Thanksgiving 2017

Thankful for applesauce, ballpoint pens that write well, country music, dihydrogen monoxide, easy recipes, Fortran, grass, Hezekiah, ice cream, jigsaw puzzles, kayaking, long romantic walks into the sunset, mountains, needless hiking detours, orange, penguins, quilts, road trips, soccer, trees, unit systems in base 10, vowels, wine, xenon (and the rest of the periodic table), yaks, and, of course, Chemical Engineering.

And I’m also thankful for having a place to stay, being warm and fed, getting paid to do what I sometimes mostly enjoy, and family and friends.

This year I spent Thanksgiving with church and lab friends. There was lots of food, some alcohol, a game of pseudo-Jeopardy!, and much absurdity. On Black Friday I spent exactly zero dollars and zero cents and used the day to work on documenting the code I’m inheriting. Today, I tried to do my grocery shopping for the week but the store was closed because they lost power. It’s at least the second time that’s happened in my ~15 months in Ann Arbor so far. I know it probably reflects the power company more than the grocery store, but, just saying, Wegmans never failed me like that in 5+ years.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Taste of Home

One week, faced with eggs that needed to be used up, half an onion leftover from making beef soup, and pineapple leftover from pineapple chicken, I made fried rice. I cooked up rice and chicken, added frozen vegetables and all my leftovers, and it was almost like a meal from home. To be completely like a home-cooked meal, the chicken would have had to be leftover too. But it was enough to remind me of home. It’s funny, how the smallest things can remind you of other things, and how certain smells, tastes, or sounds are inextricably linked to particular times or places.

The Lindseth climbing wall at Cornell, before it was renovated, smelled of an unmistakable mix of chalk, sweat, damp climbing shoe leather, and a hint of wet concrete. There’s nothing like that smell and I have yet to conduct very scientific experiments at other climbing walls to verify that statement.

Last day at Lindseth before renovation

When you’re the first to walk into Lynah Rink before a hockey game, you can still smell the fresh ice. It’s different from middle-of-the-game fresh ice and open-skate fresh ice. Really.

Almost empty Lynah pre-hockey game

After fourteen years in various bands, a lot of other things remind me of band. Snickers (the candy) because the pep band always got them at men’s hockey games. 3 Musketeers (also the candy) because I would buy them from the band parents during our lunch breaks at music festival in high school. Hearing the vibraslap always reminds me of playing “Caribbean Rondo” in ninth grade. (The vibraslap is an important part of the ending.)

Catalpa trees – my seventh grade leaf project, in which I also identified different species of elm, oak, maple, and sumac, among others. Plus I learned that ginkgo is spelled with two g’s. Chickadees – one particular bird that sang what sounded like four notes of “The Star Spangled Banner” at absurd hours of the morning at our campground in Bar Harbor, Maine. Orange slices – halftime of soccer games. Hoodsie cups (with the wooden spoon) – elementary school birthday parties. Tuna sandwiches – picnic lunches on road trips. Also vital to road trips: at least one playthrough of our 1980s John Denver CD.

I could probably come up with absurd connections for dozens of other things, because that’s how my mind works. I’ll end with this obscure one: the color red and a particular university located in Ithaca, NY.

Life-Size LEGOs

What do a saucepan, the bottle opener of a multitool, and a borrowed mallet have in common? All three were involved in assembling my brand new IKEA furniture. I moved for the seventh time in six years of college in August and for the first time ended up in an unfurnished townhouse. After three days without a bed and a week without any other furniture, I got a ride to IKEA and finished furnishing my bedroom, minus desk chair. (I lasted a solid month without any chairs in the apartment.)

Over the next week, I assembled a bookcase, desk, and dresser. I started with the bookcase, which was about as simple as it gets: sides, top, bottom, backing, and shelves. The problems began with the screwdrivers required. I have an entire precision screwdriver set with several dozen screwdriver bits. Key word: precision. Shockingly enough, screws you might find in a computer or watch are not the same size as screws you might find in furniture. I grabbed the largest Phillips and flathead bits I had, ignored the call IKEA for help page in the instructions, and started putting pieces together.

This continued until I reached the back of the bookcase. The backs of cheap IKEA bookcases are a dense cardboard-type material that you slide into a slot and nail into place. Problem number two: I don’t have a hammer. Instead of summoning a hammer from the sky Amazon or borrowing one from any number of people I know who might plausibly own hammers, I started looking around for solid metal objects. I only own a limited number of solid metal objects, so it didn’t take long for me to settle on my pot. My faithful pot, which has now cooked me two years of pasta and rice, served nicely as a hammer.

A couple days later, I worked on the desk. I pulled out my trusty precision screwdrivers, ignored the fix this item with a friend page in the instructions, and inserted the first of many screws. Everything went fine until the end. I had gotten the top aligned, everything was secured in place, and then I looked down at the remaining dowel in my parts bag. Dowel, singular, not used in any of the remaining steps. Third problem? Or not? After flipping back through the instructions, I believe it was an extra part. If not, the desk hasn’t fallen down yet. I should have counted, but there were no spare parts for the bookcase and I really wasn’t interested in counting four dozen screws, three dozen cams, three dozen dowels, and various other miscellaneous parts.

This brings us to the dresser, which I left for last after realizing that I would have to assemble each and every drawer. This is also where the multitool and mallet come into play. My screwdrivers and I ignored the tipping hazard page in the instructions and got the frame of the dresser screwed together, aligned, and standing. Next, the drawers needed to be put together. After temporarily misplacing all my drawer fronts (they were on my bed), I identified the backs, sides, and bottoms and got to work. I attached the sides to a drawer back. The bottom slid in nicely. The front needed to be secured by ridged plastic nails(?). Return of problem two: I (still) don’t have a hammer. I decided to spare my pot, the drawers, and my neighbors’ ears and borrowed a mallet.

Finally, after several hours, a scraped palm, and a lacerated toe, I could insert the drawers into the dresser. The last step was tightening plastic screws to keep the drawers from being pulled out all the way. Problem number three: my precision flathead screwdriver was not just probably too small, but entirely, utterly, much too small. I started looking around for other flat metal things and settled on the tip of the bottle opener on my multitool. I’ve been wondering if a coin would have been better, but the multitool sufficed without too much damage to the screw heads.

And that is how you assemble IKEA furniture with exactly none of the proper tools. Except the provided hex key. Long live the IKEA hex key.

Apple, apple, watermelon, strawberry

When I was first learning to play the clarinet, one of my music teachers told us how to count rhythms with fruit. It’s one of those funny things you do in band, like imagining you have a string attached to the top of your head that goes up to the ceiling and makes you sit up straight. But about the fruit. Words naturally have their own rhythms, some of which happen to coincide nicely with common musical rhythms. For example, “apple” is segmented into two even syllables that count off eighth notes neatly. We also use peach for quarter notes, pear for half notes, watermelon for sixteenth notes, strawberry for triplets, and blueberry for an eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes.¹

The title rhythm notated musically, verbally, and fruit-ically

The fruit was fun. Learning to play right hand C was not. The background you need to know for this involves two things: the key system of the clarinet and my hands. First, my hands. I am the size of a middle schooler. Second, the clarinet key system. The most commonly used key system is the Boehm system, and a handful of notes, including the C mentioned at the top of this paragraph, can be played either with your left or right pinky. When I first started playing in fourth grade, my hand was physically too small to reach the right hand C without much pain and struggle. I chose to avoid much pain and struggle by playing middle C with my left hand all the time. This continued throughout all of middle school and the first half of ninth grade. Then I started taking clarinet lessons.

During my very first lesson, my teacher asked me to play a two octave C scale and instantly noticed I was playing left hand C. She immediately started working to change that, because reasons. Actually, you need to be able to play both right and left hand C so that you can finger certain not uncommon runs and intervals.

