There's magic in the air

Or, at the very least, a magical invisible dragon blowing gust of winds at up to 30MPH.

After the tsunami, I've decided to give my grandparents more credit, and when they told me not to go out for a nightly jog, I've decided not to do it. Good thing.

From our lovely weather.gov:

A WIND ADVISORY MEANS THAT WINDS OF 30 MPH AND GUSTS OF 50 MPH
ARE EXPECTED. WINDS THIS STRONG CAN MAKE DRIVING DIFFICULT...
ESPECIALLY FOR HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES. USE EXTRA CAUTION. BE
PREPARED FOR FALLING TREE BRANCHES AND LOCAL POWER OUTAGES.

My cousin: "It's strong enough to blow away a small baby."

This picture was taken at Nu'uana Pali Lookout, an area famous for it's high winds.  Clinton told me it's usually 15MPH.

Anyways, I decided to tell Dr. Anderson, the professor at Wake Forest I applied to, that today was a day as good as any to talk.  Everything went well, but man, was the wind super strong!  Halfway through he has to ask if I was in a wind tunnel.  Actually, maybe I was.  Wind and courtyards baffle me.  He also recommended me a super cool site on African soils.   I can't wait to intersperse reading cat papers by browsing through this. :D  I think I've read every technique available on stomach and scat content analysis by now.  

Back to the wind.  I'm not sure how 30MPH compare to Davis winds, since I checked the Davis weather station, and it said at maximum it gets to 31.  Is that still bikeable wind?  I remember one time I actually got blown over while biking on the sidewalk.  Super awkward. 

Blow away your finals!  HAHA.  Three more days left!  <3

Tsunami Week

tsunami (tsʊˈnæmɪ) — n , pl -mis , -mi

1. a large, often destructive, sea wave produced by a submarinenearthquake, subsidence, or volcanic eruption. Sometimes incorrectly called a tidal wave

2. a sudden increase in or overwhelming number or volume of: the tsunami of Olympic visitors


--dictionary.com

First off, my heart goes out to the people of Japan, and anyone with loved ones in Japan.  Google has a person finder for the people affected by the tsunami.  Hopefully that helps.  And mad props to Japan's strict building codes and level of preparedness.  It could have been a lot worse, and all of us living in areas vulnerable to natural disasters should look to Japan as an example.  

Hawaii is fine.  I'm old and go to bed super early now, but was woken up by the most obnoxious, high pitched sound I've ever heard in my life.  After sleepily glaring at the general direction, I was told by my grandparents that it was the tsunami warning.  

Boo for being ridiculously hard to find.  Apparently the map is in the yellow pages, but who keeps those nowadays?

Luckily we're not in the inundation zone.  I do live within running distance (and for me, that's probably...2 miles) to the airport, which is.  I don't think it suffered from water damage - the reason why the airports in Hawaii were closed was because they didn't want to clog up the roads leading up to the airports.  

Waikiki was definitely evacuated and I think a lot of tourists had to go up passed the 4th story of their hotels.  I think parts of Hawaii Kai was also evacuated, and most of the schools were closed Friday.  (Although the lovely public school systems already had Friday as a furlough day, so who knows.)

I didn't have an ocean view, so I decided to not stay up until 3, which is when the tsunami was going to hit.  I think there were some damage the next morning, but luckily no one was hurt.  The buses didn't run early morning because the tsunami warning was still in effect.  On the news there were tapes of people waiting forlornly at a bus station for a bus that wouldn't come.  It was sad, yet kind of funny to watch.  

Anyways, I decided to call it a day off, and went jogging to see if I could see any tsunami related events at the airport.  Nothing spectacular.  Of course, as soon as I come back, they removed the tsunami advisory but by then I had made plans. :)

The UH campus was also closed (and I wish I had taken a screenshot of their website!), saying that non essential employees should stay home.  I wonder how many grad students went?

Anyways, it's finals week and I know you guys are busy so just know - I'm alive and well.  Didn't get into Stanford, btw, but I'll feel like a douchebag complaining about that in light of these events.  

Good lucks with finals!

