South Island

So tons has happened since my last entry. Last time we chatted, I was aboard the ferry crossing from Wellington to PIcton (North Island to South Island) We arrived to the South Island crossing through some beautiful hills and Fjords on the way to the dock. After arriving to the tiny city of Picton, we started our long drive to our hostel, hoping to make it as close to our next day activity as possible. We arrived in Picton around 4:30pm, and were driving through some beautiful landscape until approximately 7:30pm. On the way there, we made a brief stop in the main city of Nelson for a quick stop to refill, and buy some groceries. Our hostel was in the small city of Motueka, and was a refurbished Bakery. When we were checking in, we were greeted with a nice older guy, his cat, and a basket full of freshly baked corn & chocolate chip muffins. We cooked our staple of pasta spirals and chicken, and shared stories with a young british couple who were sitting next to us. We were planning on going out to the one bar in town, but our exhaustion got the best of us, in addition to the 40 degree weather and rain, and we decided to turn in early for the night.

The next morning, we had an early morning to catch our sea kayaking adventure in Abel Tasman National Park. We arrived to meet our bus in the next city over. It wasn’t the best of weather by any stretch, it was cold and raining, and we knew that soon ,we would be out floating in the ocean in the same. We suited up, and took a water taxi out to a small hut where we would be putting on wetsuits and gathering some of our other gear. The wetsuits were meager, but managed to keep us decently warm. Cat and I shared a kayak and we were joined by 3 other groups, mostly younger people. Unfortunately, we were only able to kayak for about 2 hours, and mostly in protected waters because of the strong winds and rain. The conditions out at sea would have probably thrown us straight into the water. So the idea to stay in the bay sounded pretty good to me. For lunch, we docked at a small spit which separated the bay to the ocean, by this time, the weather cleared up quite a bit and it turned out to be a pretty beautiful day! We had a lunch provided by the tour company, and narrated by our South African guide who has had the best accent on this trip so far. Lunch consisted of a massive sandwich, kiwi fruit, and boysenberry muffins. After lunch, we would be doing a 6km hike back to our pick-up site through the national park. It’s so weird to be hiking while its about 55 degrees out, but it visually appear that you are in a rainforest. The hike was really unique, I’ve never really hiked through a place that’s looked like that, and every now and again, you’d have glimpses of the ocean and some of the beaches. We arrived to our pick-up point exactly in time to see our sea taxi swing by and pick us up. The ride back to the start point was great, we were flying through the water, and by this time ,the weather was great. Also, I’ve never seen anyone put boats into the water like they do there, they drive the boat trailer out into the water with a farm tractor and launch and dock ships, with their passengers.

Around 4pm that evening, we were on the go again. It was about 5pm, and we had a pretty long and tough drive ahead. Our next stop off point would be Franz Josef National Park. We would see how far we could make it, but it would be likely that we’d still have a fair bit of driving the next morning. The weather turned pretty sour and the rain didn’t really help with the narrow roads with hairpin turns. The driving alone would have been exhausting let alone the full day kayak we had the day before. But, we kept a pretty good pace. On the way there, we stopped in a small town along the way and found the one place still open. (note every town on the west coast was less than 4000 people, and there were only a handful). We were lucky to catch the one place open left in town and were able to get some takeaway food as a quick recharge. Cat got some fish and chips and I treated myself to pineapple burger. After another hour, we finally made it to Greymouth, the Mouth of the Grey River (clever eh?), we found an awesome little hostel called Neptunes which seemed like a great place if you were staying for a while. The funny thing was, since we asked for a double, their only double was actually a refurbished shipping container which was about 50 feet from the actually hostel (kitchen, bathrooms, etc…) However, we did have a TV with 3 channels!

The next morning was an early one. We had to be up and moving by 6am, so we were up and shaking around 5:30. The weather that morning wasn’t promising, but we were optimistic it would get better As expected, we made it the Frans Josef village with time to spare around 8:40am. We stopped to get a quick gas and caffeine but then chcked in for our day-long hike on the Glacier.

