WEEKLY WHINE

Random musings of a random man

In general, the Weekly Whine format lends itself to a certain randomness. Consider it this way: Every week, I head to my PC and try to formulate something interesting that folks like you are going to find interesting. Rare is the occasion when I succeed at this, but I like to do it anyway. Truth be told, I'm not quite sure why I have this website in the first place. In some odd way I find it fun, but there seems to be no value to it. I almost never make connections to new people on the other side of the world. In fact, I almost never receive messages from viewers to my site. I'm hoping that this will change soon, but that's a project for later. Regardless, my parents find a value in this site, claiming that it's a good way to find out what I'm doing. I attempt to use this as an excuse to not call them, but it never works. Besides, ultimately this site is not intended as my personal newspaper. If anything, it's my personal supermarket tabloid.

But now back to the news about me. As you're probably aware by now, I'm the webmeister for Caltech SEDS, the Caltech chapter of SEDS USA, an organisation consisting of students for the exploration and development of space. Hence its acronym: Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. Yesterday, we brought in a new President. Loren Hoffman, a frosh who was instrumental in putting SEDS back on the map here at Caltech, has been President for about 10½ hours now, but so far, no major acts have crossed her desk. I suspect that the only thing that has crossed her desk is a bunch of AMa95 or something.

Yesterday, I went to dinner with her and a few of her Ruddish friends. And one of her Flemish friends as well, whose role in this story is actually somewhat important. I knew that dinner with her would turn out to be an adventure, and so it did. At a particular juncture, it became necessary for her to determine whether a certain food item was kosher. From my limited viewpoint, it seems that there are several factors affecting the kosherality of food items, but the process of finding the kosherality of this item turned out straightforward. This is not the important part of the story, though.

This is the important part of the story: At the table, the discussion turned to the number of people we had known at Prefrosh Weekend. Every April, Caltech invites everyone who's been accepted to its campus, where they room with Techers and experience their way of life. Last April, I roomed with a man called Peanut, a true Scurve in the sense of walking about barefoot. This cues up another story, but it will be told in its place. That room, Snatch C-29, is also called the Closet or the Smallest Room on Campus, because it was once a closet and is now the Smallest Room on Campus. It's now occupied by a woman called Yuliya, who probably had the very last room pick. I had the third room pick, so I ended up in LD 45, almost directly across from the Closet. Of course, it wasn't always a closet. After all, if it was built with the intention of being a closet, why bother adding windows?

I think I'm losing the point of the story. The point of the story, if I can remember that far back, is the number of people I remember from Prefrosh. Peanut, obviously, is one. Loren is another. We maintained E/mail correspondences during that past summer, during which she told me of her mentor banning her probability experiments in the canyon. There were a few upperclass Scurves in addition to Peanut that I recall. Katy Isaccs and Toby Bartels are among them, as is Rik Williams. I refer to them as "upperclasspeople" because that's what they are now, in the sense of being non-froshes. I also remember having seen Leon Torres, although I didn't find out his name then. Leon, by the way, was just reelected Hovse Alien, because that's basically what he is. Among the current froshes whom I recall, I've got an interesting mini-story about one. On the day of our arrival here [or perhaps the following day, I don't quite remember], I went over to Loren's room, where she was talking with a girl who seemed somewhat familiar. Upon having her introduced as Weiwei [one word thank you very much], it clicked into position. I said to her, "Didn't I meet you on a trampoline once?" This merits explanation, and here it is. But it also merits a new paragraph.

At that time, Ricketts Hovse had a trampoline. Actually, it still has a trampoline, but it was in more frequent use then, since that was spring and this is winter. Anyway, I was spending a pleasant night's bouncing on that trampoline, joined by many other people, all Prefroshes. Loren was one of them. I remember exactly two other names from that trampoline. One is Ali, whom I vaguely know at this point. The other name is Weiwei. She's quite a character, and maybe I'll Whine about her next Week, unless I forget about it. That leaves out about four or five others. At dinner yesterday, she gave names to two other people from the trampoline: Dave Marcus and Melissa Todd. This surprised me, and I did what I usually do when things surprise me: I completely ignore them. Despite not remembering them from the trampoline, I completely failed to mention that fact. Here's why that surprised me: Each is a good friend. I once assisted Dave and his roommate, Ryan White, with the Boxes. If I ever get around to it, I'll add pictures from the Boxes to GoobNet. Just a couple of weeks ago, Melissa helped me shop for Apache, which is also a good story. For that matter, Build Apache is a better story. These are also worth Whines of their own, but it again comes down to whether I can remember that 168 hours or so from now. Another of the people from the trampoline that Loren mentioned was someone whose name she couldn't recall at first. She then produced the name "Angie". I might remember this person, but I haven't seen her since, as she wound up going to the University of Maryland, alleges Loren. How is it that I remember this few people? Or alternatively, how is it that I remember this many people? My common excuse that the trampoline took place at after 01:00 PST, so it was not bright enough to see who these people were.

I think that's about it for that story, so it's time for the next story. Eugene Ha, my Ma1b Analytic TA, is the focus of this one. One day, when I showed up early for section, we were discussing my life as a Techer to this point. I told him that I live in Ricketts Hovse, and he said to me, "I wouldn't expect that you're in Ricketts. You wear shoes." This is true: Ricketts has the highest number of bare feet per capita of all the Hovses. I think that for most other Hovses, that rate is exactly 0. Regardless, that did bring up an interesting point: He observed that Techers rapidly begin to reflect the Hovses that select them. In some ways, I'm a good example of that; in other ways, a bad example. I can quickly give two names that are better examples, but I won't do so. However, I will say that the mother of one of them wrote a letter that made its way into the California Tech this week. I have many Scurvish friends, but I also have many friends in other Hovses. That usually seems to be a good combination.

I'd like to close at a point relatively near that at which I began. Outgoing SEDS President Joe Cook was given the office of Official Lit Major, which at first glance is a rather useless office, but his value is in his expertise and his connections. He's also part of Ecphonema, which is performing at an upcoming concert at Caltech. This concert was advertised on the Mints page of the Tech; it's called the "Love Sucks Concert". Kinda says it all, doesn't it? It's the second annual one, which indicates that the first one was relatively popular as you might expect, this being Caltech. Valentine's Day seems to bum out plenty of people here, so in response, the Love Sucks Concert was created, I suppose. Perhaps at the third annual one of these, the upstart A Cappella Techno Band will perform.