Just Because I Was Asked To...

pardon my poor writing. i dont know how to write so all my stuff is jumbled. and none of it makes any sense.

So in case you didn’t know, Sunny doesn’t plan on spending any of his summer time in Temple City, because I think he likes Santa Barbara better. so he has a job working at the dorm he lived in, and during the school year he held a night shift, sitting at the front desk, and now during the summer, the dorm turned into a sort of hotel, and he is working the same shift now. he came back for the 4th of july weekend, it was great fun and such. so he told us a story of how every person working at the dorm had to go through training, so he now knows CPR and other cool stuff, but the highlight of his training was when he had to take a test to see if he could drive the shuttle bus to take people back to the hotel dorm thing. previously, i would say that sunny has been known for being notoriously bad with directions as well as coordination, needless to say he failed his first driving test because he stopped at a green light, and didnt go until the driving test instructor reminded him that it was green. also that he got a ticket for driving on the opposite side of the road. and well the shuttle bus driving test seemed to have gone just as horrifically wrong as his other past driving experiences. so sunny was driving, and the shuttle bus test guy told him to turn left, and sunny, without thinking just made a left turn at the green light, but there was oncoming traffic and he seemingly dove head in right into the oncoming traffic, the whole bus started screaming (because it was full of people) and the bus instructor was shouting at sunnny “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”, and after sunny safely made it to the curb after the instructor told him to pullover, the instructor asked him so what went wrong back there? well anyways back at the dorm,they were asking sunny what position he wanted to work, and he said that he didnt want the shuttle bus driving position, and the woman asking him said that she had already heard about the incident. i dont know why i just wrote that story out. anyways on to stinky tofu.

so wednesday, i had dinner with sunny, we were supposed to go eat with another friend, johnson, who lives in corona, and there was some sort of drama going on because corona is like 40-50 miles away from temple city, and he wanted to eat dinner with sunny, and so we sort of agreed to meet him half way, and we would go eat at some place called Guppys in rowland heights. however we didnt end up going to guppys, we decided to go eat at the boiling crab, and ended up seeing cathy nguyen, for those who dont know, shes a youtube celebrity sort of, who sings and stuff. well the wait at boiling crab was too long, so we went to class 302, which was right across the street, and is famous for having excellent shaved snow. well after shaved snow we went to go eat stinky tofu for some reason, and that turned out pretty bad. stinky tofu is similar to fried tofu, except its stinky. and when i bit into it, all the stinky odors invaded my everything, and well i wont eat again. ever. okay the end.

So the work I am doing with the normally closed check valves might be used to help people with glaucoma, which is a disease that older people may acquire where the eyes of the old people do not drain the fluids that accumulate inside the eyes, which result in a higher than normal intraocular pressure which is unhealthy, and may damage the eye resulting in impaired vision or blindness. The check valves come into play by allowing the eye to maintain its natural PSI, and when the PSI goes over, the check valve will be forced open and the fluid will drain out until the PSI becomes normal again. However, the check valves are tiny tiny mechanisms, and each check valve can only contain so much PSI, Jeffrey believes that placing consecutive check valves in one tube will allow us to block enough PSI to allow for what he hopes to be a better solution to glaucoma. Currently the ways to help people suffering from glaucoma are eye drops and other things that I don’t remember. The eye drops have side effects ranging from growth of eyelashes to heart complications and even permanent change in iris color. His check valves will provide a passive solution, which means that it will work when it has to and stop when it doesn’t. Also it will save money for the people who suffer from glaucoma as while their medication can be used up (and the medication is expensive), the check valves are a one time surgery (or something like that). I guess all this is a small price to preserving vision. The material he plans to make the final product out of is a material called parylene C, which is one of the materials that are completely biocompatible, meaning that the immune system will not attack the parylene C if it is placed inside someones body. Jeffrey also said that parylene C is something that CalTech manufactures the best, as they were one of the few to pioneer the manufacturing of parylene C. He also made me read a bunch of articles that he wrote for conferences that were held in some place called Hilton Head, all describing his old solutions to the glaucoma stuff.

