A new feature recently added to the awesome Google Maps website is that users can now view the handy KMZ files created in Google Earth right in Google Maps. This means you don’t have to download any software. Just visit the website and you can see a list of locations and such.

So! To test this new feature out, I uploaded a KMZ file I created in Google Earth that shows every single In N’ Out that I have ever been to.

I know I posted a graphic last year about it. Now thanks to Google… it is a fully interactive map!

Check it out!

Alright!

This is a crazy post. For your reading pleasure, I have created a table of contents!

Table of Contents
I. Hiking Whitney
II. Friends, Games and Losing Money
III. Xenophobic Dentists
IV. Beat Boxing
V. Bloody Dancing

Hiking
I returned back to the Bay Area on Friday after spending the last two weeks in Southern California. The first week was spent roaming around the Eastern Sierras in preparation for our Mount Whitney climb. Unfortunately, the day before we were to begin our climb, Dan sprained his knee on a practice hike.

So that rendered him unable to carry out the climb and I didn’t want to leave him behind at camp while I spent the day hiking it by myself. Instead, we decided to explore some good old dirt roads in Owens Valley and camped out one final night in the desert near Lone Pine.

Our wonderful shrine of fire to Mount Whitney the last night we were in Lone Pine. 😉

Friends
We returned back to the Inland Empire to meet up with friends for BBQs, baseball games, and playing all manner of crazy games (Catch Phrase, Would You Rather and Cranium). Dan and I apparently have the world’s most awesome Cranium team, but we’ve never won the game. This is because every time we roll, we advance about 1 space while all the other teams blaze on by ahead of us. So we probably end up answering more questions correctly than all the other team’s put together, but it still does no good. Ah well.

We also played various Poker games (since the guys have a weekly Poker night back home that I don’t get to participate in due to my “remote” location). Fortunately, between the infrequent opportunities I play down there and playing up here with friends, I was able to continue my year long streak of LOSING MONEY in Poker. I’m quite good at it! This might also have to do with me having some form of A.D.D., where I can focus on playing the game for an hour or two and hold my own… even doing well on occasion. After that first hour though, I stop carrying and start betting frivolously when I hold a pair of 2’s in my hand. It’s awesome.

Xenophobic Dentists
Another highlight of my week was getting to visit my dentist. I know, you must be thinking, “What in the hell is wrong with you if visiting your dentist is a highlight?” Well, funny you should ask! I shall explain.

I haven’t seen her since pre-New Zealand trip, so of course she asked about it. Naturally, I start excitedly talking about how amazing and beautiful that country is, as well as the friendly people. She asked if I would ever consider moving there and I wasted no time saying “Providing my financial situation was in order, yes!” Then I went on the explain about their emigration (with an “e”, not with an “i”… meaning people leaving the country) problem and how they want young professionals and such to move there.

So far it’s a happy, friendly conversation. Cue the comment from out of left field.

My dentist gives me a concerned look, leans in close and says, “I think we should send some of our ‘South-of-the-Border friends’ there then if you know what I mean. We must get 10,000 a minute coming into the country.”

Umm… excuse me?

No, I can’t say I know exactly what you mean because I am not an irrational xenophobe. It was really nice to interject screwed up political beliefs and racist views into my otherwise happy conversation about my trip. It’s really sad that some people feel that way.

I happen to think I’m extremely fortunate for living up here in San Francisco, an amazingly diverse city in terms of religious beliefs, cultural backgrounds and ethnic heritage and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But of course they are all savagely “stealing our jobs” and “taxing our resources.” Oh wait! Don’t forget that their skin is a different color too!

Of course it’s especially embarrassing that San Bernardino(where I originally went to school and the neighboring town to where I grew up) has decided to propose one of the toughest anti-immigrant proposals in the country. City councilman Chas Kelly (Republican of course) is proposing this legislation for a variety of reason, among them: He hears little English spoken in his supermarket checkout line!

Oh no!

What a sad state of affairs.

Beat Boxing
Anyway, back to more exciting things! This past Friday, David and I went to a beat boxing competition in Berkeley. 24 performers that would be narrowed down to one winner based on who the audience voted for. It was INCREDIBLE. For those not in the know about beat boxing, it’s basically all about creating beats, melodies and other assorted rhythms by simply using your mouth. The sounds some of these people can make are AMAZING.

The MC of the event was Kid Beyond, who is apparently one of the most famous beat boxers around. He performed for people between rounds and the sounds he could make were absolutely unreal. I found a video of him on youtube:

Absolutely amazing!

Bloody Dancing
On Sunday night, David and I hung out once again and met up with a friend of his from Berkeley to check out an Asian American dance performance. Definitely fun to see. And the things people can do with their bodies are just phenomenal and beautiful.

Of course they also had some weird skit thing in the middle that was rather intense.

In the middle of the stage a table was setup with a white table cloth, a microphone and platter containing assorted items. In front of the table, facing the audience was a large television connected to a camcorder that was placed on the table (which was on and offered an exclusive “Table-Side” view of whatever action was about to take place).

