Spirit Week

UCSD implements a six college system (Revelle, Muir, Marshall, Roosevelt, Warren and Sixth) where there can be intense rivalry between them, especially during Spirit Week. The past week at UCSD was Spirit Week, an annual spirit contest between the colleges where the colours of UCSD blue and gold were painted, draped and decorated all around campus. The week started off with Superbowl XLI, where a huge projected screen showed the Indianapolis Colts take out the title as champions of 2007. Various other college vs college competitions such as the Battle of the Bands took place throughout the week, climaxing at Spirit Night (Friday night) which included basketball games, a fireworks display and a school dance.

The UCSD Tritons men and women basketball teams were victorious in their home games which kicked off Spirit Night. The atmosphere in the UCSD arena was an experience that reflected college student life stereotyped in all those American teen movies we have seen. The arena was packed with enthusiastic fans dressed or completely painted in blue and gold, cheering the Tritons on throughout the entire match. Free throws were aided by the Tritons good luck finger gesture. A star Korean point guard (transferred from the UCLA bball team!) drove our team to victory. The cheerleaders came on throughout the match and for the halftime show, somersaulting and flipping their way into the limelight. Players trash talking on the court, smartly dressed coaches rallying their teams, and ally-oops during the game all matched and even surpassed my expectations.

An impressive fireworks display on the fields outside the arena was followed by the Geisel Dance. Sounds ironic doesn't it? Basically it was a dance party with a huge sound system, held right outside our Geisel library. Kinda crazy? Seeing that the library opens till late on Friday nights, it was very interesting to think about the students studying for midterms right across the wall at the time.

On a completely contrasting subject, there was a conference about sleep that I attended, held at the Salk Institute the past two days. Salk Institute is a biomedical research laboratory founded by Francis Crick (the guy who discovered the structure of DNA). It was interesting, but very intellectually challenging, hearing and taking in the discussions between research scientists specialising in such a little-known area which is so essential our lives.

An IRB Rugby Sevens tournament is currently being held here in San Diego over the weekend. I won't be able to make it to any of the games this time round, but I'm sure NZ will have it over Fiji this time!

A pretty shocking experience one night on my way back from grocery shopping: on the bus that took me back to UCSD, I overheard a brief conversation where this one man said that he'd been living on the streets for 25 years. I was wondering who's comforter (NZ: duvet) it was next to my feet! When it was time for him to get off the bus, the very old African American man got up, stumbled his way to the tattered comforter which I made way for, then collapsed headfirst onto the pavement where the bus stopped. Shocked I was, as the bus driver helped the old man. On the same bus, another man was psyching himself up seemingly for a confrontation with someone else for a girl. I could hear him talking to himself, making alpha male gestures and rehearsing self mantras. For normally such a mundane thing, it sure as heck was one memorable bus ride.