Skydiving

Off the bucket list!

Twas the night before the skydive

Oh MAN, this saturday was one of the busiest days this year.

It is now 2:54AM and I have to wake up at 4AM, so I'll be very brief, writing only a summary now, but I'll expand on it later, after SKYDIVING!! :D :D :D

Saturday, May the 29th, 2010, my calendar marked the following activities:

1PM: Buy nachos, dip, and ketchup at Giant Eagle for Lucia's BBQ.

3PM: Get at a house I didn't know about to get a free couch that Yi asked me to take to the new house.

4PM: Lucia's BBQ.

8:30PM: Jose's Fabulous Birthday Party!

And Sunday, May the 30th, 2010:

5:00-23:00: SKYDIVING!!!

But by saturday early afternoon, I still had no concrete confirmation that we were indeed going skydiving! I had bought the nachos, dip, and ketchup on Friday night, so I was able to stay in my apartment a while longer, during which I called several U-Haul places in Pittsburgh to try to rent a 10' truck.

There were none available.

So regardless, at 2:50PM I drove to the new house at 4630 Winthrop St, and met Theo, the guy who was supposed to help me load and unload the couch. I told him we had no truck and the only way to bring it was to haul it manually, and to my slight surprise and happy excitement, he agreed to it! He said "if only for the challenge!" I liked the attitude :). So we drove to 1332 Malvern Avenue, introduced ourselves to the owner, got the couch out of his house, put the pillows in the car, and hauled the rest of the couch manually the whole 1.2 miles in between the houses. It was sooo tiring, and people were shouting at us from the cars passing by on Forbes, but we finally made it. It took us about an hour, but we made it :). We left it on the house porch.

So then we walked back to 1332 Malvern (no buses were passing at that time) where my car was still parked with the couch pillows, I drove him back to Winthrop, I said goodbye to him, and hurried to Lucia's BBQ with the nachos, dip, and ketchup. When I got there, I met Julian, talked to a lot of people, including Yang Xu, Brian Ziebart, Emily Ziebart, Lucia, John, Khalid, and two asian-looking girls, one called Lane, and one of which was with me in the Databases class with Christos. Later on I messaged Orkun to come down to the barbeque, and he came down, with the news that he had confirmed the reservations and had gotten the price down by at least $30 because the initial group of Orkun, Filipe, and me had grown to 8 people... and more discount was possible if we got more people!

So I was left in charge of renting a van big enough for everyone, and so I did. I called Budget first and they told me $152. So I said ok, hung up, and called Orkun to ask him whether that was an OK rate (refundable by the explorer's club). He said yes, so I called again, and the guy told me it was $252 this time. I didn't want to pay $100 extra, so I hung up and called again, where they told me again that it would be $152! $179 with insurance included, so not bad :) So I confirmed my reservation at 11pm that very day while walking around in the Cut (area between Wean and Porter halls), Julian said he might come a little later, and then I took a few of the remaining nachos and dip and said goodbye to everyone.

So then I drove myself to my apartment, where I showered and got ready for Jose's fabulous birthday party! I put on my lotions, my p's :P, a nice t-shirt and a nice shirt over it, and drove to 401 Shady Avenue, where the fabulous party was at. On the way, I called Leila and asked whether she would like to have the car on Sunday, since I wouldn't be using it anymore (I had planned to take everyone there but now we were many more in the group). She said yes, so I told her I would pick her up between 10 and 10:30PM to go to the airport, drop me off so I could rent my van, and then she could keep the car for the day, and she said cool.

