Today was the last full ARML. Not actually that sentimental, since there are what, 2 or 3 more mandatory practices? But even so, senior year is ending. Tis unfortunate.
On the car ride home, we created a story as a group, each of us providing a word in order. The resulting masterpeice is shown below:
A exotic mineral was consumed by five. These portable mushrooms were not luminescent, although they could, under certain circumstances, burn firewood. One silent cheesecake cracked open in five dragons, full of traffic lights and mushrooms. Poisonous pokemon attacked, voraciously, pure podcast doppler. Accidently, peanut butter jelly baptized pope through radiating cinderblocks. Flowers kicked toiletry among dancing statues rotting with glee. The moss provided sanctuary for digimon and flittering trolls so that stop sign would lose to the assassins game. Seventeen fails horrified Jared blinkers! Porky pig squeamish torbert "apparently they had complaints about five or something", Dkim huge nopper and wiretapping consistency filed complaints converging upon Bob Jones University. Haywood Woody Torrence screamed "a general is ugly, just like your mother". Suddenly rage warehouse ire proof came upon Tim. Small onions that smelled really good in terms of bio with respect to Williams college. Terrorists fenced John mailbox in forty six pine trees, unless they were too ugly for fiftyfive trashcans (read: Eric). Yes we can big bang so fat but low battery, not I said the cow, my foot is a huge large.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
More Relevant
So I'm still more or less gonna keep away from talking about the actual trip, but this post (I feel) contains the most about the experience. The topic here is crowd racing.
So we should probably define this first. Wiki and Google are silent on the matter (maybe I'm using the wrong term), so I'll take a stab at it myself.
Crowd Racing: A race in which people try to move from source to sink as quickly as possibly, with the precondition that the space in between the source and the sink is filled with a moving crowd.
I was first introduced to crowd racing in middle school. Back then, we had silly block lunches or something, followed by half-period long activity blocks. This is actually pretty good planning on the school's part, but nvm that. To get to our activity rooms from the cafeteria, we'd have to walk down one of two hallways. However, both hallways would be filled with crowds of moving students, one group outbound and one group inbound. For those who have never tried this, it is actually very much fun. The first time Alex Gomes suggested I join their crowd race, I won handily. I was very happy and surprised until I realized that they had not raced, but had stood there laughing at me as I sprinted off. After that one trick, though, we would race back most days, and I still credit this habit with cutlivating my need to run randomly.
For a long time, crowd racing was just an amusement. Then we got to Disney World, and I realized that this was actually a very important skill to have. Amusement parks are known for their rides, but in reality you spend far more time getting from place to place than you do on the rides themselves, and if you don't know how to crowd race, this process takes 10 times longer.
Of course, the crowd racing involved is not conventional; there is one extra rule, and a couple of novel obstacles. The rule is this: not only do you have to move as fast as possible, you have to do this inconspicuously and with minimal disruption. This rule bothered me quite a bit. When I'm running through hallways or whatnot at school, I can jump out randomly to the side, as long as its timed right, and people will not be particularly surprised: they're used to eccentric people doing dumb things. But in public, you try that, and you will invariably have a little child randomly speed up and crash into you, wasting precious moments as the child's parent scolds you for being an idiot. In addition, even non-disruptive running is not satisfactory. I probably should've realized that randomly running is extremely suspicious, but its never mattered before. For instance, whenever I take a bus (whether from home or my lab or w/e) to a metro station, I always get down and start running into the station. I always wondered if someone would stop me and accuse me of theft, but no one ever did, so I figured it was ok. The kind officer at Disney had no such restraint >_>. My dad had just called me, telling me he had bought lunch (we were at Animal Kingdom) in Asia, but, because of the two trays and overflowing coke cup he was carrying, had taken a wrong turn and had no idea where he was or how to find us. I decided to run around and check all the places within a certain distance of the place he'd ordered food, but I was stopped soon after I started. The officer was rather suspicious, but since I only had my cell phone on me (and it was very obviously mine, it had a very recognizable picture for background), he let me go fairly quickly. So I could not run and I could not make random leaps into clearings.
