Spring Break

My initial plans for Spring Break were to go on a RV trip around California with some friends from ihouse.  However, I got so busy with classes a few weeks before the break that I realized I could not afford not to work on my thesis during that week.

My second plans were to stay in Berkeley by myself for a few days and work as much as possible on my thesis in order to enjoy the last days of the break with Pedro, here in the Bay Area.  He would come up on Thursday, and that would give us three to four days of vacation together.  Good enough!  However, everyone was planing to leave Berkeley and I was exhausted and in deep need of some fresh air.  So, I decided that the best plans would be to go down to LA, work from there while Pedro would be busy practicing golf, and then come up with him on Thursday to enjoy a few days up here.

I ended up not following any of the three plans.  I spent nine days in LA, and such good nine days...

I actually got lots of work done in the first few days.  I managed to correct the model of my building and to get the right results for the modal analysis, which is a big step in my research work.  Next week, I will start running nonlinear analysis and making conclusions out of it.  By achieving this goals, I also finished the final project for one of my three classes, since Professor Mahin let me use the first part of my thesis for that project.  I felt so good about my results that I presented me with a few days off work in the end of the break.

During the entire break, I got to spend lots of time with Pedro, spoiling him and being spoiled.  In the first days, while I was still busy with my thesis, we went out for dinner a couple of times, I cooked a lot at home, I worked out everyday, sometimes with him, sometimes by myself, he practiced a lot and played four rounds of golf with the team.

On Tuesday, it was Ludo's birthday so I dedicated the afternoon to him.  He came over with his Belgium friends to watch Belgium's soccer game at Pedro's apartment, and then we went for a touristic tour around Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive and Sunset Boulevard.  To finish the day well, we met our friends from the RV trip at the Dockerweiler State Beach, where we had a super cool and fun barbecue.

On Wednesday, after working the entire morning, I met my Sweedish friend Malin for lunch, got to gossip a lot with her and enjoy the sun at Urth Caffe Beverly Hills, where our boyfriends met us after playing golf together.  That afternoon, we all (Malin, me and the entire UCLA Men's Golf Team) went go karting and had dinner at Derek's house in Valencia.

On Thursday, I worked in the morning while Pedro played with the team, and we were supposed to leave to Berkeley after lunch but none of us wanted to go.  Instead, we spent the afternoon in Santa Monica and the evening in Westwood with our friends.

On Friday, something new happened!  Haha.  Pedro was invited to play in Riviera Country Club, one of the most exclusive golf courses in LA, and he asked if I could go watch them play.  The member who invited him said I would be more than welcome to go, since he forgot about Riviera's liability policy, according to which no one but members and guests can walk on the golf course.  I went, I walked with them for six holes, and I was kicked out of the golf course after that.  At least, I got to see how such a private golf course looks like, and how amazing are its facilities...  The members were feeling sorry for me and even offered me lunch and drinks but Pedro decided to leave the golf course too so we just went home together.  Later that day, we worked out, watched a tennis tournament at UCLA, had an amazing dinner at Beverly Hills with Matt's family and hung out with our friends, playing drinking games in Westwood.  Another great day...

Saturday was the best day of spring break.  It started with a tough but very pleasant hike in Runyon Canyon, Hollywood, went on with an amazing brunch at Salt's Cure, and continued with a fun, fun, fun trip to Staples Center to watch one of the games of March Madness.  Do you know what March Madness is?  It's the most important tournament of college basketball, taking place each spring in the US.  Alex had eight tickets for yesterday's game (Wishita State vs Ohio State) and took six guys and me with him.  After the game, we went to a Korean barbecue restaurant, where the men ate much more that what I thought that was physically possible.

Today, it was time to come back to Berkeley.  Not that I was looking forward to it...  However, I came back feeling happy and lucky for such nice days, surrounded by such nice people.

Happy Easter everyone!

Midterms: check! Blog update

Now that the 8 huge homework assignments and the three midterm exams that filled my past three weeks are over, it's time to update my dear blog.  Hello social life.  Hello spring break.  Hello world.

