[5] Halfway Done... 😢
50% done! with senior spring. wtaf. it feels like everything is closing in towards a metaphorical singularity at a continually accelerating rate. i want nothing more than to slow down time right now..
Monday:
This day was pretty chill, just went to (most) of my classes.
For dinner, my AIM mentor John took me and my co-mentee Jingyu to Hiroshi, a super fancy and lowkey omakase restaurant in downtown Los Altos.
I had no idea this place existed, and the store front was nondescript—I almost didn’t realize the place was open because there were no lights visible from outside the windows.
We stepped inside to a warmly lit room lined floor-to-ceiling with stone walls, with an inset shelf of intricately painted glassware on the wall opposite the omakase bar.
Peaceful Chopin played from the speakers, and we were the only guests in the restaurant.
Our waiter was extremely attentive, pulling out our chairs for us, pouring us water constantly, somehow from a different ceramic carafe each time, and even taking off Jingyu’s jacket for her.
Every course was incredible, and there were some food that I tried for the first time: A5 wagyu, caviar, and rare lobster tail, among others.
We heard John reminisce about his senior year at Stanford, when he and several friends rented out a professor’s
housemansion off campus for the year, complete with 7 bedrooms, a full chef’s kitchen, and a pool. Seemed like a lit time.John is literally the sweetest person in the world. He wished us nothing but the best as we graduate, and kept saying how he’s the one who should be grateful for being our mentor because he’s learned a lot from us and has nothing to offer us (which is not true at all 🥺).
Jingyu and I are inviting him to our graduation, which I’m super excited for.
Tuesday:
I got lunch w/ Sachin at Jerry! Was chill, just chit chatted with him and some of his friends that joined about life and coterm year.
In the afternoon, Jayna and I joined Andrew and Austin at their 2pm tee time at the course to attempt the full 18 holes. This was my first time doing the full course, and I was a bit nervous at the thought of how many balls I would lose.
I played absolutely horrible in the front nine. I don’t know what came over me. I nearly ragequit somewhere between holes 6 and 8 because my shots would refuse to go remotely straight.
I locked in in the back half and started getting slightly better contact on my swings. Still didn’t play well to any extent though.
It was a lot of fun, and the back nine was even more beautiful than the front, but 18 holes was so exhausting and took way too long, especially since I walked the whole course. I don’t think I’ll be doing the full course again for a long time. I gotta get good first.
we saw turkeys!
After golf (which took close to 5 hours), I biked over to Sand Hill to play an IM volleyball game with Andrew. We won!! #firstdub
I then took a quick shower and went over to Norcliffe to get my haircut by Eujin. 10/10 barber; shoutout
To keep the evening going, I went to In-n-Out with Ari, Kieran, and Andrew. I love In-n-Out.
Later in the evening, we rolled out Jayna for her birthday. Yay!!
Wednesday:
I spent most of the day working on making the program for our senior recital. Fun stuff…
I then had to go take my chem midterm at CEMEX. It was hard asf but I ended up doing okay because they were very generous with partial credit. 🙏
I then got dinner with Kieran at Tamarine, a high-end Vietnamese restaurant. The food was solid!
these garlic prawns were gassssss Afterwards, we got SomiSomi, and then I had to rush back to campus for rehearsal with the octet.
Thursday:
In the morning I did a little off-campus frolic with Isaias and Sophie, where we went hiking in Saratoga. We honestly didn’t hike for that long because we all had our eyes on the real prize: the food afterwards. But the hike itself was quite nice and peaceful.
After the hike, we got brunch/lunch in San Jose at Blue Monkey Cafe. Sophie and I got Bun Cha, which I had never had before. It was fireeee.
When we got back to campus, I headed over to the Makery at the GSE with Elanna to begin the process of making STOLA booty shorts. Jacob, one of the staff at the Makery, walked us through how to use all the tools (cricut, design software, heatpress) and was super nice and helpful. We printed out all the vinyl letters and made one test short. It turned out super well!!
In the evening, I took grad photos at Main Quad with Kieran, Mia, Ryan, Lindi, and Joao. This was my first grad photo session and it was really fun! The photos turned out pretty well too.
I remember biking past main quad during grad photo season in spring quarter of my sophomore year and thinking to myself, “wow it must be so bittersweet to be a senior, glad that won’t be me for a while.” I can’t believe that it has caught up to me to quickly…
a lil preview
After the sun set, I got back to Storey, quickly changed out of my formal wear, and went to Treehouse for a reunion with my freshman dormmates from Larkin. There were so many people I hadn’t seen/caught up with in forever, including Dee, one of our RAs! Talking to them all brought back a rush of fond memories from freshman year. Life really was so much simpler back then. Really grateful for all the friends and memories I made that year <3
I had to then head out to go back to Storey for Jayna and Sophie’s joint birthday party. I did regrettably arrive late and missed the cake cutting (sorry…). They prepared a Kahoot containing trivia about themselves, and unfortunately my team only got 3rd place. There were a couple of questions where the answer was clearly wrong, and the 1st place winner suspiciously knew to choose the wrong right answer…
happy birthday sophie + jayna!!