Two ladies came out dressed in nothing but white shirts. They sat down across from each other on the table and started some random small talk. One of the ladies attached a small rubber tourniquet to the other’s arm. Then she pulled out a needle and proceeded to draw blood. After filling up a vial, they pulled out the needle and switched roles… this time pulling out a new needle and filling up another vial.

All the while, they had just pulled the needles out and left them, so blood is flowing onto the table. And we have a close up view thanks to the camcorder that one of the ladies is now holding!

Then comes the intense part…

They pull out TWO SHOT GLASSES. They pour half of each vial into both glasses, count to three and DRINK IT! Then the lights went out and that was the end of the skit.

It sounds gross… and it was. But watching this live, happening not more than 20 feet in front of you was intense! Oh. my. god.

Yikes.

Anyway, this was definitely an eventful weekend full of crazy things to see and experience. Now that I’m back in town, the primary focus is to secure a job and finish working on my thesis! Excellent!

Until next time my friends.

Alright! As of last week, I am finished with all my undergraduate course work! The only thing remaining is to spend this summer finishing up my senior thesis and then I am done! So close to being officially done with school. It feels amazing and scary all at once. The next immediate goal is to study for the GREs, do well enough on them and then apply to some awesome grad schools in the fall! In the meantime, I need to see if I can find a cool job that will pay the bills too.

I’m leaving tomorrow to head up to the Sierras with Dan. On Thursday and Friday, we’re going to attempt to climb Mount Whitney. There still seems to be a lot of snow up there, but we’ll see how it goes. We both have all the gear we’ll need though, so that’s good. Here’s to hoping it’s a successful trip!

Here is a picture I snapped of Whitney a year and a half ago on a geology trip:

Next week I’ll have a picture looking down. 😉

I really do have the craziest small world stories happen to me in this city.

Anyway, for the most part, this is going to be ripped straight out of an email I wrote to Meghan recently.

While riding my bus on the way to school the last few weeks, almost everytime I get on, I notice this quite fashionable, extraordinarily cute girl who apparently has a class at the same time I do. The bus is always super packed though and she’s usually at one end while I’m at the other.

So I’m really not sure how I notice her out of all the other people that are packed on the bus, but she continually catches my eye though. I’ve always wanted to say something to her, but I feel kind of strange being a random bus guy and saying something like, “HEY! YOU SMELL PUUURTY!”

Anyway!

So, two of my housemates are moving out at the end of this month! We post an ad on craigslist and get a load of responses. We setup some appointments for this past week. On one of the nights, a housemate left to go down the hill and pickup two ladies who were interested (their lease apparently expires soon and they are friends/roommates right now). They walk in the door and I look up.

One of the girls is the one I always see on the bus! I think my mouth hit the floor. Of course in my infinite smoothness, I said “WHOA! I TOTALLY RECOGNIZE YOU!” (Thankfully I stayed away from the “you smell pretty” line).

She said, “you do?” I thought it wasn’t a good idea to admit that I’m a bus stalker so I just said that she just looks really familiar for some reason.

So we showed them the house and they definitely seemed interested (price, proximity to school and the fact that they said the rooms were “good sized” – which we’ve never gotten before). We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks, but I’m sure I’ll probably see her on the bus again soon.

—

In other news: I aquired the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album “Stadium Arcadium” through rather nefarious means awhile ago.. Anyway, I’ve finally had a chance to listen to it and I am really enjoying it! It’s especially interesting since I’ve never been all that hot on the RHCP. They have some good tunes in my opinion, but I never got all that into them. But this is definitely one of the best albums I’ve heard so far this year in my opinion! Definitely excellent.

Alright… a week of classes left and I am done! YES! Then I begin to contemplate what I’m going to do with my life. Yikes!

Woo! I love random trivia (especially trivia nights at bars too!). I’ve always been fairly good at it. However, I’ve never been good enough and neither I or any of the teams I have been on have won anything!

Until tonight.

I decide to go study and finish writing a geology paper (I got an extension!) at a local bar/coffee shop/art gallery called the Canvas Gallery. It’s an awesome little place about 5 blocks from my house and usually has these awesome events going on every night.

I checked the calendar tonight to see what would be going on and if it would interfere with my studying. Sure enough, it would! It turns out they were having an event called “Ask a Scientist” and tonight’s speaker was from the USGS! He would be talking about the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (who’s anniversary is tomorrow morning at 5:12am). Even better, they were having a trivia night about earthquakes with prizes to the winners! AWESOME!

So it started in 10 minutes, I packed my bag and booked it down the hill, making it just in time to get a scorecard. The finally tally, I got 8 out of 10 questions right, the highest score there! (And one answer was originally right but I erased it!) Yes! I guess it was kind of cheating… since I’m a geologist. Ah hem. The questions WERE hard though.

Anyway, I ended up winning this awesome book, signed by the author himself! Pretty productive evening.

Well, I never did get to write any more to my paper unfortunately. I should do some of that now though. I have grand ambitions to be downtown at 4:30am to attend the memorial service and should probably get to bed early.