We bussed over to the river opening to where the glacier melt came down and began our hike. The weather had actually cleared up a bit since our morning. But they had outfitted us pretty well with waterproof jackets and pants. We hiked for about 20 minutes to the face of the glacier. It was massive! It’s so strange seeing it from a distance because it looks so different. It looks like a big mass of concrete until it gets closer to the top where it looks like blue icicles sticking up out of the ground. So the initial climb was technical, we were on safety ropes for much of the ascent. But once we topped out, it was fairly up and over climbing on the snow. Every now and again we would have to squeeze through a crevasse. These little parts of the hike were quite impressive since we saw into the clear ice from the side. Often it had shades of bright blue from the compression of the ice. After about 2 hours, we stopped for a quick lunch. One of our hiking mates managed to lose their juice box into a deep ice hole, never to be found again. Our guide, Ryan was really knowledgable and took us through some tough areas of climb. By 3pm, we were still climbing, but taking a closer look, we realized that we had not even traversed nearly 1/3 of the way up the 3000m glacier. At that point, we made a stop at our highest point of the day, and started heading back down. The way down was a bit quicker, but still pretty rough on the body. Not to mention every now and again you would step in a freezing cold puddle of ice water. My boots and crampons were fitted a bit small for me, so I was more than excited to be done with the walking, but the views were still unreal.

After arriving back at the base, we turned in all of our gear, and headed to our accommodation which Cat booked ahead of time. If you’re ever at Frans Josef, we’d highly recommend the Rainforest tree Huts, it was about twice as expensive as a hostel double room, but we had a full kitchen, and the rooms seemed almost brand new. It was a great place to cook our dinner and relax after a day of hiking. We cooked up some beans chicken and rice, and also some kiwi fruit.

The next day we were fairly slow getting moving, we slept in a bit trying to enjoying our nice place. We were back on the road around 11:30am for our trek down to the southern most point of our trip in Queenstown. We decided that we would probably take our time on the drive, and this decision was well worth it as the scenery was spectacular on the drive down to Queenstown. We passed only a few small towns, but we made it a point to stop at plenty of scenic destinations. If you’re cross referencing the blog with our photos, this is the day where we thought It would be a good idea to try to jump in as many as our photos as possible. So you’ll see a bunch of us jumping in front of the Fox Glacier, the Tasman Sea Coastline, and other random places such as the valleys on our way to Queenstown. On the way there, we stopped in a little country store which was playing “stand by your man” and the atmosphere was reminiscent of the country bar in the Blues Brothers. Just past the store, we found an empty plot of land which had a perfect view of the river valley. Cat and I stopped and took the moment to play some Frisbee in this pasture with a perfect view.

It’s so hard to describe the views that we saw on our drive to Queenstown, but they definitely kept us interested during the drive. Our jaws would drop around every corner. We also stopped a number of times to take some short hikes to a variety of waterfalls We actually ran to some of them to shave a few minutes off so we would have a chance to see more. We arrived in Queenstown sometime after dinnertime. Our first mission upon arrival was to of course… book our bungee jump, a must-do in the Queenstown area. We booked both the Ledge Bungee (143 feet drop), and the Ledge Swing, which throws you out over the city and back. We had tried to book the big drop (Nevis), but it was booked out and we were leaving town before there was an opening…. We’re going to save it for next time… After our booking, we headed to our hostel and then to get some dinner. We had been recommended a place called Fergberger in Queenstown. Upon arrival, the place looked perfect, big burgers and country-renown fries. We found out that this local joint actually uses all local businesses as their suppliers, and the taste of the meal proved it. Cat and I agreed, it was probably the best meal of our trip.

The night in Queenstown was the only location of our trip where we’d be spending two nights…. And what a nice thing that was. We were actually able to buy groceries for more than one day, and we didn’t have to worry about packing up and checking out immediately. On day 2 in Queenstown, we woke up a little late, but went on a little trek to scope out the city. We rented some mountain bikes and biked around the lake to a nearby city. The bike trip lasted about 2 hours with a short stop for lunch where we found a little dock on a far part of the lake to enjoy our packed pb and j. We spent a short bit of the afternoon doing some shopping for friends and family before we made our long-awaited trip up the Queenstown gondola where our body harness and bungee cord awaited.