Friday:
I took Grace and Jenny to Breakfast Club this morning! Was very funn.
I got lunch w/ Daphne again at Grove to continue planning more details for our grad trips. We booked most of our accommodations today, BANG
In the afternoon, I stopped by Terman to pick up a class of ‘26 champagne flute, and then had to run to east campus to play beach doubles with Carter, Dylan, and Mike. The sun was beating down on us and the sand was mildly burning, but it was still some solid reps. I need to work more on jumping with intentionality in the sand.
I was going to go run the liquidy lag lap right after, but I had it in my calendar as 5pm when it was actually at 4pm 💔 I was honestly really sad that I missed the last liquidy lag lap of my Stanford career, and Jayna was #fake for not letting me know when she went.
Instead, I went to farillaga and played badminton with Jingyu, Eujin, and Bowen. Shoutout SURG 101 squad! I hadn’t played badminton in many years, but it came back to me quickly and I was able to keep up with Jingyu and Eujin decently well even thought they are both quite good. My vastus medialis muscles started cramping around half an hour in from beach volleyball compounded with badminton, so I had to call it quits. It was fine since it was time to go back and shower anyways.
The quarter is really starting to heat up socially for me—this was the first time where I really felt like I had to choose between different events since they were at conflicting times. Beach VB ran into the start of liquidy lag lap, as well as the start of badminton. I wish I could turn back time like Hermione Granger :(
For dinner, I went to Narnia Special D with Jenny and Elanna since Jonah is a Narnia RA. We also ran into Ethan, Sohrab, and Emma there. It was a chill time! As part of the Special D, the residents all made artwork that was hung up in the lounge, like a pop-up art gallery. Some of the pieces were very silly.
some of the art pieces + the food! (paella and steak) Around sunset, I left Narnia and split an Uber to east campus (shameless, I know) to go to Kieran’s bday party at Raines. It was super cute! All of his coterm friends were there, and it was good vibing w/ all of them. There were so many drinks and drinking games around the apartment, including Beerio Kart, bday bingo, ride the bus, rattlin bog, etc.
After a while, I walked back to the row to swing by BOBnival, which was pretty chill. Saw some familiar faces, and then eventually walked over to Pi Beta Phrat Bro with pickle party. The function was pretty mid, so I decided to go back to Kieran’s bday party to end the night since it was close by.
Saturday:
I got brunch with JH, who is leaving for military service after this quarter :’( This guy is busy asf, so this was the first time we had caught up in a while. We talked about life, the future, career, AI, premed, the usual things. I hope he gets the position he wants in the military!
I worked on miscelaneous stuff in the afternoon, such as the flyer for our quartet’s senior recital (a joint effort between me and Emily)
I got a quick dinner at Flomo and then went to watch Atman and Irene’s senior recital at Campbell. I didn’t know Irene played the marimba, but she was really good! Atman killed it as well.
Jayna and I were gonna go watch the SIMPs show right after, but the recital ended a little too late so we would have missed the beginning of the improv show. We went back to Storey and ran into Sophie doing whatever this is…
In the evening, I went to wine room with some Oxford ppl + Elanna. I was dd so I didn’t have any wine, but it was a very chill time nonetheless.
Sunday:
I woke up at the ass crack of dawn (5:30) to do the Alamere Falls hike in Point Reyes with Jayna, Jenny, and Abelle. I almost went back to sleep because the weather was looking super cloudy and borderline rainy, but I decided to still go at the last minute, and I’m so glad I did.
The hike itself was pretty chill, with minimal elevation gain, and interesting features like super lush + overgrown sections and a section along the beach next to super tall cliffs.
We saw a lot of super reflective lakes, an elk, and the main attraction: Alamere Falls! One of just two coastal waterfalls in California, where the waterfall flows right into the Pacific Ocean.
Jayna and I took a dip in one of the waterfall tiers higher up on the cliff. The water was freezing so we quickly climbed back out.
We took the shortcut trail on the way back, which is unmaintained and highly discouraged by the park service. However, we felt the trail was not too bad, despite a steep cliff scramble section and a super overgrown section where you were basically crawling through a ~1.5 foot wide and ~5 foot high tunnel inside of some shrubbery, with the vegetation growth forming the tunnel ceiling above the narrow footpath.
Overall, it was a non-trivial 11-12 mile hike, but after doing Stanford 2 Sea, this felt so light in comparison.
the last picture is not the most overgrown part of the trail, but is an example of the sort of tunnel vibe i was talking about
On the way back from the hike, we stopped in the Inner Sunset for a late lunch at a Chinese place called Mini Potstickers. Everything tasted authentic and really nostalgic, and was definitely needed after such a long hike. We also got Pineapple King buns afterwards, which you can never go wrong with. Overall, a lot of good eats this week, which I am tremendously grateful for!
Right off the highway before campus, I was dropped off at Alpine Inn for our club team’s end of year banquet (thanks Jayna). It was a chill time. Our coach showed up an hour late lol.
In the evening I had to lock in brutally for research and ended up working late into the night. Not very fun.
