I would be amiss—

—if I did not mention the math meet today. Of course, I have a lot of work, so I won't go in-depth about it today, although it was extremely fun (I can say that much).

Just wanted to mention the new xkcd comic. Went through my blog subscriptions today and saw it at the end of the list, and it is absolutely amazing. I don't know how Randall Munroe does it, really.

Also wanted to mention that I am not engaging in anything suspicious at all. None at all. Just so you know (because people *cough Tea&Gretchen cough* are doubting me right now).

And this concludes my shortest post ever.

I saw xkcd at Cornell

This one. We were inside the electric and computer engineering building, which was sort of surprising, because usually these doors are locked and only students and faculty can enter. Anyway, they had these huge TVs (sort of like the ones at Paperclip, except larger), and they also had these really cool devices, such as a semiconductor wafer designed by Cornell students (my dad works for a company that manufactures the devices used to make such wafers, so of course he used this opportunity to brag).

We went upstairs afterwards, where we saw numerous computer labs, actual labs (although I suppose a computer lab is also a lab), and the xkcd strip on one of the doors. Then we went across an indoor bridge with lots of red chairs facing away from the center, and two floors below us, there was a study hall with a few people typing away on their laptops.

I have only been inside one other non-library, non-huge-lecture-hall-for-info-sessions academic building, and that was Huntsman at Penn (which I have written about, in part, but it is still in draft mode because I need to add two more schools to it), so I was still fairly surprised that we were allowed inside. There were lots of cool equipment rooms, and my dad even talked to one of the professors there (while my mom and I were outside, so we didn't get to hear what they talked about), and he got a booklet on Cornell engineering projects.

Some other highlights:

• Really helpful people, or at least the ones I've met. So even though it's a predominantly science and engineering school, it's not in any way unsociable.
• Buildings could use some better planning. There are some gorgeous (I still can't stop thinking about the "Ithaca is Gorges" pun whenever I use "gorgeous") buildings, such as the Baker dorms and the really fancy all-glass building, but they're this awkward mix of Gothic-old to contemporary-new that really doesn't mesh well.
• They sell bubble tea in downtown Ithaca. Taro-flavored bubble tea. Definitely a good point. Plus Ithaca's got a small-town feel but pretty busy, yet it's far away from Cornell (which has many of the pretty gorges) that there's no problem with noise or chaos.
• My tour group people are really, really unprepared. This isn't actually a highlight, but I found it shocking when someone asked, "Does Cornell have its own supplement to the Common App?" I mean, really? Just add the school to your list and you'll see. It's not that hard.
• Lake Caguya is really close by, and it's a pretty neat lake. Not Lake Ontario or Lake Michigan nice (I'm pretty biased in that aspect), but the ducks are friendly and don't run away from you. Neither do the squirrels in Cornell. I suppose that reflects on how nice the people there are towards the animals.

My dad joked that he would try to find a job in Albany if I go to Cornell. It is a bit better than his claim that he'll find a job in Chicago if I go to, well, Chicago, because I am not sure how well I can handle the whole commuting to school from home thing when I'm in college. I guess it's nice that I won't have to pay extra room and boarding fees, but I'll probably lose out on several years' worth of experimenting with living on my own.

Besides, didn't my dad say he was going to move back to China once I get into college, and never, ever come back again?

People are fickle these days.

Also, completely unrelated, but I had a dream that I was driving last night. There was something special to it than just driving, though (and it's not the "I crashed into a wall" kind of special), but I don't remember what it was. I was going to write it down but then I forgot.

So... time to finish up that Penn/Princeton (again)/Swarthmore post.

I'm Going To Wake Up At 5:00AM

Hahaha.

As if.

I have been telling myself those words for the past few nights, but doing so after staying up late reading Takaki (or Gatsby, for that matter) has proven to be ineffective.

Also, my French teacher today lamented the awful, dreadful, absolutely "wrong, wrong, wrong" act of ending a sentence with—gasp—a dangling preposition!

Never mind that according to Grammar Girl, it's the number one grammar myth. (The actual explanation is much more complicated than a simple, end-every-sentence-with-a-preposition-if-you-so-desire statement, but that's what external links are for. And the last preposition was used correctly.)

Other grammar myths include the much-feared "never split an infinitive" (also something my French teacher obsesses over) and "it's incorrect to answer 'How are you?' with 'I'm good.'" So really, the next time some grammar-amateur-freak tries to correct you by saying, "It's 'I'm well,' not 'I'm good.,'" rest assured that you are actually correct.

Of course, the fact that I am reading Grammar Girl instead of doing homework is probably not a good thing. I might have been able to get away with it if I were not doing my English homework, but we had an in-class essay today (with frozen-thawed muffins and coffee cake), so we did not have any homework. Such a pity.

In other news ("Extra—! Extra—! Hear all about it—!"), I was going to blog about math team yesterday, but I got sidetracked by my trip plannings, so I didn't have time to finish my post. Instead, I will take the lazy way out and simply highlight several important things that happened to me in the past few hours:

• Math team: as Gretchie already had already mentioned, so I will link you to her post instead (later).
• Calc test: half-horrible, half-not that bad. I got the same answer as Bryant for one question, but as the next bullet point shows, this may not be so reassuring after all. (In realms of math, however, I will trust Bryant over Dino.)
• Chem test: nightmare. I half-guessed on half the questions, and for the last question, Bryant got a different answer from Nyx and me, who got a different answer from Camel, who got a different answer from Boris, who got a different answer from... well, you get the drift.
• Tests in general: why have all the tests been squished into this week? I had a physics test today as well, which wasn't bad at all, but I compared answers with Michael, who refutes what I've written, so there is a potential (no pun intended) problem for at least one of us. This seems to happen a lot lately.
• National Honor Society: completely distracting. I listened to our principal talk for a while, thinking about how I would not fit in to the criteria for membership selection. The other half I spent staring at Dino's hair squinting at the board. (Also, Dino might have caught me staring at him several times, which might be either good or bad.)
• US: we (well, mostly our US teacher whom I have to find the nickname for) panicked when we realized that the REVISED edition of Takaki is drastically different from the original. Lots of "sexy" titles gone, and an entire introduction changed. Better than any revision I've ever done.
• xkcd: is every addicting, as I've found out lately. I'm on #600+ now, and I started with 100+ two days ago. Not good. Not good at all.

And of course, I am very, very sleepy and this is very, very late right now, I will go to bed and try (really, really hard) to wake up at 5:00AM tomorrow morning.

Man Girl: 0
Nature Sleep: 1+2+3+...+n+...