2012 Review (2)

My life at Princeton came to an end in June, after a carnival of Alumni Weekend, a hooding ceremony and commencement. Everyone around was crazily busy - packing, visiting friends, hugging each other with tears and leaving the campus. My story is a little different because of my mum and Joop's visit.

They arrived at the weekend of Alumni Reunion, when the campus was covered by all sorts of camps and suffused with the whiff of beer/wine. We went to Philly the second day after their arrival, spending the entire afternoon exploring the Independence Hall and Liberty Bell, sighing at something that we haven't acquired yet. Later that day, we wandered around the Reading Terminal Market, where Joop tried Philly cheesesteak while mum and Gang had some American-style Chinese food. And that's just the beginning of our week-long trip on the east coast. After my graduation on June 5th, we rented a car and drove all the way up to Niagara Fall, followed by Pittsburgh and DC. I made a 16-page trip plan in advance with two appendix, including detailed information about highlights and must-dos. Unfortunately most of my team members lacked the patience of reading it. Anyway, we had an amazing time in Niagara though we all got wet very quickly; enjoyed some craziness in the Musical Festival at Pittsburgh and knocked ourselves out by walking into one museum after another in DC. After that, mum and Joop continued to Boston and New York, Gang left for London and I came back to California.

I don't know how to describe my thrill after arriving in the bay area again. Days were beautiful with lovely sunshine and cool breezes. Though I very much enjoyed the laziness, I started to reach my connections around to look for job opportunities. The job hunting turned out to be a lengthy process given the few policy openings in the bay area. It was during my idle times that I decided to start this blog as a way to keep myself busy as well as practicing English writing skills when I was not obliged to submit papers anymore.

One quick decision Gang and I made regarding to our new life in the bay area was to get a new car. Our old car, a Nissan Altima 1996 had worked for us for 4 years, accompanying us in most of our roadtrips. It was still in good situation when we sold it. The new one we got was a Honda Accord in crystal black with ivory seats. Soon two visiting students from Peking University moved in the apartment across ours, who joined us a lot in potluck, board games and hiking.

The best time in the second half of this year should be our trip to Hawaii. Details about this trip can be found at Impressionist Hawaii in my previous blogs. After that, I decided to learn some skills in addition to the job search. Therefore I started to teach myself SQL through online courses and textbooks, which kept me busy most of the day. No matter how clear it sounds in the textbook, when I tried to work on it with my laptop, things still went wrong from time to time. Luckily I finally finished the course and acquired some skills of processing data with SQL. It was also during this process that I was reconfirmed of my interests with data analysis, which finally led my applications to a few jobs in this field.

My Family at Niagara Fall