UC Stanford Barbara Trip

Ok, I'm a day late from my self imposed deadline, and I actually feel really bad about it.  Not going to lie, it was kind of a crazy trip though, and I was exhausted by the end of it.  (And had super fast onset of SAD. HAHA)

To bring everyone up to speed: Stanford invited me to visit their campus back in January for this weekend.  Then UCSB invited me to their campus on the same weekend.  After a lot of emails, I decided the best plan of action was to take a red eye out Monday, arrive Tuesday at SFO, Amtrak bus it down to SB, spend a night there, take the train back up, interview at Stanford, go back down to SB for a BBQ (SO WORTH IT.)

Sunday I rested (heh) and Monday morning I flew back to Hawaii.  Just another week in the life of Ann Tan. No big deal.  I do owe the planet a gazillion trees now though. 

Anyways, I don't think I should have even unpacked from Wake Forest.  I brought pretty much the same things, but with macademia nuts:

So colorful!  MMmm chocolate covered macademia nuts.  Originally I was going to buy one for Dennis for letting me stay in UCSB, but then they found me a grad student to stay with.  Luckily the only way to buy the boxes from Costco is in 6's.  So I had enough for my sponsor and for my host!  And since I was already accepted and got a fellowhip, it was not bribery.

I was totally knocked out during the red eye, which was glorious.  I think the secret is to just wake up hella early and be sleep deprived beforehand.  Me gusta.  

Some pretty pictures early in the morning.  The Amtrak bus is surprisingly comfy.  Fun fact: according to the person I ordered my tickets from, Amtrak lawyers found a loophole for train companies that allows them to provide bus services as long as part of the trip involves a train.  So one way down was by bus, and I had to take the train back up. 

I got picked up by my sponsor, Oliver, and pretty much hung out with him the whole day.  I got to see one of the job talks (and apparently, one of his former students is trying to get a faculty position at UCD!), some biogeosciences lunch thing, and eat dinner at a very cool beachy restaurant.  Kind of funky because the faculty candidate from the job talk was seated right behind us.  Apparently that's where all the faculty hang out.  

No pictures of SB though, because I wanted to seem cool in front of a prospective advisor.  :(  And cause the weather wasn't all that great when I visited.

Anyways, there's some pictures from Stanford, when I was away from judging eyes. 

Fancy!  I like the name tag.  Teehee. And the pen!  It's a really nice, rolly one.  Doesn't get stuck like mine does.

I must have crossed this bridge over 20 times.  Wearing heels was definitely painful, and coupled with this, kind of an adventure.  It's one of those metal mesh bridges with holes everywhere for your heels to get stuck on.

That's the building where the Stanford Prison Experiment took place!

These have to be the most glorious pillows I've ever slept on.  First purchase once I get my stipend.

Stanford interviews were a lot of fun.  A bit intense because I think I did my homework a bit too well, and regarded all the professors as these mystical academic beasts with awesome papers. We were scheduled to interview with 5 professors for 30 min each over the course of two days.  That gave us a lot of free time, and after exploring a narcolepsy lab (So cool!  Apparently only people of a certain type of tissue can get it, and they think it's autoimmune.), I decided to go rogue and visit the earth sciences people.  They were on the other side of campus so it was a lot of walking, but worth it!  The Stanford biology program is definitely molecular based, which is cool, but I'm not. :)

Some home sweet home pictures.

Bookcase!  I miss you.  I'm slowly packing parts of it to my carry on. I got my environmental law book in Hawaii now - can't wait to start reading it!

And a new car!  This is actually kind of a depressing story.  My beloved car (17+ years) got smashed from behind by some truck when my mom stopped the car to let some guy in a wheelchair cross the street. She's ok (thankfully!) but my car isn't.  Don't tailgate, y'all.  Well...not when you're...driving...

To end this post on a happier note, here's some fun coincidences:

• I'm reading Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card, who lives in Greensboro NC! What!  That's where Wake Forest University is! (Or uh, in 1992 he did)
• There's a building called Y2E2 on the Stanford campus.  It's short for Yang and Yamazaki Environment and Energy building.  The Yang = Jerry Yang, alumnus of both my middle and high school, and co-founder of Yahoo!   And I think the lab I might get into is in there too!