The shadow of my plane, surrounded by rainbows

Lately, life seems to be going my way.

Case in point number 1: As I was returning to Boston recently, we flew through a cloud-bank and I was able to take the crazy picture above. Now, I know that it was really a trick having to do with optics and the water droplets in the cloud and the angle of the sun and whatnot. Nonetheless, what are the odds?

Case in point number 2: I was running late for class on Thursday. I parked my bike, quickly locked it, and jogged toward the South door of the building. Then I saw my professor heading for the same door! He was farther away than I was, and hadn't seen me yet. If I kept going, I would beat him to class but he would see me walking in just before him (and obviously late.) So I circled to the North side of the building and made it to the room before he did, undetected. If I had been 10 seconds later, if he'd looked up, or if there hadn't been another entrance, all would have been lost.

Case in point number 3: It's the week before Thanksgiving, and my roses are still blooming.

Also, I live in a castle (see the stone behind the rose)

Case in point number 4: This is where it starts to get really good. I'm hoping the MIT students who didn't listen to me at first have returned to work by this point. In this shaky economy, I know many people who haven't found work. I even have one friend whose summer internship just canceled on him because they're in financial trouble. Despite this... I landed a definite job with a company I am CRAZY about! Stroud Consulting is a relatively new Operations and Management Consulting company. Basically, they hire out their problem-solving skills to a lot of huge companies who want to be more efficient or productive. They go in with big goals, get told that it's impossible, and then produce the results they promised. Sounds like a good challenge :) The people are great, the job will change with each new client, and I am really excited to start! I just have to finish this thesis...

The Official Employment Contract

Case in point number 5: My classes lately have been all about how people learn. So we basically do activities and play games all hour to see how good they are at teaching us material. Here's my team playing with Legos and pulleys:

Yun '12 and Ken '11 building a pulley structure

Yun '12 and Ken '11 demonstrate our pulley structure in action (video)

We also get to play with higher-tech sorts of games. While other people are working on Mastering Physics tutorials, I’m playing Waker. Waker was developed at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT game lab this past summer to showcase some elements of physics. All of GAMBIT’s games have educational objectives. A quick perusal of the games on their website shows coverage of everything from neurotransmitters to political oppression. Waker was a fun way to spend my Saturday morning. If you try it out, or any other games on the site, let me know what you think!

Isn't it a beautiful game? Now, no firsting on this post unless you beat Waker first!

Comments (Closed after 30 days to reduce spam)

Thanks.
The airplane pic is cool. Good luck with your job!

Posted by: 0 on November 22, 2009

beautiful stuff!

Posted by: Alireza'14 on November 22, 2009

I'm confused - are you MEnging or doing Course 15?

Anywho, I usually get 9hrs of sleep every night, though my life doesn't match up to yours in goodness right now :D

Posted by: Piper '12 on November 22, 2009

@Piper MEnging. Course 15 can be a useful signal of interest for consulting companies. But, they are also interested in an engineering/logical mindset; different companies place more or less importance on the 2 factors. Stroud actually focuses on recruiting courses 6, 2, 5, 8, 18, etc as opposed to 15.

I'm glad you're getting lots of sleep!

Posted by: kimd on November 22, 2009

The games are really cool. But I got stuck on a level :/ Oh well. I'll figure it out

Posted by: Lauren on November 22, 2009

Kim,I envy ur life!
Gudluck with the Job.

Posted by: Sam on November 22, 2009

Darn. At least everything is going SOMEONE'S way. Can't say the same here.

Posted by: Vinay H. ('14?) on November 22, 2009

Ok. That game was pretty awesome. Props to whoever made it.

Posted by: Vinay H. ('14?) on November 22, 2009

Wow, I haven't played a computer game in ages but that was really fun. Such a good way to avoid doing homework. Thanks, now I'm hooked.

Posted by: Jen on November 22, 2009

Very nice game, stylish and refreshing surprisingly.
Usually I'm playing something frustrating like the Kaizo Mario mod, Megaman Zero series, Super Bomberman (in all it's glory and splendor on an SNES emulator) and the sort. Waker is a series of interesting puzzles, but I glitched/cheated through some of them.

You can't glitch through Professor Layton's puzzles. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Layton_(series))

Good job on having an awesome life! Which inspires me to write this:

YOU WIN AT LIFE!
HIGH SCORE: 6,022,141,793
YOUR SCORE: 314,158,265
Enter Initials? _

Posted by: Nestor (14?) on November 22, 2009

Am I first?

Posted by: JF('14?) on November 22, 2009

What happened in the first picture is called a "glory"
http://www.atoptics.co.uk/droplets/gloab.htm
I'v never seen any, you were so lucky:D

Posted by: Niloo on November 23, 2009

@ Niloo
Wow! Thanks for letting me know; I was wondering about the details

Posted by: kimd on November 23, 2009

its awesum

Posted by: enriqueve on November 23, 2009

Nice stuff!

I have to say, your avatar is the first cute/creepy combination I've seen

Posted by: Sonam on November 23, 2009

@Nestor
don't you mean 314,159,265?

Posted by: anon on November 29, 2009

Comments have been closed.