The Birthday Boy

We started the day with an extremely unorganized meet up with all of us in order to surprise Alex for his birthday. Eric Wang and Frank went to pick up the ice cream cake while I had the task of waking up the others. The most difficult one was Eric Wilson. After about 20 phone calls I decided to go to Donlon Hall myself. When Eric Wang came back, we both (along with Matt) went over to Eric Wilson's room to bang on his door and call his phone again. Originally, we thought he might have been in the shower, but to our amazement, he actually slept through everything despite his phone volume being on high. Our surprise was delayed for about 45 minutes. We finally went to Risley Hall with Mr. Chan-Law to go and surprise Alex. For most of the time, we were more concerned about the cake melting than being sneaky. When we finally got there and said happy birthday to Alex we commenced the cake eating. However, the cake was rock hard and impossible to cut so our concern of the cake melting was all in vain.

Alex, Eric, and I spent most of the day working on our essays with some TV-watching thrown in there. After   finishing the essay, we met up with a bunch of people and watched Spain win the Euro Cup 2012. However, I ended up sleeping through most of the second half of the game along with Eric Wilson. After the game, we watched a little of The Matrix Reloaded, then headed up for dinner. Upon coming back from dinner, we revised our essays a little more and then watched Taken.

This day was mainly dedicated to work so not a lot of things happened. After a full week being independent, I think my time management has really improved; I find myself finishing all my work with enough time to wind down and explore other things.

Happy Birthday Alex!!!

Cutting the Cake

I awoke this morning to the sound of my phone ringing and a banging at my door. I answered them simultaneously and it turned out to be Matt, Alex ,Eric, and Frank who had forgotten to tell me about Alex's morning birthday surprise. I  had previously thought the festivities were starting at lunch. I quickly got dressed and cleaned up and we headed out to pick up the ice cream cake (egg free for Alex) from Matt's refrigeration where Eric and Frank had stored it. Then we walked down to Alex's room with Mr. Chan-Law to surprise him.

This was the first time I, and I think all of us, had ice cream cake for breakfast, an it was quite the experience. After we finished eating we walked back to Donlon Hall and met back up with Aflredo (who had left while we were eating). We again went over our plans for the next couple weeks. We spent the rest of the time before the Eurocup Championship  Game working on our essays. I actually fell asleep, along with Calvin, during the game and awoke to see, with a small level of disappointment, that Spain had won by a long shot. We watched TV for a little longer until dinner time. After dinner I finalized my essay and Alex and I proofread eachother's work and bounced ideas about the essay topic. Then we watched Taken for the rest of the night.

Tomorrow my second week at Cornell starts. It is easy to fall in to a routine, and I have become very at home. Every morning I wake up, shower, and clean up then head off to breakfast. The day varies, but every night ends up pretty much the same. After dinner is usually free time which I spend socializing until check in. After check in I spend some time with my roommate, then perform the general pre-sleep hygiene ritual and go to sleep. I am really enjoying my time at Cornell, and so far I have not felt overwhelmed or stressed out about anything. Having only one class, and complete control of my time makes getting my work done and still having plenty of free time an matter of only effective time management. This experience is making a more responsible person, and I feel like I am becoming much more mature. It is a great feeling, and an awesome thing to recognize.

Hot, But Not Much Action

Saturday is a Hotelie's real day off - no class in the morning or evening; one can sleep in, and stay up late. Or, in my case, work on a group project. Thankfully, though, this only took up an hour of my wonderfully empty day; my group was well-prepared (a first for me), and it was only me and Colleen working together to decide transitions, builds, and diction.

Otherwise, there is not much left to write about today. I got to sleep in until 10:30 AM (I would have slept longer, but my roommate's friends came in and woke her up - waking me up in the process) and enjoyed a three-mile walk with my iPod. As I took the long route to the College of Human Ecology, Three Days Grace was telling me that "Life Starts Now," and looking at the view made me believe it. I took a detour down to the arts and sciences area. From the parking lot in the back, I could see all of the campus below, surrounded by tree-filled, looming hills. The 19th-century buildings complimented the scenic background; the only layout mistake was that the view was in the back, where staff can park next to dumpsters. It would have been perfect to have the buildings face outward instead. On my way back up, a wedding procession passed by, and I moved aside for them. They probably liked the view too.

