Long day today. Just got back from school. And I left home at 8 am.
The day started with rain. It seems that it didn't stop raining at all since yesterday (Friday) around noon. It drizzled yesterday, and it poured today.
I drove to school, and, alas, yet another Princeton football game. Just like last week, good ole public safety/event coordinator stopped me to ask me where I am going. But unlike last week, I arrived early enough that I was fighting for spots in the graduate student lot (in fact, I was the only one there). And I was questioned too much. As soon as I mentioned that I am a grad student going to Lot 25, the PS person let me through.
Met up with the badminton team (Rafe, Ross, Rohit, Umar, and I) at the Dinky station, and we drove to Philly to play against UPenn.
Apparently quite a few guys promised to come but played a no-show and/or canceled last minute. The girls just said flat out they won't come (with a mixture of good and bad excuses). So it was the 5 of us against the 8+ at Penn.
Rafe plays first single, Ross second, followed by Rohit, I, and Umar. Rafe and Ross then play first double, and Rohit and I play second double. And then it degenerated into free plays. The first single guy on UPenn's team is Ram. He is an Indian student who is studying in Singapore and applied to an exchange program to the US for one year. He studies business and finance. Ram is also an Indian National Team player--one of those Olympic caliber people. Rafe was pretty upset at first after his game against Ram. Then he found out who he played against...
For some bizarre reason Penn's team could only reserve this tiny out-of-use court for play. Horrible environment. The fan for the gym wasn't working properly, and with the rain, it was extremely muggy in the gym, and as a result I got tired quicker. The courts were painted in light blue lines, which made it impossible to see. The gym has white walls with big windows which doesn't have blinds. Since it is cloudy/raining outside, it showed bright white when you look at the window. Those two factors together made it impossible to see the birdie. And while the ceiling is high enough, the court has drop-down beams running across the top with lights hanging from it. Ram, being a great badminton player, serves high and deep--and at least 40% of his serves end up hitting a beam or a lamp. And I sucked more today then usually. (My reaction time is slow to begin with... and now I couldn't see the birdie until it is 4 feet in front of me...)
Still, it was a lot of fun. While I wouldn't really say the Penn guys were great (I think they were laughing at Umar a bit because he thought net-serves are lets in badminton [in fact, if in service, the birdie touches the top of the net and bounces into the proper receiving court, it is legal and in-play]), and that some of their players are down-right nasty (one guy has the tendency to lie about line-shots--always calling it out--and another "inflates" his score in game), in general, they were pretty nice guys. Especially Ram.
After the game, we went in search for lunch food. Ross played against Penn before, so he remembers that there is a food-truck with decent/cheap Chinese food somewhere. Unfortunately, a combination of lateness (we got there around 1:20) and weather, most food trucks were closed except for this Kielbasa and Cheesesteak place. So that's what we had for lunch (except for Rohit, who is vegetarian...)
I studied a bit in the afternoon, and got really tired. So I spent a bit of time following the DARPA Grand Challenge in real-time (for an hour or so until Stanley, Stanford's bot, crossed the finish line). This year's DARPA GC is much more spectacular than last years, where no car made it past the 7 mile mark: Stanley not only finished but also beat DARPA's time limit by a whole bunch. And closely after that, both of CMU's cars finished. Very cool. (Well, the Princeton team, many of it members I actually know, died after 9 miles. I am not quite sure what went wrong though: they passed the qualifiers with flying colors).
Then I got real tired and took a nap in Frist. It was raining out and I didn't want to move.
Went to my first Anime Club showing tonight. It is Texhnolyze. Due to the only Anime/Manga store in Princeton closing, now we are down to member supported DVDs. This has the annoying side effect of not having much selection. So, unlike before, when we could show two series each not at AMP, with one episodic and independent (or movie), and the other serialized (so people who can't come normally would not be left out in the cold not knowing the storyline), we now just show one show for a real long time--and hope that we can finish 26 episodes in 3 showings or fewer. So today we watched 8 episodes (2 DVDs) of the 22-episode-long Texhnolyze, which adds up to just about 3 hours, and resulted in me getting home late.
Texhnolyze is an interesting show. The first episode is extremely fragmentary, and you end with the impression of confusion. But things starts to become related in the second episode, and by the third, everything is fairly tied up together. One weird thing is the large amounts of sex in this show, but it might be a reflection of the hedonistic principles of the people in the show (click for spoiler).
After the anime showing, the rain stopped. It is an immensely good thing, because on the way home, I found out that had the rain not stopped, I might not have been able to get home. On Rt 526 before hitting Princeton Junction, there was a road block set up, with a sign that said "Road Flooded". I paused for a while. And then I saw a car coming the opposite way and sort of drove around the road block. So I put on my high beams and the road seemed clear--so I followed the lead and went around the road block.
Another fun thing that I saw on the way home was a toad crossing the street. I've seen plenty of stuff crossing the street now. Deers and squirrels are often sights in Jersey, and rabbits are everywhere. Snakes I've seen twice: once in Taiwan, once in Jersey near where S lives. And last Sunday night I saw an opossum crossing the street. Today, I was coming home, and I saw what I thought was a fallen leave drift across the road in a very funny way, that it looked like it was bouncing! So I stepped on the brakes (there's no one around), and looked more carefully. It was a gray jumpy animal crossing the street. It is either a tree-frog or a toad, I couldn't get close enough to tell. But that was quite exciting.
The show is about an underground city which is "forgotten" by those above ground. It seems that above-ground, people have evolved the ability to self-regenerate and the society becomes unchanging, pacified, and in general prosperous. But some people seem to consider that a lost of "humanity" (these are all my speculation based on the first 8 episodes). One such guy comes to the forsaken city and wishes to observe humanity, and incites conflict in the community. So I think that the gratuitous sex might be a reflection on the humanity of this forsaken city.
A weird thing is that the plot orchestrated by the guy from the surface world is already fully perpetrated and carried out by episode 8. So it would be interesting to see where the plot goes from here. The characters still has a lot of developing to do (the main character, besides looking cool and alternating behaving murderous/helpless, hasn't much of a personality so far). But there could be very interesting plot twists (there's also the off chance that this is as interesting as the plot gets, and that would be BAD!).
I can't wait to see the rest