Cambridge/NYC joint adventures

Sorry I haven't posted recently, but I'm still recovering from two almost back-to-back trips: One to NYC with my orchestra and one to MIT to visit. I'm just barely recovered sleep-wise now (I went to sleep at 7:10AM on the airplane the day I flew back from MIT), so I shall finally update.

Short note on NYC, as I'm not going to write too much about it: I really love New York City, even though it is massive and sketchy at times. We actually lost a girl in our school group on the subway, and it took quite a bit of frantic cell calling and running about in Manhattan to track her down again. We told her it was an April Fool's joke :) The NYC pics are from me, and I'm most proud of the Carnegie Hall snapshot, as that was taken very surreptitiously. I also discovered the joyous wonder that is Jamba Juice, and if you ever run into one, I highly suggest you stop in. I'm not quite addicted like some of my friends (one can recite the whole menu), but it is damn good. So that happened (we won our competition too!), and four days later, I was on plane (delayed) to Boston.

If I haven't said it, MIT was by far my first choice school, but I had never actually visited the place before the weekend. Of course, that meant that I had a preconception in my head of a place really special and really fitting my personality and the danger was that I could have been let down completely, leaving me in limbo for where I wanted to be next year. Luckily, MIT rocked my socks off!

MIT is roughly split between two cultures: West Campus, which is where the "normal" nerds hang out, with alcohol and frats as the main sources of entertainment (gross generalization alert) and East Campus, where the really interesting people are, and where fire and elaborated hacks (pranks) are everyday occurences. Guess where I ended up :-P The floor of the dorm in which I stayed built a Jacob's ladder, which is basically a really high voltage spark gap that produces streams of plasma. Not content with the danger of 10,000V ionizing air, we decided to spray denatured alcohol into it, producing small fireballs. Essentially stupid? Uh-huh. Potentially lethal? Oh yeah. Incredibly fun? Like you wouldn't believe!

The prefrosh also got a tour (Tangerine Tours) of the campus from a hacker's (prankster) perspective. That is, from the rooftops and tunnels. So at midnight we crawled up the domes and down the hot steam tunnels and all around MIT without ever leaving a building. I will have to draw up a map sometime of the tunnels; they are so practical if you want to escape the New England chill/snow.

More importantly, I got sooo much free stuff. Among other things, I now possess a capture the flag T-shirt, two bouncy balls (they dropped hundreds off the roof of a dorm), an exploded capacitor (we microwaved it), a red frisbee, a geological sampling thingy, and an a capella CD of the MIT-Wellesley Toons (Jason, any interest?). The Institute also gave us money, ostensibly for food. Instead, of course, I scored some free gear at the Coop instead. Thank god for free food, is all that I can say.

Of course, since I was in Cambridge, I visited Dylan, who lives just two T stops away from MIT. I ate dinner with his family when I arrived, and we checked out Harvard's sumptuously appointed campus. Of course it was infinitely older-styled than MIT, but much better in terms of complementary architecture. Shockingly, we actually ran into a '04 Michigan TASPer (He was wearing their TASP's T-shirt), and we chatted it up for a while. They stayed in ADG as well, and he told us of the high volume of TASPers in the big H. Unexpected, but it's a small world after all, and I suppose the number of TASP alumni (which we are!) is much higher in Cambridge. Some days later, we also cruised through Harvard Square, where I was introduced to the joys of Burdick's hot chocolate and the cool air of the Charles River. We talked, gossiped, shared stories of college prospects and generally shot the shit. I love you TASPers, and I'm even more convinced that we need an East Coast reunion in the fall.

Between climbing up the fire escape at 4:30 in the morning to get into my dorm and the LN2 everywhere (EVERYWHERE!) and climbing the Caltech cannon (take that, Sam!) and playing capture the flag at midnight all over campus and drinking cocoa with the
coolest nerds in existence, I KNOW that MIT is for me. Really, what a place!

Well, I'm off now. In the MIT tradition, I'm writing a letter to ask my girlfriend to prom as a big puzzle involving alternately Morse code, the Battle of Trafalgar, and 8-bit binary. I hope this doesn't end up being too frustrating....

PS: Congrats all on your decisions and future plans; I know it's an exciting time for all of us.
PPS: I'm told that there was a St. Louis TASPer at CPW, and since we heard the same story on Tangerine Tours, I may have been mere feet away! Adam Higuera, I demand satisfaction, or at least that we can hang out during orientation (wink, wink). And dude, sign up on the MIT guestbook at least.
PPPS: Where is Emily Jenda?
PPPPS: No reason, I just like PS's. What does PS stand for anyway?