These past few weeks were intense, so intense that not only did I break some personal records but I also missed a few important social events.  The personal records beaten have to do with hours spent in Davis Hall in one day (over 15 hours on March 18th, from 7:55 am to 11:00 pm), and incapacity of solving past exam exercises (when studying for CE221 - Nonlinear Structural Analysis).  This class (CE221) is a pain in the neck.  The average of past years midterm exams grades was about 30%.  After doing that midterm on Thursday, I guess it won't be much different from that this year.  I'm likely to be able to beat the curve so don't worry, I won't fail.  :)

In what concerns to the social events I missed, the biggest one was St Patrick's Parade, on March 16th.  Saint Patrick's Day is an Irish national holiday on March 17th, in the name of a Roman Briton slave who is told to have brought Christianity to Ireland.  However, its festivities (at least in America) include everything but religious celebrations.  Instead, they include public parades, people wearing green attire and drinking like crazy.  Because it was a lovely sunny day in SF, they also included lots of red faces in the following day.  Hehe.  I missed the parade in the city but didn't miss the super cool event organized by the irish residents in ihouse, which included irish food, celtic music and traditional irish dancing classes.  Oh, I love ihouse and how it gives us the opportunity to experience cultural events...!  Who doesn't know that all that the Irish people are known for is drinking, drinking and drinking?  The Irish guys in ihouse, one of them being my good friend Rob, made a big effort in showing that Irish people know how to have fun without being crazily drunk, and they did a great job.  

Another social event I missed this week was the Portuguese Father's Day.  I sent Dad a small present and tried to text him throughout the day but missed a proper post on my blog, wishing him a very, very good day.  I guess Dad could tell I was super busy struggling with CE221 and decided to give me some great news that day: Dad is coming to visit me for two days in two weeks.  It is going to be a short visit but it is still a visit and I couldn't be more excited about it!  I'm already making plenty of plans for us, including going to my "prom" party, going shopping in an outlet, making a little tour around campus and going out for good food.  Yummy!

After the big exam on Thursday, I took some time to relax, partied Thursday night with a surprise birthday party for Courtney and came down to LA yesterday.  I had initially planned to spend the first part of Spring Break in Berkeley just working for my thesis but then I realized I would probably feel lonely and depressed, specially because today is Mico's birthday and all my family except me would be together.

Mico's birthday is the final topic I wanted to cover on this post.  My big brother turned 26 today.  It's still weird for me to think about it.  Isn't 26 already a respectable age?  Isn't he already getting close to being 30?  Yes, he is, but he is aging in a great way.  On one hand, he got much more mature in the past few years.  Mainly due to Rita's influence, he is a man now, and a great man.  He's the best friend someone can ask for, he's been successful at work and has good goals for the near future.  On the other hand, he will be always a child, with an amazing sense of humor, even when he turns 100 years old.  He has the both of the two worlds, right?  Happy birthday Mico.  Hopefully, this will be the only birthday of one of us we spend apart from each other.  I love you.

A little bit of America

Today I decided to post some pictures that describe typically American stuff I've experienced in the past few weeks.  I guess that the fact that I took all these pictures and am posting them here is very American itself too...  Enjoy!

1. A cinnamon roll, toped with vanilla sauce, cookie dough and chocolate.  This is what my classmates had for lunch (no, not for dessert but for lunch) the other day.

2.  A girl in a club in Las Vegas, wearing no skirt and no pants.

3.  A peanut butter and Nutella sandwich, and what my friend Sam has for dessert every meal.

4.  A girl wearing her pajamas on campus.

5. The honor pledge my Steel and Composite Structures professor made us sign during a midterm exam.

"That" look

"That" look...  Pretty much everyone who reads this blog knows me well enough to have seen me doing "that" look.  It's in my genes, I guess.  Dad does it all the time too.  It's impressive how we are so alike...  

Apparently, even my friends, classmates in general and professors in Cal now know "that" look of mine too.  By "that" look I mean my mean/bored/respectful face, with my head slightly bent to the side and my attacking eyes reaching whoever I don't agree with.  The favorite joke in our class right now is that a Professor was specially nice or someone didn't try to change something because they were afraid of receiving "that" look.

All I have to say in my defense is that I don't do it on purpose and, more than that, I wish I didn't do it.    It's totally automatic and it is not under control.  I get very embarrassed when I realize I made "that" look to anyone.  It annoys me like crazy that I cannot hide my feelings too.  I make "that" look when I'm mad, my eyes get teary when something doesn't go as well as I planned, and I cry like a baby when I'm sad.  One of my resolutions for the near future is to try to correct this.

I suppose Mom, Pedro and Ed will specially like to read this post, since they are the ones who more often tell me not to make "that" look.  At least I'm not fake and I don't fool anyone...  And I'm going to work on that and try to change it soon!