I think both of us knew that we wanted to do the jump before we arrived to Queenstown, but I think I may have been a fair bit more excited about the actual jump. Catherine was pretty nervous, but she was quite the trooper in convincing me to sign up for both the jump and the swing. Cat ended up going first, and on the swing since it was the less scary of the two. I videoed as she was lowered down into the starting blocks. She hastily smiled for the cameras before yanking the little red loop which sent her flying off into the distance with the picturesque views of the lake and the Remarkables in the background. Her scream didn’t sound planned at all, and was quite funny to watch if you ever have a chance! So I was next, and got myself in the same position. To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting the drop that came next. I am pretty sure I let out an non-manly scream when I went flying off, but the views were incredible, and after the split second of surprise, the drop is pretty fun too!

So next was the bungee jump, if you watch cat’s videos, I apparently am sitting in the background, chilling on the couch while she is nervously getting attached to multiple cords, and asking if her limbs were going to be safe when she jumped. They really don’t give you much time to recover after your first jump…. But they counted. 5,4,3,2,1… in about the amount of time it takes you to read those numbers, and off she went. I remember screaming for her, just being excited for her. But she made it alive, with her limbs. I think she was pretty excited to be back on the platform though.

Next it was my turn, I don’t think I was that nervous, but more excited about having the chance to run and jump off a platform into thin air. That doesn’t come very often. He mentioned doing a gainer, and I gave it some thought, but I thought it would be a shame if I screwed it up and ended up smashing my head again the platform… probably not the best way to spend $210. So I opted for the front flip, when my time came. I sprinted off the platform and gave my best front flip. I don’t really remember much of the actual jump, probably because it felt like doing a front flip off of a high dive, by the time I was out of my flip, I was flying down towards the Earth. The recoil on the cord throws you nearly back to the jump platform, that was pretty impressive.

So after it all, it was an awesome experience and would definitely like to give it another go. The timing was perfect as it was nearly sunset and we got to watch the colors change on the surrounding mountains from the top of the Gondola.

The rest of the evening was fairly easy and relaxed. We cooked our last dinner of the trip in the YHA kitchen, enjoyed the leftovers of our wine, and did some people watching of others and tried to figure out their backgrounds and intentions. Afterwards, we went in search of a good local and fun bar. This turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than one would think. But put into perspective, a town of 3500 on a Monday night, in a country with lots of sheep probably isn’t going to be the most happening place on Earth. Regardless, we ended up at Montys which was Monteiths Brewery’s restaurant and grabbed a drink with a warm fireplace to our backs and a little Aussie Footie on TV. I had a winter brew and Cat had a Pilsner.

We had one last morning in Queenstown, and like much of the rest of the trip, it was well spent. We woke up a little earlier today and made breakfast and packed our things. Before our coffee/red bull runs, we over to the queenstown gardens and took advantage of their 18-hole Frisbee golf course. Our round took a little over an hour, but was a great and relaxing way to end our time in Queentown. After that, we made our way to the airport, parted with our friend and journey companion “Puggles” which allowed us to traverse the distance between Auckland and Queenstown, and checked into our flight.

So ironically, I’m writing this entry about the South Island in the exact fashion as I wrote about North Island. Both times were written in crossing the passage between islands, only this time I write from the air. The last portion of our trip will consist of a short time staying in Auckland at a B&B, visiting a friend of mine from the IHouse, and making the 7000 mile journey back to the US.

This entry is way too long, so I’ll continue with the trip wrap-up in a final entry.

Paul

End of Spring 2007

Well I write this today as I’m on my flight to Australia, to start a completely new type of summer experience. As my girlfriend Catherine reminded me, I haven’t spent a summer in Atlanta since 2003. Looking back on my summers since college began, 2002 was spent taking courses in Boston and then being at GT to help with FASET. 2003 was in Atlanta working and doing FASET, 2004 was in Asia (Singapore, Thailand, China, Indonesia, Malaysia), 2005 and 2006 were both spent in Los Angeles, with high school students. In whole, I really can’t complain about my summer months, they all have been really new, exciting, and an adventure. But now that I’m off on a tangent, I really want to get back to describe my last few weeks in Berkeley, going home to Illinois and returning to Georgia.

