AiriZel: Thoughts

So around 2:47AM today, (IE when I started this blog post), I pretty much finished testing the backend of the new survey I coded for the School of Management. What’s really cool is that the survey is very much related to one of my favorite shows on television, Lie to Me, which is about a main character named Cal Lightman who’s based on Paul Ekman who’s the guy who created the entire idea of micro-expressions, which is one of the things this survey is testing. So I don’t want to say too much, but micro-expressions are awesome. The idea of a person being able to see how another person is truly thinking/feeling despite their intention to hide it seems like an awesome thing to be able to do. I focus on a lot of decision making aspects of a variety of things. In fact, it’s probably going to be the focus area of whatever major I decide to take. The reason I’m interested in decision making is because I love trying to figure out how people think. Micro-expressions fall in line with these things.

In other news, I’m in desperate need of sleep, but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get it since there’s a BBQ at my house tomorrow and I’m leaving for New York on Saturday. I also have to get this data entry done for the SoM’s 4th of July study… Wow lots of work, but it’s about time I sleep (I have to meet with Andrew in the morning tomorrow).

Oh well life goes on! I’ll sleep when I’m dead? heh.
-Sebastian

Studying for an Microeconomics final. Hopefully it’ll go well. What’s more to say.

For anyone who reads this and is in SoCal, I’ll be at the PTQ San Diego event on the 19th of December at Costa Mesa. My only real life PTQ this season, hopefully I’ll only need to that one that qualify for PT San Diego (at which point, you’ll see me coming back to LA to participate next year)./

Lastly, today a few of my friends and I had our first really legitimate idea for an entrepreneurial venture. I’mma roll it out as it comes along, but this is the first one I’ve had in college that I feel will work very well. Hopefully the first success of many.

Back in LA the 15th.

-Sebastian

Well today is the morning after the first night at the homestay. Man, not what I expected. From what I undestood, the homestay program was supposed to put us with a traditional korean nuclear family. That is to say a mother, father, and kids. Instead I and Nicolas Pang (a very bright kid from Hawaii) ended up with a god-fearing grandmother, similar in style to that you would see in a western movie in regards to an old grandmother figure.

So what does that mean? It means near unlimited freedoms equivalent to what I have not only in the home, but also what I’ll have when I’m in college. Simply put, the grandmother of this small apartment lives by herself. If you put it into the perspective of a grandmother living alone, the apartment is not that bad at all. I could definitely live in something like this by myself (which brings me to the funny point that I may not have a suite room year 1 at Yale. But rather a very big room. I don’t know how that’s going to go). That said, for the three of us, it’s a bit smaller than anticipated (but not overtly uncomfortable by any means).

In addition, the son, IE the hypothetical father figure of this house seems to work all the time, living away from this apartment. In addition, the grandmother is a god-fearing woman who attends church everyday until 6PM. So what does that afford Nick nad myself? Well we get keys to this apartment and the freedom to come and go as we please whenever. That’s a lot more freedom than I thought I’d have, but also we lose out on the immersion into Korean families. I feel worse for Nicholas than I do for my own situation, having grown up in in fact a Korean nuclear family, knowing that my father sits at the head of the table, knowing that the respect I show to my parents is infinite. Nick will never have that experience at this rate.

That all said, the family is still very supportive as if we were college students. The grandmother graciously took us to the nearby YMCA equivalent so that we could spend 31000 won to open membership. I’ll probably be heading there every morning from 6-6:30 or around that time (with the exception of maybe wednesdays when the program takes us away). She also took us into town, which is about 1 km away I think from this apartment complex, where we bought bread, power adapters (since the prongs on american adapters differ), and ice cream. Lots of ice cream.

So moving on to talking about last night. Man I could not sleep well. I costantly felt like I was waking up, and my back couldn’t seem to realign itself with the bed. Meh, hopefully tonight will be better. Also, my eyes seem to be failing me lately. I don’t know if it’s becuase I’m tired, but I can’t seem to focus my eyes on people. Words and letters no problem. People… they seem to be blurry at a not that far distance. I’m thinking it’s just a lingering effect of my jetlag, but if it continues when I return to the States, I’ll get a contact in my right eye or something.

