Been ages since I wrote anything here. My (very reasonable) excuse is that all my creative-brain-writing juices have been poured into thrice-weekly journals from S,SEASN R5B throughout the entire semester. Now that Sp11 is over, I feel obliged to update people on my life. Also, I'm actually finding it difficult to adjust to
not having a default outlet to vomit my thoughts into. The S,SEASN R5B journal contents were mostly unfiltered: whatever I could come up with. This LJ, however, is quite a different story.
Speaking of school, let's commemorate the end of my 4.0, which sadly only lasted one semester. Like as if that wasn't expected in the first place. With me having to take physics for my chem major, it was only a matter of time until the inevitable stain of a B crept into my Berkeley transcript. In this case, I should thank Physics 7A.
Though I'm not quite as bitter about that. I knew, quite certainly, from the start, that Physics 7A (and 7B) were going to be two hellholes of a disaster. Physics and I are like oil and water. And trust me, I've tried a lot of different kinds of soaps, and none have worked. On the other hand, I'm
extremely disappointed for Linguistics 100, which was supposed to be an A but didn't materialize. I did know about this problem – for some reason I kept scoring in A- territory no matter how much I tried
not to make silly mistakes. The final was... horrendous. Thrice the difficulty of the previous midterms, or something like that. I suppose that while I was very clearly above the mean/median, as I had been throughout the semester, I was
still not in the top 5% or whatever it is that the professor set A to be, as I had been throughout the semester. I'm kind of frustrated because I was really hoping for a 4.0 in the linguistics major, but alas, that is not to be.
In any case, S,SEASN R5B gave me my first A+, which was kind of unexpected (at the start of the semester at least), though by the end I was averaging 99%, so when the grade came I wasn't too shocked. It was also the first time I got 100% on any essay. To say I'm stunned by the grading system here, even after a semester, is an understatement. I mean, who on earth gets 100% for an essay? Especially for one that I took all of three hours to finish? But I won't complain.
Anyway, the few days after finals was something I term "Moving Weekend", in which I carted everything from my dorm room on southside to my apartment on northside. Up a freaking hill. I hate moving. Thankfully there were Strong Boys (and Men) to help me shift my stuff up the three floors of stairs in my non-elevator apartment. I got my bedframe and mattress from a senior for cheap, which was nice. IKEA supplied my desk and chair and bedsheets and drawers. The best part was the everything-else that this guy sold us. He was an exchange PhD student from Italy who'd been in California for only three months, and was getting rid of all the stuff in
his apartment, which he said he'd rather see someone using than simply letting go. So for $200, we got: a large futon (opens to a double bed), a small futon (opens to a twin bed), a drying rack, a dining table and four chairs, a study desk, three small end tables, a couple of pots and pans, a toaster, a bunch of cutlery and cutlery organizers, some plates and bowls, two rugs, a few lamps, etc, etc.
Two. Hundred. Dollars. Can you believe that? We really struck gold with this guy.
After we'd settled whatever was imminently necessary to live in the apartment, I left for LA with the Women's Chorale. Exams ended on Thursday, I moved and set everything up from Friday to Sunday, and Monday morning I was gone. We drove down to Santa Cruz before reaching LA proper, and sang on the beach a couple of times. The next day we went out to Hollywood and sang at Grauman's Chinese Theater, and tried flash-mobbing in the LA metro before going back to Universal Citywalk for dinner. Day three, we headed to Santa Monica pier, which is beautiful – it also has a great shopping district. Too bad we couldn't stay there longer. Next was Venice Beach, which is actually really ghetto. Someone described it as "hobos on Telegraph and People's Park being thrown on the beach and told to set up shop". It's actually a pretty apt description. The only thing not so ghetto about it was the obstacle course on the beach where they were filming the semifinals of Ninja Warrior, which was nice to watch, if only to see the rugged guys fail spectacularly. Out of the ten or so guys we watched, only one made it through the entire course. To be fair, the course was impossibly difficult – I would fall in the first obstacle, I bet.
That night I left the chorale and flew to Toronto, getting delayed and missing my connection in Chicago on the way. That... really sucked. But after getting very little sleep, I reached Toronto and met Rachel, whose baggage was on my flight anyway, so it was all fine. We spent two days in Toronto. The first day, we went to the Bata Shoe Museum, and it was pay-as-you-want night, which was awesome because we didn't have to pay the full $14 fee. The museum was quite fun to look at – it covered shoes of every culture, not just modern Western fashion. Then we walked through the University of Toronto, which looks like an interesting mashup between public university and traditional college quadrangle cloisters. The second day was a visit to Lake Ontario, where it rained for a little bit, which was kinda depressing. But it lifted and once we were done with the island, we went back to Kensington Market and had dinner. We stayed in a small guesthouse that we'd found on roomorama, only to be told that they had their own website and so we could've saved on the roomorama fee, but ah well. It was still pretty cheap though, and the room was big and clean. The bed was amazingly comfortable pocket coil. The house itself was located in this historic part of town called "Cabbagetown". I am not even kidding. It was a 15-min walk away from downtown Yonge Street, which was okay by us.
Which brings us to today. Our train left at 8.20 am, so we got up early and dragged ourselves to Union Station to board the Amtrak. The scenery was quaint, small-town Canadian, at least as much as I saw before drifting off to sleep. When I woke up we were at customs and immigration, which took
forever as they unloaded the train car by car. Once we'd finally cleared everything, the Amtrak people dropped us off and we got picked up by the owners of the motel we're staying at. This motel is also quite cheap and nice, especially since the owners practically drive you to everywhere interesting. We headed to Niagara Falls State Park and spent the entire afternoon and evening there, going to Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist, Niagara Aquarium, Three Sisters Island, and more. I can't stress the beauty and power of the Falls. To think so much water falls down at once... well, pictures are on facebook if you'd like to see. We got wet a couple of times, but it was fun, and we dried quickly. My camera got a lot of exercise. We splurged a little on dinner at Hard Rock Café, which was
very nice, before coming back to the room.
Now it's 1 in the morning and we have to be up at 5.30 tomorrow since our Amtrak train leaves at 7. But it'll be a nine-hour ride. Next up: the bright lights of New York City!