New faces on campus August 25, 2007

Wow, it has come time to Freshmen orientation at MIT. I feel so old now, especially when I am no longer an undergraduate! But this year will be good, turns out the Graduate Student Council has a month long of orientation events for grad students! It sure sounds like it would be better than the freshmen orientation!

I am busier than ever. It’s Friday night, and I have too much work to do, and too much to think about. Life is good, but I don’t write down all the details like I used to in Tanzania. Moving day (August 31st) is coming up, and looking to apply for grad school and also begin my full time job search. I have to wrap up my work from Tanzania (which I have been putting off because of my thesis work), and begin my next project for the WDDC class (will need to start thinking about funding again, and the possibility to visit more workshops). Lots of big decisions coming ahead! Whenever I have free time, I am putting my head in the world of Harry Potter. The books are much better than expected, and at times, I wouldn’t be able to stop turning the pages!

The term will start soon, and I am very excited about the new school year. I’ll be taking these classes:

MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
MIT 6.898 Transparency and Accountability Architectures for the World Wide Web (supplement to 6.805)
MIT 18.310c Principles of Discrete Applied Mathematics

As a grad student, I have a credit limit, so I can no longer take more than 2 classes! It should be a fun term. Just bought my books from Half.com

Andrew is out working tonight, and I am staying at home to do work. Hopefully I’ll get some work done.

Great news! August 21, 2007

I’ll be continuing to work with the WDDC class this year More on this later…

As to why I haven’t been blogging much? I have been too busy since I got back. I need to get back into the habit of blogging now.

Still sick with a cold, but! August 17, 2007

But, but but! I am a happy gal, and that’s all that matters!

Well today as a birthday lunch, the Lemelson-MIT Program took the staff out for lunch! We went to Sandrine’s in Harvard Square, and it was a delight! Highly recommended!

It’s so humid right now, but I think I am going to cook, it’s not gonna be fun!

Mario’s kick ass Web site August 17, 2007

Mario, one of the other students in the WDDC class, created a website about his Figure Eight two-geared system.

Here is an excerpt from the site:

The Figure-Eight Drive is an implementation of a Retro-direct bicycle drivetrain on a hand-powered tricycle. It provides tricycle users with a reliable two geared system. Users can switch between the two gears by changing the direction of their pedaling, with both directions resulting in forward propulsion. Pedaling in the standard forwards direction provides users with an approximately 1:2.25 cruising gear, while pedaling in the reverse direction allows users to climb and maneuver easily with a 1:1 gear ratio. The tricycle can freewheel in the forwards direction, though no backwards movement is allowed. The steering column can be rotated 180 degrees, allowing one to ambulate and freewheel in reverse.

hahaha this is cute August 15, 2007

My friend Amy sent me this today and totally made me smile!

Oh I remember when Hana and I took 6.111, our code would take 20 minutes to synthesize! So we would play Text Twist!

Yesterday was a low-key birthday, my boyfriend and I had a bottle of Asti and Marty’s sandwiches! They were really good

Alright time to get back to work!

Birthday Princess! August 14, 2007

Hehe. I am 21+1 today

Don’t know what the plans are, but it sure feels good on my birthday! I love how Facebook tells everyone that it’s my birthday, I get a lot of Happy Birthday’s on my wall

My wonderful friend Alicia called me today too. I was so happy to hear from her. I have to visit her in Houston sometime, she tells me there is a nice beach down there!

Kittens! August 14, 2007

This video totally made my day!

I really like going to http://funnyanimalvideos.com every now and then to check out some funny stuff, and came across this one last night when I was just surfing the web.

It’s my video of the moment!

No longer MIA!! August 13, 2007

Well, it’s almost been two weeks since I returned to Boston, and I have never been so sick in my entire life!

1. Got a Staph infection on my back (well it’s gone now…)

2. Antiobiotics made my stomach so sick I can’t sleep at night…

3. I’ve got a cold, too.

It’s weird that I didn’t get sick when I was in Tanzania, but I got terribly sick when I got back. *sigh*

Anyways, I have been really busy with my thesis work, and been taking a short break from the fellowship work that I have been doing, so not too many updates there. I have been home-bound because of my stomach problems, but besides that, I am thankful that most of my work can be done remotely from home.