Unfortunately, Savage Hall (which has the Nutrion Science department) was closed, but the walk was fun. It was really hot by the time I began my trek back, though; in the Bay Area, the fog eventually rolls in and acts as a natural air conditioning system. In Ithaca, no such thing exists, and being in my room is especially difficult due to the seeming lack of air flow. No matter what the temperature is outside, it stays a steady mid-80s in my room (the fan does not help, either). If I come to New York for college, I think I'd like to be closer to the ocean.

My walk was the highlight of my day. Tomorrow I have class from 6 PM until 9 PM, but I am meeting with my group one last time at 1 to make sure that everything is correct. For now, I am going to try sleep; even though I increased my fan's speed a few minutes ago, it only seems to have gotten hotter. Maybe the Ivy League Connection should offer students portable ice packs instead of desk fans.

Productive Day

I took advantage of today to get a lot of things done. In the morning I relaxed with Calvin, Alex, Eric, and Frank as we watched a bit of Casino Royal and Flightplan. We then did laundry and saw some people who had no clue how to do laundry. I saw a girl who put her wet clothes into her laundry bag and then put the entire bag into the dryer. While we Waite for our clothes to get clean, all the guys and Matt went outside to play a game of catch. We discover that we wouldn't be a great baseball team because we had trouble catching the ball - we couldn't string 20 consecutive catches in a row.

After our clothes got clean I went to the RPCC computer lab to work on my group's presentation. It was interesting because one of t groupmates, Kathleen, is from China and her English isn't great. I have been to China and can understand Mandarin to some extent but can barely speak Mandarin. She speaks to me in Chinese when she can't explain something in English and I try my best to answer in Chinese but it comes out at about 60% English and 40% Chinese. It's interesting because I get to brush on Chinese, get to know her, and get work done. We made considerable progress and with a little work tomorrow, we'll be ready for our practice presentation with Mark tomorrow afternoon. My job is to speak about the various brands of hotels Host has manage it properties and Host's competitive edge. With practice, I'll be ready to go on Monday.


After a pretty productive day, it's nice to just kick back and relax as I escape the heat in the only air conditioned building in Donlon Hall: the lounge.

A Relaxing Saturday

It feels amazing being able to sleep this late. For the first time since the last Sunday, I didn’t have to wake up at 6:40 AM. I woke up at 9:20 and got ready to go to the Statler building to meet with my group and finish our PowerPoint presentation. I spent about an hour there, getting all my information done, so I would know what to say during the presentation.

At around 11:30 AM, we finished most of it, and I headed down to the Dining Hall. I met up with Eric and the El Cerrito group, and ate lunch. Later, we went down to the common area with a TV, and watched the Matrix, and another movie (forgot its name). It was interesting, but then, we all had to do laundry. We had leisure time afterwards so everyone just hung out in the only air conditioned room in the building, playing games or just doing homework.

After dinner, my friend, Matt, and I went to play some pool. It was one of the first fun activities I played in Cornell. It was pretty fun, but I wasn’t that good. It took some 15 minutes or so to finish one game. After finally leaving, I met up with Eric, who was still in the computer lab with his group making some finishing touches to their PowerPoint. Since it still wasn’t so late, all three of us decided to view the campus. We visited the Science Building, which smelled like one of those newly built, glass buildings. It was completely different from what I was used to look at. There were so many old, classic-looking buildings, and then, suddenly, a modern architecture comes to view. It really pops out, and not in a good way, because modern and old-fashioned doesn’t look good together.

View outside of the Science Building

It was a fun, relaxing day today.  I’ll try to enjoy the last of my easy days tomorrow. I’ll have to rest up so I’ll be ready for that presentation on Monday.

Laundry Day +

My first Saturday in Cornell was a day of schoolwork and housecleaning. I did not leave my room until a little after 11. I spent most of the morning reorganizing my desk, dresser, and bed while listening to music. When we all finally decided to meet up, it was past breakfast time and in to the brunch domain. We had to wait even longer though for everyone to be ready, so Calvin, Eric, and I watched part of Casino Royale. We spent over an hour in the cafeteria, procrastinating before the work we knew would take the rest of the day.

 When our laundry group was finally assembled, we headed down to the basement where the washer and dryers are. While waiting for our laundry to be done, we returned to the TV lounge and watched Flightplan. After our laundry was done we transferred our clothes to the dryer and went outside to play catch with a tennis ball in the field in front of my dorm. Soon enough we overheated and went inside to start the long process of writing our essays.