It’s pretty crazy to think about though, especially after walking around the streets tonight. 100 years ago was a night much like tonight. Crystal clear, calm, quiet. No one really knew of the impending doom that was about to be unleashed. And it can happen at any time too.

Of course I’ve already heard numerous people in the last few weeks say, “Wouldn’t that be crazy if it happened again, right on the 100th anniversary?” I suppose stranger things have happened up here of course. We’ll see what tomorrow brings! 🙂

I know I haven’t posted much since I’ve gotten back from New Zealand. School has really been tough this semester with the amount of work that I’ve had to do. Plus, life really hasn’t been all that exciting, leaving little to write about (excessive amounts of rain and excessive amounts of school work).

Anyway, I read this article today and was sad I didn’t know about this earlier. A tricycle race? I totally would have signed up to do that! The pictures in the news article are hilarious. I really do love my cooky city.

And here is another reason I love my crazy city, this news article is circa Valentines Day. And another reason. And even another… though that article is two years old, but they ran the race again this year. Also, the Bay to Breakers (WARNING: Pics of naked people on that page!) run is coming up in May as well and I’m definitely looking forward to that, as it’s always a good time. It’s basically an organized party. 🙂

In other news, Tuesday is the 100th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. A memorial is planned downtown at 4:30am on Tuesday, and I’m going to try my best to attend.

Ugh. Just got a phone call that is not good news.

Two weeks ago, one of my closest friends in the geology program up here got into a horrid motorcycle crash one evening when a car swerved across 3 lanes of traffic to try and get to an exit they were about to miss. My friend Kurt happened to be exiting the freeway at the same time.

Fortunately, he saw the car coming and was able to try and react. Unfortunately, he was basically run off the road. He ended up in extraordinarily bad condition and considering his injuries, it’s amazing he even survived.

Last night was the first chance I’ve had to see him since the accident. Along with a few friends, we spent three hours at the hospital last night. His injuries are numerous. There was a compound fracture in the left leg, his right foot might be broken, ACL and MCL in both knees are ripped, his pelvis was basically broken in half, busted bladder and three broken vertebrate.

Anyway, my friend Peter, who has been spending a lot of time at the hospital, just called to inform me that the doctors are going to have to amputate his left leg, due to the amount of blood lost and muscle tissue that died as a result. Ugh. I feel sick and sad. All we can do at this point is be there for him and keep him in our thoughts and prayers.

The snow level is expected to drop down to 500ft tonight! My house is situated at a cozy 640ft! Will we get snow? Who knows! Especially since I am about to leave for a geology trip to Point Reyes in about 30 minutes. I don’t mind camping or doing geology work, but not if it’s raining.

Here’s to hoping!

Alright! So of course it’s been nearly a month since I last posted. Fear not, for I am still alive!I’ve been trying to keep up with school and stay afloat, after starting the semester off at a disadvantage thanks to gallivanting around far away lands for the first two weeks of the semester. So writing anything here has basically been at the bottom of my priority list.

Anyway, it’s nice to be back in the States, but I do miss New Zealand. Air New Zealand now has some crazy sale going on for another week where you can by a round trip ticket from San Francisco to New Zealand for $800… and they’ll throw in a free flight to Australia as well! Oh dear… how I want to take advantage of that! (Of course the offer is only valid for their winter months, but that might be an interesting time to go there)

As far as the rest of my life is going, there hasn’t been too much exciting going on other than school (which has taken up the majority of my time lately). Up until this last week, the weather had been absolutely beautiful and was a very nice thing to come back to. We even got to see some incredible sunsets from the house as well!

The Farallon Islands silouhetted off in the distance by the setting sun.

For our geologic mapping class, we went up to the Marin Headlands (north of San Francisco) yesterday and the previous Friday to begin some mapping exercises for our course. It’s quite hard to concentrate when you have this view behind you however…

I’ve also been working on my senior thesis lately as well, which involves looking at diatoms from a place near Death Valley called the Tecopa Basin. It’s basically a paleontology thesis where I’m trying to determine a paleoenvironment for this area about one million years ago. I haven’t done the field work for it yet (since I was in New Zealand), but a professor brought some samples back from when he was in the area in January. So I’ve really just been in the lab for the most part processing the sediment. I’m supposed to do my field work out there (and collect more samples) around the beginning of April.

Some samples sitting in baths of hydrochloric acid. Fun! (It looks like urine… I know.)

Here is a pic Michelle snapped of me when she stopped by the lab and wondered what sort of ridiculous outfit I was wearing. Hah. I’m trying to follow in my father’s footsteps and be a mad scientist!

Lastly, to leave you with a picture comparing where I was to where I am now. Here is a pic we took in New Zealand one night while playing with a fellow student’s digital SLR (those were soooooooo nice). It’s the constellation Orion (upside down compared to what we’re used to).

Constellation Orion viewed from New Zealand (upside down!)

Orion as viewed from San Francisco. It’s flipped the other way, but hard to tell since there’s so much ambient light in the picture that washes out the stars.

Back in the States and jumping right back into school.

Anyway, I went ahead and created a photo gallery with pics from our stay on the North Island. Check it out!

North Island Photos