My kind of trip to NYC

Not rushed, easying going, spur of the moment decisions, and not being a tourist - this is the way I love exploring cities. New York City is not an exception :)

This is my third time to the city, but my first time by myself. It has been great fun to blend in with the locals, taking the Subway, biking around, and working in the NY public library. Yes, I do some touristy things - I get to see Mary Poppins on Broadway today! That was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision: I woke up this morning and when deciding what I wanted to do today, I realized that I had a great opportunity to see a show on Broadway, something I've never done before! I am really excited, I've heard it is a great show. I really wanted to see the Lion King, but I prefer $30 tickets to $130 tickets!

When I got to NY yesterday, I had some time to kill before meeting up with Hannah, my friend from Brooklyn, so I ran into Macy's to see about finding a suit. My grandparents want to buy my a nice suit for a graduation gift. After doing a ready-to-wear design project for class last quarter, I know that my measurements fit right in the average size 8 for women's wear, but I couldn't find a thing that fit! Granted, half the suits were way to matronly for my taste (think some Mother-of-the-bride outfits) and some of them just had design details that I didn't like. I'm looking for something that is not too outrageous (ruffles under the collar?) but also not in a cheap feeling/tacky fabric or with oodles of topstitching. And I think I want a gray suit, but finding one that works well with my complexion is challenging. I also kinda want a dress and suit combo, mainly because I've never had one and I think they look sharp. Unfortunately the one I could find fit around the hips, but not around the top (story of my life) and it was about twice as expensive as my budget would allow....but the fabric had a wonderful hand and drape!!

I liked the color and texture of the fabric and the different cut of this suit, but the top was too big :(

This was the suit with the nice hand and drape, but way too expensive!!

After Macy's, I tried to find the fantastic fast-food steak place my dad and I went to when I was in 8th grade. It is now a Chinese Express...but at least I found the location!

Because I was in the Garment District, I popped down to the Fashion Institute of Technology Museum. It was pretty small, but there was a great exhibit called "His and Hers," that explored how dress changed with or defined gender roles throughout history. I've done some research in this area (mainly with traditional Asian dress) and found the exhibit interesting. It didn't make the gender role tie-in as explicitly as I would have liked, it mainly felt like a historical costume tour. The gender roles were explored subtly, as on could draw inferences from the particular garments chosen to describe each time period. Overall, it was great to see so many historical pieces in person!

an Alexander McQueen dress, part of the exhibit

I also dropped into a small fabric shop in the area, but didn't get too much of a chance to do more than glance around before Hannah called, done with class.

Because it was a beautiful day, we decided to grab some bikes and head out to see some of the city from the road. It was great fun! We biked over the Williams and Mary bridge (I think) and winded through the city to the Financial District. We went down to water and passed by the new Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center. Afterwards, we made our way to a 'bike class' Hannah had been to before. Basically it was in the basement of someone's house - when we first were pulling up on our bikes, I asked where it was on the street, and Hannah pointed to what she called "that hole down there." We went to a door that was down a few steps from the sidewalk, covered in graffti and it opened to an unfinished basement bike shop. There were about 8 people gathered around a gentleman with a wheel on a truing machine. We learned how to check spoke tension, change a spoke, and generally keep our wheels in good condition.

Leaving the bike class

Hannah made some great chili afterwards and then I got to sleep in until 10 am today! It was great :)

Houston is a warm place.

I finished my honors project. Printed, binder-clipped, and placed in Dr. Reinsma's hands for binding :)

Chemical Synthesis of Inorganic Nanomaterials for Energy Harvesting Devices
-check it out in the library next quarter!

And I finished the only paper due for this finals week, so I'm taking a mini break before starting to study spectroscopy (not as fun as it may sound)

I brought back a sunburn from Houston, TX, as I went down last week to visit Rice. But, I don't think I'll be going back to get more sun as I don't believe I'll be attending grad school there. The campus was probably the most beautiful place I'd been to - I felt like I was back at Stanford in some areas of campus. The campus was also HUGE, especially for only 3500 undergraduates and 1000 grad students. Apparently, one of their major donors owned a construction firm and just built them buildings in lieu of donating dollars. He built them a 70,000 person stadium, but I guess you can't do anything on the small scale in TX...

One of corridors that made me think of Stanford

But, I will be back down in TX this July flying on NASA's micro-g plane! I'm with a different team this year, with two people based at UPenn, two at Rose-Hulman, and I'm still at SPU. Hopefully going in to this trip, we'll be better prepared. As difficult as it was to go through the engineering issues last time, I feel way more prepared to help this team get our act together before we get to Houston! And we have a more diverse team, so I think we can our experiment pulled together with more ease. And some of us will be at Ames this summer, so we can work on the experiment together for a bit before we have to ship it to Houston.

