Merry Christmas ...

As planned, we spent the holidays with C's family up in the Central Coast area. We showed up at his mom's place on the 22nd, in case she needed us for preparations or to run errands for her. We were the first guests to arrive this time, although C's sister arrived later that night with her kids and the dog ...

I spent the holidays here two years ago too, but this time was a little different, for many reasons - most of them sad. For my part, I didn't really feel in the mood. It's just so different here from what I'm used too. It's too warm here, too casual, not dark enough, not cozy enough. On the day of Christmas Eve, we went into town to fetch some prepared food C's mom had ordered, and nothing there made you think that the holidays were coming up. Although I guess there was probably a little less traffic than usual. Something that was reflected in the commercants' grumpy mood. We walked all around downtown to try to find gift tags and cards, but couldn't find anything seasonal. "Maybe you'll find them at Target", people said.

The American tradition says you're supposed to watch this movie each Christmas. (The Americans will know what I'm talking about.) Well, I tried really hard, but didn't make it through. I'll take A Wonderful Life anyday over it ... We then did a round on the ranch, delivering Danish chocolates to the neighbours and spent a while with them, having cranberry cocktails and chatting with C's childhood friends.

It was nice to have the kids around on Christmas Day. They were excited and fun to watch. The downer for me though was that everything is super casual here. C's brothers and sisters don't even dress up for the Christmas dinner. But, Americans don't get a lot of vacation days. So, I guess, when you're on holidays you're really gonna want to relax and hang out. And that's what we did. Alot!

I read a couple of novels and started the third one. Will maybe finish over the New Year break, who knows.

... when you're having fun

Days fly fast now. Since I finished school I've been killing time taking care of correspondance, e-mails, paperwork, going to campus everyday. It doesn't feel as if I've gotten a whole lot done, but time flies fast. Sunday night we had a Farewell dinner with Anu from C's lab at a Thai restaurant. She's so spirited and lively, I think she will be greatly missed. Tuesday we made another trip to Fashion Valley to finish the last Xmas purchases (or almost). Turns out that we still have some presents left to buy for C's nephews and nieces, as we haven't been able to find what he had in mind for them. As for me, I haven't been able to find what I had in mind for C either ...

I actually stayed at home on Monday, cleaning the house (that had been very neglected during the last few weeks) and Tuesday we did some heavy cleaning too, rented a carpet cleaner and shampooed all the carpets, (American homes tend to be carpeted, except for the kitchen and possibly the bathroom.) and washed the windows and blinders in and out. Now, we are not going to be spending Xmas at home, but anyway, it will be nice to come back to a sparkling clean house.

We offered ourselves a nice dinner at the Fishery as a reward for the good results of my coursework and the publication of C's article. When we came back from dinner we could hear the surf from our house. Pretty impressive, considering that we are whole eight blocks from the sea!

The Rootbeer Float Experience

We spent the weekend in Temecula hanging out with P (C's sister) & R. Most of the time we did nothing, that is we just hang out. Made a short trip to the mall on Saturday afternoon, then went out for dinner in a Mexican family restaurant - according to R the most authentic mexican eatery in Temecula - and had their fabulous Seven Seas Soup.

Today, I managed to drag them out to the Old Town of Temecula. I've never visited that neighbourhood before and it was kinda fun. It's crammed with interesting, quaint, little shops, chocolate stores, candle stores, food stores, art galleries and antique stores. We toured up and down the main street until all the funky, antique stuff got a little old ...

Ended the tour with an authentic rootbeer float at an old rootbeer brewery. Wow, that is such a weird drink, or treat, or what shall I say, but somehow pleasantly strange and surprising. Now, we have vanilla ice-cream in the freezer at home already, and I am thinking I will conjure C up to getting a couple bottles of that root-beer to make a cocktail at home ...

One more of those authentic all american essentials I can mark on my checklist now ...

A day of satisfaction

I finished the quarter with straight As finally. Found out today, as I was doing my registrations, that my grades had been registered. So, as much as I feared that Computer Architecture class, I did manage to get a high score on the final exam. Well, I guess I should have known, that I would probably perform much better on three hour finals than I did on the numerous 10 min quizzes we had through the quarter.

Anyway, it was a lot of work, it sure was. Now, maybe I will feel more confident next time. I've been whining about how hard these classes were all winter, how smart my fellow class mates were, and how it just had to be a mistake that they had actually let me in. But maybe it wasn't a mistake after all, not if I managed to get the highest scores on all my exams. It's still gonna be a struggle though. I'll pass up to the graduate level now and have assignments that require more research work and will bring along new frustrations ...

C had a great day too. His paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science came out, and it was highlighted as a special feature and cited in Science Daily and a University news release .

To celebrate the end of exams and the end of worrying about grades and requirements, I went out with a girl from my class tonight, for a drink and a movie. We saw Brokeback Mountain.