I’ll start this story with how Spring 2007 ended. Being in city planning is sure grand. Compared to engineering (e.g. problem sets, endless study sessions, and scary final exams), I would much rather have the stress-pace that city planning provided. Granted I ended up writing at least 100 pages of term papers and reports, I really enjoyed the work, partially because the topics are interesting, but more so, I felt that it was a level of work and stress that I could handle versus the rough first semester that I had at Berkeley. One big bump in the road of a smooth finish was this little thing called the oral exam. It happens once in the career of a transportation engineering student (and for some, it can happen twice). So I spent about a week preparing for an academic’s nightmare… standing in front of a group of faculty members (who are all pretty much aces in their field), and explaining and describing answers to problems which they give you on the fly. Comparatively speaking, my panel of faculty was easier than the others, but still, it gives you plenty to worry about.

So my last two weeks of school, I spent studying for the oral exams, preparing to pack my bags and leave Berkeley, windsurfing a bit here and there, writing papers, and wishing my friends off as they left for summer. The oral exam pretty much came and went, I had it at 10am on a Thursday. After walking out, I felt that I had a 80% chance of them passing me, and luckily they did. Whew, check. After that it was only one final, and about 3 more reports to finish. It’s amazing how things always manage to get done. This is on top of my research project at CCIT which super stressed me out. Luckily, I had the help of a French student who seriously helped me in completing the project. So with academics and research complete, I had the chance to relax and finish off the semester. Which I got a 4.0 , (I know its grad school, but hey, this is the first 4.0 I’ve ever had in my entire life)

So on Thursday night after my last exam, I went out for a fantastic dinner at LaMed in rockridge with some of my good friends from Berkeley. A few of which who are graduating, which will be very sad for next fall…. But it was good to see them again and reminisce on the good and bad times we spent together in our first year of grad school. After that, I hopped on my flight from Oakland, CA to Chicago Midway. I have those red-eye flights pretty much down now. Even better, they stuck me in biz class for some nknown reason, funny thing though, biz class usually means hot meals and special treatment, well on ATA that means a box of food that looks similar to one of those firework variety packs. But it was good. I arrived in Chicago fresh as 6am can be, hopped on the train to meet my good friend Heather who was letting me borrow her car (she’s fantastic) for the weekend. So after that, I headed south to the bustling metropolis of Gibson City where I would meet up with Ben and Matt (high school buddies) for a good ole Midwest cookout. So you can ask that, but my cooking didn’t go the greatest (that’s what happens when you live on cafeteria food for a year), But the guys and their girlfriends were good sports and we enjoyed a night hanging out by the fire. The next couple of days were pretty laidback as well, seeing my childhood friend Justin (who is now married and has a child… wow) as well as seeing a few of my teachers. Going out in the town of Strawn (population of something like 50.. seriously), and going to turkey run for some hiking and kayaking down the raging sugar creek in Indiana.

After that trip, I flew back to California to meet up with my parents for a 10 day camping and hiking trip. We do this approximately ever summer starting in 2004. This year, we would be just roadtripping around portions of northern and central CA. The opening night was capped off by my dad realizing he had bought child-sized sleeping bags for he and my mom. Hilarious, just a way a family hiking trip should begin. But all in all, the winner of the trip is the California State Park system, they have awesome campsites, showers and all. So to not get into too many details, our trip campsites consisted of Lake Tahoe, a central CA resevoir, Pacifica, CA, Big Sur, the SLO area (where we met my sister Ann), and a bit of Marin County and Point Reyes. We also had a chance to stop by the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. My dad has been studying one of the teachers at this center for years, and it was pretty interesting to actually be able to see him (Jack Kornfield) teach in person.

So back to GA, as soon as I returned, I had the chance to visit Birmingham, AL with Catherine in honor of my college-friend Tyler’s wedding. The weekend was a blast, Birmingham is a pretty fun town if you have the right people around! The wedding was great, Cat and I both had a chance to see a ton of our old friends. On that Sunday, we went back and caught the Atlanta Symphony who were playing Gershwin and Copeland (I usually don’t like most classical, but I like this stuff).. but that was absolutely amazing. I had a great time hanging out with Cat since we don’t get to see eachother that often, it’s too bad she had to work, but we did manage to sneak in some good dates and good trips like going to the new world of coke museum and playing some Frisbee. I’ll be seeing her next in New Zealand, so we’ll definitely have that to look forward to. I also got to spend some time with my parents at home, which is always nice to have a meal at the house. Versus on the go at a campsite or hotel.

