Trip to Cali

My apologies if this post lacks any entertainment value or purpose.

As many of you already know, Allison and I and two other random juniors (Dan Wang and Judy Zeng) were finalists in this contest called the Conrad Awards. The good: we received $2000 to cover travel expenses incurred from travelling to California for the final round. The bad: many people thought our project was laughably ridiculous (well, it was a house that floated in the ocean). But to be fair, the people running the contest only asked for a "concept" that "utilized renewable energy" that would "change the daily lives of those who used it". In hindsight, I've realized that they were kind of vague as to how detailed the design had to be and how much of the technical aspect we had to work out. More on this later.

Also; none of us had ever been to California before, but of course we had heard about the nice weather and stuff. Let me be clear: the awesomeness of the climate in California is generally understated. The sun is warm and fuzzy on your skin, and there's a cool/warm breeze coming in from the bay at all times. The houses are low and unimposing, all light-colored and festive. People are outside a lot. High schoolers eat off-campus, and crowd around at strip malls and just hang. Basically, take the nicest day you can recall in Va (in terms of weather) and multiply that by like 365. (Actually, apparently, it rains in the winter.)

Anyway, we left from Dulles Airport at around 3:30 on Wednesday, and arrived at around 8. But because of the time difference, we had actually travelled for 7 hours and 30 minutes. I spent most of the flight playing around with the touchscreen media player imbedded in the back of the seat in front of me. They offered free seat-to-seat texting, so I texted my mom, and she looks over at me, and laughs, then fails to figure out how the hell to text me back.

The actually conference/convention at California was great; the speakers talked about stuff like SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), the nature of critical thinking, and venture capitalism, among other interesting topics. I ended up learning a lot about entrepreneurship.

But yea, even though our presentation was pretty good, we failed to place or win any kind of recognition. It was probably because I hadn't actually designed most the technologies used in our concept; we just said, "yea, it's possible to do these things, because similar products have been developed before." Well you know what, we'll win next year, because a) we'll actually know what the judges are looking for and b) we'll compete in the aerospace division, which had a whopping total of 2 teams participating in it this year. yea, one of those teams got a 1st place prize, and the other one got 2nd place.

Oh well. It was a free trip to California, so I can't complain.

I'd also like to mention my tour of Stanford with Zahra, because Stanford ==> paradise, except for the pollen, which is so abudant that black cars develop a visible yellowish layer over the paint. One of the great things about Stanford, besides the enormity of its campus and the weather, is that the buildings are all extreeemely NEW, unlike some other universities that I know of *coughMITcough* And furthermore, there are tons of asian restaurants in Cali.

*A related anecdote*

So a harvard graduate who is now working towards a master's at MIT asked me where I was planning to apply, besides Harvard and MIT.

I was like "Oh um, Princeton, Stanford--"

"Oh, forget about Harvard and MIT then."

Me: "uh..."

Him: "Yea, just go to Stanford."

*end of anecdote*

We also saw the Golden Gate Bridge and all that touristy janx, but that wasn't so interesting, except our experience with San Fran's transportation system. What happened was, we were wandering around San Fransisco and we wanted to go eat in Chinatown. Unfortunately, Chinatown was a gazillion blocks away, and we didn't want to figure out the public transportation system. So my mom decides to flag down a taxi, because she figures that San Fran is just like New York, where she did her residency. So after a while, a taxi drives slowly past us, and my mom immediately starts waving her hands in the air. We catch the taxi driver's eyes, and he then proceeds to shake his head vigorously, even though he has no passengers. He says: I have other customers to attend to. So we wait and try again. Basically, we do this 6 more times, each time with the same results. Then as we start discussing whether or not to give up, another "cab" drives toward us, and my mom starts the whole waving-arms-in-the-air routine. The guy drives over to the curb and stops, and I look at Allison with an incredulous expression. My mom asks: "Can you take us to Chinatown?" and the man replies "Sorry, this is not a taxicab."

XD