At long last

Well it's been a long time since I last updated. It's hard to make blogging a part of your daily routine, once you fall out of it for awhile. But, I've finished my senior thesis and since I'm no longer taking classes, I have a lot of free time. Of course, I finished my thesis on May 11th, so for the past few weeks, you'd think I'd have plenty of time to blog.

In either event, there's only one thing I wanted to write about today. This week, it was revealed that a recent graduate of Troy High School has been posing as a Stanford student. Azia Kim both lived in Kimball and Okada for this entire year, claiming to be a Frosh or Sophomore. She even studied with peers, ate at the dining halls, and became close friends with the girls she squatted with (for the full store, read the Stanford Daily article). Today, when I was able to actually look at a picture of Azia, I finally realize that I had seen her in the dining hall and had seen her around campus. It's so easy to fall off the radar at Stanford and you become used to running by or having class with people you don't know or care to know. I can see how she fit in and unassumingly fooled everyone. But, I still don't understand how she was able to squat. That's the disconnect I see in the entire situation. Is it really possible for RAs to not know that she was squatting or sneaking into her room through the window? I want to say no and I want to say that I would have been able to catch her if she was doing that in Lantana. I'm happy that I know all my residents and at least know all their faces. I know if someone actually lives in the dorm and know if someone is a stranger. I know my residents' boyfriends and girlfriends. But, I guess in a larger dorm, I wouldn't be able to know everything. Especially in a larger dorm like Kimball or in Azia's case, if she was always around the dorm and said she was living elsewhere, I wouldn't think too much about it. Regardless, Azia succeeded and tricked Stanford this entire year. It's really crazy to think that this university is so safe, but it's also so easy to break into dorms and walk into dining halls without paying. It's the good and bad of Stanford's culture - it's too laid back to the point of ignorance and apathy.

The end is near

I apologize for an absence from my blog. Spring quarter has kept me surprisingly busy, even though I'm not taking any classes. In the meantime, it's been a whole lot of fun, kicking things off with a trip to LA to see a performance of Wicked. Driving around a mini-van in LA, however, is not that fun, but eating Korean BBQ at Steph's house was worth it. Had to carry Sprinkles cupcakes 500 miles back to Jenny, too!

Writing my thesis has basically become full-time work and I turned in a draft last Friday, which totaled 110 pages. I'm happy with what I've written thus far, but I still have plenty of room for improvement.

In the meantime, I've been going to the gym more frequently.

Kind of interesting thing to note, but today I was approached by some research group with a questionnaire that they were having college freshman and seniors fill out across the country. Basically, it was questions about US history - the things you learn in middle and high school. Not surprisingly, I knew very little, even though I'm a history major! The evaluator then went over the results from last year's survey, which indicated that nationwide, students scored around the 60-70% range, and Stanford was 31 of 50 in schools. I wasn't very surprised with that result, since rote memorization, which the test covered, is not really emphasized at all here. On the other hand, seniors performed better than frosh on the test, but it was mainly due to scoring better on economics questions, which many college students study. Anyway, back to my thesis.

I'm done!

In the most anti-climactic way possible, I have finished all my undergrad classes. Next quarter it's Camp Stanford - no classes, but finishing up my senior thesis. I'm kind of sad that I won't be taking any fun courses next quarter, but with all of my free time, the possibilities will be endless!

If you've into YTMND vidoes, check out these two Harry made for my birthday:

http://reidmustardout.ytmnd.com/

http://reidhumps.ytmnd.com/

Gary Danko!!!!

Jenny took me here for my birthday. Maybe captions will follow later. Until then - pictures of food!!

Bball Update

Funny thing is - I did have a change of heart over my picks. My final four is:

UCLA v Florida
UNC v Texas A&M

Finals:
UNC over Florida.

Thank goodness I didn't pick Texas like I did before. They didn't even make the Sweet 16. There have been some great games thus far, but no Cinderella's like I imagined. Thus I lost crucial points with Oral Roberts and Davidson going out on the first day. Stanford got mauled against Louisville too.

Luckily, Brook is returning for another season for the Cardinal! The team is going to be so good next year!