Among the many ironies of my life, as I was being forced encouraged to play right hand C, we were preparing for our last concert of the year. One of our pieces was a medley of songs from The Little Mermaid. During “Under the Sea,” the third clarinets play an arpeggio in C, which is our home key². Except that the arpeggio goes from open G to middle C, a fingering change that moves from all holes open to all fingers on deck. I tried. I managed to get it a couple of times during rehearsal. Then I played the part with left hand C during the concert.

I’ve learned a lot of things in band over the years. I still remember my elementary school band teacher coming into the cafeteria at lunch time to sing solfege with the whole grade. Before every concert in middle school, we were reminded that early is on time. And then there’s all we learned about fingerings, working through tricky rhythms, breathing, shaping the line, balance, intonation, and right hand C. I play it like that by default now. Most of the time.

¹Five notes in a beat is “university,” six can be thought of as two triplets smashed together in one beat, and by the time you get to seven or more, you give up counting, fake lots of notes, and come in at the next downbeat.

²It’s our musical happy place. We have no sharps or flats.

The Nineteenth First Day of School

It’s that time of year again. The leaves are starting to turn brown change color. The temperature drops twenty degrees overnight. The air starts feeling crisp and fresh in the mornings. Parents are giving their wallets to Target buying shiny new pencils and notebooks. Half-asleep Smiling happy children shuffle onto eagerly board bright yellow school buses at dark o’clock in the mornings. Yes, it’s back to school for children all across America. And me, if I’m not considered a children any more. And if we ignore that fact that I didn’t leave last year so I’m not really coming back this year. I’m just . . . here . . . all the time.

To celebrate my nineteenth year of schooling, I thought I would answer some back to school questions. Questions (taken from various blogs across the internet) and answers below. Sorry, no pictures with Pinterest signs.

School: University of Michigan

Grade: 18th (hypothetical question – how much school is too much?)

I am _____ inches tall short and I weigh _____ pounds only slightly more than my IKEA dresser.

Favorite color: Orange

Favorite food: Dessert

Favorite thing to eat at lunch: The only thing I eat for lunch: Peanut butter and jam sandwiches

Favorite animal: Grumpy cat. Also dogs.

Favorite book: Books about people climbing and hiking things; science fiction; comedic sci fi fantasy; books without characters falling in love at first sight/meeting their true love/falling in love at first sight, breaking up because of a horrible misunderstanding, then realizing they really are meant for each other because true love

Favorite movie: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Pixar movies

Favorite TV show: Jeopardy!

Favorite scientific calculator: Still the Casio fx-300ES.

Something I really like: Well-marked bike lanes that don’t end suddenly on the highway and cars who let you make left turns when you signal

Something I really don’t like: When food you haven’t had for that long goes moldy

Something I want to do this year: See the New England Revolution win MLS cup, but I’ll settle for baking cookies. Maybe also cake.

The best thing that happened today (this weekend): Buying apples at the farmer’s market

When I grow up I want to be a: Employed

Holland

The last stop before returning to Ann Arbor was Holland. Yes, we crossed the Atlantic, visited Holland, and crossed the Atlantic again all in a morning. No, we definitely did not go to Holland, Michigan, an hour away from Grand Rapids.

We began our morning with another complimentary hotel breakfast before setting out for Holland. When we arrived, we spent some time walking around the downtown area and visited the farmer’s market. It was nice; it’s a lot like downtown in cities that are trying to maintain a small town feel. There are a bunch of specialty shops and restaurants along the sidewalk-lined streets to encourage people to spend their hard-earned money. The farmer’s market had a good variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers, jams, and other farmer’s market-y products.

After walking down to the farmer’s market and stopping in a couple stores, we drove over to Windmill Island. The main draws of Windmill Island are that it has the only working Dutch windmill in the United States and tulips. The tulips were long wilted, shriveled, and gone, so that left the windmill. Admission to the park is $9.00 a person, which is a little steep compared to the activities I usually partake in [think going to the library (free), voluntarily sweating on my bike all over Ann Arbor (free¹), and practicing scale exercises for all 24 major and minor scales on my clarinet (free²)]. Unless it’s tulip time or you really love windmills, in which case I’m sure it’s very worth it.

The windmill, De Zwaan

We ended up spending a couple hours at Windmill Island during which we saw the windmill, took the tour up the windmill, heard the organ play a bit, saw a few imitation Dutch houses, and visited the gift shop. Then it was off to Ann Arbor, my latest home away from home. We took a couple days to visit the Henry Ford Museum because I could honestly spend days there. Then we did the whirlwind tour of Ann Arbor, including North Campus and my very boring exciting office in NCRC, the farmer’s market and Kerrytown, the library, Central Campus, the State Street area, and a picnic lunch at the Nichols Arboretum.

Overall, it was a good trip, but it could have used more trees and hiking and it screwed up my sleep schedule (again). A few months later, I’ve mostly fixed my sleep schedule (my eating schedule could still use some work), and I moved in the recent past (again). And then classes just started, which is sure to screw everything up (again).

¹After a $100+ investment
²After a $500+ investment

Art

Our next stop on my three-state/five-city tour was Grand Rapids, to visit one of my cousins. I have a lot of cousins. Most of them are older than me, got married, and are now spawning children. The point being, we went to visit one of my cousins and her family. While in Grand Rapids, the plan for the day was to visit the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, so we got up nice and early and drove to the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

Neuron

We ended up spending most of the day there, because in the theme of doing things for arbitrary completion, we like to get our money’s worth at any kind of museum or attraction by seeing everything there is to see. Besides, you might not be going that way again for awhile. We started out with the giant horse (and the medium horse and the little horse) then made our way around the sculpture park. Here’s where I add the disclaimer that I’m not a huge art person. I appreciate art, and I like going to art museums, but I can only name a handful of artists and I’m not discussing the symbolism of the green fork in the bottom right corner of the painting unless someone pays me.

That said, I liked the sculpture park. There were enough sculptures that looked like things or were otherwise interesting, and the walking between sculptures was through nicely manicured areas with lots of trees. Highlights included a giant trowel, a tree, headless ostriches, and curly fries, among others. For the right price, my naming services may be available for any paintings, sculptures, artwork, or children you might produce.

Clockwise from top left: giant trowel, headless ostriches, tree, and curly fry

After admiring every sculpture possible, I was hungry, so we went to have lunch back in the main building. It was standard museum-style food – mainly sandwiches, some salads and soups – and it was good, but not spectacular. If I remember correctly, the prices were reasonable, if on the higher side. The meal area also has Chihuly pieces hanging from the ceiling. Chihuly had an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that I saw some years ago; he’s known for his often very large and colorful blown glass works. If you have a chance to see a Chihuly exhibit, take it.

Following lunch, we returned outside to the blazing hot sun to explore the Japanese Garden. The Japanese Garden is the newest part of the Gardens/Sculpture Park. You could tell from the lack of mature plants in some areas, but it has a nice lake surrounded by paths, bridges, and waterfalls. After sweating our way through the Japanese Garden, we swung by the farm and the children’s garden, walked through the shade garden, and finished up in the greenhouses.

Cactus

So all told, we spent a full day there, with a lunch break. You could certainly take less time if you walked faster or didn’t look at every block of steel and concrete. You could take more time if you wanted to discuss why each artist used a particular shade of orange or placed that piece of wood exactly three centimeters from that other piece of wood. For the price, it’s worth it even if you only spend a few hours there if you compare it to a movie ticket. If you don’t like paying for movie tickets, spend the whole day there and it’ll be worth it then.

Tom, Jackson, and Holden

Upon leaving Chicago, we drove back to Michigan via Indiana. Around lunchtime, we stopped to eat and to take a (not so) small detour. We had seen signs on the highway for the Indiana Dunes State Park and decided to stop and see some dunes since we were near Lake Michigan. We entered the park into the GPS and set off. Straight for the National Park Service park headquarters. We got directions to the park visitor center and set off again.