MEMS is an acronym for microelectromechanical systems, and that is what I am working with at CalTech, MEMS. I just want to say, holy shit. I never imagined that one day I would have to work with things so tiny. Today I was working with normally closed check valves, which are little cylinders that regulate the flow of liquids. It is called normally closed because the valve is normally closed until it reaches a certain external pressure. The thing about these check valves is that they are only 500 micrometers in diameter, which means that they are about the same size as a grain of sand. Not only do I have to pick them up with a pair of tweezers, I also have to dab epoxy (a glue like substance) and orient them in a certain direction so that it will fit in a tube whose diameter is only 50 micrometers more. I find it difficult to work with things that I can’t really control very well, and not to mention that I have to do all this under a stereoscope. Anyways I have learned a lot in the couple days that I have been here and hopefully what skill I obtain from working with these infinitesimal objects will be of use to me in the future. I also get to have my name published on a research paper that the grad student I am working under will write some time in February. He also taught me about computer processors, which use transistors and such. The transistors must remain separate from each other in order to work, and to minimize that distance will allow more transistors to fit in a small amount of space, say the size of the computer processor. The more transistors that are in a processor means the more calculations the processor can make, and the more powerful the processor will be. The processors that are in the computers most people are using now using transistors that have 45nm between them, and nanometers is like 10^-9, which is a thousand times smaller than a micrometer, which is the scale of things that I am currently working with. The problem with the there being so many transistors in so little space is that there will a lot of heat generated by the computer processor, and so it will require adequate cooling. Jeffrey said his first computer, which he bought 15 years ago, didn’t even require a fan, it only needed fins to dissipate the heat, and nowadays people must resort to gigantic fans and even liquid cooling. I feel so humbled.

Joon

So you have deactivated your facebook, and I had trouble thinking of a way to contact you but since you do use tumblr I shall just tumblr to you haha. I did ride the buzz lightyear ride, and i destroyed diana, i had like 10x her points the first round, and the second round she had like 10k points while i had 100k points, so still about 10x, i have some pretty bad aim when it comes to shooting and i imagine i looked like a tard when i was shooting taking aim. disneyland was great and so is the new universal studios. the city walk is pretty cool, and the simpsons ride has replaced the back to the future thing they used to have, and i really like the simpsons ride, but i believe they could have done better if the picture quality was a little brighter maybe. O yea and thanks for activating your facebook just so you could comment on my stuff :D

Diana

You come second, because all i got was an email notification from fb saying share =(, and it was a restaurant city ingredient, and i actually did try to share it, except it didnt work, and i just ended up accepting it. it didnt even ask my if i wanted to share it back with you so o wells. btw i am not going to start playing that fb game again kk. you should stop leveling so quickly, i tried to open maplestory but it just crashed by itself, so i guess that might be a sign for me to continue watching the karate kid online, i actually wanted to attempt to catch up to your level, i hope that you are only 2 levels above me, so that i might have a chance to be equal to you kk.

Clare

Thanks for the resume help, and i just wanted to apply to pizza hut LOL, i need a job over the summer even though i already have an internship with some professor, i just wanted to have some income, so that my burden on my parents wouldnt be so heavy, but so far all my applications seem to have gone unnoticed with the companies, even though i did cheat on the personality trait questionnaires by googling the answers that i was supposed to be giving :D I find it quite funny that a person can fill out a personality trait thing by having the internet answer for them, as there are many people who are quite happy to help with them. and they do ask the silliest questions. also i just read your other post, about eastern medicine, my parents believe in that stuff, and i guess i do too to some extent, like because they have worked for me, and the eastern doctor guys prescribe herbs and natural remedies to things i didnt even know were ailing me (or maybe they are making up these problems idk), like i went to an eastern doctor lady and she asked me if i had been drinking lots of water, and i admit that i had been drinking a lot of water and that i had been peeing a lot too, then she said that i was having a fiery temper or something and that i should drink a bunch of herbs made into a blackish tea sorta thing, and idk if she cured me but i stopped drinking as much water, just my thoughts on eastern medicine D:

Staaaaphany

hi you are my last follower i think, i hope you had fun with joon living at your house and i have no idea what his living conditions are anymore and all i heard was that he was hit by a taxi from timmy. but guessing from all of his internet activity i am going to assume that he is alive and well, and guessing from that he used your fb at one point that he was at your house for at least one last time :D i am such a detective :D