Back to the living of Korean life!
-Sebastian

Krishna, the captain of Science Bowl at Granada Hills, is also an amazing singer. Here’s a link to the song he made as part of his final project for our AP Physics C class in Mr. Van’s K-2.

Enjoy. It’s good stuff. MP3 link coming soon.

-Sebastian

EDIT: Here’s the link to download an MP3 version of the song. Download it here.

Alright! So after a brief hiatus (caused by my debate schedule, the Superbowl, and the heavy snow that kept Erik off the internet), Freed from the Real, formerly known as PureMTGO Podcast has entered its 3rd (second published) edition and is currently featured on the website.

Moreover, I’ve finally installed stats! I’ve been meaning to track the stats of my website and so I finally got it installed yesterday, so now I can track what’s happening in terms of my site traffic. So far, since I installed it at 11PM yesterday, I’ve gotten 12 hits (and one google hit from facepalm. haha).

Lastly, I’ve been working on my programming projects! I thought I’d update everyone that as of right now, I’m still engaging in doing programming projects off of Craiglist, but I’ll also take requests directly to my e-mail. Contact me either via my e-mail or this blog if you require coding services. I can do most webcoding, but I’ll also come up with a more comprehensive list of coding I can do in the relative future.

Now I need to get home so later!

-Sebastian

As part of my blogging, I’ll be going over my weekend in review. The weekend will encompass 3 days from Friday to Sunday.

So the weekend is over, and I’m now onto my last week of break.

So just a few general musings from the weekend in list form!

• Gundam 00 didn’t release a new anime. This is the first weekend I haven’t seen a Gundam 00 episode in months ( I even watched them when I was swamped with apps and finals!)
• Naruto the manga got really really good really really fast. Naruto became more epic very quickly. I have this weird sense that it’s ending though.
• Bleach on the otherhand seems to be going the other direction. How is it that Ichigo can go from losing to the same guy to having a chance at beating him within the span of maybe an hour… Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since the storyline is set so that the events in which he seeks his revenge and to protect his friends occur at the same time as when the rest of the Gotei 13 fight people in the other place.
• I finished all my apps on the 30th, but didn’t finish my FAFSA until yesterday. Apparently I have to wait to receive my EFC until I can finish the rest of my FAFSA (IE sending it to more schools).
• The CSS profiles are getting done!
• I met up with Ryan Meyerhoff, Minh Dan, and Betty. That said, I saw Elliot and Jeffrey Koury randomly more times the weekend than anyone else.
• Greg Trigub likes Zero Punctuation. That earns him a point in my book.
• Rune’s Ramblings: The Pauper Burn Standard went up (although never occupied the top slot).
• I got a wireless headset (Logitech USB wireless) from Best Buy for about 85 dollars. I had a gift card so that covered about 60 dollars of it.
• I ate at CPK, specifically pepperoni and BBQ chicken pizzas with a Shirley Temple (which cost me about 20 dollars), had sweetened (well it was supposed to be) Black Tea Boba from Boba City, and a Passion Fruit Iced Tea Lemonade (Grande size, which is like a regular drink elsewhere) from Starbucks along with some coffee cake, and a slice of Pumkin Pie at the Kourys with Cool Whip.
• I finally saw someone play Gears of War 2. That game looks really cool.
• Ironically, post is in every category with the exception of General-Random
• I went to Collector’s Paradise for FNM for the first time in months. I finished 7th due to the lack of  a 3rd mountain needed in order to cast Violent Ultimatum. Other than that 1-2 loss, I went 6-0 over the next 3 matches.
• I playtested against Affinity (Eric) on Saturday. I went 3-7. So I added Shattering Spree to my board.
• Elliot, Jeffrey, Justin, and I tried to play basketball at 7AM @ Northridge Park. That failed, we packed it up and went home by 8AM.
• I fell asleep Sunday watching the Lakers play the Trailblazers. Slept around 8PM waking up around 5:15AM.
• I dreamt about racing with my father, and mused over the state of my life.

And that’s the weekend in review!

As I brushed up on my photoshop, I decided to render Kyon’s facepalm for my 404 page!

So now everything anyone reaches a site found in error, they’ll see this classic image.

Kyon Facepalm 404 image

You’ll also be able to download the render from my Deviantart page here.

Alright well that’s all for now.