When we finally found the visitor center, I discovered the 3Dune Challenge. The 3Dune Challenge is to hike to the top of each of the three dunes in the park. It’s exactly the kind of semi-arbitrary accomplishment that appeals precisely to my semi-arbitrary personality. There’s no real reason why you should hike three dunes other than to say you hiked them all, but you do get something out of it – a hike, some nice views, a good story to tell afterwards. It’s like why I’ve been watching musicals for the past seven months and why I do things like hike twenty miles in a day for fun.

On the beach

It was hot, and we intended to walk the beach for awhile, maybe see a dune, but (when doing anything with me, there’s always a but) then we walked up the first dune. Since we were already up there, I voted to keep going and summit the other two dunes as well. Let me make it clear that I did not force anyone to do anything like keep hiking in sun/humidity, but we were already one third of the way to hiking all three dunes, so why not? Let it also never be said that I don’t give good answers for why I do things.

Back to the dunes. We hiked all three of them. I had just spent over three days in Chicago moving my brother’s apartment, watching him graduate, and eating while surrounded by concrete and diesel fumes. I needed some sweat, dirt, and handfuls of sand in my hiking shoes. Well, I didn’t really need the sand in my hiking shoes, but it was an unnegotiable add on to the 3Dune Challenge. Round trip, from the parking lot to the dunes back to the car, it took about an hour and a half without rushing. If that was my local state park, I would be back over there trying to see how fast I could do it, hiking multiple laps, summitting while carrying a twenty pound sack of potatoes, etc., because we’ve established those are the kinds of things I do for no reason other than I thought it would be a good idea.

There were more trails that we didn’t get to hike because we needed to be on our way to Michigan, but based on the parts we did see, it’s worth stopping by. If you have more time than we did, you might even be able to complete the challenge and lounge on the beach.

Proof that we made it to the top of all three dunes. And who what Tom, Jackson, and Holden are.

Chicago Not The Musical

When I arrive in Chicago and get picked up at the bus stop by my brother and father, the first order of business is not “have a nice dinner” or “relax at the hotel.” No, my first task is to load as much of my brother’s apartment as possible into our rented van. I spend the next two hours hauling books, clothes, and furniture down a flight and a half of stairs, because who needs elevators? After packing the van, my brother went out for dinner with his friends and I ate McDonald’s oatmeal after parking the van at a garage that cost more than a week’s worth of groceries. Finally, we walked over to the hotel where I settled in on my saggy sofa bed to watch Mexico beat Honduras 3-0 in World Cup qualifying.

The next day, my options are not “visit a museum” or “see a show” but inspect my brother’s new apartment and spend the rest of the day moving all his things into it. Except that wasn’t really an option because there was no “or.” The apartment was nice. It also cost a multiple of my yearly salary. Which wasn’t really a surprise.

Chicago River at night.  And buildings.

The following day is graduation. I again have no options for how to spend the day. I also accidentally delete my pictures from the previous three days before Convocation. And as an added bonus, my computer has been refusing to turn on. But the graduation ceremony is a reasonable length, the sun does not beat down on us like it’s the Sahara at noontime, and the clouds do not weep like they’ve just broken up with the love of their life. The speaker is a chemistry professor who gives a nice speech about learning. The most puzzling aspect is where they found all the bagpipers to lead the processional and recessional.

The University of Chicago has an additional afternoon ceremony where each student is recognized and given their diploma. Before that, they feed all the families lunch. It was an impressive feat, even if my lettuce was wilty. I did get a chocolate chip cookie though. The interesting part of the diploma ceremony is that the students are split up by the dorm they lived in during freshman year. Some of them haven’t seen each other in three years, but they graduate together. Cornell does the smaller ceremonies by major, which would seem to make more sense to me, but I’m not a graduation ceremony planner.

Afternoon graduation.  Note the absence of heat-induced mirages or small lakes of rainwater.

Anyway, we sat through the diploma ceremony. It was hot. Several students had their names severely mispronounced and one girl had the wrong major announced. After that, we wandered around campus for awhile then went out for dinner. Peking duck. (The night before was ramen and I had tempura udon; the night after was dim sum. So my brother knows his food places. I would later feed my parents handmade sandwiches crafted from only the finest grocery store ingredients.)

Sunday was our last day in Chicago; we visited my brother’s church and walked around a bit. At the end of the weekend, I did get to see a bit of Chicago, finally set foot on my brother’s campus, and eat some good food. So it was a worthwhile trip, even if I didn’t get to see any of the museums or spend much time in the parks (one of them had a climbing wall).

Finally, please note that this has been a post about Chicago without a picture of the bean (Cloud Gate – made of 168 steel plates and weighing 110 short tons, in case anyone else was wondering¹). That’s because I accidentally deleted my pictures of the bean.

¹Also under the category of things people might be wondering: because Cloud Gate is hollow, it weighs 99.5% less than a solid 10 m x 13 m x 20 m rectangular prism (dimensions found online) or 99.2% less than a cylinder with a diameter of 10 meters and a length of 20 meters (a rectangular prism overestimates the volume occupied by the bean). This assumes a stainless steel density of 8000 kg/m³.

Yet Another Travel Misadventure Story

In my latest adventure, I visited five cities in three states in ten days. My first stop was Chicago, Illinois, and to get there I took the bus, which sounds innocuous enough until we remember that this is me we’re talking about. One of my many talents is being plagued with every sort of travel delay possible, except not normal things like refueling or flat tires. No, I find myself waiting at the bus stop or stuck on the tarmac for things like losing the deicer coin flip and stopping to look at a snake.

This time, my journey began at the bus stop. I decided to take the Ann Arbor bus system (AATA) instead of the U of M buses so I could get off at the transit center and directly transfer to my next bus instead of having to walk with my bags from another stop. I even checked to make sure I had more than one minute to transfer. A couple minutes after I arrived at the bus stop, I saw a bus pass by on the opposite site of the road. Well, I thought, worst case scenario is that I have to wait for that bus to loop around the end of the route and come back to pick me up. A few minutes later, I went to the AATA website to track my bus. The site said the next bus was coming in less than ten minutes.

For the next ten minutes, the site kept telling me that the next bus was arriving in ten minutes. Finally, I stopped checking for a few minutes and watched to see if the bus was coming at its scheduled time after all. Sometimes the site is wrong. The next time I checked, the next arriving bus was updated to the bus scheduled after the bus I was waiting for. The bus I saw on the other side of the road had disappeared from the tracking site. I spent the next twenty minutes waiting for the bus, but I wasn’t that concerned. Yet. When the bus eventually arrived, the driver careened through the streets of Ann Arbor trying to make up a half hour delay on a ten minute ride.

I got off at one end of the transit center and walked over to the other side to catch my transfer. The bus was already there, but the driver wasn’t. As I was standing there waiting for the driver to arrive, I realized that my rain jacket, which I had slung over my messenger bag, was gone. I retraced my steps hauling my backpack, a messenger bag, and a sleeping bag, unsure if I left the jacket on the bus or it slipped off while I was walking around the transit center. When I rounded the corner around the building, I could see my jacket waving in the wind. The driver had helpfully hung it on a post. I went and grabbed my jacket, double knotted it to the strap of my bag, and circled back around the building. Thirty seconds later, the bus driver showed up, let everyone onto the bus, and drove off.

The last time I took a bus to this area of Ann Arbor, I missed my stop. This time, I watched every stop closely and got off at the correct stop. My next task was to find the pickup point for the bus to Chicago. The email said that we were boarding at parking lot pylon fifteen. I gazed over the vast expanse of the parking lot and located the nearest pylon. In large, clear numerals, it said fifty-eight. In disbelief that I could be forty-three pylons away from the bus, I peered into the distance and saw pylon six. I figured that had to be nearer than fifty-eight, so I started dragging all my things in that direction. As I approached pylon fifteen, I saw no sign of the bus, but there were other people waiting with luggage, so at least I hadn’t missed the bus.