Today

Disclaimer: the rest of this has nothing to do with anyone lol

One of my closest friends left for hong kong today, hes going away for three months and i dont think i will be able to see him until winter break probably, because our school starts sometime around september and that is when he comes back, hes such a faggot i hate him. anyways hes a nice guy. he says that this will be the last time that he will be gone all of break because next year his brother and cousin are coming over to the US from HK, to study in america :D His situation is very complicated. Toby was adopted by Jack, his cousin. Toby’s dad is related to Jack’s mom, and Toby’s dad is the elder i think. Toby got his citizenship because Jack’s parents adopted Toby, and they plan on doing the same for Toby’s brother, lets call him Shunby, and Shunby will be coming over to the US this year, and he wasnt given a visa so he is going to have to fake his way to go to highschool here in california. Jack’s parents have gotten fake information and plan on saying that shunby lives somewhere in rowland heights, which is about a 30 minute drive from temple city, and they will enroll shunby in a school in rowland heights, i forget which school, but shunby will actually live with jacks parents, in temple city, so jacks mom is going to drive 30 minutes every morning to send shunby to school, so that someday he will be able to go to a nice college in america, and something similar is happening for tobys cousin, i just dont know what. however this will all work out for toby because when this does happen, toby will be given a car, which is something he has been dreaming of for a long time. o yea and toby is going to hong kong today, he probably got on the plane an hour ago cuz his flight was changed to fly earlier. anyways he is going to be nice enough to take any requests i ask of him, so that he can get me hong kong goods, and i guess if anyone tells me that they want something from hong kong ill ask toby if he can get it, only because tobys a great guy and im an asshole for using him. diana got the key chain with her chinese name inscribed on it, and clares gotten a necklace sorta thing with her name inscribed on it. inscribing names on metal things is really cheap in HK, but may cost up to 20$ here if you go to the elizabeth center in chinatown haha. so thats all goodnight everyone. i start my cal tech internship thing tomorrow at 2 and i plan on visiting the gym before then :D time to get back in shape!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914863/

So I just finished watching Unthinkable, a movie that’s meant to be released on June 17^th somewhere in Europe, the Netherlands, and I thought it was amazing. Spectacular performances from all of the cast, especially Samuel L. Jackson, he played his role unbelievably. Never did I flinch so much by watching a movie, because this movie is pretty gruesome and I think I can take some pretty gory stuff without batting an eye, but I found myself covering my ears in an attempt to muffle the sound of the screaming that was coming from my computer. Anyways, all the actors did spectacular, the guy being tortured was great, the supporting actress, Agent Brody played by Carrie-Anne Moss was also great (I thought she looked really familiar, but that’s because I recently watched Memento, another film she was in and one I thought was spectacular as well). The torture scenes are pretty gross, and they only get worse as the film continues. So yea long story short, this was a great movie, everyone should watch it, with the exception of kids and people who don’t think that they can withstand all the gruesome shit. Near the end of the movie I was even wincing inside.

oo can’t sleep yay. When I lay down, and closed my eyes after I had already shut my computer off, I began to think. I didn’t think of anything too amazing, just that I need my laptop cooler, because it is summer time, and my laptop does run hot, and that there were a few times where my laptop shut off because it was too damn hot. Sooooo if its not too much trouble, Diana could you dig through the snakeskin like bag I gave you to keep, and take out my laptop cooler, and bring it with you to California? If you have no room in your luggage then its perfectly fine, it would just be nice to have my laptop cooler with me, instead of sitting in my luggage. Okay that was all I thought about while I was having trouble sleeping. In case you don’t know what it looks like, its a big black metal board, with a bunch of hole punch sized holes, and some USB ports on the sides. Hopefully my laptop cooler doesn’t frighten you because I know you dislike dots. Thanks and see you in 7 days :D.

