Chi-Town

Here's to my boss for sponsoring a pretty sweet trip to Chicago two weekends ago.  Grad school is really pretty sweet.  Most of the time we're living off of Ramen noodles, but every once and a while we get to take all-expenses-paid trips to random locations in order to give 20-minute powerpoint presentations.  And if the location happens to be a 3 hr road trip away, it's all the easier to convince people to let you go.

And of course, it just so happens that some of my bestest friends also work in chemical engineering and also like going to extremely fortuitous professional meetings.

AIChE Spring meeting 2011 + Josh + awesome friends = Amazing

To start the festivities, we all went out dancing at Sound Bar, which is a little bit crazier than the clubs in Champaign, as you can imagine.  I didn't know what to expect, but it was pretty cool.  Mainly because of the company.

I'll admit I like getting my dance on too, though.

We stayed out until 5AM, just enough time to squeeze in a shower and a restroom break.  Turns out that the hostel where we were staying didn't have any running water in the morning.  Construction evidently.  So that means no sinks, no toilets, and no showers.  How do you survive in a hostel without running water?  How do you let people reserve places at your hostel without mentioning that the water won't be there when you arrive?  Oh well.  I'll bet Panera across the street had a bunch more interesting visitors than usual that particular morning.  Most of our entourage, though, were too beat to be doing much of anything, much less showering.

So then we went to the conference hotel, which was the Hyatt.  Most expensive hotel I've stayed at probably ever in the States.  We basically spent most of our time outside of the conference eating.  That was definitely the highlight of the trip.  In all we visited Joy Yee Noodles (Chinese, with the best Bubble Tea's in Chicago), Sansoogabsan (awesome Korean BBQ), _________ (insert incredible South Indian food place here), and Red Apple (Polish buffet).  It was intense.  I've never had such a concentrated culinary adventure before.  I think the coworkers were happy.

I know I was.  I found a great shirt for the conference, and it was on sale.  I had great food.  And my gf came along too.  Can't ask for anything better.

Red Apple seemed to be the favorite overall.  I've never seen Matthew eat so much, but he destroyed all of us.  I think this is his third plate...and it came after two dessert plates.

Time to hit the gym.  Thank you taxpayers:)

Shenanigans

Alright.  Enough shenanigans.  And I'm pretty sure almost everyone knows anyways.  For all of you who don't: I am officially (finally) in a relationship.

And it's great.  I'm pretty sure it all started because both of us share a bunch of common interests.  Such as...

Also eating.  I love eating.  So does she.  Indian food, Korean food, Chipotle, you name it.  She likes chocolate a whole lot more than me though.  And it's not like I don't like chocolate.  Here's us at Jim Goulds.  

Along with my other love in life: Scallops!

Pretty looking girl.  Pretty looking food.  Life's good.

[Add on]

One more pic.  She reeeeaaaaalllllly wanted me to post it.  I'm not stoned, it's just my eyes are sensitive to intense flashes of light in dimly lit restaurants.  And I was sleepy.

Department of Offense

So a good buddy of mine, Fikile B., once came up with an amazing name for a nerdy grad student soccer team, and although he's not with us anymore (confound you MIT), the dream lives on.  Actually, it's no longer a dream.  Shiz just got real.  Currently 1-1, we won our first game of the indoor soccer intramurals last night, and this is our celebratory post.

So if you're a grad student looking to actually make some cash during your long hours of labor as a PhD-chasing peon, best thing to do is get straight A's throughout undergrad and publish a paper or three.  Then you might actually perhaps maybe potentially get past the first round of cuts to be considered for a federal grad student fellowship.  You'll make upwards of $10000 more than your fellow students, and you'll also get to boast about it for all eternity on your CV.  What makes this tricky is that (stereotypically), it's the non-Americans that are rocking the 4.0's.  Anyways, one of the funding agencies that gives out these auspicious fellowships is the Department of Defense, whose logo is displayed below:

But what's so great about defense?  In soccer, I've almost always played on defense, and although the level of talent required is less, the whole game the only thing you're trying to do is not mess up.  The only thing worse in my opinion is being goalie.  One proverbial saying states that "the best defense is offense", and we (tried) to take that to heart this year.  Since we're a bunch of grad students who all missed the cut for a Department of Defense fellowship, we've decided to make our own agency of weighty renown (soon): The Department of Offense:

There's supposed to be small parallels between the designs.  Of course, there's the eagle, but I think the one I ripped off google images is better.  Our eagle also isn't holding a bunch of stupid arrows.  Missiles, in my opinion, make a statement.  Also, we replaced leafy foliage with barbed wire, and although stars are always cool, stars AND grenades are cooler.  There's some jets because I love jets, and I put some soccer balls on the side since, after all, we are a soccer team.

Two more games to go then playoffs (maybe?...)