It showed up on time; I lugged all my things on and spent the next four and a half hours in transit to Chicago. We arrived at the precise minute listed on our tickets.

Chicago River and buildings

The Sound of (More) Music

The next batch of musicals. Including two more live musicals (because they’re already filmed, and so end up on DVD), two classic-ish (depends on your definition) musicals, and three Disney-related musicals.

Into the Woods (2014 movie) – The plot mashes elements of “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Rapunzel” with the story of a baker and his wife trying to have a child. I realized halfway through that I had previously seen Into the Woods Jr., which cuts the entire second act, so there were still a lot of things about to happen. It was a bit dark, but I was pleasantly surprised by the cast. I did not know James Corden could sing, though I guess he does host carpool karaoke. . . . The princes were wonderfully dense (see “Agony”). Also, Meryl Streep as the witch was pretty fabulous.
Notable songs: “Prologue: Into the Woods,” “Giants in the Sky,” “Agony”

Peter Pan Live! (2014 live TV production) – This was based on a musical adaptation of Peter and Wendy, J. M. Barrie’s play. I haven’t seen the Disney movie in years, but I remember it being at least somewhat decent. That said, Peter and Wendy did not make a great musical. Most of the songs, excepting the pirate features, were forgettable or not that exciting musically or lyrically. At least the choreography in the pirate songs was fun to watch. Neverland was very Technicolor. I don’t think I would have gone quite so cotton-candy-colored, but that’s a production choice. Also on the production side, the commercial cuts were terrible. The scenes would cut out while the orchestra was still holding their last note. That’s not how cutoffs work.
Notable songs: “I Won’t Grow Up,” maybe?

Mary Poppins (1964 movie) – Another Disney movie I hadn’t seen in years, and I was surprised by how good it still is. The scene inside the chalk drawing is still my favorite.
Notable songs: “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,”
“Chim Chim Cher-ee”

The Music Man (1962 movie) – I’ve seen either the Jr. or full version of this performed live, so I knew the basic story – Harold Hill sells marching band instruments and uniforms to towns, collects the money, and flees before everyone realizes he knows nothing about teaching music, except this time he falls in love. Robert Preston is great as Hill and Winthrop is child Ron Howard. If you’ve ever wanted to see Ron Howard as an 8-year-old singing, this is your chance. I didn’t realize the number of songs I was familiar with, but it was almost half the musical numbers.
Notable songs: “Rock Island,”¹ “Seventy-six Trombones,” “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little,” “Gary, Indiana,” “The Wells Fargo Wagon,” “Shipoopi,” “Till There Was You”

The Wiz Live! (2015 live TV production) – Like Peter Pan, this is another musical where I just don’t like the musical itself. The Wiz is a soul/R&B reworking of The Wizard of Oz, and it’s well done and produced, but I remain partial to the 1939 movie.
Notable songs: “Ease on Down the Road”

More of a split decision this time. Into the Woods was unexpectedly well done, while Peter Pan and The Wiz aren’t must sees, in my opinion, and Mary Poppins and The Music Man are two standards from the golden age of musicals.

¹This is a very clever song. It uses the natural sounds and rhythms of the words to suggest the motion of a train even as the actors remain stationary (in the stage production). “Comedy Tonight” in Forum (see previous musical post) does a similar thing where Sondheim decreases the number of syllables in a series of rhyming words to speed up the feel of the song without increasing the tempo. These observations courtesy of The Secret Life of the American Musical by Jack Viertel.

Roses are Red

Peonies are too

I actually go places
Who wants a gallon of glue?

Obviously I should quit my day job and become a poet. No, I really shouldn’t. But my point is that I do, on occasion, go places and do things worthy of being written about. I do also have a bunch of musicals to review, but last month I left my apartment to go on an excursion to see the peonies. Apparently peony breeding is A Thing that is a Big Deal to some people, and the University of Michigan arboretum has a very large collection of peony breeds, so one evening after work I biked over to see what all the fuss was about.

Some of the peony beds + people

It turns out I timed my trip correctly because the online peony tracker later told me I was there during maximum bloom. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it was rather pretty. There was a small crowd of people meandering amongst the peony beds, and I joined them for a few laps around the garden. After a bit of this, I decided to wander around the rest of the arboretum. It’s not huge, but there’s enough space that you can find some pretty quiet areas away from the hospital complex/railway tracks/river filled with tubers/kayakers paddling being carried down the river by the current.

I found a nice wooded spot (Heathdale) filled with ericaceous and Appalachian plants. Ericaceous plants dislike alkaline (basic) soil and prefer acidic soil and include rhododendrons, heather, and northern highbush blueberry. Note that I did not pay attention to any of that information while I was actually there; I looked it up on Wikipedia as I was writing this post. I also walked out to the edge of the prairie but I was ready for dinner at that point so I walked there, looked at it for a minute, and walked back to my bike. It was flat and grassy and I suppose prairie-like.

More peonies

In contrast to the arboretum at Cornell, Michigan provides bike racks at each of the entrances. Parking, however, can be a challenge. I’ve written about this before, but the arboretum at Cornell (Newman Arboretum) has exactly zero bike racks and over a dozen parking lots. The parking lots are scattered throughout Newman Arboretum so you can drive through it; you can’t drive (or bike) through Nichols Arboretum at Michigan and have to find parking in the surrounding streets. In terms of size, according to the internet, Nichols Arboretum is actually larger than Newman Arboretum, but it doesn’t feel that way. The Nichols Arboretum is hemmed in by the U of M hospital on one side and the river/railroad tracks on the other. Newman Arboretum is surrounded by hundreds more acres of natural areas, including the land the Cayuga Trail passes through. Minus the lack of proper bike racks, I still prefer the Cornell arboretum, though the peonies were very nice.

The Sound of Music

You may have noticed that a lot of my post titles come from songs [see: every post I wrote about summer 2016 (posted in January 2017)]. You can thank band for that. I’m beginning to reach the point in my musical career¹ where I have a song for most occasions². In that line of thought, I’ve been watching a number of musicals. The branch of the Ann Arbor public library system I go to sorts their DVD selection by genre (action, comedy, etc.) and musicals have their own section, so I’ve been working my way through some of the more well-known musicals, including the following:

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966 movie with Zero Mostel reprising his stage role) – Forum is one of those works where everyone spends their entire time running around trying to trick everyone else. Several identities get stolen, there are numerous love polygons, and it’s absurd overall. It’s a fun watch.
Notable songs³: “Comedy Tonight”

Hairspray (2007 movie) – A movie adapted from a Broadway show (2002) adapted from a movie (1988). Based on three minutes of research on Wikipedia, it looks like the 2007 movie and the Broadway show are pretty similar while the original movie has the same plot but a lot of details were changed for the later musical and movie. Hairspray follows Tracy Turnblad’s journey to stardom as an overweight dancer on The Corny Collins Show and her efforts to desegregate the show. The score contains a number of upbeat 60s dance tunes with a bit of a Broadway ballad feel at times. Some of the songs could have been more varied in style and dragged on a little, but overall I liked the movie. And in keeping with tradition, John Travolta plays Edna Turnblad, Tracy’s mother.
Notable songs: “Good Morning Baltimore,” “You Can’t Stop the Beat”

Company (2011 staged reading with the New York Philharmonic) – Company is a series of scenes about the perpetually single Robert and his married friends as they have dinner, fight, get married, and live their lives. This filming used minimal props/set/costumes and the orchestra was actually seated at the back of the stage rather than in a hole in the ground. It worked, and keeping the set simple focused attention on the lines instead of flashing lights or smoke machines.
Notable songs: “Another Hundred People,” “Being Alive”