Wan Wan is an evil dog. Not only does it not listen to my simple commands, it pounces at me. I think it tries to kill me because sometimes it bares its teeth. I should probably change all the “its” into “she” and “her” but I am too lazy. I don’t think Wan Wan is learning any of the commands I ask of her. So far all I have tried is sit, and she does sit, but the problem is that is she is always sitting, so I don’t know if she is obeying me or just acting out of her own free will. The other thing is that she always returns to this mat that is in front of the door, and every time I give her a command, she comes to me, sits down, then goes back to the mat and sits. The problem is I don’t want to teach her to go sit down on the mat afterward, I just want her to sit down in front of me. Its too difficult. The other thing is that she always pounces and jumps around, and jumping is a bad behavior because it scares away strangers, especially because she is a giant dog, and she can only get bigger. The problem is that one day, if we don’t train her to stop jumping, is that she might knock something over, and that would be bad. She does exhibit some good behavior though, she doesn’t enter the house ever, even if the door is open she makes sure to stay outside. That is the only good thing I can think of however.

The last time I went on a walk with my parents, they took Wan Wan out too, and instead of walking the dog, the dog walks them. The dog takes the lead dragging my parents wherever it wants to go. The dog sure is powerful, I feel like this is another bad behavior we need to fix, because when other people walk their dogs they have slack on the leash. Our dog makes sure that the leash is taut, maybe she is trying to escape. Anyways I tried to train the dog for 10 minutes, and she wasn’t very responsive, so I gave up. Maybe Sharon will have more luck, so I shall leave the training up to her.

Yesterday I had a wonderful day. I went to jwang’s house, and I kicked his butt in smash, and I got to talk to Paras, and I got to eat a torta from Cook’s Tortas, I got the Ahogada, or something like that, with a potato salad side and a Strawberry Delight drink. The torta was delicious, it had pulled pork and twice dipped bread, I don’t know what the bread is called, some pickled onions and a really spicy sauce on the pork. It was really messy eating, they gave me a disposable fork and knife to eat a sandwich, which was served on a styrofoam plate. The bread from the torta was pretty difficult to cut with the plastic knife, and I didn’t want to get my fingers too dirty while eating it, so I just impaled it on my fork and bit it piece by piece. The pork was really juicy and tender, it fell apart in my mouth, and the sauce on it was pretty damn spicy, so I enjoyed it. The environment was quite nice, and the torta menu was written in chalk, and it seemed like they changed the menu daily, as there were about 30 tortas listed, each with a number, while the numbers went up to 316. I find it funny that the torta #69 was listed as La Lengua, which is made with cow tongue.

Wow. It has almost been a week already since I last held your hand. It seems like it has been forever, forever since I have touched your hair, your face. I didn’t think it would be possible for me to say this but I have even missed touching your feet, and I wouldn’t mind hugging them right now no matter how pungent they may be. I am so excited that you are coming to visit me, except the thought also frightens me a great deal. I don’t know many places to take you, but I want to show you the world, and all I can think of in my world are places to eat. The foods I used to indulge upon are the types of foods that you refuse to eat, so that basically destroys most of my plans. Planning. What a terrible thing, to make a plan, but I do enjoy it when people do have plans made for me. As of now the places we can go are the beaches, maybe Cabazon for shopping and Morongo for Indians (the red kind) and gambling, and theme parks like Knotts, Disneyland, Six Flags, and Universal Studios. We should probably go to those places on Tuesday because people still have school, and the lines will be short if we do go.

Tonight, I ate dinner with the Cal Tech professor and his wife, we had a great time, they drank quite a bit, but they still decided to go and drive home. He taught me how to train the dog, whose name apparently is Wan Wan, not Wah Wah. He also told me that you shouldn’t solely eat vegetables and fruits, because that is bad for your health in the future. The protein that you can acquire in meat is invaluable to your body, and that if you only eat soy protein you develop joint pains and bad skin in your later years. He says that if you stand by your vegetarianism, then at least do your body the favor of drinking a lot of milk and eating cheese, to get the protein that your body needs. I hope you listen to him, because I fear for your well being, and I think I will trust him because he is a professor. His wife seems to be the boss of him, and she says that I should start helping him out when you go back to New Jersey, that I should call around the 14th of June, which doesn’t seem to be a bad time. So now I just have a week to do nothing, and two weeks to spend some quality time with you. I am sorry I couldn’t call you and have a nice talk with you, I hope I can make that up tomorrow, except you have to go to work all week. I miss you so much, no words can describe, and I am only writing this because you have inspired me to do so.