After a few minutes Alex and I realized we forgot our laundry and ran downstairs to claim it. After folding it and dropping it off in our room, it was right back to essay writing. I started talking with a girl from our class, named Sam, who was also writing her essay and we became friends. At 6:30 it was time for dinner and Calvin, Alex, and I went to the dining hall to eat with Sam, Morgan (another girl from our class), and Gloria (Sam's roommate). We spent the rest of the night with them most socializing (unfortunately), but I also got a lot of work done. It was a productive Saturday full of work, but I also managed to have good time.

Making Buddies!

Today, we experienced our first weekend as "college students." I'm not going to lie, it was not that eventful, but it was fun. I ended up waking up relatively early at around 8:00 AM, and since no one else was up, I spent the morning playing World Golf Tour on my computer. I ended up going to Donlon Hall and watching Casino Royale with the two Eric's before heading up to the dining hall. Unfortunately, all of us being wait-listed for the trip to Buttermilk Falls, we decided to start our essay for the Freedom & Justice class, but was interrupted by the need to do laundry. Just a word of advice to future ILCers; when doing your laundry, do it in small loads because the clothes will not dry in the dryer. For the most part of the afternoon , we watched Flightplan starring Jodie Foster but we never finished it. Later in the day, we played catch in the fields during the hottest hour of the day.

Afterwards, Alex and I went to get our computers to start on our first draft of our final essay. Unfortunately, I was way too distracted to even start it. Since, we were procrastinating so much, Eric, Alex and I decided to head up for dinner with our new friends Samantha, Morgan (who are both in F&J), and Gloria. After we finished, we vowed to finish our essays but that never happened. I ended up only completing two paragraphs, but I finished all the required weekend reading. Once we gave up on finishing the essay, we talked the night away with our new-found friends in the Donlon Hall lounge. It ended up having a lot of fun just talking and hanging out. 

While it was an eventful day, we had a great time making new friends. Tomorrow will be a fun day since Mr. Chan-Law made some plans for us to do throughout the day. Well, motivation better kick in tonight and tomorrow for me to finish this essay.

A Failure Turned Success

Today was a much-needed leisure day.  Unfortunately we did not make the Buttermilk Falls trip because of the extensive waiting list, but we are still trying to organize a private trip with Mr. Chan-Law for another time.  I hope to have pictures for you all another time.  We spent the afternoon doing laundry, watching Jodie Foster's Flightplan, and working on our Plato essay, taking a break to walk around campus to compensate for the trip.  Matt later played the bagpipes outside Donlon Hall while the rest of us spent the day primarily indoors.  We met new friends from Hawaii and Florida today and later joined them for dinner.  I have had a great experience meeting people from different parts of the country, and also succeeded in meeting a foreign student finally: Fabian from Costa Rica.

Having an entire day to familiarize ourselves with the campus was very beneficial, seeing new areas of the school especially.  Unfortunately I left my camera in the dorm room today, which made it better that we did not make the trip to Buttermilk Falls today.  We spent the later hours in the lounge to socialize and meet new people and formed sort of a study group with new Freedom and Justice students.  Analyzing Plato's philosophy on social hierarchy and natural order as a group tends to be easier to understand...

Though this day was particularly relaxing, I felt it was very well-spent.  I read the selections from John Locke and drafted my Plato essay, doing schoolwork that I would normally save for a Sunday.  We will meet Mr. Chan-Law in the morning and hopefully spend the day as a cohort.  Tomorrow is my seventeenth birthday as well and I am excited to spend this special day with my friends on the East Coast!

Cheez-its and Research

Going into class today, I had one thought: Get that CHESS business memo turned in. Before I could get to the computer lab to turn in my memo,  however, we had a guest speaker, Stefani Robson, who is an environment physiologist. She spoke about design and how our five senses lead us as customers to make purchases. The presentation was very interesting. We looked at how hotels such as ACE Hotels can be profitable by spending money on designing and an enhancing an existing building as opposed to building from scratch. ACE does implements sense of place into their designs. This means that ACE takes advantage of the location of it's property as the characteristics of the location are found in the design. For example, the ACE hotel in Brooklyn has a wallpaper that is covered in sights that one would see around Brooklyn.