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967 movie) – In the “see how many people you can scam” style of Forum, J. Pierpont Finch scams his way into jobs at the Worldwide Wicket Corporation. If you know that guy in group projects who does nothing but answers all questions after the presentation with “we,” that’s Finch. Worth a watch for its (satirical) take on climbing the corporate ladder.
Notable songs: Nothing very memorable, but “Grand Old Ivy” is amusing

Grease Live! (2016 live TV production) – This was an interesting production. The opening and closing numbers were purposely done on the soundstage set, with clearly visible supports and the cast riding around in backstage vehicles. The rest of the musical was contained in single scenes that looked like elaborate stages. It was all fine except for the race, which looked like two grown men pretending to drive stationary cars like kids ride carousel horses. I wish they’d found a way to make it look more convincing, but they tried. They also added a song for Frenchy (Carly Rae Jepsen) so she could show off her singing ability, but the style wasn’t quite right. In addition, the actor playing Danny Zuko, Aaron Tveit (who went to Ithaca College), looked too old. My personal policy is that actors playing high school characters can look like they’re in college, but not any older than that. And finally, Grease commits the offense of two characters singing a duet in perfect harmony . . . from two completely different locations (I’m looking at you, “Summer Nights”). Other than that, Grease is a classic. I’ll be looking for the 1978 movie starring John Travolta as Danny Zuko; fun fact: Aaron Tveit was in Hairspray on Broadway. However, he was not Edna Turnblad. He was cast as Link Larkin.
Notable songs: A bunch – “Summer Nights,” “Greased Lightnin’,” “Beauty School Dropout,” “Born to Hand Jive,” “You’re the One That I Want,” “We Go Together”

I’d say all of the above musicals are worth watching. Grease Live! was a little unconventional and if you don’t like watching musicals filmed on stage, skip Company, but otherwise there are a lot of good lyrics and songs and some fun acting. The next set of musicals is still to come.

¹Not actually a career
²Road trip? “On the Road Again.” Long walk? “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).” Just set your pet budgerigar loose? “Free Bird.” Missing hairbrush? “The Hairbrush Song.”
³Notable to me, in that I remember them or they’re known in pop culture.

Hezekiah’s Next Big Adventure

Hezekiah and I have been through a lot together. Band rehearsals three or four times a week for most of middle school and high school. Clarinet lessons. Concerts. Music festivals. Four years of pep band, including: the time it snowed at lacrosse, the time I chipped my mouthpiece by dropping my clarinet at Lynah, the time it poured at sprint football, and the other time it poured at baseball. We’ve rattled around in buses, bumped along on my bike, been carted around in cars, soared on a plane, and made the move from New England to Ithaca to Ann Arbor. Our latest venture: the Ann Arbor Concert Band.

The week I moved into my apartment, Hezekiah, Cyrille, and I set off to conquer the Ann Arbor bus system. Earlier that day, I had gone to get my MCard made, so we rode for free, courtesy of the University of Michigan. With the help of Google maps and my phone, I found the site where auditions were being held. A couple of weeks later, I found myself at my first concert band rehearsal in over four years. Over the next two hours, we sight read Vaughn Williams, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and the now infamous Menotti. Sight reading is not one of my best musical skills. It was a long two hours.

As a perennial stalwart of the third clarinet section, my talents lean more toward things not involving high notes or fast rhythms, or horror of horrors, high notes and fast rhythms. Polka bass line with the tubas? You got it. Obscure part written only into the third clarinet and second trumpet? Sure thing. Counting 78 measures of the same note? No problem.

Why do I mention these things? Because I spent the year back in the third clarinet section. I alternated between the third and first clarinet parts in high school, played second clarinet in pep band, and am now reprising my role in the wonderful world of the third clarinet, with occasional forays into the fourth clarinet part. It’s been a great experience so far. When I decided to go to grad school, I knew that I didn’t want to be shut up in my office all the time. The purpose of grad school is to be doing research, but I’ve met grad students from Cornell who weren’t sure where the Dairy Bar was. It’s the Dairy Bar. There’s ice cream there. Ice cream. Cold, delicious, creamy ice cream in all sorts of flavors you never knew you wanted to try. And also cheese curds.

That’s one of the reasons I joined a community band – to get off campus and be a part of the community I’ll be living in for the next few years. A couple weeks ago, I played my fourth concert with the AACB, the last concert of this season before our summer break. There was a lot of fun music. “Slava!” by Leonard Bernstein – the wind ensemble at my high school played it one year, a piece by Grainger – I played a different piece by him that involved singing my second year at district band, “Hungarian Rondo” by Carl Maria von Weber – I butchered the first movement of his clarinet concerto in F minor at all state auditions my senior year of high school. It was a good concert. Signing off now; I should go practice my long tones and syncopation.

Since I’ve Been Gone

Life in academia-land has gone on mostly as usual in the past month and a half. My last two days of classes required me to complete two presentations (polymers and transport), two reports (kinetics and polymers), and a problem set (transport), but I did it without losing too much sleep. The transport final passed without excessive trouble, then I spent the next month preparing for the candidacy exam. Spoiler alert: I passed, earning myself the right to spend four more years at the University of Michigan working toward my PhD.

In the meantime, there was also:
World Penguin Day (April 25)
National Star Wars Day (May the Fourth)
National Eat What You Want Day (May 11, but basically every day for me)
Mother’s Day (May 14) (Happy Mother’s Day. Better late than never?)
National Bike to Work Day (May 19)
Towel Day (May 25)

On the research front, the main news is that I passed the candidacy exam. I’ve also read more about CTAB, CTAC, CAPB, SLES, SANS, SDS, DPD, MD, the CMC, and related topics than I ever wanted to.

Since the weather’s gotten mostly nice, I’ve been biking to work, as well as to band, the grocery store, and the library (with stops at the farmers market). I’m at 84.5 miles for the year, and I’ve ridden at least once in every month of the year so far. It’s not a huge amount of mileage, but that’s 84.5 miles of not driving, not that I have a car. Also, I’m really good at just barely missing buses, so I’d rather bike than set up camp at the bus stop for an hour. Because if I left to go somewhere else, I’d get back to the bus stop just in time to see the next bus pulling away. Because that’s how my life works.

Ann Arbor Farmers Market

I had my last concert of the season with the Ann Arbor Concert Band. The concert included a march (“Paladin”), a slow piece (“Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon”), a trumpet feature (“The Three Trumpeters”), a trombone feature (“Shoutin’ Liza Trombone”), a bassoon feature (second movement of “Hungarian Rondo,” with the soloist being the winner of the AACB Young Artist competition), a whole band feature (“The Band Played On,” narrated by the mayor of Ann Arbor), and “Slava!” The first time I heard “Slava!” I was in ninth or tenth grade, and the wind ensemble played it before I was in wind ensemble. It’s a fun piece; the whole concert was a fun way to end the season.

I also baked a batch of snickerdoodles to use up eggs and butter, completed a jigsaw puzzle of the space shuttle launching, watched several movies (still working through the library's musical selection), read half a dozen books (nothing that great), cooked, cleaned, ate, slept, and did all the other necessary grad school-y things.

PS: The title is a play on the song “Since U Been Gone” which was in Pitch Perfect which was one of the movies I saw since I last posted.

Things That Annoy Me

I complain about a lot of things (for example, anything related to ChemE) but most of the time I do it because I like complaining. It’s a great conversation topic. After current state of being and weather, you complain about all. the. things. There are, however, some things that legitimately drive me just a little bit crazy. And yes, I’m sure I have habits that some people find horribly irritating too. This list will probably annoy someone.

1) Crossing the street wherever and whenever. I walk dozens of miles every month. To class, to and from the bus stop, to the grocery store, just because I feel like it. And I know what it’s like to be late to class and need to save twenty seconds by not walking to the crosswalk at the intersection. But running across the street is very different from strolling across the street. Without looking for cars first. While staring down at your phone.