When I arrived at 401 Shady Avenue, I managed to parallel park my car in a space with only about 4cm to spare on each side. Then I looked for the place, I got a little lost while doing so, I found the place, I got into the apartment building because of a nice guy going in, while I was in the lobby I saw Tony (Luis's programmer) and his wife Astrid coming in, so I followed them (because I didn't know where exactly the party was at). We went down into the basement, I got there, and everyone who was invited was there! Andrea, Eber, his wife Kelly (who I just met), Luis, Severin, and Jose Bonilla. I drank some Ron Zacapa with coke, then an excellent pina colada by Andrea and Astrid, and talked to everyone. Later on this girl called Maria Clara came into the party, and Andrea introduced her to all of us. After that my skydiving trip came into the conversation, and Andrea and Maria Clara seemed interested. So I went out to the lobby to ask Orkun if we still had 2 spaces left in a 12-passenger van (there was no signal in the basement), and he said yes. So I went down, told them that there was space if they wanted to go, and since it was already past 10pm, that I had to go to get the rental car from the airport. I said goodbye to everyone, and left the party.

I called Leila while driving to ask her where should I pick her up, and then she told me that she misunderstood, that she thought it was between 10 and 10:30 AM, not PM. She was eating at India Garden with Ina, so she said she preferred not to go drop me off at the airport anymore. So then I drove to the airport to pick up the van, where I parked at the long-term parking lot and arrived to the Budget counter at around 11:15PM. I waited in line for about 10 minutes before I was attended by the woman at the counter, who confirmed my reservation, swiped the card, and everything. She then went to look for the van keys, and she realized she couldn't find them. She then went to the Avis counter and looked for them, then she went to the parking lot to look for them... long story short, she stayed there almost 2 hours after 11:30PM trying to please me with some other car she could give me instead of a 12-passenger van. However, I was the only confirmed driver in the group, and our group consisted of at least 8 people, and the next-biggest car after the van was a 7-seater. Too small. So while she kept looking for the keys, I started texting people in the group I knew to ask them whether they were able and willing to drive. Filipe said no, Orkun said no, Andrea said yes but her credit card was maxed out, and Maria Clara finally said yes! So we agreed... I would rent a 7-seater minivan, get back to Pittsburgh, sleep for a few hours, drive the minivan to the airport again and get there at 5:30AM with Maria Clara, either pick up the 12-passenger van if they had found the keys by then OR get another 7-seater minivan for Maria Clara to drive, come back to Pittsburgh, pick up everyone at the UC turnaround at 6:30AM (and Andrea at her place in 401 Shady Avenue and possibly Filipe at his place near Forward Avenue), and then head out to Rittman, OH!

So I drove back to Pittsburgh in my newly-rented minivan, I asked Maria Clara if I could stay with her at her place so we could wake up early more easily (she offered first), she said yes, I picked up stuff like clothes, food, chargers, and toothbrush from my apartment, drove to hers, and when I got here, she had made me a bed in the living room with a blanket, pillows, and everything! She was pretty nice :)

So now I'm on this bed in Maria Clara's apartment- my phone is charging and waiting to ring the alarm in about 15 minutes (because I couldn't sleep because it's very hot and because for some reason I'm not sleepy and couldn't force myself to go to sleep and I really wanted to write what had happened to me this saturday). It's 3:27AM and the first alarm is set for 3:41AM, I believe.

And I'm going skydiving in a few hours!! In an hour I should already be driving... it will be pretty soon. I'm not thinking too much about the skydive itself... it's going to be SOOOOOOOOOOO COOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

hehe I remember my bungee jump. I was so relaxed, so nonchalant about it... very unafraid. And when I actually got the border of that bridge and everyone was looking at me and they started the countdown... OH MY GOD!!!! That was SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH an intense moment!!! I bet skydiving is similar... maybe orders of magnitude more intense??????? :) :) :D :D :D :D :D :D :D I don't want to wait to try it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

Now I'm going to try to pretend to sleep at least the last few minutes before the alarm rings. I'll remove the 3:41AM alarm and keep the 3:50AM.. that should give me at least time to rest my typing muscles, and my back and arm muscles from the couch-hauling :P :).

Good night!!

Dream Transcription

Last year, right after waking up, I wrote up whatever I remembered from what I was just dreaming on a sheet of paper. Today I saw these pieces of paper, and decided to transcribe them into digital form.