Now for the obstacles. These pissed me off a good deal. These were: obnoxious little kids, strollers, wheelchairs, fat people. The little kids had no idea what they were doing, they'd just randomly get in the way, even if you were walking normally. They'd also make random sounds (like zoom, whoosh, etc.) and randomly hit their siblings while laughing. If I could convince them that I was running fast enough, though, they'd usually get out of the way. They were far more annoying while standing in line, but that's a story for later.
Wheelchairs I suppose can't be helped, but my god those things are annoying. They take up much more space than people, and there's really no room to maneuver around them, so they just completely destroy your ability to get wherever you wanna go. I wonder why the hell people who cannot walk come to amusement parks (can you really go on any of the fun rides?). So often I found myself wondering why the laws protecting disabled rights extend to things like amusement parks. (Note that I am not typically so openly insensitive, and this is not how I feel right now, but at the time, after a while in the sun and slow moving crowds, I was getting pretty fed up.)
Next we have the strollers. These were hindering for the same reasons as the wheelchairs mostly, but there was one other major factor. Half the strollers I saw had kids of age greater than 5. So I figure there's two options:
1. Your kid's under 5. In which case, (s)he's obviously not gonna enjoy Disney, why the five are you bringing them.
2. Your kid's over 5. In which case, your kid clearly doesn't need a stroller, they're just lazy, so tell them to get up and walk.
So yea, strollers just made me much more upset, because they're so daum.
And finally, the fat people. I suppose these were the most prevalent, but at least they were people, so I could maneuver around them fairly easily. I noticed something interesting actually. In my mind, there's supposed to be more fat guys than fat women, but here it was the reverse. I'm not sure why (I had that notion and why its the way it is).
So yea, now for what I actually picked up about crowd racing. The trick back in school has always been to move very fast and never stop moving. The same goes here, more or less, except that you want to choose a good starting speed and make more deliberate movements. You should never have to slow down, because you won't be speeding up again if you do.
Anyway, crowd racing is actually really fun and pretty useful too. I'd advise you all to try it sometime.
So we should probably define this first. Wiki and Google are silent on the matter (maybe I'm using the wrong term), so I'll take a stab at it myself.
Crowd Racing: A race in which people try to move from source to sink as quickly as possibly, with the precondition that the space in between the source and the sink is filled with a moving crowd.
I was first introduced to crowd racing in middle school. Back then, we had silly block lunches or something, followed by half-period long activity blocks. This is actually pretty good planning on the school's part, but nvm that. To get to our activity rooms from the cafeteria, we'd have to walk down one of two hallways. However, both hallways would be filled with crowds of moving students, one group outbound and one group inbound. For those who have never tried this, it is actually very much fun. The first time Alex Gomes suggested I join their crowd race, I won handily. I was very happy and surprised until I realized that they had not raced, but had stood there laughing at me as I sprinted off. After that one trick, though, we would race back most days, and I still credit this habit with cutlivating my need to run randomly.
For a long time, crowd racing was just an amusement. Then we got to Disney World, and I realized that this was actually a very important skill to have. Amusement parks are known for their rides, but in reality you spend far more time getting from place to place than you do on the rides themselves, and if you don't know how to crowd race, this process takes 10 times longer.
Of course, the crowd racing involved is not conventional; there is one extra rule, and a couple of novel obstacles. The rule is this: not only do you have to move as fast as possible, you have to do this inconspicuously and with minimal disruption. This rule bothered me quite a bit. When I'm running through hallways or whatnot at school, I can jump out randomly to the side, as long as its timed right, and people will not be particularly surprised: they're used to eccentric people doing dumb things. But in public, you try that, and you will invariably have a little child randomly speed up and crash into you, wasting precious moments as the child's parent scolds you for being an idiot. In addition, even non-disruptive running is not satisfactory. I probably should've realized that randomly running is extremely suspicious, but its never mattered before. For instance, whenever I take a bus (whether from home or my lab or w/e) to a metro station, I always get down and start running into the station. I always wondered if someone would stop me and accuse me of theft, but no one ever did, so I figured it was ok. The kind officer at Disney had no such restraint >_>. My dad had just called me, telling me he had bought lunch (we were at Animal Kingdom) in Asia, but, because of the two trays and overflowing coke cup he was carrying, had taken a wrong turn and had no idea where he was or how to find us. I decided to run around and check all the places within a certain distance of the place he'd ordered food, but I was stopped soon after I started. The officer was rather suspicious, but since I only had my cell phone on me (and it was very obviously mine, it had a very recognizable picture for background), he let me go fairly quickly. So I could not run and I could not make random leaps into clearings.
