Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Ann Arbor has cleared out. The winter semester ended last week, so all the undergrads have moved out and the town is a lot quieter now. (According to wikipedia, 32% of Ann Arbor's population is students.) Grad students are usually glad when this happens because it means all of a sudden things are no longer crowded and lines are shorter at stores and restaurants. But personally, I like when people are around.

This will be my last summer in Ann Arbor, and it will likely be quieter than usual for me. A lot of friends have already graduated or otherwise left town, and most of my labmates will be away on internships. I suppose it means I'll be able to focus on getting work done and graduating, which is a good thing.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

It's finally warming up in Michigan. I played some tennis today, first time since last year (not counting an aborted attempt a few weeks ago where we quit after 30 minutes because it was too cold out). Also I'm trying to find time to go flying... I haven't flown since last fall.

This morning the cat's owner came to take him home. We had him for 5 months, so it was sad to see him go. Here are some final pictures (as you can see, the cat likes to go inside things).

Cat in sink:

Cat in duffel bag:

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Last week I went to Boston for a conference. It was the first time I'd been to Boston. Unfortunately, I didn't really get a chance to see the city, although I did get to meet up with a friend who showed me around MIT and parts of the Harvard campus.

Before going to Boston, I went to see a concert by Lang Lang, who is a pianist from China. It was pretty impressive. Most of his songs were classical pieces (Mozart, Schumann, etc.) but he played a few traditional Chinese songs that he transcribed for the piano. The interesting thing was that I actually recognized one of the songs, because when I was younger I used to play in this Chinese music ensemble where we played traditional Chinese music with Chinese instruments. Here is an old picture:

This is us performing at some event in 1995 (I would have been in 10th grade). In the middle is my dad playing yang qin; left of him (on his right) is me playing er-hu. (Seems I'm the only guy not wearing a tie.) My mom is playing pipa on the right. The other two performers visible in this picture are other kids my age; they actually went to my high school. This picture brought back some old memories...