These are all from 2009:

March 14th-March 15th:

I'm on a trip to some caves which appear to be part of or near Pacaya with several people, and through traps and ancient riddles, almost everyone dies. I return alive. During my stay, I sometimes saw myself as a superhero, sometimes as Goku, who could run through the whole "cave" (which also curiously was run by many workers, like in the Fresno facility and the pickers). After surviving my dad wanted to make us leave and go elsewhere, but I didn't want to. I ran back into the caves and stayed there longer.

March 16th-17th:

A weird remembrance: And I suddenly woke up, and was surrounded by Alicia, my dad, and I think Isabel. I got up, calmly, and while talking to my dad, I asked him about mom, and he said, strangely, that she was in France, dead. I immediately thought he was joking or had misunderstood me and was talking about another person, but then, asking more, I saw that he was speaking the truth. He said that a wish had made her die in France just after my birth. But then I thought, how could this be? Alicia is here too. But then Alicia started questioning me about what had happened to Coco, and was physically dominating me, blaming me for what had happened. Apparently, she was the one who had caused this strange change.

And I knew it couldn't be real, I knew it was a dream, but I think I was far too awake to wake up to a "lucid dream".

March 18-19:

Last night, my mind took me to South Korea, where I stayed at a hotel and enjoyed some pleasures of the beach, friends, and food. There was some mafia and killers involved, and at a certain point, some people were being beheaded, by pulling off their heads with motorboats. At one point, I lost my red bathrobe but a hotel person found it for me, and then I think I also lost my passport. Not much of a general sense.

Austin Lovin' coming up!

So I just bought my flight for Austin! And I know what that means! (You may not, but I certainly do)... LOVE! I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE JEROL... :) She's so much older than me but she loves me and I love her and we make so much lovin' when we're together... it's great :).

Ticket here:

I'm gonna go FUCK HER BRAINS OUT :P And she's gonna love every second of it :D. Yes you will ;)

Two thirds

As a previous last blog entry predicted, I went swimming with Lucia yesterday. I swam... let's see... at least 36 laps (1 lap is back and forth), which amounts to 1800 yards. We did 600 yards warm-up, and a set of 11 2.5-minute swims. In each swim, Lucia swam 150 yards, and I swam 100. Man, Lucia CAN SWIM. She ended up resting between 5 and 10 seconds between swims - and I was already exerting myself with 100 yards - I had trouble keeping up with her during the first 100 yards, and when I tried to, I ended up panting.

Great workout though. Great for me, great for her. I think today's routine is 25-minute bicycle. Cool :D.

Star Design

Today I made a design made out of stars: Look!

It was originally going to be star-shaped all over, but I decided I didn't want to deal with all the different angles (it's made out of text), so I just left it as is now (a screenshot). But it still came out nice, right?

(I was originally going to paste it as text instead of an image, but the darn Blogger editor doesn't keep multiple spaces intact. And I'm sure there's an HTML tag to do that kind of stuff, but I'm not too keen on looking it up right now. Already spent enough time doing that design, which should've been spent on something a bit more productive... :P)

(I was originally going to start the last paragraph with something besides "I was originally going to" to avoid the blatant redundancy it implies together with the penultimate paragraph, but I was lazy and just used it again).

1st year graduate school...

Check! :D

Just a few hours ago, I took and solved my final 15-826 Multimedia Databases and Data Mining exam, which marks the end of my spring semester 2010. The end of my academic year... I'm no longer a 1st year grad student!! :O I'm a... 1.5'st year grad student? Hmmm, "Summer student" sounds pretty good, actually. Summer student it is! And soon I shall enter the portal to the solid title of: "2ND YEAR GRAD STUDENT". Cool.