Now for the obstacles. These pissed me off a good deal. These were: obnoxious little kids, strollers, wheelchairs, fat people. The little kids had no idea what they were doing, they'd just randomly get in the way, even if you were walking normally. They'd also make random sounds (like zoom, whoosh, etc.) and randomly hit their siblings while laughing. If I could convince them that I was running fast enough, though, they'd usually get out of the way. They were far more annoying while standing in line, but that's a story for later.
Wheelchairs I suppose can't be helped, but my god those things are annoying. They take up much more space than people, and there's really no room to maneuver around them, so they just completely destroy your ability to get wherever you wanna go. I wonder why the hell people who cannot walk come to amusement parks (can you really go on any of the fun rides?). So often I found myself wondering why the laws protecting disabled rights extend to things like amusement parks. (Note that I am not typically so openly insensitive, and this is not how I feel right now, but at the time, after a while in the sun and slow moving crowds, I was getting pretty fed up.)
Next we have the strollers. These were hindering for the same reasons as the wheelchairs mostly, but there was one other major factor. Half the strollers I saw had kids of age greater than 5. So I figure there's two options:
1. Your kid's under 5. In which case, (s)he's obviously not gonna enjoy Disney, why the five are you bringing them.
2. Your kid's over 5. In which case, your kid clearly doesn't need a stroller, they're just lazy, so tell them to get up and walk.
So yea, strollers just made me much more upset, because they're so daum.
And finally, the fat people. I suppose these were the most prevalent, but at least they were people, so I could maneuver around them fairly easily. I noticed something interesting actually. In my mind, there's supposed to be more fat guys than fat women, but here it was the reverse. I'm not sure why (I had that notion and why its the way it is).
So yea, now for what I actually picked up about crowd racing. The trick back in school has always been to move very fast and never stop moving. The same goes here, more or less, except that you want to choose a good starting speed and make more deliberate movements. You should never have to slow down, because you won't be speeding up again if you do.
Anyway, crowd racing is actually really fun and pretty useful too. I'd advise you all to try it sometime.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Least Relevant
A foreword: I'll be writing a number of entries about the last howmanyever days, and they will grow more and more relevant (I think). This post will be a very brief outline followed by random thoughts/anecdotes.
I got picked up near the end of math on Thursday, and we drove home to wait for our taxi. The taxi shows up, and we head for Dulles. However, the left turn light from fcpkwy onto the toll road is very ugly and broken. Our driver is very pro though. He pulls out of the leftmost of the two left lanes into the forward moving lane (cursing throughout at the complete daums who are sitting waiting for the broken light to work) and then takes a U turn back to turn onto the toll road. But here's the real pro part: the guy pulls out his cell, dials, talks to some road authority or someone about the problem, and by the time he hangs up, the light is fixed. That just blew my mind >_>
So then we check in and are waiting at the terminal, and my brother is like, let's get food. So we go get food, and because I am skinny, I was required to buy something as well >_> So I decided to try a cheese danish, and I was very surprised to find that the stuff in the middle is CHEESECAKE.
Moving on, we land at Orlando, my dad gets angry with the roads there or something, and we reach our hotel. Im kind of happy to see that we have a comp in the lobby with internet, so I go online and check the arml (wtf high score 4??? someone should show me the problems at some point).
The next day (friday), we go to epcot. Saturday is Universal Studios, Sunday Animal Kingdom, Monday Magic Kingdom, Today was Kennedy Space Center.
So my dad is very very cautious, and he will keep checking details, even when they are extremely obvious, until the relevant event occurs. So I think the most striking example of this was on Friday. We had had some difficulty getting to the park (btw, every morning we'd ask the people at the hotel counter for directions to the park we were going to, and everyday their directions got us onto park grounds but then were completely off), but we were finally driving up to the entrance. It looks like a large toll booth, and in big letters all over the top of the toll booth, is written "EPCOT". My dad drives up and is greeted by the Disney guy in a suit that says "Epcot" on it. He rolls down the window, is greeted by the guy, and then asks "How do I get to Epcot".