I miss Tanzania a lot, and especially everyone that I had met. People are so nice to everyone there. They are now great friends of mine, and thanks to the internet, I am able to keep in touch with them! I also started a Hi5 (a social networking website) profile, so that I can keep my network going. I don’t really like Hi5 though, it’s such a buggy site, and I realized that I take it for granted that Facebook is such a robust site. Props to Facebook!

I really want to go back to Tanzania, but because plane tickets are like 2,000 USD, I am really not sure when I can afford to go. One day I’d like to take my boyfriend and family there. Everyone loved the pictures, and it was good to really show them what Tanzania is like. Many people I know had no idea what’s like in East Africa (to be honest, I didn’t either, before I visited).

A lot of my friends are asking questions like “What was the most memorable thing from the trip?” Or similar questions like the sort, I can’t seem to answer those questions. Every little thing was memorable, everything was really eye opening… And things just can’t be described in words.

more on this later…

Photos are here! August 5, 2007

http://picasaweb.google.com/shirley.mit07

Trip to Arusha with My Host Sister! August 3, 2007

(July 28th-29th)

We woke up early to go do some shopping around town. I wanted to buy some Tanzanian fabric for my little sister, and we went around town to find some Changa for us. I found a very cute purple one that I would give to my little sister

We got ready and met with Payal and Pricilla (Sarah’s friends), to go to Arusha! Two hours ride later, we arrived in Arusha! We walked around a bit to look for our hotel, and found Hotel 7-11 and a double room with full size beds for 30,000 Tsh! We split so each of us would just pay  7,500 Tsh! The hotel was clean and cute, well worth the money. Christina then later joined us at the hotel, and paid for a single room for 25,000 Tsh.

We went back out to town to shop around, and ate a little bit of food. I tried this Ceres sparkling grape juice, and it was unbelievably good. Ceres is a brand that makes pure fruit juice, and oh my it always exceeds my expectations. No added sugar or preservatives. Highly recommended!

We got a ride to go to the movie theater outside of town, and we saw Ocean’s 13! The theater is in this new mall complex and it’s quite nice. The movie was very good. I really liked it and it had the feel of the Ocean’s 11.

We then got a ride back to town for dinner. We went to McMoody’s and had pizza! Their milk shakes are so thick and good, and I definitely stuffed myself with food there. We sat around for a lil more while Christina and I had some tea while we waited to go out. We got picked up by Samir, Pricilla’s friend, and we went out to go drinking!

We first went to a small bar just outside of town, it was a quite chill place, and we sat around and took some shots. Mmmm I like tequila. We then went to Maasai Camp, which is a pretty popular club, and it was a very cute place. I finally got to see Tish and Tish’s boy, Joseph! We talked for a little bit, but they had to go! I got more to drink from the bar and surprisingly I was not drunk at all. I ordered a screwdriver, and was hoping that it would come in fresh squeezed orange juice… But I was let down, and it was some nasty juice. I downed the screwdriver anyways and went back to chilling with my friends!

The night was good, until we realized that Christina’s wallet+keys+everything is missing~ Needless to say, we did a lot of running around, and we went back to the hotel. After getting back to hotel to sort out everything, we went outside to have chipsi mayai! Yummy but greasy!

Samir’s friends left us around 3:00am, and we stayed up to chat for a little bit, and waited for Sarah’s friend, Hassan, to come. Ahh he finally arrived, only he was plastered and throwing up. So Sarah and I chatted with him for a little bit, and I left them to take Hassan home. Ahhhh it was so late. I finally got to bed around 5am….

———–

Christina and I woke up early to have breakfast so that we can head back to Moshi! We got back and Christina had a flight at 3pm so we had to pack her up, and she had to quickly interview me before she head to the airport.  Sarah, Pricilla, and Payal came back a little bit later than us, but they got back and we had ice cream! We bid good byes, and Sarah and I went to town for more shopping and juice. Ahhh I am so sad.

I don’t want to leave! It was a slow day, and I watched a little bit of TV at night.  I also developed some kind of infection, so late at night, I went to the local doctor to get it checked out. It was painful! They cleaned it out and checked me for malaria. Thew, I didn’t have malaria. But the infection wasn’t too good. I just gotta wait to go to MIT Medical.

I couldn’t believe that I was leaving