Marta, the iron lady

First, Marta, the butcher.  Now, Marta, the iron lady???  Have I gone insane or what?  Haha.  Is that my Halloween outfit?  No, I'm not insane.  No, I'm not gonna dress as the Iron Lady for Halloween.  I've just spent more than one hour ironing all the clothes that I haven't been wearing in the past few weeks because they looked messy and I decided to try to make a joke out of it.  I was not very successful, I knowwwww.  I'm too tired to care about it!  :)

Actually, ironing my clothes was not the topic of today's post.  Let's move on to interesting stuff!  There were to major events in my weekend and I wanted you to be aware of them.  First, I finally started working on my research.  Second, I had a really nice trip to Santa Cruz on Saturday.

Do you wanna know some more about it?

Have I already mentioned what I'm going to work on?  In 2010, two buildings were built to be tested simultaneously on the biggest seismic table in the world: NIED EDefense shake table.  One of them is a conventional reinforced concrete building; the other has the same structural systems but with post-tensioned members.  I'm going to model and study the reinforced concrete one and compare the results  I get to the experimental data documented after the tests on the seismic table.  How cool and interesting is that?  Probably not interesting at all for most of you but I am very excited anyway.  A Berkeley's PhD student is doing exactly the same with the post-tensioned building and he's going to help me a lot.  Moreover, the fact that the building was purposely built to be tested means that I'll have access to all the information I need.  

In what concerns to the trip to Santa Cruz, it felt very good to leave Berkeley for a while and get some fresh air.  I went with 20 more people who live in i-House and we had lot's of fun.  Check out the photos below for more details on what we experienced.

It's time to go to bed.  Talk to you soon!

UBRIH

"Hey guys!

Everything I’m about to say, would be much appreciated if you kept it on the DL (that’s downlow).
Basically I’m planning on setting up a sister branch to a society at my home university called UBRUB: Urban Beverage Racing University of Bristol.
How is works back there is you have set teams, typically 2 boys and 2 girls and you are all tied together.
Then you essentially complete a pub crawl, where you down a drink and run to the next bar. Maximum 8 drinks, and include anything from a jagerbomb to a strawpedo… It sounds messy but it’s incredibly fun and the winner gets a patch, to show how cool they are.
Have a similar idea for I-House but instead of bars we use the rooms and different floors for the race. People who don’t want to race can help monitor that the drinks are finished ONLY in the rooms.

ALL GOOD?

Thanks, Courtney xoxoxoxoxo"

And because getting to know other cultures also involves getting to know how they party, today I decided to experience the UBRIH: Urban Beverage Racing International House.  Courtney, the girl who wrote and published the above message, is a british very cool chick that is my neighbor.  She ordered some official t-shirts, picked 8 different stations all over i-House, bought lots of drinks, invited people and the result was... a crazy Friday evening.  As you would all expect, I was part of the monitoring crew, not a real participant.  I was responsible for the 8th floor drinking station and for taking as many pictures as possible.

Attached to this post, there are several photos of what happened tonight here in the dorms.  Enjoy!

Weekending in Berkeley

After a few weeks here, I feel ready to describe a random weekend here in Berkeley.

Most people are not very busy on Fridays so that's when the weekend begins.  Friday's late afternoons wouldn't be Friday's late afternoons if we wouldn't play some kind of group sport, particularly touch rugby.  Likewise,  Friday's nights wouldn't be Friday's nights if we didn't party hard.  Parties usually start in i-House's 4th floor (aka party floor) and move on either to the i-House's games room, a fraternity party or a bar.  The good thing about doing an exchange year in the US is that you can party and still study in the following day because nightlife finishes around 2 am.  It is not legal do sell alcoholic drinks after 2 am here.  All bars and nightclubs close by then...

On Saturdays, most people have to study and just a few of us dare to go traveling.  If traveling is the choice, San Francisco and Santa Cruz have been the most popular destinations so far.  If there's no way of escaping from a big study session, there are plenty of places to go: tons of library's (including i-House's one), loads of very nice caffes, each other's dorms, etc.  Everyone is very busy with school here and it feels good not to be the only one who has to study hard.

On Saturdays' evenings, everyone is so tired from the previous night and the study session that we end up just watching a movie or playing some board games all together.  As you can see, it's nice to live here.

Another (important) feature of weekends in Berkeley is the gastronomic experience.  I-House offers only two meals per day during the weekends: a huge brunch and dinner.  What most people do is having a nice meal in another place too.  This week's personal gastronomic experience was Dim Sum: a Chinese brunch.  I saved a swipe for a meal here in i-House and went to a Asian Restaurant for brunch today with my classmates.  I really liked it!  Somewhere in the bottom of this post, there's a picture of some of the dishes we ate.

Weekends wouldn't be weekends if I didn't post something on my blog, right?  Take a look at some pictures taken in the past three days.  Talk to you soon!  :)