September 18th - Settling In

Well I probably shouldn't be writing this right now seeing as I'm all liquored up on Sangria but I'll give it a shot ( I will explain shortly). Many things happened this week. I met with three potential professors, got a coat, a new phone, explored downtown Seattle and after tonight I saw Newcastle/Espana.

Coat:

So I'd been looking for a coat for a long time Goodwill, Ross, thrift stores, Nordstroms rack. Nothing was quite right. The closest thing was a coat at Nordstroms rack that was $1,195 marked down from $3,395. I ended up getting a wool peacoat at a used clothing store for $45. It was originally a $500 coat so not too bad. Well it needed a bit of TLC. There were stains, missing buttons, the sleeves were a bit too short and it was a bit too large in the waist, but that is all being taken care of as we speak and on Tuesday I should have myself a brand new tailored peacoat.

From the coat, there is a direct segway into my NEW phone! As I was walking home from the alteration place I passed by Verizon and went inside. I ended up getting the new Blackberry Bold which is a very nice professional smart phone, excellent for text, email, and internet. But it took so long that by the time I left the shop, the blue skies had given way to rain. And since I was now coatless I had to walk/jog home which was not that close. The phone is really nice, I like it a lot, although I still don't really know how to use most of the features. There is an application on there to find local happy hours, it even will pinpoint your location, because it has an internal GPS, and give you step-by-step directions on how to get where you want. This took Megan and myself to Palomino, a rather swanky establishment at the top floor of the city centre (Don't get excited, it's only 3 floors up) but it is in the middle of beautiful downtown Seattle.

Here I had two amazing pomegranate mojitos, Megan had two incredible Pear-Ginger Martinis, and we split a wild mushroom flatbread, Dungeness Crab dip, and a huge bowl of puget sound clams for about $40. Then we got to walk the streets in the rain and get on a bus back to the U district. All care of my new phones directions. Oh and Mom thanks for mailing the UPASS. The busses here are about $2 each way. With the UPASS they are all free.

Professorial Meetings:

These were very interesting, I had three of them back to back. First I met Professor Pauzauskie. A recent Berkeley graduate, he was extremely nice, and he listened intensely to what I had to say, his gaze was almost Dumbledore like. He is doing work with optomechanics meaning moving objects using only light. Its really cool and he is trying to employ these techniques as well as some others to work in the field of nanomedicine. For example, with his "laser tweezers" (thats really what they are called) he can grab a single virus, or bacteria and move it any way he wants and actually video record it. In this way you can physically see how a virus infects a cell by literally poking them at each other.

The second professor I met was Dr. Christine Luscombe, she had a very interesting accent, almost British but not quite. The thing that I didn't like about her was her timidness. She didn't meet my eye when I asked any questions, she seemed quite busy with other things to tell the truth. Her projects were really cool though. She recently got a large grant to work on electrochromic windows which act like transition lenses but they also work like solar panels. In this way buildings could be their own power plants.

Third professor was the department chair and he didn't listen to anything I said, he just talked about what he did.

So basically at this point I'm going with Pauzauskie even though his projects don't interest me quite as much at this point. I do have two other professors to interview next week, and I'm gonna try to talk to some grad students before I make such a big decision.

After talking with the professors I had a moment of zen where I sat in Red Square and sketched Suzallo library while listening to music on my ipod and sipping my latte. Life is good.

The sketch came out kinda crooked because I was sketching at an angle. It was a very clear day and on such days you can see Mt. Rainier through the main plaza of campus. It's one of the those mountains that actually makes you gasp. Usually it isn't visible because of clouds, but when it's out you know it. Over 14,000 feet it looks huge even from how far away it is. I couldn't take a good picture so I've included one from google.

Actually the meeting with Dr. Pauzauskie went so well that we ran out of time. We scheduled to meet up again the next day. This has been the only time so far that I was caught in a torrential downpour. The sky was blue in the morning, grayed over slightly and then it was like the entire heavens were falling onto my hoodless jacket. My question then became "Who's brilliant idea was it to pave almost the entire campus of a place where it rained 3/4 of the year in slippery brick?!?" But I made it to the meeting.

Our 30 min meeting turned into almost 2 hours of talking about grad school and life. It was really good. The above picture is Dr. Peter Pauzauskie.

Random:

I made an appointment with a dentist, turns out the most highly recommended one in the area is about 6 doors down from me, in the same building. Highly convenient. I also got a prescription for massage so that I can get them covered by insurance. Turns out the deal isn't quite as good as I thought. The University will only cover 50% of the cost up to $250 and it seems like massages here are more expensive than they were down in LA. I found the best chai latte that I ever had over at Trabant Chai and Cafe, it was actually meteoric. I finally got my wireless internet so my apartment looks good. I don't have pics though sorry.

Today: Disclaimer - I am aware that it is Yom Kippur, I actually did a lot of reflection last night and this morning. I forgot to fast and ate breakfast and then I figured well I already broke it so...

What an exciting day today was. It started off with farmers where I bought far too much, but I received assurance from Student Fiscal Services that my $10,000 will be available Monday. I know that about $3000 of that immediately goes to Mom. I bought a pound of fresh chanterelles for $8, yes eight dollars. I bought heirloom tomatoes, nectartines and pluots, squash, spinach, basil, river cheddar cheese, and Inness bought me maple candies from Quebec and Honeycrisp apples, a very popular, HUGE apple that is really good. Its all quite delectable and shall be a fun week of cooking. I'm gonna make soup I think and other tasty things that will start to last me when I don't have time to cook. After Farmers Inness and I went to Capitol Hill where we had excellent New York style pizza and we watched the Huskies lose to Nebraska (boo!). Then against my better judgment I had some really good artisan vanilla ice cream and then went back to apartment completely miserable full.

Later that night we were invited to a Paella and Flamenco party by a coworker of Inness' mom. So I thought I would have time to rest up go to the gym and then leave in the evening, I was wrong. I had barely started digesting when Inness' mom came and picked us up. She was already in the area and with football traffic it would have been terrible to come back so I had to change into "spanish" clothes and then rush out the door. I accompanied Inness, her mom and her mom's boyfriend on errands then we went to the Paella party which was amazing. These were some very rich people. It was up in Newcastle in the mountains. Their backyard had it's own protected wetland. We were greeted at the door by a guy serving Spanish almonds and sherry. Then we had our choice of fine spanish wine. There were empanadas, shrimp, all sorts of things and then really excellent paella. There was a professional flamenco guitarist, a singer, and two really good dancers. It was quite the party, sorta surreal.

Now I am home, it is raining lightly outside. Tomorrow I shall digest the repasts from this week. Go to the gym and finish cleaning the apartment. I have some laundry to do as well.

These are the pictures that Inness and I took at the ACLU thing last week.

Hope you enjoyed all the writing. Be sure to post comments if you want me to continue.