A similar event, without a car. My dad is also fairly terse and hurried. We were in animal kingdom, and we needed to get to some ride. So I give my dad directions, and we're walking along pretty fast. My dad, as usual, feels compelled to check, so we're passing this disney employee, and my dad turns and, still walking by fast, says "Rapids" (part of the name of the ride) and, before the confused employee can respond, walks past him and onwards.
There is more to come, but I think I'm done for tonight.
Edit: False, I am not done. There is one more bit I wanted to talk about.
So like, we hear a lot about how fat america is, about how obese people are becoming. And we believe it, more or less, but we don't really see it here in fairfax county. Nor do we really see it all that much elsewhere. But I promise you, you wanna see obesity, go to Disney World. To describe just how bad it is, an anecdote from Magic Kingdom:
Dilip and I go into splash mountain, and parents are waiting near the big splash to snap a picture. Now they can time it (sort of) based on when our raft enters the mountain and which raft came before us and so on. So my mom notes to my dad "Hey, the raft before theirs had this really fat guy at the back, so we just watch for the fat guy, and then snap a pic of the raft that comes after this guy.
They took 15 different pics using this criterion. GG.
In summary, a quote from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle - "This is America. Learn to Drive."
I got picked up near the end of math on Thursday, and we drove home to wait for our taxi. The taxi shows up, and we head for Dulles. However, the left turn light from fcpkwy onto the toll road is very ugly and broken. Our driver is very pro though. He pulls out of the leftmost of the two left lanes into the forward moving lane (cursing throughout at the complete daums who are sitting waiting for the broken light to work) and then takes a U turn back to turn onto the toll road. But here's the real pro part: the guy pulls out his cell, dials, talks to some road authority or someone about the problem, and by the time he hangs up, the light is fixed. That just blew my mind >_>
So then we check in and are waiting at the terminal, and my brother is like, let's get food. So we go get food, and because I am skinny, I was required to buy something as well >_> So I decided to try a cheese danish, and I was very surprised to find that the stuff in the middle is CHEESECAKE.
Moving on, we land at Orlando, my dad gets angry with the roads there or something, and we reach our hotel. Im kind of happy to see that we have a comp in the lobby with internet, so I go online and check the arml (wtf high score 4??? someone should show me the problems at some point).
The next day (friday), we go to epcot. Saturday is Universal Studios, Sunday Animal Kingdom, Monday Magic Kingdom, Today was Kennedy Space Center.
So my dad is very very cautious, and he will keep checking details, even when they are extremely obvious, until the relevant event occurs. So I think the most striking example of this was on Friday. We had had some difficulty getting to the park (btw, every morning we'd ask the people at the hotel counter for directions to the park we were going to, and everyday their directions got us onto park grounds but then were completely off), but we were finally driving up to the entrance. It looks like a large toll booth, and in big letters all over the top of the toll booth, is written "EPCOT". My dad drives up and is greeted by the Disney guy in a suit that says "Epcot" on it. He rolls down the window, is greeted by the guy, and then asks "How do I get to Epcot".
A similar event, without a car. My dad is also fairly terse and hurried. We were in animal kingdom, and we needed to get to some ride. So I give my dad directions, and we're walking along pretty fast. My dad, as usual, feels compelled to check, so we're passing this disney employee, and my dad turns and, still walking by fast, says "Rapids" (part of the name of the ride) and, before the confused employee can respond, walks past him and onwards.
There is more to come, but I think I'm done for tonight.
Edit: False, I am not done. There is one more bit I wanted to talk about.
So like, we hear a lot about how fat america is, about how obese people are becoming. And we believe it, more or less, but we don't really see it here in fairfax county. Nor do we really see it all that much elsewhere. But I promise you, you wanna see obesity, go to Disney World. To describe just how bad it is, an anecdote from Magic Kingdom:
Dilip and I go into splash mountain, and parents are waiting near the big splash to snap a picture. Now they can time it (sort of) based on when our raft enters the mountain and which raft came before us and so on. So my mom notes to my dad "Hey, the raft before theirs had this really fat guy at the back, so we just watch for the fat guy, and then snap a pic of the raft that comes after this guy.
They took 15 different pics using this criterion. GG.
In summary, a quote from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle - "This is America. Learn to Drive."
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