Facebook Statuses: MIT vs. CAM

[Cambridge Facebook statuses]

i wish more than anything that the coffee shop delivered to our rooms, i cant move...and am still in yesterday's clothes -ST

sign of a ridiculous hangover: light of laptop screen hurts to look at. oouuuch. -LB

doesn't remember anything after the port -JDF

I wish we had guitar hero in the library. -NH

You know Monday night was bad when you have a hangover Wednesday morning -PW

is too drunk to go to a supervision

is practising using his gown

really can't be bothered to go to his supervision

The hardest part of Cambridge is having to put on cufflinks every week

Plan for tonight; Formal, back up to room for a homemade southend special, cocktails at the union then on to Emma (wednesday)

is an exhausted, hungover mess, but SO excited about tonight! [another formal] -JDF

is well chuffed with the discovery of her wonderful array of drunken facial expressions -HB

loves the fact that she got wrecked last night but still made it to lectures and labs, while her mother drank a few too many bacardis with her mate and, as a result, is wagging work.

5:46am. Did Tiananmen make the Chinese intellectual community more independent and vocal? Joseph Fewsmith says 'no', Xu Youyu says 'yes'. -JDF

Entered the library at 7.30pm... it's now 5.30am and I've nearly finished the introduction. I'm the Usain Bolt of essay writing. -KK

Working from bed with mint tea and Yemen books. Lovely. -LL

post-ball motivation fail.

To remove the HAMMER & SICKLE FLAG or not. This is the subject of tonight's controversial OPEN MEETING. Come speak at 6pm tonight!

rihanna.rwanda.coffee.

music, food, alcohol and friends - it's like the fun of a nightclub but in the warmth and comfort of King's library :) -MM

is an exhausted, hungover mess, but SO excited about tonight!

£5... 13 glasses of wine... can't be bad.

has been in the library for nearly 4 hours, and is only just starting her work.. -NH

[MIT Facebook statuses]

I just downloaded 3 gb in 3 minutes on the MIT network :) -JL

gallons of coffee and 12+ hours of various labwork to do? must be friday! -SF

So, maybe my grad student and I get a little overexcited about dorky things. but in our defense, that interface, and those grain boundaries, were absolutely gorgeous. mmm.

3 exams and 4 psets in one week? Really? -SW

haha! The dude that invented the happy meal and the cabbage patch doll (as well as pop rocks) wants to talk to me about Electroplushies. Hilarious! -MS

downloading at 5 Mb/s via wi-fi. Mmmmmmm.

wants better a better metadata UI than _KB.txt files. -KH

got into 24.900 and CMS.100 and has a UROP in CVCL! Which means that he'll be dropping 4.351

feels surprisingly prepared for doomsday tomorrow. Bring it on. -VH

bounce like ya got hydraulics in yo' g-string? hahahaha. -MYL

just found out that laundry view only works for the building you're actually in... I was trying to see if anyone was doing laundry in BC right now. -KB

excerpt from the BEST DESK CALL EVER guy: Can you connect me to the science department? me: This is a dorm, I don't really know how to do that. MIT has multiple science departments, so you'd need to call the main number and be more specific. guy: I was calling to settle a bet between me and my stepdaughter. We wanted to know if the moon is a planet or not. -EJ

is trapped in an infinite potential well. (it's like The Ring, but with more sine functions.) -SF

Op-amps are my new favorite circuit element... especially when they look like little insects. (They even look adorable in circuit diagrams.)

I've finally reached the point where it takes me much longer to format something in Word than it does when I just use Latex. Another questionable MIT milestone.

Dear fluids class - you have made me confuse upper case gamma with the capital letter F. Now the notes from all of my classes are super hard to decipher. -VH

all I want for Christmas is a stream function.

will have time for basic human needs at the end of the week.

is a sine wave for Purim! -DB

spent 3 hours figuring out android virtual machines instead of doing computation theory work. well, at least now today's refactoring nightmare is resolved....

Uncharacteristically Busy Cambridge Week

10 hours of lecture
1 Macroeconomics essay
1 Organisational Behaviour essay
1 Human Resource Management essay
1 Engineering lab report
Macroecon supervision
3E6 supervision
3F2 supervision
Valentine's Superformal
Football practice
King's Voices rehearsal
Churchill Spring Ball
Football match
King's Affair meeting
King's Voices Evensong
... within the same week, when Britni also happens to visit for 3 days and Ted for 4.


