First Week Rush

It's the first week of classes here at UC Davis.

OK, that's not completely true. It's the first week where classes can meet, but classes only started Thursday.

The week is more commonly known as Welcome Week, or Week 0. This is the first week freshman are on campus. As a result, walking around there are groups EVERYWHERE that want to give you stuff and tell you about their awesome organization. Even more fun is that since I'm asian I don't look as old as I am, so I've been approached by some people who thought I was a freshman. I guess I just don't have the downtrodden grad student stride just yet and have too much optimistic naive bounce to my step.

Highlights of the week included meeting a lot of really cool people. We had a meet-up after one event to play board games, except we only played BANG! For those who don't know what BANG! is, it is a card game in the vein of mafia, but set in a spaghetti western where everyone is shooting everyone, but miraculously you might dodge the bullets, and indians might arrive from the hills trying to hurt everyone. I also had a really revealing discussion with a Muslim student who originally grew up Catholic and then converted. She had some very interesting views and some very thoughtful questions that I will have to research a bit. Friday was The Buzz which is a generic free-for-all of goodies and bands, and stuff to do in the Quad. We got free henna. Apparently my ability to make curvy lines is a natural gift or something. I thought my job looked like crap compared to what others were doing.

Perhaps the most fun is that I have to decide which course to take this quarter. I am doing research and am a TA again. However, I wanted to throw in a class to keep myself on my toes a bit. So, I get to decide between Error Correcting Codes (ECC), Operating Systems (OS), and iPad development. ECC is all about how we make sure wireless transmissions work and are not corrupted, a really useful skill since wireless applications are a booming industry. OS deals with understanding how something like Windows or Linux works, which would be really helpful to understand for programming. iPad development just sounds cool. But I am probably not going into Apple development. Then again, I have a few fun friends in that class that I wouldn't mind working with. That's not to say I don't have friends in the other classes. My housemate is taking ECC, and I know several students in OS as well. At the end of the day, the "safest" route would be to take ECC, sit in on OS, and watch from afar iPad. Then again, who said taking the safe path was the best choice in life.

Overall, life has gotten really interesting these last few weeks. We'll see how well I survive this quarter. God willing.