Two Weeks of Culture!

The tragedy of the Virginia Tech shootings resonated around campus early last week, and I attended the candlelight vigil that was held on campus.

On a completely different note, Friday April 20th was a very happy day for lots of youth in North America. The 4/20 celebration was about the consumption (by inhalation) of cannabis (weed, kush, whatever you want to call it). It was a night that never fell short of laughs.

The day that followed was the second "American Pie" event of the year. With other UCSD students, we went to the US/Mexico border and took a tour, learning about the many border-crossing and militarization issues that were yet to be resolved. We also visited the Chicano Park Annual Celebration that was happening, and then did some volunteer work at a community centre where a UCSD newspaper (The Guardian) reporter took a candid shot, unbeknownst to me until the following weekday...whoa surprise, there I was.

On the Monday, along with some other members of the group, International Cares, and some Koreans from I-House, I went to a largely Mexican-American elementary school near the border to teach a classroom of kids about Korea and to show them Korean culture. After the class, I showed them some Taekwondo, which some youngsters loved a bit too much. It was cool being a primary school classroom teacher and a P.E teacher for a day (although it got a bit strenuous on the vocal cords).

On Wednesday, Mohit and I bought all the ingredients required to make ANZAC biscuits and hokey-pokey. We then baked (baked? baked!) the biscuits and made hokey-pokey ice-cream - delicious Kiwiana. Why? The next night (since the night coincided with ANZAC Day), us Kiwis of I-House (Alice, Mohit and me) gave a presentation about our New Zealand and served the delicious Kiwi dessert afterwards. During my section, I touched on some areas that greatly (and truthfully) favoured NZ over Australia in our trans-Tasman rivalry. This got an Aussie girl in the audience fired up a bit, who cursed out loud for all to hear, a well-known (false) dirty remark about NZers and sheep. What directly followed this was my final slide that stated that Australia had more sheep than New Zealand. Haha.

What a Weekend!

A UCSD tradition that is common amongst students here is going to the Bear Garden, an event held twice per quarter on campus. What a weird event you ask? The smart idea will reveal itself when you think about the verbal ambiguity of the event name with our beloved alcoholic beverage. Basically, it is an excuse for students to wag Friday afternoon class and enjoy free food and beer. Free Domino's and Subway were generously given out to the students, who would play fun little games that had themes to do with bears. Examples are throwing bean bags through holes, throwing frisbees through slots and beer pong. If successful, prizes would be soft bear toys ranging in size depending on the difficulty of the games. I managed to win a yellow bear, which symbolised the Orient (inside joke).

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.

Old Town and Major League Baseball!

Mohit, Esther and I spent Saturday afternoon at Old Town, San Diego. This is the place considered the "birthplace of California". Spanish settlers established the very first mission here, before a chain of missions were built up along the length of much of California. The preservation of many buildings, plus the culture and heritage that we saw was informative and interesting to see. We visited a sheriff museum, a synagogue, and various old-style houses where people were dressed just as they did many decades ago.

On Monday night, Mohit and I took the opportunity to see a Major League Baseball game - the San Diego Padres vs the San Francisco Giants. The game in terms of crowd was a good one - since many UCSD students are originally from the Bay Area (where San Francisco is). While the two of us who had never been to a baseball game nor even seen a full game on ESPN were neutrally just sitting there, the student crowd on either side of us were alternately screaming "Let's go Padres/Giants!!" relentlessly throughout the night. Drunken behaviour was present of course, the night ending with one really loud and obnoxious guy being soaked in a chick-thrown beer cup (although not silenced). The actual baseball itself was not the most exciting since it was a very low scoring game, despite the fact that Barry Bonds (of the SF Giants) was only 20 or so runs away from getting the record for the most runs in a career.

I learnt a lot about baseball that night, and also about how there were so many on-screen interactions with the crowd. These included live candid cams - where some people were completely oblivious, baseball trivia, games, jukeboxes, prizes, loudness meters, and even kiss cams - where one guy got denied real bad (that was the crowd's biggest laugh of the night). This sort of stuff kept everyone excited between innings. I had thought that a baseball game would seem to drag on after a while, but the three hour game went by very quickly with the Padres winning 1-0.

The coming weekend is going to be an awesome one, with another TJ night, a Disneyland trip and the biggest hip-hop dance competition in California - Fusion!

Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon!

Arriving at LAX, I was picked up by Mojdeh and Paris (Persian Americans), along with Mohit. The vehicle that we were going to drive out of California with was a Jeep. It was a solid ride alright. We prepared all our gear at Paris's place in Palos Verdes, one of the rich beachside neighbourhoods in LA. Lots of water, Powerade and sandwiches were packed in the trunk. After having delicious Persian food as lunch, we left to pick up Esther (Chinese American) who was on her way back from a spring break at Catalina Island (off the LA coast). Our first destination? The self-proclaimed entertainment capital of the world, Las Vegas. Since it was late Friday afternoon, heavy traffic stretched a good distance out of LA towards Vegas.


