New Blog!
I’m back again! I used to maintain a blog at xanga.com under the same login name, but I shut it down after my career as an undergraduate at Berkeley ended. I felt like this was part of closing a chapter of my life, but here I am again, unable to suppress the urge to write on an online blog.
I wanted to start blogging because a few interesting events happened and I wanted to mention them.
A few weeks ago, while at my parent’s home, I took a nap during the middle of the day. Usually I feel groggy afterwards, but not this time. I felt energetic and refreshed. Since this was so unusual, I wanted to mention it. I have nothing more to say about this, which I find silly to bring up in the first place.
Another event was that I set off the fire alarm to the whole building. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but I found some humor in it…well at least after the oh-crap-I-made-everyone-annoyed feeling during the alarm. Here’s how it happened:
A few days ago I decided that I should learn how to cook. I’d been buying out for almost all my meals for several days. It was about time to cook for myself. I found an online video tutorial for cooking ribeye steak: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-rib-eye-steak and a few days later I had the opportunity to go to Berkeley Bowl. (Btw, this place is amazing! I had been going to Safeway for 3 years, and I’ve only found out about this place. It seems like a chef’s heaven). I bought a few other ingredients that I wanted to try, along with the ribeye steak.
So I get home and try to cook my ribeye steak, only I do it in an iron pan. I let the pan get extremely hot before placing on the oil covered rib eye steak. Immediately, smoke comes from the pan. I felt worried, but quickly dismissed the possibility of the fire alarm going off because our kitchen fan was on, windows and doors were open. I picked up a flattened cereal box and started waving at the fire alarm in the apartment. For about half a minute, it was okay and it seemed like I was going to enjoy a delicious rib-eye steak in a few minutes. But, since this story wouldn’t be worth telling if that was all, you could probably guess what happened next. BEEP BEEP BEEP! (No, a car was not driving into our aparment!)
I run into my roommates room. He quickly corrects the assumption that it is OUR apartment making that noise. In fact, the whole building was aware of the alarm. He closes the front door. We scramble to put our shoes on and head down to the front of the apartment.
When I got outside, sure enough there were all the residents of the apartment. Around 100 people. This was all my doing. The whole thing was so absurd I couldn’t help laughing. Then I realized what these people must think if they see me laughing – that I think the fire alarm’s annoying me. So I continue to smile and laugh, and look back at my roommate and I try to make conversation with him. Yep, that’s us – just another couple of residents annoyed at the fire alarm.
A guy comes up to us and says “I just moved in 2 weeks ago. Do you know how often this thing happens?” My roommate moves his eyes around with a HUGE grin on his face and starts to say “uhhh…” My face is straight and I try to say something before my roommate gives me away, “Well, it happens every now and then.” My roommate agrees with me, probably picking up the hint. I continue “Sometimes there’s dust in the detector and it just goes off. It doesn’t happen too often.” The guy responds, “Yeah, I was just trying to code and all of a sudden this goes off…”
I look over and notice the new restaurant that just opened under our apartment. Their customers have been evacuated too. Yikes.
Then comes the wait for the fire trucks. I say to my roommate, “You know, at least we now know who lives in the building.”
The firefighters come and hurry towards the door. I try to relocate to a place where if I were to explain to them what happened, no one else would hear me. Two firefighters pass and I walk up to the 2nd one.
“I think it was because someone was cooking,” I say.
“Cooking?” He replies.
I nod. He continues to walk.
That was alot easier than I thought.
The firefighters enter the building and exit within 3 minutes. Then we see them go over to the restaurant and check out the fire alarm. They pull it to test it, and it goes off. They nod to each other and motion to let everyone go back inside.
As everyone walks back in, someone comes up to the firefighters and asks them what happened. I lean over to get a closer hearing. The firefighter said that someone pulled the firealarm.
I smile and walk in with everyone else. I made some loud comments to my roommate as we were walking up with everyone else like, “God, I hate people who pull the fire alarm,” or “Whoever set the fire alarm off is a jerk.” We get some hearty laughter out of that and return to our room. This time, I use the George Foreman grill to cook my steak.
My original intention was to tell the firefighters that I think I set the fire alarm off, but I rationalized to myself that they never gave me the chance.
I was always self-concious about accidentally pulling a fire alarm to a building. So when I made everyone step outside for the fire alarm, that was a unique experience.
The whole event was only about 15 minutes, after which everyone moved on with their lives and forgets. But here I am 2 days later recounting the events so it doesn’t fall out of record.
During last semester, SPS held a singing contest called Physics Idol. The winner of the contest is trying to create another karaoke event, this time inviting many of their friends to take over a karaoke place and have fun. It was inspiring to find out that Physics Idol allowed other events to be created. I’m very happy about that. The winner even mentions that they will perform their winning performance at the event.
That’s all for now!