These last few weeks have been bustling with activity and changes for me. To list a few:

• End of courses, final projects, final exams.
• I passed my Speaking Skills requirement this semester! Man, at the time I was just too insanely busy to write about it, but it was fairly crazy. See all the way at the bottom of the entry for a more detailed recount.
• I bought a mountain bike for $60! (It was originally $50 but the guy was really nice and repaired some of it for me because he was cool). Now I'm using it all the time - it's great!! The optimal mode of transportation for Pittsburgh! (in the non-snowy time)
• I am now a Coke Loader for the coke machine in GHC 6th floor! Last night I did my first coke machine refill by myself. I like the activity - it's productive and pleasantly distracting.
• I went to get my car brakes checked because it was making some squeaking noises, like metal friction, when I hit the brake pedal. Pep Boys says they're ok, though - they said something about the front brakes being at 10 and the rear brakes being at 6, and the minimum being 2, so I was fine. That was reassurance enough for me... and the revision was free, too :P.
• I'm training for a Triathlon with Lucia! The registration cost $100, but at least it's making me train consistently and with a regular routine. We're doing bicycle, weights, abs, running, and swimming. Today we do swimming (and maybe running)! Swimming is AWESOME :D.
• I've been looking for apartments all over the place! My current lease ends in June 15th, and since it's the time for summer sublets, I've been looking around for good opportunities to rent a good place for a good price. I think I have contacted no less than 15 different people, in between Craigslist and people in the CMU mailing list, and visited at least 5 different places so far. A house in a corner that we lost a bidding war for, an old Victorian house pretty close to Giant Eagle, a nice quiet home all the way up in the mountain (Bryn Mawr Road), a very nice girl who's subletting her place near the CVS on Forbes along with her bed, and a girl who was offering a room in a house REALLY close to campus that I eventually lost my chance on because I exasperated her with my calling her on the phone and my emailing. I didn't really call her that much but, oh well. I'm aiming for as cheap and as close to campus as possible. My last find was a $250 place really near campus - just as near as that other girl's who I exasperated. If it's a nice house, I'm certainly getting it. If not, I might stick to the nice girl's room, though a bit farther away (1 mile). I should have made a decision and sealed a deal by tomorrow, I think. I hope. I already told my landlady I'm moving out on June.
• I'm signing up to go Skydiving! There's an Explorers Club here in CMU, and they offer group activities and discounts on a lot of activities, including kayaking, climbing, skiing, and SKYDIVING!!!! I want the activities and I want the discounts, so I'm joining. I have the form ready and everything, but I'm still not sure who to give it to.
• I got a new credit card! And it has a $2000 limit! No, I didn't get it because I need more money. No, I didn't get it because it'd improve my credit. (This last one is a nice side effect, though). I got it because it's a SOUTHWEST credit card which, when first used to purchase anything, gives me THIRTY-TWO RAPID REWARDS CREDITS!! That's enough for two free roundtrip flights!! (Those are their advertising lines, by the way). So yeah, I'm getting two free flights!!! I made my first purchase with the card yesterday, but the Credits haven't appeared in my Southwest account yet... I hope they get included soon!
• I helped Pedro buy a car!! Yeeeah!!! He didn't have a car, he saw a nice bargain: a well-kept 1984 Porsche for $2,500. Not too bad, right? He didn't have any money at the time, so I lent him some. And now he has a car! And a PORSCHE! :P I personally don't care much for car brands, but he likes it, so that's cool.
• I bought a blender for $20! It's still in the bag that the lady gave it to me in, and I'm not sure how or when am I going to use it, but it seems like a good blender: (http://www.amazon.com/Wolfgang-Puck-Handheld-Immersion-Blender/dp/B000FEGEOW). My mom has told me to make fruit shakes, so I'll try that one of these days. I do want to explore culinary possibilities beyond rice and pasta.
• Speaking of food, I now eat in my office most of the time. I've been buying cans of Campbell's mushroom soup and Giant Eagle-brand bread, and now a can of soup and two buns of bread are my basic meal. :) Quite a bit more efficient (though Min says it can be unhealthy. I've heard that before...).