In addition to learning about hotel design, we learned several neat facts such as for men, hearing is the first sense to go and often times, the first frequency of sound that men cannot recognize is the sound of a woman's voice. When Ms. Robson said this, Mark promptly said "What?". Another interesting fact we learned was that in a study on music in a wine shop, people are more likely to purchase wine when there is classical music in the background as opposed to the Top 40 songs. Moreover, when Italian opera was played, people purchased Italian wine, when German opera was played, people bought German wines, and when French opera was played, "people bought wines that they cannot pronounce the names of". Today's guest lecture was incredibly interesting.


After the lecture, Frank and I promptly went to the computer labs where we proofread each other's memo, and then submitted our memos at the same time. It was an incredible feeling to get to walk to lunch knowing I just turned in my first major assignment and I had put my new Word skills to use! It was also a great feeling to know that I took the time to pour over data from my CHESS hotel trial to find  our how I should spend my money to make the most profit.


When we returned from lunch, my group got right back into the swing of things and started to work on our PowerPoint presentation. Host Hotels and Resorts is and interesting company. It isn't a major hotel brand or company. It is an REIT that purchases land a properties which it then has managed by upper upperscale and luxury hotels such as Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton. Host used to be a part of Marriott Corporation and as a result the vast majority of Host's properties are under the Marriott brand name. Also, unlike other hotel brands that  other groups will present about, Host doesn't have any brands. It would be more correct to say that there are brands on Host's properties. Host doesn't operate any of its properties so it doesn't have any other brands like Comfort Stay by Host. 


I find this company to be extremely fun to learn about and I can't wait to work more with my group tomorrow so we can put everything together.


On the way back from class, Frank and I took a shortcut through the science building where we saw a lady standing looking pretty sad as she stared at the vending machine, When Frank and I looked at the vending machine, we saw that the lady's snack was stuck - right above where she could grab it. Frank and I tried to help by sticking paper, our folders, and hands through the flap on the bottom to grab it to no avail. Just when the lady gave up and walked away, Frank and I thought, if we buy something that is heavy enough that is above the stuck bag of chips, then would our snack falling down get the bag of chips unstuck? We tried and sure enough, our small bag of Cheez-its came down with the bag of chips. We then spent the next ten minutes or so walking around looking and asking if anyone had seen the lady we tried to help. After awhile we found her, gave her the bag of chips, and walked away feeling pretty good about ourselves. The $1.00 we spent on a small bag of Cheez-its was well worth it.

Help From Some Cheez-Its

Finally, the last day of school of the week was here. I was able to wake up an hour later because class started at 9 AM instead of the usual 8:30 AM.

In the beginning of class, we had a guest speaker again. Her name was Stephani, and she was graduated from the Cornell’s hotel college. It was a very interesting lecture, because we learned how to examine people’s behavior. Her job was to observe behavior in order to make hotel designs. She explained that design’s goal was to please customers, and the best way to know what they want is studying them. It was funny how she explained how a mob of police always questioning her when she took pictures of random people walking in public. It was a very valuable lecture, and from now on, I will always pay attention on how a stranger stands, and the way they act. This was basically the entire class.

After a quick lunch, I met up with my group in the computer room. We technically had office hours from 11:30 AM-3:30 PM, but if we finished our business memo, we really had to come there at 1:30 PM. My group and I tried to finish as much of our PowerPoint for our presentation as possible. We all were able to finish our research by the end of office ours.

This was the first time I ever exited my classroom before 4:00 PM, besides lunch. Eric Wang and I went to college town to by some body wash. The walk back to campus was too intense though. The sun was so strong that my back turned into a faucet. My shirt was extremely wet, and longed for air conditioning. We both decided to enter the science building to cool off. What are the odds that we would help a stranger there? Well, that’s what happened.

We were going to leave on the other side because it was close to Bailey Hall, but this lady was having trouble on the vending machine. Her chips were caught on the bottom, and there was no way to get it out. After she left to find help, we felt generous, and bought Cheez-its above the chips so they would both fall through. It was a very rewarding day, and considered ourselves good Samaritans.  

Eric with the Cheez-Its

Finishing off the day, everyone met up with Mr. Chan-Law to eat. We discussed about the plans for next week. This day passed much faster than the past week. I was finally able to relax. Tomorrow is going to be the first day without class. I’ve been waiting for Saturday for a while now.