After about five hours of driving, we knew Las Vegas, Nevada was visibly ahead, as hotels, casinos and huge billboards flashed before our eyes. We arrived at around 9pm, just as the city's lights were in full swing. After checking in at a very affordable inn considering the city's standards, we began the walk down "the Strip". The colossal monuments, fascinating lighting, and riveting atmosphere blew me away.

Traffic was crazy, to the extent that there were no crossings allowed at many large intersections. Escalators would take pedestrians up to a level which would stretch over the intersection. Each of the many hotels had an associated theme, with an impressive facade that must have cost millions to make. I couldn't help but imagine that power consumption in this area must be phenomenally excessive. As we walked, I noticed that carrying open vessels and drinking outdoors was legal in Las Vegas. Although the legal age for gambling is 21, we were permitted to walk through the casinos. The smell of cigarettes was unavoidable in these casinos and it remained on our clothes afterwards. It was interesting to see the contrast between the rich in limos and casinos, and the poor giving out cards and flyers on the streets. The disturbing part was that some of these poor were very young children and very old folk, many of Mexican descent, giving out advertisements for strippers and adult shows. Passing through themes such as "New York" and "Paris", we reached "Venice" to have dinner at the affordable Grand Lux Cafe, where I had a delicious IndoChinese dish, a waiter's favourite, and one of the best drinks I've had in my life, the "Island Cooler" (a blend of many fruits, squeezed and balanced to perfection). We had a good laugh at a hugh neon "Kimchi" sign that caught our eye. The night was still much alive until 3am, when we reached Luxor hotel, which was for me the most impressive themed hotel. The theme was "Egypt", where there was a replica of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid. The pyramid at its apex beamed out light vertically up towards the stars.


Later that morning, we left for the Grand Canyon. We briefly stopped by at the Hoover Dam on the way, but needed to get to the natural wonder of the world as quick as we could in order to do some decent hiking before dark. The five hour ride from Las Vegas took us into the Grand Canyon, Arizona.
The view was amazing at the platform. The rock formations carved out by the dynamics of the Colorado river over the many years was why this is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. We saw cars with license plates from all over the country - even Georgia, which is a state on the southeast of the US. We began hiking down the South Kaibab trail on the South rim of the Grand Canyon, which offered the best views. On the way down, I briefly talked to a guy who had gone all the way down to the bottom of the canyon and back up since the morning...with a broken leg! A variety of coloured rock layers and desert-like vegetation surrounded us. After stopping by at the "ooh-ahh" point, we reached the halfway point down the canyon (Skeleton Point, 3 miles down from the rim) with a feeling of accomplishment as the Colorado river was finally in sight. The California condor is supposed to be the most endangered bird of prey species on Earth. On our way back up to the rim, one of these rare condors, possessing a wingspan of up to 3 metres flew just a few feet past my head! I sure hoped our singing and shouting "U-C-S-D!" and "Whose house? I-House!" (and of course the resulting echo that reverberated far, far away) wasn't the reason why. I had not caught a glimpse of a rattlesnake nor a scorpion, but the condor experience made my day. We hiked up and reached the rim just as the sun completely set on us. At the top, we saw a night photographer with a flashlight attached to his head just on his way down. He was probably a photographer for National Geographic or similar...a sweet job that could be. Although we were too late to reach the bottom, the splendid panoramas made it more than fulfilling to have hiked halfway down.



My trainers were pretty much orange once once we got to the rim, due to the soft outer soil layer of the canyon. We had some typical Arizona-like food for dinner to reenergize ourselves from the hard day. A big, solid, protein rich steak did it for me that night.

We then roamed around in circles in our car for quite a while, attempting to find our campsite, before managing to finally turn on our spatial intelligence. We put up a large tent, made it comfy, and also made a campfire. The Grand Canyon's desert-like climate got very cold (below zero) at night. I experienced a traditional American campfire treat for dessert. "S'mores" (short for "some more"s) they were called. It was heated marshmallow and a piece of block chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers. It was fun heating the marshmallows over the fire (skewered onto the end of a stick) just enough so that it didn't sizzle away and burn. This is me burning them (a diagrammatic example of how not to do it, lol).


It was delicious, and definitely made me crave s'more. There was a little bit of tension between the sexes as our (Mohit and my) bittersweet male attempt at a "scare tactic" that night, was followed by the failed female attempt at tipping over the tent while us dudes were still sleeping in the morning. We headed back to California that morning, saying goodbye to the geological showcase that I fell in love with. The drive back was a soothing reflection of the most full on week I've had in my life. So much seen, so much done, so much learned.