Searching for the holiday feeling

Nothing here reminds me much of Christmas. But we did put up white lights in our garden that we admired while we drank mulled cider. I finished wrapping up the Christmas presents that I was sending back home, and took them to the post office. There is still something missing though, not quite sure what it is ... Snow, gingerbread, pine trees, ligths?
Luckily still, a number of San Diegans have put a giant blown up snowman in their gardens or on top of their roofs. It takes a little getting used to for me, but who knows, maybe this is what will do it for me this year ...

Jingle Bells

Christmas shopping is coming along. We went down to Horton Plaza after work yesterday and got some more gifts out of the way. I have to ship all the gifts in time, so I better get going. Since we were at Horton Plaza, we did a movie as well: The Constant Gardener, a John le Carré thriller where poor Ralph Fiennes in the role of a gentle British diplomat ends up at the center of a major corporation conspiracy ...

A as in A+?

Yay hooray, I got an A in Operating Systems. Went to my professor's office to check out the final and he told me I got an A. So, my efforts payed off. At least my grades have been constantly going up since the beginning of the quarter. My last homework was the best, my last project got a full score plus extra credit and I scored more than ten points better on the final than the midterm. The prof actually claimed I had the highest score.

On the other hand, I had to tell my professor that this class completely ruined my first Thanksgiving in America, just so that he was aware of the suffering involved. But wow, I never thought I was the kind of gal that would ace in operating systems. I hate operating systems. Don't I ... ?

Party Time?

There was a lab party for C's group yesterday. Big house in La Jolla, greek food from a caterer, chocolates, lots of people (some of whom I've actually learned to know, by now), piano banging, and at the end: C's boss playing the guitar to the awful singing of the lab members.

I am finally beginning to relax enough to be able to talk to people. I, like, know I should be relaxed because my finals are over, but I am probably still a little anxious about the outcome. It's quite critical that I get fairly good grades in my course prerequisites, so that I can move on to the graduate versions of the classes.

So, I am eagerly waiting for the results. Got one actually last week already, or the day after the final. Nailed that one with an A+, one of the top 3 grades in the class, but this was by far the most accessible of the classes I was taking this quarter, so it doesn't really reassure me, as far as the other classes go ...

Shopping and Surfing

Sort of beginning to realize that I'm sort of on vacation now. The plan was to finish work early on Friday, go do some shopping and then movie and dinner. When it came to it though, we didn't have the heart to do it. It just didn't seem right to leave campus before dark somehow!

On Saturday however, we woke up with the best of intentions. We need to do Christmas shopping and so many other things, and there is just no excuse not to anymore.

So, first of all we went to Charlie's Best Bread to have a little breakfast and coffee. Then, off to Fashion Valley for Xmas shopping. We spent the whole day there, nothing less. Filled the car with shopping bags. Then squeezed in a movie.

Yesterday we decided it was time for some outdoor activity and took to the beach. Me to try on my fabulous new wetsuit. C to check if he could actually put me on a surfboard. The sea was a little rough for my taste but the tide was out and there was some safe learning space out there, not too deep. Once I got over my fear of the whitewater, I made a dozen rides on the board. Lying down of course, not standing. And swallowing a lot of sea water in the process. But it was all good. And fun. I did feel tired though, afterwards.

We went grocery shopping then and bought ourselves a cute little rosemary Christmas tree. Then went and rented a DVD for the night, March of the Penguins. Check it out!

Finals finally finished

I hope this was my toughest quarter, because it was really hard. I have basically done nothing but study for the last two months. I have spent every night and every weekend working on homeworks, programming assignments, group projects, reading and preparing for quizzes. I had completely forgotten that school implied so much work! I've been out of school for a very long time, and my brain has adapted to a very different rythm from the one students are used to. (Plus, I must say, that students here are *really* smart!)

So, I've spent the whole quarter trying to get into gear. Developing efficiency, learning to prioritize when getting everything done is not possible, gathering speed when reading course material and taking tests. The first quiz I took was over before I started writing the first problem. I got a 1 out of 10 on that one. But the beginning of the quarter seems like another life already. And I have learned tons since then.

I now know how a computer works, how a processor is designed, know how to put together an arithmetic logic unit out of logical circuits, can write binary code, assembly language and translate from one to the other, and know how to evaluate the performance of a CPU. I know what the operating system does and how, understand the functions of the kernel, know how to handle processes and threads, do priority scheduling and ensure synchronization for multiprogramming with locks, semaphores and condition variables, implement memory management, sharing, paging and virtual memory, understand file systems, disks, protection mechanisms and security policies. I now have a basic idea of programming languages paradigms, the pros and cons of functional, imperative, object oriented and logic programming, I know how to program in C, C++, Python and SML, and I (finally) know how to write an interface in Java, how to implement it and how to extend and inherit from classes. And aside from all this, I now know my way around Linux, how to use emacs and makefiles and how to use CVS in UNIX.

So, I have definitely added to my knowledge, and I am sure these concepts will be very helpful during the rest of my studies. I just wish that learning all this hadn't been such a painful, debilitating experience. But, it's over now (for the moment). I passed my last final yesterday. Now I will have winter break for a month.