Later that Friday afternoon, I attended the inaugural UCSD Bioengineering Day held at the School of Engineering. It was a great opportunity to listen to distinguished bioengineering leaders around the world. Company presentations were great too, as we indulged in the prospects of a bioengineering career in a variety of disciplines. I also realized from this event that there were a very large number of bioengineering firms and job opportunities in the San Diego area. I had never heard of some of these companies before, but their products were almost purely bioengineering-related - examples of some big guns are Edwards Lifesciences, Gore Medical and Abbott Vascular.
That night, we had another I-House trip to Tijuana, Mexico. The theme of the party at Balak was "Pink", so we were all in pretty/metro attire. It was another memorable night with lots of free drinks, lots of grinding (American style), and loud music that gave me buzzing ears for the hours that followed.
Early the next morning, there was a UCSD-hosted trip to Disneyland. Off to Anaheim we went, which was south of downtown LA. I spent the day with the I-House Koreans. Disneyland is the so-called "happiest place on Earth", "where dreams become reality", and so on and so forth. For the lucky kids I saw at the park, these descriptions of Disneyland were indeed true. Many of them looked absolutely delighted and incredibly happy. The park was divided into separate areas each carrying a theme, such as Mickey's Toontown, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. When compared with Six Flags Magic Mountain, the rides at Disneyland was not scary. However, the rides here each had a very meaningful theme or story to tell. Much of these could be associated with the famous Disney moments, that we have all secured in our memories since our good old childhood days. Fastpasses for high-demand rides helped a lot in saving valuable time. The park was nicely designed, with tram systems connecting the main park with the parking areas, and a monorail system that connected the park with the Disneyland hotels. The highlight of the day for me was the world-famous Disney parade, which marched down Main Street of Disneyland. The parade celebrated the most famous of the Disney films, such as Peter Pan, Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion King and many more. Funny moment during the parade: "How come I didn't see Bugs Bunny?" Sadly for the many thousands of people there, the world-famous Disney fireworks show was cancelled due to prevailing winds at the time. Although we didn't see as much of Disneyland as I could have wished in the short space of ten hours, I had a lot of fun thinking back to my younger self for a day.
If Friday and Saturday weren't enough, I had two more events to come on the Sunday. The first was Sunday Supper, a quarterly I-House formal dinner event. Keynote speakers gave their words of wisdom, food of the highest quality was relished, and a slideshow brought back memories of spring break.
Fusion is the largest hip-hop dance competition in California, held this year at UCSD's RIMAC Arena. A crowd of 2500 were packed into this arena, and everyone surrounding us were real loud and into it. It was spectacular! Ten teams from all around California competed for what was glory of the highest level, and monstrous trophies. The routines were very long but very impressive. The crowd went mad with one performance where a kid (who seemed like 8 years old) came out onto the stage and busted out some flawless popping.
This remarkable event got me wanting to dance real bad afterwards, and brought my incredibly packed weekend to a close.
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