoyed all of the performances and had a good time.

I had an act too which was supposed to have been kept secret, but the details were passed around the school nevertheless. As everyone already knew, I was playing “the mario theme.” Luckily, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve so that it wasn’t just “the mario theme,” but “whole-bunches of mario themes.” Honestly, I was kind of worried about playing. The days before the talent show, I was trying to practice, but I felt that I was hitting a plateau in my performance. I originally auditioned with a 10 minute or so piece, but since I had to cut down my act to around 4 minutes, I made numerous cuts, splices, and upped the tempo on the themes. I don’t think my fingers and finger-wrist muscles were as developed as they could have been, so when I was playing much faster than I normally played it, my fingers wouldn’t respond as well and became very lazy when hitting notes. The ending of my act was brutal too since I had to make chord jumps at high speeds. This is something I’m not very good at, and in practice, I frequently miss notes or hit the wrong ones. Therefore, in the attempt to perfect the ending, I burnt myself out the past two days repeating the ending over and over again.

The actual performance at the talent show was perhaps the worst I’ve ever played it. One problem was that the super-awesome Steinway $20,000+ grand piano wasn’t loud enough to overcome all of the commotion in the auditorium so I had to forcefully play louder. This led to less finger mobility which caused me to miss a lot of notes in fast passages. This also fatigued my fingers and wrists a lot so when I got to the hardest part, the end, my fingers were very sloppy getting the right chords and notes, and I messed up many times during the jumps and the arpeggios.

The good news was that a bunch of the mistakes went unnoticed since I was playing very fast, and because the noise that the audience made masked some of the harmony.

Thanks to everyone who applauded and to those people like Felix who stood up too. However, I only take performance credit and the slightest modification to the order and links between the themes. I got the idea and the sheet music from The Video Game Pianist whose skills surpass mine at least five times. If you check out the videos section of his site, you can see him perform. He makes everything seem effortless! Finally, if you like what he did (or what I did), you can learn the music yourself in the sheet music section of the site. Most of the pieces are very easy too but just sound cool.

So afterwards a group of us went to Friendly’s because Mare used her persuasion techniques to convince a lot of people to go (including me). I went with the Steve group and happened to be the last to arrive! To my bad luck, there wasn’t a seat left for me so everyone was being nice and tried some solutions until a seat arrived. So I sat at the “literary discussion” table.

Everything on the menu looked the same so it took me ages to decide on what to order. I ended up getting Fish and Chips! We all ate, talked, looked around, repeat, etc. The good thing was that the table I was eating at wasn’t as awkward as the “awkward table” that included Steve, Carli, etc.

Like all good math students, we had trouble calculating the payment at the end and tipping.

Then the Mare-group decided to hang around in the Mall so the rest of us decided that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Since I’m running out of words right now, I’ll just give a quick recap of how the Mall went:

1. People gather around entrance. Wait around.
2. The Acorn-like group splits from the Mare-group.
3. Eugene walks to Radioshack. We follow.
4. Dave considers getting blood pressure tested and having everyone else do the same. Idea fails.
5. Christina-person and friends gets idea of having the guys try out funny clothes. Mike heartily agrees with the idea but declares self a non-inertial observer. Idea works and we all laugh at the zoot suit that Eugene wears. Well, okay, it didn’t work.
6. Eugene runs off.
7. We-group -> Showcase comics. Browse around. See strange comics like: “Story of Christ” and “Assasination of Abraham Lincoln.” Leave.
8. We-group hang around outside. Eugene shows up with Half Life 2.
9. Bookstore goto. Book looking. Some people buy books. We leave.
10. Nothing to do. Find corner of mall. Play cup.
11. Time to leave. Single file walk around mall.

The highlights of the mall were definitely playing cup and playing “follow the leader.”

On the topic of cup

That was the first time I played cup. In my own inadvertent words: “It’s….so….stupid!” But when I blurted it out, I had the underlying meaning: “It’s so stupid, but awesome!” It’s true actually, the game is simple (we hit a stryafoam cup around), but addicting since using a cup is different from using a ball, potato, or a balloon. I ended up looking much like a toddler trying to hit a ball with my arms waving around stupidly. I could hit the cup, but the cup wouldn’t move in the direction I wanted it to move. I also had this tendency to want to kick the cup back up when ever it fell down in the middle where no one felt like getting it.

On the topic of following the leader

Now, malls usually have a bunch of hidden cameras with security teams watching all the time. I remember back in my middle school days when I was in the mall and saw three normal looking guys coming out of no where to tackle some other guy walking out of a store. When, after cup, we all decided (expect Eugene) to walk in a single file around the mall following the leader, this guys must have been crapping their pants with laughter. First, what kind of kids would stand in the corner of a mall hitting a cup around, and second, when do kids ever decide to walk single file around the mall doing really crazy caterpillar-like movements? Never? Okay, that sounds about right. That’s exactly why it was awesome–because no one expects to see that.

Overall, it was fun hanging out with a different group of people at the mall who do spontaneous and different things. It makes me feel that I’m not just a robot following society’s preplanned procedures.

Okay, this is not an April Fools joke. I swear. I maintain that everything I say below is true. Eugene was witness to this.

So I was at Granite Run Mall on Monday for the science fair and after wandering around for a long time scrutinizing projects with Euge (we applied our scientific knowledge to some of the projects and saw some serious flaws in some of the results and conclusions), we decided to trudge into Radio Shack to see if we can come up with a way to build a weapon from the electric and magnetic concepts we had learned from AP Physics. Admittingly, we couldn’t come up with anything good besides looking for the biggest bad-ass capacitor we could find, charging it up, and discharging it on people. There were also ideas of making epileptic blinking LEDs or ear piercing peizo sound generators.

Then, I turned around and something caught my eye: Initial D Manga!

Okay, let’s stop here and consider this statement:

1. Radioshack is selling manga.

Next, pinch yourself, because you are awake. This is not a dream. Read that sentence again and do not panic! Yes, Radioshack is selling manga. No, you are not going insane.

Well, I thought I was going insane when I first saw the three pack bundle of Initial D sitting innocently on the bottom shelf. “That’s insane!” I practically yelled. In fact, I might have. I don’t remember.

Now, consider this next statement:

1. Radioshack is selling three volumes of Initial D (1-3) for $5 (all three).

Now, you might be saying: “So what? Am I supposed to do a backflip or something?” My response would be: “Yes, yes, a backflip would suffice.”

Considering that each volume of Initial D costs $10, the three pack bundle would logically be $30. However, Radioshack is selling it for $5 despite this ominous stick on the back saying $20 (for all three). I even asked the lady if it was an error, but she shook her head and sold it to me for five bucks. Wow. That’s great :). Considering my lack of monetary funds, that deal was too good to past by!

Now, I swear that they had a pricing error. There should be three packs left. Get them while you can.