Love and sweet looks,

Martinha

SEMM

It's Thursday evening and I am E-X-A-U-S-T-E-D.  School finally decided to get tough and that has kept me pretty busy lately.  This week, I spent and average of 10 hours per day in Davis Hall.  That made me realize that it is time to start introducing you all to some of my classmates, probably the people I spend more time with here in Berkeley.

Who else could I start with other than Barb?  No one.  Barb (Barbara Simpson) is definitely my study buddy and closest friend in the entire Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Materials Master Program (SEMM).  She's so smart, so determined and such an hard worker that makes me be humble and realize that there's people much better in what they do than me.  It's funny how we became close friends.  When I first met her, she seemed too American to be my friend.  She was born and raised in Kansas, which is definitely not as international as California, and her parents are both strictly republicans.  She doesn't really care about what others might think about what she says or does.  You cannot believe how many times a day we laugh out loud about stuff she does.  She's truly genuine!  Now that I think about why we became closer and closer I realize we have a lot in common: we study a lot, we like succeeding, we are both obsessed with working out and eating healthy (if we can consider eating American food healthy...) and all of our classmates make fun of us because we work too much.  I actually don't know how successful I would be in this program if I hadn't start hanging out with her...  Barb is staying in Berkeley for five more years to get her PhD.  She is actually planing to do it in only four years and, although no one ever does that, I actually think she might be able to do it.  Way to go Barb...

Talking about smart people, Ahmed Bakhaty comes to my mind.  Ahmed is an Egyptian guy, who has been living in the US for a long time.  He's probably the smartest person in our class, specially in what concerns to programing.  He's a little genius...  He is one of the few people in SEMM who did their undergraduate degree in UC Berkeley and, thus, knows all the professors and gives lots of useful hints on how to survive here.  He also helps us surviving in the sense that explains us whatever doubt we have in whatever homework assignment we're trying to solve.  Although he's always busy, either studying, doing research or working, he's always available to help us out.  Way to go Ahmed...

Now it's time to describe the group Zahra-Niko-and-Brendan as only one classmate, because it is rare to see them apart from each other.  Ok, I'll describe each of them separately but I wanted to make that joke anyway.  Haha.  Zahra, whose family is originally from India and some surrounding countries, is probably the only texan in our class.  I like her!  She's very well travelled, not only because she has family around the world and travels a lot, but also because she has worked before applying to this program.  Actually, there are a bunch of people with work experience in our class.  Brendan, for instance, worked in design.  I think he scored 100% in all of our Concrete exams last semester.  He knew every little thing.  He's from the Bay Area but did his undergrad degree in Can Poly, in San Luis Obispo.  He's a cool shy guy, typically American.  But more American than Brendan is Niko.  Fresno-American!  You look at him and he's all into sports and fast-food but actually he is super, super smart and has tremendous engineering skills.  It's impressive how he thinks about the physical meaning of everything and knows a bunch of stuff I've never thought about.  I like this group.  Barb and I end up working a lot with them.  They are the ones who make fun of us more often.  We always have a good time together.

There's much more people in the class I wanna talk about but I'll leave that to another post.  I gotta go now.  It's 10:30 already and I have to send a few e-mails before going to bed.  The alarm clock rings at 6 am tomorrow morning, as every morning.

Talk to you soon!

Marta

Oakland Art Murmur

Every first Friday of every month, the Art Murmur takes place in Oakland's Telegraph Ave, where 21 member galleries and 9 venues are open to artists to expose their work.  There are mainly expositions, but also street performances, food and craft vending, receptions, artist talks, and musical performances.  It's basically a cool eight-block street festival and a great reason to leave campus on a Friday night.

As soon as one gets closer to the festival, it's impossible not to feel engaged.  There is a big retro car exposition in the streets, where families proudly show off their impeccably preserved "babies".  There are groups of Oakland black people, chilling around their big American cars, listening to loud rap and hip hop music.  There are groups of hipsters and cool young people walking towards the festival.  And there is much more.

Everyone is eating, some people are actually interested in the art expositions, and the walking rhythm is  pretty slow, since no one wants to lose any important part of what's going on.  The smell in the air is interesting.  I would describe it as a mixture of mexican food and weed.

I didn't take many pictures because I was busy having fun with my friends.  However, I guess you can get a taste of what Art Murmur is by seeing the pictures shown below.