This is more like it.


(The Friday before this week was uncharacteristically packed too:
10-11am 3D7 Lecture
11-1pm 3D7 Lab
1-2:30pm Pick up/confirm King's Affair hoodie order
3-4pm 3F1 supervision by CMS
4-5pm 3E5 supervision at Trinity Hall
5-6pm 3D7 supervision at CUED
7-9:30pm iCusu formal at Queens
9:30-11:30pm finish King's Affair launch paty decorations)

My workload at Cambridge ...

... is truly pathetic.
I sat in the library today because I felt compelled to do work ... and I realized I had done all of it already.

Perhaps I should just work on the stuff due in 2 weeks' time ...

WTFTPCIAU?

This school's system IS SO IDIOTIC. UGH. It just goes against all logic. And against everything a "university" should be. I mean, this place is alright. But this school ... hate it.


WTFTPCIAU. The new IHTFP, except it doesn't have a brilliantly extreme positive connotation.


anecdote 1: I do my lab for 3C7 and afterward ask the lab instructor for his email "in case I have any questions" (about what we did, or while writing up the report/analyzing the results/learning). His response: "well, I'm not really supposed to help you ..."
I don't have his email.
(I still can't believe this actually happened.)

anecdote 2: The lab instructors for my other lab left the lab after the 2-hour designated "slot" time. No staying after for answering any questions we might have, anything we might be confused about ... and never, ever, ever would you see here TAs who stay until 4am helping undergrads understand a lab that started at 9pm. Don't even think about it. (Granted, I'm not asking for that, I simply want to finish hearing your input past the 1pm-sharp mark.)

anecdote 3: Every college has a download/upload bandwidth limit. It's like 3GB a day. SERIOUSLY?!?! Are we still living in the 13th century when Cambridge was born? Hello people. I had to reinstall MATLAB last night, so I downloaded the 1.8GB installer and received a "caution: approaching bandwidth limit" email (at which point my internet connection may be severed -- and yes, they can do that here because "wireless" is a foreign and innovative concept here).


WTF, (seriously?) this place calls itself a university?

6:20 AM

Late night up writing my lab report due tomorrow.

Two mornings ago, I was already at the boathouse at this time.

Ridiculous.
My neighbor just left for crew practice. The sun's rising! Aahhh! Bedtime.

To anyone who wants to visit ...

1. Buy a large cardboard box at UPS/FedEx/DHL.
2. Cut a few air holes.
3. Go to the post office, hop inside, tape it up.
4. Ship to:

367 King's College
Cambridge CB2 1ST
United Kingdom


p.s. - don't forget food! and water! and maybe your iPod if you're easily bored.

Cambridge Fall

Yesterday I went to my supervision for 3F1. It was at the fellow's house out in West Cambridge.

So I biked out there and back - about 10 minutes each way. We passed various sports fields, little rural houses, the University library, and countless trees/bridges/parks.

It was beautiful. Finally, a redeeming factor of this place. It's not a city, but it's got its nice, compact, chill and rural areas of narrow streets, standing mailboxes, and cottage houses. 4pm, under a calmly setting orange/pink sun, biking down the street past house after house, notes in a messenger bag hung across my shoulder, fall jacket loosely wrapped around, all as a Cambridge University student ... it was one of those happy moments that every once in a while amidst my homesickness for MIT give me hope that this place has its gems to be discovered.

:)

I miss MIT like mad.

Ugh.

I want snow too ...

It is snowing in Cambridge, MA.

The explosion on my Facebook home page of statuses like
"Snow!!"
"omg it's snowing in October?!"
"snow in Boston!"
"snooowwwwww"
"it's snowing!"
"SNOW SNOW SNOW."
etc.

makes me so jealous.
I wish it would snow in this Cambridge, too ...

Familiar Faces.

So far around campus, I've seen people who really really really look like:

Carson, Bethany, Carlo, John '12 from crew, Sarah from my club soccer team, Heath Ledger, and a cute mouse. Oh, and also a younger Robert Sean Leonard (Wilson from House/Neil from Dead Poets Society)
Also, during my bike home from classes, I passed an old man who looked just like Robin Williams.

Am I going crazy?

Credits ...

are going to screw me over, potentially.


----edit:
yay my course CME coordinator back at MIT finally responded and my coursework here will get me credit for everything I need. looks like it's smooth sailing after all.