Bhatluck!

Just got back from the International Potluck held at Dr. Bhat’s place (the so-called “Bhatluck,” at least according to Zach). (Dr. Bhat is one of the transportation professors.) Everyone had to bring a dish representing their cultural heritage (ethnic, regional, etc.), so as an emissary from the Northwest I brought honey dijon salmon. By the end of the night it was all gone, which means it was either well receieved or I didn’t make enough.

Following the meal was a brief “talent show” of sorts, most of which consisted of the Indian students dancing to… well, Indian dance music. This music is awesome — great rhythmically, and you can’t help but feel like dancing to it. I’m sure that if some clubs here in the US got a hold of them it would spread, but unfortunately international music doesn’t get much play here in the States. Anyway, I wish I knew how to dance to this kind of music, but I don’t. A few of us Americans tried our hands at it anyway to mixed results, but the music is so good I might try to track some down. I’ll keep you posted on my efforts.

Major keys

I now have keys to my office (ECJ 6.202), the computer lab, the suite my office is located in, and the exterior door to the civil engineering building. My keychain may be twice as heavy but now I can enter and leave the building at will! At will! Bwhahahaha!

I also started attending rehearsals for the choir at University UUMC. I’m looking forward to this, it’s a fun and talented choir that sings interesting music. I missed singing during the summer, so I’m happy to start again.

Ah, search engines

I got a new light for my bike today, as well as a rack. It turns out that the parts for the rack don’t quite fit on the bike, so I had to do some improvising using fishing line to hold stuff in place. I obtained a roll of fishing line at the end of my freshman year (someone was trying to get rid of it when moving out), and it seems like the most random thing, but I’ve put it to good use on a number of occasions. I wasn’t sure if I should bring it to Texas, but now my decision has been rewarded. I also used some more fishing line tonight to fasten the rear reflector to a new location where it isn’t blocked by the rack. It’s great stuff.

On a funnier note, earlier today Yahoo! had an interesting suggestion about what it thought I was searching for:

Best swimming ever

First, I’d like to apologize for yesterday’s blog entry. I’m normally not that negative but I was in a pretty crappy mood while blogging. That said, I’ll leave the original entry unedited for historical purposes and to illustrate my feelings at the time.

Anyway, today was much more fun. In the early afternoon, Nick, Mike, Rachel, and I (all new
transportation grad students) headed to Barton Creek Greenbelt for swimming. This is the best place to swim I have ever seen! It’s out of the way (the park entrance was hidden in some housing development) so it isn’t very crowded, the water is warm enough to be easily swimmable, and there is a nice hike through some trees to get there. We swam, sunbathed, jumped off a rope swing, and did other relaxing things like sitting underneath a (really) small waterfall. There were even a lot of fish that swam around and poked you. This was cool.

In the evening was trivia night at Mother Egan’s, something of a tradition from the internship last summer. At first it was just Mike and Mike (besides me), but Alison came by later. Our performance was so-so (55/80, good for ~10th place out of 38 teams) but nothing spectacular. Unfortunately there was only one question from my areas of trivia expertise (classical music and Christianity), although I was able to pull some facts from niche areas (naming Steve Prefontaine as a runner from Coos Bay). Schofield pulled through with his Simpsons knowledge as well, and Shenoda did his typical thing of answering 80% of the questions. Anyway, it’s always a fun night doing this and hanging out with friends.

R-r-r-ranting

Remember how I got a light for my bike just in time for the rain on Friday? Well, as of 9 PM tonight, I no longer have a taillight because somebody stole it off my bike. I had removed my headlight and speedometer because they were more obvious, but I didn’t think anybody would go for just a taillight. Besides, I never took the accessories off my bike in Seattle all last year and never had any problems. But now I have to go spend another $15 for a new light, plus batteries. I guess I should thank the person who stole my light since I haven’t forgotten which aisle to get it in at the store. I’m glad Texas is such a friendly place. Go Longhorns. At least the light was nice for those three days. To the person who stole my taillight: you suck.

