Ker Lee

Our senior trip was to Las Vegas. The whole thing cost each person about $20. Lodging, transportation and a dinner show were all included in this fee, thanks to generous subsidies.

Nobody told us that even after we’ve passed all our exams, we would still have to survive one more thing: the scorching 2.5 hours of the commencement ceremony. This year’s graduation events look like this:

It’s common for the new seniors (who are technically juniors) to set up a fake Ditch Day stack after the real Ditch Day. For Page House, our “Day After” fake stack happened a week after. At 8 am, the house was woken up to a battle between Twix bunny and the Frosted Flakes tiger.

One of the things I will miss most about southern California is its beaches. The week of commencement is going to be super packed, so I figured the weekend right before that would be a good time to take a solo adventure to Santa Monica.

Our class got a lot of weird looks that day we demo-ed our bike projects for E88 Critical Making. We were led by our guest lecturersJen Hofer and Rob Ray, who are artists in the LA area.

For Drawing and Painting class, the instructor Jim Barry took the class to Art Center College of Design for a field trip. Part of the gallery involves an area reserved for a professional artist. It was closed when we arrived at around 7:30 pm, but we had a security guard open it for us. The artiston exhibition right now is Yoshio Ikezaki, a professor at Art Center. His works with different kinds of inks and papers are put on show, including folded paper sculptures.

For one of the car-themed games for our Fast and Furious Ditch Day activities, we made a giant version of theboard game “Rush Hour”. The point of the game is to slide blocks around until a designated block makes its way across the grid.

Seniors plan elaborate Ditch Day activities for the underclassmen each year, often sleeping very little the night before. There is a midnight curfew till 8 am, the only time seniors have free reign over the campus without the chance of underclassmen might walk by and ruin the surprise.

Leaving the museum, we ran into a self-serve boba truck and got decently priced beverages (with all the topping you could ever want!) that came with a cute glass bottle.

Enticed by images of water filled caves and promises of an adventure, Jennifer and I decided to go hiking to Dawn Mines in Altadena, in Angeles National Forest. We got dropped off at Millard Camp Ground (20 min and $10 Uber from Caltech). We chose the Millard Falls trailhead over the Sunset Ridge one (which was a few hundred feet away) because we heard it was faster though it’ll involve some climbing.

For E88 Critical Making, we embarked on the balloon mapping unit. Balloon mapping is a grassroots technique for gathering aerial photographs. Examples of uses might be for mapping refugee camps which are often grayed out of maps for the general public, or for gathering images documenting the extent of oil spills. We had a guest lecturer who is working closely with Public Lab, a DIY citizen science collaboration, with balloon mapping.

It’s somewhat of an annual tradition to have a special Chandler dinner for Cinco de Mayo at Caltech. This year, it was a triple threat, with Guardians of the Galaxy decorations and special guests: firefighters!

Page House’s annual beach trip is a 3 hour drive southwards to Carlsbad. I noticed a field of yellow flowers right off the side of the road. I tried walking into the prickly field and all I found was more and more of the yellow flowers. This probably has something to do the with superbloom in California after we finally got out of the drought.

I visited the Broad Museum in LA this Friday! We booked the free tickets a month ahead of time because the museum was so popular and busy. As if to balance out the free tickets, parking was super expensive, around $14 for the first 3 hours and then you pay per 15 minutes after that.

In the spring, Caltech holds its annual Grad Fair for its graduating students.

Right across the street from campus, on the way to the gym, there’s a distinct red building. It’s the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. It’s somewhat ironic that this building, which looks like it went through an earthquake, is the astronomy building. Across the street, there’s a building with a telescope dome on top, and it is for seismology. In fact, this dome is a solar dome that opens up and follows the sun throughout the day to project images of the sun inside and also to bring sunlight into basement.

For E88: Critical Making, our class took a Techlab orientation in order to make 3D prints for homework. The orientation is open to all students and it’s basically a free 3D printing lesson, help with setting up the software on your laptop, and also opens up access to free 3D printing!

Screen printing and silk painting is offered as a joint course at Caltech. Classes are once a week, 7-10 pm. Screen printing is an important skill because that’s how seniors make T shirts for Ditch Day and also fake Ditch Day stacks throughout the year. Various sports teams and clubs also use these screen printing facilities to make T shirts.

Caltech unveiled our (first?) art galleries! Works submitted to the Totem, Caltech’s literary magazine, as well the Art of Science contest, were put up. The Art of Science Gallery is located where Red Door Cafe used to be. Recent renovations have moved Red Door Cafe to the C-Store (convenience store). Art installations for the Caltech Art Gallery are also hung up in “Little Chandler”, the front indoor seating area.

I went hiking this weekend with a group of 10 other Techers to Kelso Dunes.These dunes are known for “singing sand”. It’s part of the Mojave Desert about 3 hours drive from Caltech. Hiking uphill was quite the workout, especially with our backpacks.