2) Biking. Specifically, trying to bike anywhere that’s not a quiet, peaceful suburb or specifically marked in neon yellow paint every thirty feet as a bike lane or path. Ann Arbor calls itself a “bike friendly” city, yet the cars still freak out at bikes on the road, pedestrians freak out at bikes on the sidewalk, and half the bike lanes spit you out into traffic.¹ Don’t even get me started on making left turns in traffic.

3) People who are late to everything. I’m okay with people being 5-10 minutes late, even consistently, because I know it’s easy to go from “plenty of time to get there” to “running out the door about to miss the bus” just in the time it takes to put your shoes and jacket on and not forget your keys. I’m also okay with one-time “missed the bus” or “slept through the alarm” events. I’m not okay with consistently being over fifteen minutes late for reasons like “decided to paint my nails” or “thought I could walk a mile in five minutes.” We learned in band in middle school that early is on time, and on time is late. Words to live by.

4) Using “I’m lazy” as an excuse for not doing things.

5) Using “I’m lazy” as an excuse for doing things.

6) When air conditioning is set at sub-Arctic temperatures. I should not have to put my jacket on to go inside during the summer.

7) Celery in chicken salad. Raw celery is an abomination to food everywhere. Cooked celery is barely acceptable when boiled to a tasteless mush in soups.

8) Tight pants. Putting on pants should not take extra time to heave them over my calves and thighs. Wearing pants should not restrict my ability to bend my knee.

9) The dishwasher placement in my last apartment. Opening the dishwasher blocked the stove, the microwave, and three quarters of the available counter space. It was also as far away as possible from the sink, so whenever we put washed dishes into the dishwasher drying rack to dry, we dripped water all over the kitchen floor. And yes, we were all Asian.

10) The fact that if you go to the Arboretum, run by the Cornell Plantations, which supports the outdoors and nature and people enjoying the outdoors and nature, you will pass no less than thirteen parking lots but exactly zero bike racks. Apparently the lesson to be learned is only enjoy nature if you can drive to it.

There’s also short shorts, the decibel level in movie theaters, instant gratification, wet socks, people automatically assuming I’m right handed, and much more, but I’ll leave it at this for now.

¹It’s not entirely cars’ or pedestrians’ fault. I’ve seen bikers not wearing helmets, weaving in and out of traffic, breezing through stop signs, and going the wrong way on one way streets.

Ann Arbor News

New ID card. Yellow instead of blue. Still gets me into the ChemE building at all hours and onto buses any time, not just weekends and after 6 pm on weekdays.

New basement lounge. Different: no couches, lockers, or fridge. Same: windowless, full of ChemEs and hints of despair, confusion, and lost dreams.

New desk in a shared cubicle. Cubicles = maximum grad student packing in minimum space. Office accessed by basement but has a ground level window next to me. Can’t find a power outlet along my wall of the cubicle, but there is an ethernet cable for the ethernet port my laptop doesn’t have.

Olin Hall (Cornell)

New ChemE building. Two of them, actually. One old, classic engineering building cinder-block and tile construction. Stairs could use polishing, and maybe some fake wood panelling. One new, shiny and glassy with its very own cafeteria.

The North Campus Research Complex (NCRC) (Michigan)

New standard issue dorm furniture. Still using under the bed as prime storage space. Still cooking everything in one pot and one frying pan. Still don’t own an umbrella.

New band. Went from concert band to pep band and back to concert band. A return to tuning, dynamics besides triple forte, time signatures involving sevens and nines, key signatures with more than two sharps or flats. The sixteenth note runs remain. Getting reacquainted with old pieces and composers. Also miss Cornell sports.

New church. Found one. Has fed and driven me more than I deserve.

McGraw Tower (and Uris Library) at Cornell

New clock tower. With carillon, not chimes. Sounds the quarter hour differently. Rarely plays anything recognizable. Also no Jennie McGraw Rag, Alma Mater, or “O Christmas Tree” Evening Song.

Lurie Tower (and engineering quad) at Michigan

New grocery store. Wegmans is better. But Kroger has a free item every Friday.

No new hat yet.

Star Wars: One New Rogue Force Awakens

In keeping with our Christmas break movie tradition, my family saw The Force Awakens and Rogue One the past two years when my brother and I went home for vacation. I’m somewhere between a casual and hardcore Star Wars fan – I’ve seen the Anakin sand quote¹ make its rounds on the internet, heard the Jar Jar Binks Sith theory, and know about some of the more . . . interesting CGI effects George Lucas keeps adding every time he digitally remasters the series, but I can’t name every character in the cantina scene or recite the soundtrack listing from memory. That said, I liked both movies.

Spoilers from this point forward.

The main complaint I heard about The Force Awakens is that it was A New Hope with different characters. I think Rogue One makes that less of a problem – the trilogy movies can all follow parallel structure and/or ring theory² while the stand-alone movies are new Star Wars stories. The one thing that was a little much was the destruction of the third Death Star, I mean Starkiller Base. Seriously, the Death Star was already blown up twice; have they not learned their lesson about fatal engineering design flaws?

Apparently not, but other than that, my criticisms are mainly the Millenium Falcon coincidentally rusting on the same planet Finn and Poe coincidentally crash land on where Rey coincidentally is, and the lightsaber battle. Rey has never touched a lightsaber before but somehow manages to hold off Kylo Ren, allegedly one of the strongest force users in the galaxy. No matter how strong Rey is in the force, I feel like inexpertly waving a glowing laser stick around should have resulted in someone losing a limb. Finally, I don’t care that BB-8 couldn’t actually move an inch in the desert sand because he’s kind of adorable. Apparently I like small round things that make chirping sounds (Star Wars droids and penguins).

While the plot was a little stale (though executed well), the rest of the movie was good – the visuals, music, cast, BB-8. I like that the main cast wasn’t big name actors, and there’s a female (co?) lead³.

Moving on to Rogue One. Finally, a new plot. With male and female actors who don’t fall in love with each other at first sight, realize halfway through the movie that they’re secretly in love with each other, or have a sordid love affair just for the heck of it. I read a spoiler-free review of Rogue One that said it was overall a dark movie, heavy on the war part of Star Wars. Other people said they didn’t connect with the characters or care much about any of them. My take on these points: it’s definitely a violent movie, particularly the last third, but it’s not gory. And it is dark, but it has to be because it’s leading into A New Hope. As for the characters, there were a couple of the less-main characters that were kind of just hanging around, though they were important for the final battle scenes. I will say that as a group, Cassian, Jyn, K-2SO, Bodhi, Chirrut, and Baze worked well together even if I didn’t care as much about some of them. Also, K-2SO sounds too much like potassium sulfate (K₂SO₄).

One note about the soundtrack. It’s not scored by John Williams, but by Michael Giacchino, who also composed the music for Zootopia, Inside Out, Star Trek, and a bunch of other popular movies. I didn’t find the soundtrack extremely remarkable, but it was well done. Giacchino used themes from Williams’s original music, including the perfect fifth that opens the iconic Star Wars theme, except then he composes a different melody for it. It’s painfully brilliant, because you want to hear the Star Wars theme, except Rogue One isn’t in any of the trilogies, so it has its own themes.⁴

I’ll end with a couple of my favorite scenes from Rogue One. First, the scene where Cassian and company are stealing a ship to steal the Death Star plans and are asked what their call sign is. That’s when Bodhi Rook replies with “This is Rogue One,” and when the group is really, truly, in it together. And second, the moment you realize that the Rogue One characters aren’t in A New Hope. Instead, they’re on a planet with seven million Stormtroopers shooting at the rebels in general, a desperate weapons developer shooting at Jyn and Cassian, and, oh yeah, a giant superlaser beam aimed at them. Painful, yes, but if you can achieve that moment in the middle of an epic battle scene, that is good storytelling.