March Madness

It's a shame I haven't been updating my blog, since so much has been going on in the world. Most recently, Jenny and I roadtripped down to Los Angeles to see the Pac-10 Men's Basketball tournament. We made it just in time for the tip-off of Stanford v. USC on Thursday. Unfortunately, we lost the game in overtime, putting Stanford's NCAA tournament hopes in jeopardy. Since we had tickets for the rest of the games, we went to Friday's semifinal games, watching Oregon dominate Kal and USC stifle Washington State. Luckily, we sold our tickets for the Championship match, which turned out to be an excellent choice, since USC got completely dominated by Bryce Taylor's amazing 11-11 shooting (32 pts) and Oregon. Instead, we went over to Pasedena and met up with some friends to go to Ding Tai Fung, one of the best dumpling houses ever! For the 6 of us, we ordered about 80 dumplings. :D

Anyway, I was elated to hear that Stanford was an 11th seed for the tournament and spent a majority of Sunday and Monday reading all of the commentary about the seeding, potential upsets, and cinderella stories. Having filled out a bracket, I feel pretty confident about a few upsets:

VCU over Duke - Duke, dealing with its lowest seed in 11 years, just does not have enough maturity or a go-to shooter. Much of this game will depend on if Paulus will show-up, but VCU (having beaten George Mason to win the Colonial Athletic championship and could thus be this year's George Mason), has more upperclassmen and quality wins against Albany and Old Dominion, two other potential sleepers in the tournament. I don't see them going past the second round because Pittsburgh always finds a way to score, but a probably upset against Duke.

Oral Roberts over Washington State - Having seen Washington State play in the semifinals at the Pac-10 tournament, I'm hesitant if Kyle Weaver and Derrick Low adequately penetrate to the hoop, especially against a defensive Oral Roberts team. It's a stretch, since this is a 14th seed knocking off a 3 seed, but if there was one game in the tournament where it could happen, this would be it. Tony Bennett showed he couldn't provide an answer for USC last Friday, and I'm not sure he will be able to in the Big Dance either.

Arkansas over USC - I just want this to happen so bad, since USC beat Stanford in the Pac-1o tournament.

Stanford over Louisville - This would make my week. Stanford certainly has a size advantage and great perimeter shooting with Goods and Hill, but when Brook and Robin get in foul trouble, and Stanford gets in turnover trouble (they had the highest turnover to assist ratio in the Pac-10), one starts to wonder. Plus, Louisville will be playing in their back yard in Lexington, so the home court advantage might help, especially since Stanford does not have quality wins on the road, with the exception of Virginia and Texas Tech (on neutral territory). Regardless, I don't see either team beating Texas A&M, but getting to the second round for Stanford would prove that they deserved to play in the Big Dance.

Final Four:
Florida (1) over UCLA (2) - A rematch of last year's Final game, where Noah and co. prove that coming back for another year was worth it.

Texas (4) over Texas A&M (3) - Texas A&M, still reeling from their 2OT loss to Texas in the regular season, still has no answer for Durant. Law IV is clutch, but not enough to stop Texas.

Final:
Texas (4) over Florida (1) - Similar to Syracuse's champsionship with Carmelo Anthony, Durant takes over and scores 30+ points and grabs 10+ boards in a game for the ages. Texas goes crazy while Florida misses a chance to win the NCAA Football and Basketball Championship in the same year.

My predictions, however, seem to change every 4 hours, so I'll post any final changes on Thursday. The only difference I see is if I become more confident about Ohio State over Texas A&M (which I'm currently not), or see Purdue (9) over Arizona (8) or similarly, BYU (8) losing to Xavier (9). UNC also has a chance to go really deep and they could even take out Texas in the Sweet Sixteen, and I'll have to think long and hard about that one too. Texas vs. UNC in the Sweet Sixteen? The matches this year are going to be AMAZING.

Viennese Ball

I've never taken up social dance, primarily due to laziness. Social Dance 1 is offered at 8:45AM across campus, and as a Junior and Senior, there is no way I would ever make the effort to get up and do that. As a result, I'm quite inept at any sort of physical fluidity; I think the term is having two-left feet. Luckily, in preparation for the 30th Annual Viennese Ball, there were introductory classes offered at night. In the course of two weeks, I learned basic cross-step waltz, rotary waltz, swing, polka, and the Congress of Vienna Waltz. At times it was incredibly frustrating; I often got upset that I could not even master a seemingly simple step pattern, but for the most part, I enjoyed learning and doing something that will definitely come in handy later in life.

The Ball itself was fabulous! After an excellent dinner at California Cafe Jenny and I headed over to the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame. First off, there was tons of food. Like, fruits, gourmet desserts, cheeses, breads, and meats. And an ice sculpture to top things all off. We spent half the time dancing and half the time eating. As for the dancing, I think we did alright. The waltz was difficult because the band kept on changing tempos and the floor was packed with spinning couples. In the second room was band that played swing music, and we did a lot better there. There were also swing and waltz competitions that we paused to watch - some couples are so graceful! I guess that's something so strive for.

Here's a picture of Jenny and I waltzing ;-)