Lab and girls...Day 37

Day 37 - Friday, May 7

There really isn't a better way to start your day than with a six hour lab. Yeah, from about 9 to 3 I was in E40 lab building and soldering an audio amp. So much fun! Actually, it was pretty cool. Not going to lie I felt pretty intelligent plugging chips into my board and connecting wires all over the place even though I didn't really know what I was doing. But to an outside observer, I would have looked pretty smart. So I had built the amp (it took extra long because there were a limited amount of soldering irons because Stanford decided to be stingy, so most of the time was spent waiting) and went over to test it out and it was working but the signal wasn't being amplified enough so the TA told me to tweak a few things. So I go over and check my connections and tweak things, and when I went back to test it again and I my signal was terrible. I think at some point my signal was actually being de-amplified, which shouldn't be possible. So I broke for lunch with Kenny and when I returned, my amp magically was amplifying fine and when I plugged it in to the ipod and speakers, music was bumping. As it turns out, our function generators and oscilloscopes are kind of fussy.

I was planning on going to check on the social dance circle, but I because my lab ran so late I missed the bus to go to the other campus and the group had already gone. So I went to the program library to hang out a bit and as it turns out there was a social event going on a the neighboring all-woman's college. The mixer, as it was called, had already started but one of the girls in the library kept getting calls from the director to show up so she, Kenny, and I headed over to the Doshisha Women's College. We had some difficulty finding the right building, but got there eventually by following a trail of drool left by our boys.

Maybe I should put this in perspective. Our group is composed of about 30 people, 20 of which are male. 90% of whom Asian girls was a big bonus in studying abroad. Yeah. My EE class (11 boys 2 girls) really wanted to get their amps done early so they could get an early start on the women's college. So when we roll up to the women's college and there were little Japanese girls everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Literally there were at least 4 girls to every Stanford student. Complete insanity. It was kind of weird. I was mobbed by groups of Japanese girls. Okay, mobbed is a bit of an exaggeration, but if a Stanford student was standing alone for more than 3 seconds a group of at least two girls would come up. The joy on our boys' faces were apparent. And the Doshisha girls weren't too disappointed either. I talked to a group of girls who asked me what I thought of Japanese boys to which I made a face and shook my head. I asked them what they thought of our boys and they gave a smiling thumbs up. Shivers, (and not the good kine) thumbs up? Really? But I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it when this one girl told Kenny he looked like a Backstreet Boy.

But not all the girls had that one track mind. I actually exchanged numbers with a few of them, so who knows, maybe I'll be making some quality Japanese friends. Although, between their English and my Japanese, I don't know how deep our conversations will extend. But it was fun. I'm definitely glad I went.