¹”I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.” This line probably gets more flack than it deserves, but it’s a pretty bad line, and even worse used completely out of context.

²Ring theory says that the story comes back to its beginning at the end. For the first six Star Wars movies, this would mean that A New Hope (episode IV) and Revenge of the Sith (III), The Empire Strikes Back (V) and Attack of the Clones (II), and Return of the Jedi (VI) and The Phantom Menace (I) parallel each other.

³Just as long as they don’t force it to the point where it looks like a college brochure, as in one smiling student of each race/gender artfully placed on a lush green quad with bright blue skies and ivied stone buildings in the background. Because that totally happens all the time, especially when you go to college in the northeast and your quad is buried in snow over half the time classes are in session.

⁴You can hear the part (two notes) I’m talking about at the end of “A Long Ride Ahead,” the middle of “Rebellions Are Built on Hope,” and the middle of “The Master Switch.”

Eating Ann Arbor, Part 2

Here are the rest of my Ann Arbor restaurant ratings (part 1 is here and includes my rating system):

8. No Thai (Thai) – I overheard a very heated conversation about this place last semester. The consensus was that the food is Not Thai. It’s not. When I went with my parents, we ordered pad thai and green curry. I’m not sure what we actually got, but there was a lot of it, and it was edible.
Rating: 1.5/5

9. Palio (Tuscan – Italian) – I paid this restaurant a visit with some ChemE friends during Restaurant Week when they were doing two meals for $28. For $14, we got an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert to share. The tomato soup I started with was good, but nothing too special. For the entree, I ordered the veal tortellini, which I really liked. There were mushrooms, I ate all the mushrooms, and I don’t even like mushrooms. Then dessert was Nutella bread pudding. Nutella. Enough said.
Rating: 4/5 (This was the most satisfying meal I had all month. Meat that wasn’t dry chicken, dessert, free bread, and special pricing.)

10. Panera (American) – I am aware that Panera is a chain restaurant found across the United States. I like Panera. They make good sandwiches.

11. The Lunch Room (American – vegan) – Did not pick this place. Did not realize it was vegan until after lunch even though the cream cheese in my bagel tasted nothing like cream cheese because it was cashew cheese. I also accidentally ate blue cheese once, so that should give you some idea of how my brain reacts to my taste buds. As long as you don’t expect the vegan substitutes to taste like their animal counterparts or insist on meat at every meal, you’ll be fine at The Lunch Room. I’ve heard their desserts are really good though I haven’t personally tried any.
Rating: 3/5

12. Tomukun Korean BBQ (Korean) – Ate here after the Ford Museum. I don’t know if it’s completely authentic, but I liked it. They have a variety of soups, noodles, stir fries, and hot pot, as well as bbq. If I remember right, we ordered an appetizer, an entree, and one order of bbq.
Rating: 3.5/5

13. Tomukun Noodle Bar (noodles) – Ramen is pretty good, though the noodles and ingredients come swimming in a sea of broth that’s on the salty side. It’s also a bit lacking in meat and vegetables. I’ve had better ramen back home in New England. I’d go here for an easy meal but would otherwise try another place since there are so many restaurants nearby.
Rating: 3/5

14. Zingerman’s (American) – On one hand, they make really good sandwiches. On the other, they’re just sandwiches. That cost as much as a fancy meal at other places. Zingerman’s is Ann Arbor’s famous restaurant, and they do sandwiches and everything else really well, it just feels overpriced because I can make a peanut butter and jam sandwich¹ for less than a dollar and be only slightly less satisfied.
Rating: 4/5 (food), 3/5 (value – still worth going to so you can say you’ve been to Zingerman’s, but some of their sandwiches cost more than half of my weekly grocery bill)

Overall, excepting whatever was going on at No Thai, I haven’t paid² for a bad meal in Ann Arbor. I’m not super picky about authenticity, except if I’m trying to get closer-to-actual Chinese food³. I also don’t eat out that much so I don’t mind paying a little more for my meals occasionally ($15-$20 – I'm a single grad student with no car on a stipend, so money's not tight, but I'm not running around throwing $20 bills around like confetti either). So far, I’ve been happy with the variety and quality of restaurants in Ann Arbor. The only things missing are Dunkin Donuts and a waffle place, then I would be completely satisfied⁴.

¹With good ingredients, by which I mean not the super economy sized jar of hydrogenated fat peanut butter, high fructose corn syrup jam, or low volume fraction white bread.

²We had these research ethics seminars last semester and one of the times they gave us pizza, it was pretty lousy pizza.

³Pro tips: Cheese is not a traditional ingredient in Chinese cooking. Throwing bean sprouts (or water chestnuts, or bamboo shoots) over eveything doesn’t make it Chinese. And spaghetti is not noodles unless you’re a desperate college student.

⁴With my eating-out food options. I still have plenty else to complain about, because I’m a chemical engineer.

Eating Ann Arbor, Part 1

Without a meal plan for the first time in four years, most weeks I fend for myself for twenty out of twenty-one meals. Meal number twenty-one is usually a shared meal after church. About once every other week, though, I’ve eaten out at one of the numerous restaurants in Ann Arbor. Similar to Ithaca, you can get a wide variety of cuisines in Ann Arbor, ranging in quality from late night drunk food to unaffordable on my stipend. The following is my rating¹ for every restaurant I’ve eaten at so far. Keep in mind that I’ll eat almost anything, I’ve probably had a sandwich for lunch for about 170 of my 180 days in Ann Arbor so far, and I don’t mind eating the same thing for dinner for a week straight.­ I also tend to rate everything starting at a 3 and move up or down as necessary.

1. Bewon (Korean) – After (yet another) homework session, a couple friends and I went out for dinner to celebrate Chinese New Year. I had the bibimbap, which was served with warm (purple) rice and mostly cold vegetables, including cucumber, bean sprouts, carrots, and spinach. The overall portion was large, but it was a little short on meat (beef) and it got cold by the time I finished. Still, it was good, and the rating gets increased a bit because they served us a variety of sides and tea that had taste.
Rating: 3.5/5

2. Cardamom (Indian) – For whatever reason, Ithaca has at least three Indian buffet places, two of them next to each other, and I’ve eaten at all three. At Cardamom, there wasn’t a buffet, but I enjoyed my meal there nonetheless. It’s pretty standard Indian food. They do have a naan that’s filled with nuts and other things that was really good.
Rating: 3.5/5

3. Evergreen (Chinese) – I’ve been to this restaurant twice. The first time we went for a quick meal and ordered off the lunch special menu, which was like every other Chinese lunch special menu ever.² The second time I went with a larger group of people and we ordered family style. Surprisingly, the food was not drowning in sauce, salt, or oil, and we left satisfied with the quality, quantity, and cost of the food. They also have the honor of making the first eggplant dish that I’ve liked.
Rating: 3/5 (lunch special menu), 4/5 (traditional menu)

4. Frita Batidos (Cuban) – Be forewarned this is not where you go if you want a light meal. That said, the frita part of the name comes from Cuban-inspired burgers made from chorizo. The batido is a milkshake . . . and you can add rum to it. So we did. We had a passion fruit milkshake with rum, then for dessert we got churros. It’s something different from standard pasta/burgers/sandwiches, and worth trying at least once. (By the way, Google Translate tells me the name together means “fried batter.” Like I said, not light fare.)
Rating: 4/5 (because alcoholic milkshakes and churros)

5. Kang’s (Korean) – Basic Korean restaurant, decent food. I ordered the spicy beef and it could have come with more vegetables, but otherwise the taste was fine. This is probably the only place on this half of the list I wouldn’t go to if I wanted a nicer dinner, and it’s starting to push the top of my price range for lunch, but it’s another option for Asian food.
Rating: 2.5/5

6. Madras Marsala (Indian) – Another Indian restaurant. I had the chicken biryani, which I might have ordered a little spicier than I should have. I know authentic biryani involves over a dozen spices (meanwhile, the entirety of my spice rack (okay, it’s a box) in my apartment is eight spices, and that number includes salt and pepper), but it turned out over-flavored. It would have been okay if I’d been eating it with other dishes, but by itself it was a bit much.
Rating: 3/5

7. Neopapalis (pizza) – Average pizza place with the option to choose your own toppings or order pre-set pizzas. The pizza we ordered was a bit oily but tasty. (Cornell dining makes surprisingly good pizza, precisely because it tends to be on the drier side, though they sometimes solve their “crap, these vegetables need to be used up” problems with the pizzas. And giant bins of shredded carrots in the salad bar. And carrot cake, heavy on the carrots.)
Rating: 3/5

¹My ratings can be described as follows:
0 – Don’t eat here unless someone pays you a significant fraction of your annual income.
1 – If it was free, it would still be a toss up whether I ate it or not.
2 – Food is edible, but I wouldn’t choose to eat here if there were better options.
3 – Solid choice, would voluntarily go back.
4 – Very good food, would definitely recommend to other people.
5 – Best meal of any given month.