Here's our new team website:
https://sites.google.com/site/microg2011/

We're dropping balls into different types of sand - should be fun!

To Maryland and Back

I visited the University of Maryland at College Park this past week (yes, it's been like one grad school per week - fortunately I don't have a visit scheduled for finals week!) but it was a fast trip: leave early Thursday morning and get back late Friday night.

Side note: I think all this traveling has cured me a bit of my eagerness to travel - I think I'll make sure that whenever I do travel somewhere, it'll be for at least 5 days, more if it is overseas!

UMD was a good school, with a pretty flexible program, but I'm pretty sure I won't go to school there. I just didn't feel quite like I fit - not sure if I can explain it more than that. It was interesting how focused they were on telling you about the program and doing large overview-type presentations and less focused on getting students to meet with profs. If you wanted to meet with anyone, you needed to email them and arrange it yourself. I'm never quite sure who I want to meet with until after I hear more about what projects their group is actually working on, as the group websites are usually out of date. I emailed two profs last minute and was able to talk with them, and I think I could get along with them, but I just don't think I'm going to go there. In contrast, the UW was solely focused on having you meet with profs, they never did a general program or research interests overview. GT touched on both, but it was easier to do that because their visit lasted for almost two full days.

Still not sure where to go....but I've got til April 15th, right?

On another note, I visited one new coffeeshop this week and one kinda-new shop!
I'd been to Cafe Vita, located on the other side of Queen Anne, once before, but it was a rushed meeting with Dr. Reinsma and I didn't recall the atmosphere. I went there with my sis and it was pretty nice. Not the greatest tea, but it is hard to compete with the Teacup! She and I both forgot our computer power cords, so it was a short visit!


Caffe Ladro is one shop that I've always seen, but never been to. There is one on Queen Anne and in Fremont that are relatively close to school. Today, a friend and I ended up here because the Fremont Coffee Company that I usually bike to was super full this afternoon. The tea wasn't bad, all their stuff is organic and/or fair trade and overall it was a nice place to sit and work through my PChem report.

Hmm...both Ladro and Vita have men with tall hats in their logos...interesting.

Art + HP = Wordle

You didn't even have to read the 22 pages and now you know all about my honors project :)

Spring Break? More like Spring Busy

This is my spring 'break':

March 17th - finish finals
March 18th - speak at a SPU science research fair for prospective students
March 19th - ??
March 20th - Fly to Rensselear
March 21st - RPI visit day
March 22nd - Take train to NYC, meet up with Hannah
March 23rd - stay with Hannah in NYC
March 24th - Fly to AZ (midmorning)
March 25th - AZ
March 26th - AZ
March 27th - Fly to CA for conference
March 28th - Conference all day
March 29th - Disneyand morning/early afternoon; fly back to Seattle in the evening
March 30th - School starts and Radiolab show!!

Anyone want to fill in the ?? on the 19th? Why not fill up everyday! :)

Also - super excited for Radiolab, espically since Zoe Keating is coming!!!
In case you missed the last time I posted on Zoe - watch this:

Weights

Picking a grad school is worse than picking an undergrad school. (this does not bode well for job hunting....)

what feature of grad school should weight the most in my decision?
- program
- time to PhD
- advisor choice
- group size
- program size
- research areas
- number of research groups I'm interested in
- US News ranking
- stipend
- location

toss 'em all in a hat and pick one out?

The UW was an interesting visit - not as organized as GT and I'm not entirely sure they have research that really interests me. I like how the path to your PhD is really geared towards your project, your pre-lim and general exams are all based on what you are researching. I met some great profs, but I'm not sure who I would work with.

Best part though, was meeting someone who worked in my NASA lab 7 years ago! It was great to hear some stories about the people I know now and to find out about this funky plaque that hangs on the wall in my lab. Apparently, a guy I met, a current UW grad student, made it and sent it to group after one of the summers he interned there! It is basically an inside joke, a plaque that reads something like "To the Nano Friends" and lists a bunch of nicknames: Mentor Man, Rotovap, Intern Boy, and the like. I never understood it, but apparently it was his research group! Made my evening.

And this is the beauty that I saw as left the UW today:

Don't you love the mountains? They're one of the best parts about living in the Northwest!

HP

No, not Harry Potter. Honors Project.

(Basically a mini-dissertation that I don't have to defend)

I finally got around to looking at the projects in the library.

Mine will soon be residing with the other 420-ish projects. Wow. That's a lot of UScholars!

I'm also off the UW tomorrow to check out their MSE program! They have a PhD in nanotech that I'm interested in, so hopefully I'll get a good look at that program.