Hmmm, I think that about covers these past few months. On the good things, at least. :)

Hey, it's time to go swimming!!! Oh JOY!! :D

Bye!

(

Updates:

I got my grades for the semester! Here's a copy-paste:

Core Requirements

DB	15-826	Multimedia Databases and Data Mining	S10	A
SM	10-702	Statistical Machine Learning	S10	A
IS	10-705	Intermediate Statistics	F09	A
ML	10-701	Machine Learning	F09	A

Not bad, huh? :P

Also, my Speaking Skills story referenced from above:

I signed up for my SS on April 29th, my advisor found out about it, and told me I should start giving dry runs up to 3 weeks beforehand. I said "OK", but I thought it was way too much time in advance, so I let time slide by. About 2 weeks beforehand, I had chosen a topic. About 1 week in advance, I had the slides halfway done. 2 nights beforehand, I didn't sleep so I could polish up my slides as much as possible for the dry run I scheduled with my advisor and her research group.

After I finished talking, I got HAMMERED. The talk lasted 30 minutes, but the criticisms on my talk lasted 2 hours. Good criticisms, don't get me wrong, but it was really embarrassing - and all my body wanted to do was fall asleep! I was instructed to change the slides and the whole structure of my presentation for the following day. When I finally got out of the meeting, Leila called me to help her finish up the project report for Databases. That took over an hour to do. Right when I was going to work on the slides, Sid from the other project called me for a meeting we had that day that I had forgotten about, and I spent about an hour and a half working out GWT interface design on that project.

Only then, at 4:30, did I step into Robin's (the paper I was presenting's first author) office to have him help me fix my slides. We spent about 2 hours discussing what to fix, where to put slides in, which slides to remove, and what points to focus on. He was great, and then I went back to my office and started working head-on on fixing the slides. I finished them up by about 1AM, and only then did I start practicing my actual speech. Every practice round took about half an hour, so it was only until about 4AM that I felt decently prepared and decided to go back to my apartment to get some sleep. I went to sleep at about 6AM (after discussing the presentation with Min), slept about 3 hours, came to campus, practiced a couple more times in an empty room with a projector, and then it was already time and got to my real presentation room. I presented, and I passed :D. The effort was worth it, but MAN, it was a lot of effort! A presentation has rarely ever taken that much effort off me. But now I passed. :)

)

Death Will

Death, I perceive, is seen by most as something that they'd rather not encounter. In fact, I see that in movies, books, poems, stories (at least most of them), Death is an event that people postpone as much as they can, as long as their bodies allow them, far beyond the boundaries of comfort and utility. As their bodies decay, as their strength and abilities deteriorate, they keep on going with their lives. Even when many of them realize that they are doing no good in life anymore, that they no longer even enjoy themselves, that they are only living because that's all they've ever done, they keep on living. They grasp activity after activity until they can't even do that, and eventually they die, failing to take that additional breath of air, their last tenuous grasp on life broken at last. Death defeats them, against their will.

Seems to me like quite an ugly way to go, don't you think? Gloomy.

So the scenario I described is not the only one, of course. People die in many ways. Car accidents, murders, terrorist attacks, sudden heart attacks, war, snake bites, flu, influenza, some chronic disease, or simply old age. However, if you join them all up, you'll notice that all of the ones in this list are involuntary ways to die. Involuntary. You did not mean to, but OOPS, you died. Darn it. Oh no. Sad, sad, sad. Loved ones and family cry. Your body is either placed in a glamorous trash container, burnt, or disposed of somehow, and then everyone else goes on with their lives, trying to forget the loss. To almost everyone, death is a bad thing.

I think death is not bad. It's just the end to every life. And if you know that you're certainly going there, what is the reason for postponing it until the very end? Do you gain something by keeping yourself alive for the longest possible time? More time with your loved ones? I imagine this is the case for many people, like parents and grandparents who want to see as much of their descendants' lives as possible. Some other people live for their "soulmate", so to speak, whose company they still constantly enjoy. And some others may simply be curious to see how much of the future they can see - what happens with the world? What new technologies and wonders will the future bring?