²My cooking goal is to be able to make subpar knock-off versions of any dish you’d find on a Chinese lunch special menu. So far I’ve made orange chicken, teriyaki chicken with pineapple, General Tso’s chicken, kung pao chicken, and beef and broccoli. And also tacos, but those aren’t Chinese unless you add soy sauce. I basically make the same sauce base for every single one of these dishes and add one or two different ingredients.

The Wright Brothers’ Flying House

File this one under things you can do when you’re rich: buy famous people’s houses, dismantle them, and cart them off to Dearborn, Michigan, to be reassembled as part of an outdoor museum full of famous people’s houses, which is complemented by an indoor museum full of planes, trains, and automobiles. This is, of course, exactly what Henry Ford did with some of his prodigious wealth, opening what is now known as the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village. I visited with my family during the week I moved to Ann Arbor with my carload of books and dishes, Hezekiah, and my bike.

We started outside with Greenfield Village and saw a sawmill, weaving, a printing shop, a tinsmith, and a pottery shop. At the tin shop, we saw a cookie cutter being made, at the weaving shop there were workers operating the hand looms, and at the printer’s, there was the opportunity to operate the printing press. This part was similar to Sturbridge Village or Plimoth Plantation, both perennial field trip destinations for New England schoolchildren. Next, we moved to the Main Street area, which contains the majority of the transported buildings. Here we saw a millinery, a jewelry store, the Wright brothers’ workshop and house, and the post office, among other anachronistically placed structures. You can send actual postcards from the post office that have their own special postmark.

One of the mills

Later in the day, we ended our evening back in Greenfield Village walking through various homes. Regretfully, we didn’t have enough time to spend time admiring every building, but it was a unique experience. I mean, how else would you ever be able to walk from Thomas Edison’s grandparents’ house to the courthouse where Lincoln once tried cases in fifteen minutes? Overall, I found that the historical presenters were willing and happy to answer any questions, which was a welcome change from art museum docents/security whose main job seems to be yelling at people for using flash photography/taking any pictures at all/getting too near to the art/scaring the paintings by breathing too loudly.

We spent the middle part of the day indoors in the Henry Ford Museum looking at dozens of cars, trains, and any other thing Henry Ford thought would be cool to put in a museum. Highlights include a snowplow train, an(other) entire house, the bus Rosa Parks rode, and a tomato harvester. The house is the Dymaxion house, designed by R. Buckminster Fuller as a cost-effective house of the future. He designed the house to be easily transported and assembled and to be resource-efficient, but the idea never caught on. Fuller has ties to another museum I’ve been to – the Biosphere in Montreal. The building is surrounded by a geodesic dome of which Fuller was the architect. Inside, the museum focuses on the environment, and if they haven’t changed it too much since I went, it’s worth a visit.

A neon Holiday Inn sign.  Because why wouldn't you think
"I should buy this," when you see one?

Two more things you can do at the museum: eat and watch films. We had lunch at the café inside the museum. The prices are pretty reasonable, especially for museum food. It’s not cheap, but the portions are decent and the food’s good. Lastly, they show documentary-type films throughout the day. We saw one on national parks, which we mainly just watched to see scenic shots of nature, and one on transportation, focusing on planes. There were some interesting points in that one, about globalization, and just how quickly things can move now. That movie was the last thing we did at the museum; we returned to Ann Arbor after that for dinner. It was a very long, full, and varied day that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I would highly recommend the Ford Museum.

To conclude, if you’re ever in the southeastern corner of Michigan, pay the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village a visit. You can easily spend a couple days wandering around, because you really can’t go wrong when the theme of the museum is “cool stuff Henry Ford decided he should buy and haul to Dearborn.”

Five More Years at Forty-Two Degrees North

Better title: Hopefully Five More Years at Forty-Two Degrees North, because less than five years means I got kicked out of my program, and more than five years means I still don’t have my degree. That covers the five years part. As for the forty-two degrees north, after growing up shoveling snow off an abnormally long driveway and catching the bus at six dark thirty in the morning, spending four years at Cornell being rained, snowed, sleeted, and hailed on – with exactly zero weather-related class cancellations – I decided I didn’t have enough of the northern United States’s climate and chose to attend the University of Michigan. I also thought long and hard about the hours of pain and suffering inflicted by four years of ChemE problem sets, classes, and research, and opted for five more years of it to get my PhD in Chemical Engineering.

All of which is to say that I’m currently in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan working towards my PhD in Chemical Engineering, a process that takes an average of five years, and the weather is just as wonderful as in Ithaca.

My new clock tower (with carillon, not chimes) and engineering quad

How I came to this point is one of those stories. Like the story of the time I tried to fly out of Ithaca or the story of everything that happened at Lick Brook Falls. This story starts all the way back during my sophomore year at Cornell. After complaining about everything fluids related for four months, I spent one summer working on a fluids demo project, TA’d the class, spent another summer doing fluids-related research, then applied to grad school. My research group at Michigan studies surfactant solutions and does molecular dynamics simulations, among other things, so . . . more fluid mechanics-type topics.

I applied to six schools spread out across the United States and was rejected by four of them, including all three of the schools with significantly warmer temperatures. As a side note, my home, Cornell, and the University of Michigan rank among the coldest, windiest, and snowiest places in the United States. My only other option besides Michigan was Carnegie Mellon (CMU), which is slightly less frigid, but cold and snowy nonetheless.

I visited CMU and Michigan on consecutive weekends, and had a good time at both schools, besides that whole flying out of Ithaca thing on the way to CMU. The grad students were on their best behavior, we were shown the best of Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor, and there was as much alcohol as we wanted. [A word of caution: I heard that at one of my visits, a prospective student drank and behaved badly enough that the grad students recommended the school rescind their offer of admission.] But back to my decision. I liked the ChemE programs at both schools, but as much as CMU tried to convince us their school wasn’t right in the city, it was right in the city. The University of Michigan is also classified as an urban school, but to a much lesser extent than CMU, so when April and decision day rolled around, I officially accepted Michigan’s admission offer and four months later, reported to Ann Arbor.

Michigan is about twice the size of Cornell, both in terms of campus area and students, though the graduate ChemE program is less than half the size of my undergrad program. They have a bus system similar to Ithaca’s that I’ve already taken full advantage of and lots of local restaurants. What they don’t have is Wegmans, hiking trails within walking/biking/bussing distance, and an on-campus rock wall, but they do have a community band, a nice public library, and my desk in the group’s basement office has a window next to it. Hey, sometimes it’s the little things.

My new ChemE building (the complex houses other departments,
including some of the medical school)

I survived my first semester of classes – Cornell ChemE prepared me very well for grad school – and started my second. Now I just have to make it through four and a half more years of exams, research, and publications, and then hopefully they’ll give me my degree.