While I’m ranting, today I rediscovered how much I dislike Gregory Gym (the UT campus gym). It tries to look like a trendy fitness center (which I dislike), it looks really spacious but doesn’t have very much equipment, so it’s always crowded (which I dislike), and they wasted a lot of money trying to make it look like a trendy fitness center instead of getting more equipment to fill the space so it isn’t as crowded (which I dislike). Yes, I know it was extra crowded today because all the freshmen just moved in and classes haven’t started yet, but even last summer it was way more crowded than it should have been. There are 10,000 more students here than at UW but only about half of the weights, benches, and machines that the UW has at its gym. It feels like I spent less time lifting than waiting for free equipment and navigating between mobs of freshman sorority wannabes wearing matching Texas shirts and saying clever things like “Let’s work buns!” in a perfect Barbie voice. Again, go Longhorns.

Anyway, on a happier note, yesterday the transportation folks (plus some others from environmental/water resources) went toobing on the Guadalupe River, which was a lot of fun. There were scattered thunderstorms on the bus ride from the toob rental place to our launch point, which was exciting. The rain let up just as we started, and the first hour or two was pretty uneventful apart from a few rapids, specifically me falling out of my toob at the first rapid. At least I recovered it quickly, we had to stop and wait while some less fortunate people had to chase after their toobs which had gotten farther away. After a while, we got another taste of the heavy Texan rain.

It started raining really really hard, and there was thunder and lightning as well. Some people took cover under the trees near the shore, but our group decided that hiding in the water underneath a tree was about the worst place to be in a thunderstorm. We got into the middle of the river, figuring that lightning would strike all of the tall trees on the banks before hitting us (plus, we were on rubber toobs, so we’d be insulated). After it started to get cold we decided to paddle as fast as we could, to warm us up and to get out of the storm. The wind was so strong that it was blowing waves upstream towards us. Exciting, but a bit scary too.

That was the only major adventure for Sunday, but it was fun hanging out with everybody and eating dinner at the Grist Mill in Gruene (the town where the toobing place was in). An enjoyable day, although I’m butt sore from the rapids (literally) and I was really tired from all the swimming. I must say, Texas has great water recreation.

The mystery unravelled

First, an update from yesterday. The emergency blinker mystery has been solved thanks to a timely response by Lauren, who says that at UT people unloading at the dorms put their blinkers on, because otherwise they get parking tickets. Makes sense, although in a way I was hoping for a more exciting explanation.

For those looking for more exciting news, today I got a gospel CD by Richard Smallwood that includes Total Praise and Anthem of Praise. These are two of the coolest songs ever! Back at UW when I took gospel choir one quarter, one of the songs we sang was Total Praise. Later on (when Rachel was in it) they sang Anthem of Praise. The rest of the CD isn’t too shabby either. If you’re looking for good gospel choir music, check out “The Praise & Worship Songs of Richard Smallwood.” You won’t be disappointed.

Bats in the storm, plus a mystery

Today I went to see the bats with the other grad students. Apparently the world’s largest urban bat colony can be found underneath the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin (we’re talking millions of bats) and every night around sunset they fly out to eat bugs. I’ve heard that these bats consume 10,000-30,000 pounds of insects every night. It’s quite amazing, actually, since for a good fifteen or twenty minutes there was a nonstop stream of bats (lots of them) flying out from under the bridge. After that we went to Sixth Street (a street with tons of bars and clubs, it’s actually closed to vehicle traffic at nights) to go bar hopping, but since I don’t like getting drunk I took off fairly early. Walking back to campus was nice because I talked to Rachel the whole way (cell phones are your friend, who thought I’d ever say that).

