MIT CPW

For the past four days or something like that, the entire universe went to MIT. Well maybe not the entire universe, but approximately one thousand MIT '14 admits. Each day was packed with events, and there certainly was lots of free food.

Thursday

• Train ride with Pavel and dad was fun ^_^ unfortunately the free wifi wasn't working, so I read a MSDN magazine instead.
• Registration went smoothly. Then I went to sign up for UROP tours, only to find out that the video game lab tour was full, so I signed up for a MechE one for the lulz.
• Lunch…what lunch? I just had two cookies and a cup of lemonade because I wanted to catch a class.
• Investments was a pretty cool class. Unfortunately I know too little management or economics to get the most out of the class, but I understood the part about using a Taylor approximation to derive an estimation formula for yield. Also, I read Engadget's coverage on iPhone 4.0.
• It was about 1500 now, so I retrieved my luggage from the storage room and haul it to Ashdown. June then led me to the suite and we talked for a while.
• Brian told me to meet him at Random for Bubblewrap at 1617, which turned out to be a huge fail because the demand for bubblewrap exceeded the supply by like hmm…over 9000? Yeah. The little room got mobbed by fifty people. Yeah.
• We walked back to main campus and bumped into Sam and Travis. Then we went behind Kresge to eat some BBQ because I was starving.
• Brian goes on a tour with Akshar and other TJ folks and I go eat ice cream at Simmons. A group of people were there already so some upperclassmen took us on a tour of the dorms. The interior was so different; the walls were curvy! I do realize it's an extravagant waste of interior volume, but the fact that it's so different just appeals to me. Then I had ice cream and played legoes with some other people. I was pretty surprised that two girls there were also having fun decapitating lego people and constructing a human rainbow with the bodies :O
• I start heading over to Random for tea and math and then see Brian and the TJ folks (who were headed to EC for BBQ), so I join them. When we got to EC, I saw Pavel, Ian, and Ben, and the TJ guys decided to go to the minorities dinner.
• Then Pavel and I went to Tea and Math and Ian went to quizbowl. I had tea while Pavel, Brian, and the other guys there did math. lol
• We went to Rockwell Cage for the opening ceremony, which turned out to be pretty epic. The Logarhythms sang ``You Belong With Me'' XDD After the assembly, we got into small groups and played icebreaker games.
• After that was the Activities Fair. There were lots of booths for every club. I watched a lot of supersized Jenga and a chess match between two BCAers to stall for time while Brian just stood at the physics booth doing integrals -_-
• We walked to Firehose for some midnight math/physics (wedge products). It seemed pretty random but understandable until the end, where the lecturer just threw random calculus applications at it ._.

Yep, that really is a crown composed of lego bodies.

Our mostly complete amusement park. The human body rainbow on the revolver was my idea :)

Evil calculus problems. Evil, I tell you. EVIL!1!!111!

Friday

• Chancellor's welcome address was neat. The four presenters were excellent speakers, and the two professors at the end surely prepared informative yet entertaining lectures. Unfortunately, there was a minimum of free food, so my breakfast just consisted of a cup of iced tea. >_<
• Having failed at finding more free food, I went to the student center to check out the women engineer's brunch. The line was unbelievably long (over 100 people), so I bought a Subway sandwich.
• Right after that, Pavel texted me about the BCA alum/senior lunch. He told me to meet at Stata, so I made my way there through the infinite corridor and stuff. I met Ian along the way and he decided to follow me. We got to Stata, floodfill the first floor. No Pavel. Ian texted him and said to meet in the Gates library. We floodfill the first floor of that. No Pavel. Then he texted us to meet at 466. We climbed the stairs to 4th floor, head to that room. No Pavel. Frustrated, Ian and I left to eat lunch and continue with CPW.
• UROP tour of the Ideation lab was pretty cool. The room was basically a junkyard filled with prototypes, posters, and a few Macs. The tour guides had us brainstorm improvements for the paper towel to show us what a typical day working in the lab would be like.
• Went back to dorm to sleep for ~3hr. 5hr is not enough sleep >_<
• Walked to Random Hall in the rain. First went to the Nerf Gun battle, but people were still setting up their hideouts constructed from cardboard. I learned how to operate a nerf gun!
• Minihunt was pretty fun. I had the the team's sole internet connection, which helped a lot. We got pretty far, until everyone got distracted by beef. BEEF. Except I didn't, because it looked unappetizing and I'm not used to eating meat for dinner (gasp).
• Brian took me to the pizza shop diagonally across from Random and I had a slice of pizza and a drink. Yay, I'm no longer starving!
• We went back for nTris and Friends, a rigged Tetris tournament. I did miserably because I treated it as normal Tetris and just used a greedy algorithm to clear lines. 
• Tangerine Tour! Under Jack Florey's NDA, all I can say is that roof and tunnel hacking is awesome. And so is sitting on roofs with a spectacular view of the city :)

Darn, I can't read. XD

Saturday

• Solar Car Shop Tour was really cool. The people discussed what it took to build a efficient, yet high-performance solar car. The project is really tempting, but I probably will forgo this opportunity.
• Took a nap again because 5hr sleep is not enough >_< (see a pattern?)
• Yugioh: The Abridged Series Marathon + Live Interview with LittleKuriboh was one of the most awesome events I went to. We watched the first twenty episodes and then had a live chat with the man himself :O Of course, Jordan asked him a bunch of questions about the creation of the show and how he gets inspiration. I asked him to sing Brooklyn Rage for us :D He told us that he's working on a parody of ``Bad Romance.'' I suppose he's not giving Lady Gaga a break, is he?
• For dinner, Brian and I went to this upscale Spanish restaurant called ``Cuchi Cuchi.'' We ordered two delicious (albeit expensive) dishes, garlic shrimp and bliny. It was also my first experience with bread and oil (still don't understand why; bread is good by itself). Maybe I should convince the rest of purchase cellophane to eat at more upscale places rather than pizza and burger places.
• Our tour at EC was pretty lol. Our tour guides were all from the same floor, so of course they weren't biased. We saw four floors of East side, skipping floor four because it was ``lame,'' apparently. One of the floors had a hackable soda machine that dispensed free soda if you knew how to use the computer program and another had a knife sticking out of the wall. Most of the floors were basically computer junkyards, which makes me feel right at home :) Then a gymnast decides to climb on the steam pipes single-handedly, which was pretty epic. I probably should have recorded it or something…
• Around midnight, some EC folks put on a fire show! The pyromaniacs were spinning fire batons, spitting fireballs, and playing with a fire yo-yo. It was so awesomely mesmerizing…
• We went to the Big Bang Theory marathon (it's a geeky comedy) at 1am. One of my friends had recommended that I watch it, and so I did. It's pretty hilarious. Sheldon has got to be the most socially awkward character XD We got through the first six episodes, but I fell asleep sometime during the middle. 

Sunday

• After sending Brian off to the shuttle, I joined Pavel, Ian, and Ben in an empty classroom for early morning breakfast. We talked about EC, MIT life, and math team. 

In other news, I finally memorized all of Gen 1 Pokémon! Now for Gen 2…I have 75 of the 100 down. Maybe I should play HeartGold or SoulSilver to refresh my memory :)

Also, while walking through Ashdown, I came across one of the ``don't lose your laptop'' posters, but this one was a bit marked up:

QFT :)