But I'm also sure that there are many people who, past a certain age, are not happy with their lives. Their joints hurt, they can no longer work, and they don't know what they want to do - they just exist day to day, year to year, waiting almost impatiently for the certain end. What I think is: if they're not enjoying it, couldn't they make it quicker?

Yes, there is a notable amount of suicides in the world. But I'm amazed that this number isn't larger. People think of suicides as such a bad thing - are they really? A man decides his life is unpleasant, and is certain he wants to die. Doesn't it make sense then to... DIE? It's his own life. Not his parents', not his friends', not his lover's - it's HIS. His to experience, his to change, his to end.

I think the spirit of death could be much improved. In particular, I think that people should be able to CHOOSE their own death. It's a really important part of life - why not customize it to the exact way you want it? You don't have to choose it to be voluntary, of course, but I think that most people don't even consider it as a possibility. Why not? You lived your life, you reached some goals. You know you still have some others unaccomplished, but do you seriously expect to accomplish any more of them? (Assume that you don't). Then what will you do with your life? If you want to live until you can no longer, then right on, enjoy! But CONSIDER the possibility of a voluntary end! It will allow you to clear up any misunderstandings you had with other people, or to say those things you always waited until later to say, to express your final will clearly, and to say proper goodbyes to the people you care about, instead of cramming it until the last few seconds on your deathbed. (Procrastination is everywhere...)

By walking into death voluntarily, you refuse to be a victim of it. You accept it as your decision, as your own last choice of your free will, and not as what drags you out of life against your last dwindling, hopeless resistance.

Thus, I propose that people CONSIDER this possibility. I think it can be quite a sensible thing to do, depending on your circumstances. I know there's no defined boundary that can tell you when is it "ok" to die, but that's the point, right? It's up to each different person. At 20, at 40, at 80, it's each life's choice.

You could even videotape yourself right before you do it! Then you leave proof of your will, and you can make even up some cool last words to say. Personally, I can think of several different ways to die voluntarily:

1. Jumping off a very tall cliff with sharp rocks at the bottom (preferably with a spectacular view).
2. "Lethal injection" (just need to get the right substances and a syringe. and you might learn some organic chemistry, too).
3. Swimming out indefinitely into the sea in a remote location.
4. Guillotine.
5. Hangman.
6. Total blood donation (and you'd recycle resources!).
7. Ingest some cyanide (I've heard raw bitter almonds can do the trick (like 20 pounds?)).
8. Shotgun blast to the head (beware: VERY bloody!).
9. Hara-kiri (Must be pretty painful, though). And requires getting a sword. (Nah, a good knife should do the trick).

Since the topic of this entry can be highly controversial, I would like to clarify three things:

First, I don't mean to offend anyone. I know that some people may read this and think "INSENSITIVE F***ING BASTARD!!", especially if someone they knew died recently. But hey, if your dead acquaintance died while suffering, wouldn't you rather have had them die by their own will and with certainty towards what was happening to them? I imagine I would.

Second: I'm not thinking of dying anytime soon. Some people could read this and think "OH MY GOD HE'S PLANNING TO DIEEEEEEE!!! Nooooooooooo, don't dooo iiiiiiiiit, we love youuuuuuuuuu!!!" or something like that. No, I still have plans for my own life. But I do think there will come a time when I won't, and then I DO hope to take my own advice. Not soon, though.

Third: Yes, suicide is illegal. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be so, but I do think it's a foolish kind of rule. It's not very punishable, is it? But yes, by making assisted suicide illegal, they also disallow murders from looking like assisted suicides and having the "assistants" walk away innocent. And yes, if a productive member of society suddenly kills himself, the impact upon society is negative, so it makes sense for governments to discourage suicide. I'm not saying the law should change. But each person knows what is best in his/her specific case, right? Decisions about yourself should be made by yourself only.