Glass Half Full

“Nothing lasts forever!” — A.H.

Popcorn

I’ve always loved salty snacks like popcorn, pretzels, and chips.

Whenever I would watch a video while eating these snacks, I’d be done with the whole bag before I knew it.

Maybe I’m eating too fast, and I should try to slow down. But I’m mostly eating off of instinct. If I eat that fast then that’s what I’m meant to do.

Lays

Time is like a bag of chips. Every minute, a chip gets eaten no matter what. Doesn’t matter what you do in ten minutes because after ten minutes you’ll have ten less minutes anyway.

How you enjoy those chips is your business. Perhaps some people will spend them studying or working or hanging out with friends. Personally, I try to waste as much of it as possible.

Cardboard

Sometimes, when I think back to just things from a few months ago, they have a cardboard-like texture and everything is fuzzy. For me, writing is not really a way to recover the definition of the past, but to put more focus on the present.

So, I don’t really write as a historian. It’s more like I’ve packed every month into cardboard boxes to be put in the attic.

Tunneling

I think the Caltech tunnels are one of the most interesting pieces of art I’ve ever seen. Not just because it’s mysterious, but because you can feel what others have felt in the exact same way. Hope, love, fear, faith.

Time is the currency of emotion. You don’t get to feel emotions unless you spend a little bit of time to obtain and experience them. If you spend too much time just on experiencing new things though, the emotions may become dulled and devalued.

Half Full

Sometimes I look forward to graduating but I’ve recently begun to miss the past. I guess that’s something that happens at the end of sophomore year.

On the bright side, there’s still two years left, and that’s great because I think only in the last year have I really begun to appreciate Caltech.

Nightmare

J had a nightmare that he and I transferred to Columbia. Apparently I transferred to Columbia and then he was like, “I guess I’ll also transfer to Columbia.”

But we soon realized that Columbia is very sad compared to Caltech (even though neither of us have been to Columbia), and then we started crying LOL.

After he woke up, he was incredibly relieved because that would have really sucked.

Anyway, that nightmare just goes to show how the present should not be taken for granted.

Free at Last

It’s summer and I’m finally free from Caltech. I’ll be doing some oil trading at my internship in Singapore, which I’m really excited for. However, I’ve heard the weather is terrible, so I’m not really looking forward to that.

E and W are coming during the summer, which should be fun since I can show them around as a semi-local. I think I adapt relatively quickly, so I think I’ll be fine.

Advice for Frosh

I’ve given advice quite a few times on this blog but it seems to change every time, so I hope I’m not contradicting myself.

What I’ve realized in the last few months is that being an extrovert is far superior to being an introvert in basically every situation.

Why extrovert?

I think I remember thinking that lots of extroverts I knew were annoying, which I found is only true if the person is just loud and doesn’t say anything interesting.

However, just by nature of having more interactions with other people, extroverts get more opportunities to make connections which is much better than the alternative.

The main problem with being an introvert is that you can’t guarantee that anyone is going to talk to you, especially not later on.

Fear

As an introvert myself, it’s sometimes hard to find the courage to just talk to people I don’t know, but that’s something that can be practiced.

It’s hard for people to change their personality. So, for the introverts reading this, I think that one solution is to go up to someone who is also an introvert and try to talk to them because you probably have similar personalities.