But that’s where the real adventure started! All the way back from downtown I saw flashes of lightning in the air, which was kinda beautiful. Once I got back to the civil engineering building (ECJ) I sat on a bench near where my bike was parked as I kept talking to Rachel. It started to rain slightly, so I moved to a bus shelter. Eventually, the rain got harder, and we said goodbye, so I got on my bike and started to ride back to the apartment. And then it started raining really hard! In Seattle it rains often, but not hard. Here it rains seldom, but when it does, it’s like the heavens open up and let loose. I literally couldn’t see anything through my glasses, but if I tilted my head down I could look over the lenses and get an idea of what was where. I also just got a light today for my bike, which was incredibly good timing, since even with it I could barely see the road. And I almost hit a (moving) truck since I misjudged where its headlights were. In retrospect I should have just gotten off and walked but I just wanted to get home. I was soaked. It was an adventure.

There’s also a mystery that needs unraveling. On campus, I saw a whole line of parked cars that had their 4-way flashers on (emergency blinkers). Odd, but as I walked further, I saw three more cars parked on the side of the street with their blinkers on as well (about a block down). I don’t know what to make of it, and Rachel didn’t know either. So if anyone can offer suggestions, that would be cool.

Orientation, Part 2

Further orientation updates today.

• I’ve met Dr. Waller. He’s a fun guy to talk to, although I’m going to have to get used to weekly “coffee hour” meetings that actually end up being several hours, if today is any indication. Basically all of his grad students meet with him and we talk about all sorts of things, TV, sports, politics, and, from time to time, actual work.
  
• Right now I’ll be reading through a bunch of papers and proposals to try to narrow down my research interests. It sounds dry but I’m actually looking forward to it, since Dr. Waller’s interests line up closely with mine. Yes, it sounds incredibly nerdy to say that I’m excited about reading papers with names like Development of Freeway Traffic Time Prediction Capability in Conjunction with Detector Coverage Analysis or On the Online Shortest Path Problem with Limited Arc Cost Dependencies, but you know what? I don’t care. I’m a grad student, and I wouldn’t be one if this stuff didn’t interest me. So there. :-)
  
• Registration bars suck. Although none of them were too difficult to deal with, it was annoying to have to provide University Health Services with immunization verification, especially since I had no idea I needed to give them such a thing. Oh well, thanks to a quick call home and fast work by Mom, I was able to get this taken care of by the end of the day. It’s just annoying. I’ve found that there’s a lot more red tape here than back at UW.
  
• I attempted to register for classes today. No problem getting into two of them (Advanced Traffic Engineering and Transportation Planning Method & Techniques), but the third (Linear Programming) was full, and since it’s outside of the department, it might be tougher to get into. I’m not too worried since I’ve never been unable to take a class I’ve wanted to (it just takes patience), but I need to figure out what UT’s overload policies are.
  

Orientation, Part 1

So orientation has started. In addition to meeting a number
of fine individuals, you may be interested in the following answers to frequently asked questions:

• My faculty advisor is Dr. Waller, for whom I will also be working as a research assistant.
  
• I will be considered a university employee working 20 hrs/wk until I graduate, so this means I
  only get a few weeks off for vacation each year (actual University policy is just two weeks a year, but the department stretches it to about four… two at Christmas and two during the summer, but they’re flexible)
  
• I will have an office, but I don’t know where it is yet.
  

Other eventful happenings include going bowling twice today, once with the other transportation grad students, and again with Ray (my temporary roommate) and Julie, a prospective girlfriend of his. First time was fun and I bowled well, but the second time I played really bad (sub-100) until the last game, and I felt like a third wheel, since Ray and Julie were more interested in each other for the whole time. Oh well, I didn’t have anything else to do, so I didn’t mind that much. Also, in a completely different vein, the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack arrived in the mail today. Mmm… cheap used CDs from amazon.com… Mmm…

Compline? Cool.

I discovered that you can listen to the Compline service
online. Too cool.

(For those who don’t know, on Sunday nights at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, a men’s choir sings through the Office of Compline, the monastic office at the end of the day. The choir is very good and it’s an incredibly relaxing experience, and I attended regularly while in Seattle. St. Mark’s Cathedral itself is a cool space, but for now I’ll just have to listen to it as it’s broadcast on KING 98.1 FM, which also broadcasts online: http://www.king.org).