But that’s pretty much put me at the present, so with that I think I’ll go ahead and sign off until the next note comes around, which I usually do when I get bored of writing or my hands begin to hurt.

Almost Done...

So the spring semester is drawing to a close, and my final comprehensive exams are less than a week away. It's really strange, I've mentioned this to a few other people, but at least in my eyes, most of my academic career will be summed up in an one hour session next Thursday at 10AM. So I've been in school since what, roughly 1988 or so (preschool included), and if things go well, nearly 19 years later, I'll come out with a masters degree. Granted, I'll be back in the fall for another 1.5 years, but I'll definitely be excited to get engineering behind me, and as I see it, the next 1.5 years will be much more enjoyable. So roughly how would I sum up this last year. It's really hard to describe. Grad school is kinda a hostile place. I don't feel that I've been able to get nearly as close to people as I wish I could have, but maybe that's a product of being at a competitive school, and a different place. I think it's always interesting to see if people are really a product of their environment, and where they grew up.

But in terms of a life experience, I cannot think of a place where I would be happier. I've had a chance to learn to sail and windsurf, snowboard, rock climb, and hike, all from within a day's drive from home. I feel really fortunate to have a chance to do all of these things, and even more so, I feel fortunate that I'm still capable of doing them. I think it's easy to become near-sighted being in grad school. Despite seeing a wealth of individuals, for the most part, it's still a close-association of well-educated, well-off, well-to-do individuals. It's easy to forget the rest of the nation while being here. Being here another year or so, I hope I do not become to jaded and always remember the midwestern roots of my childhood.

So looking back, it really has been a great year, full of awesome and new experiences. But, I also find myself often reminiscing about the past, and it becomes harder and harder to remember the past, especially since my senior year in high school was six years ago. But looking on into the future, I'm hoping that I can continue to fill my time by learning new things, and making sure to experience life to the fullest. It's definitely been a transition, this is something that I think Catherine and I are both getting use to, together and individually, but in the long run, I think that it's been worth it, and I hope she feels the same. Grad school truly is a transition, but I think it is much easier than had I went straight to work after my undergrad. The past year has also been a very introspective time, I have always found myself as a very external and outgoing person, but I feel that this year has lessened that characteristic in me. Why that has happened, I cant' exactly explain why. I have my own hypothesis, but who knows what the root cause of this change has been. I'm also not sure if its a bad or good thing, but hopefully that will sort itself out within the next few months, or I will at least come to terms with how I am changing along side my environment.

Looking forward, I will be in Australia and New Zealand within the month, and you cannnot believe how excited I am for that. Despite being a bit nervous, I think it'll be an awesome experience, and I better know how to kite-surf, and have good stories of surfing on Australia's Gold Coast. It's also my goal to do a better job posting while gone over the summer, so for any of you constant readers... get ready for more Paul Supawanich.

My Life : One Year Later...

So welcome to 2007, I'm glad you could join in on the newest addition to my story, so since my last installment, alot has happened. I graduated! Before jumping ahead too far, I just wanted to point out how it is much harder to do anything academically related knowing full well that you have that one degree under your belt. But at any rate, I will continue with my story. So the time is May 2006. After a quick trip back to Cedar Point to relive the days of my past...I made a quick stopover in Chicago to visit a few friends, then to drive back down to Gibson City. It's always great to go back to the Midwest, I have this strange affinity for the place, even though it's flat, humid, and boring. But it's still home. After that, it was time to put some time with the family. Last spring, we went out to Seattle and traveled much of the Pacific Northwest. Truly gorgeous place, but I wouldn't recommend going at that time of year. We ran into alot of rain, clouds, and unpleasant weather in general. But we made the best of it. Definately hit up plenty of national parks: North Cascade, Olympic, Mt. Rainer, Glacier, Banff, Waterton... Truly an awesome trip.

So moving onto the summer, worked at summer discovery at ucla again! This summer was vastly different from the past. I mean, it's hard to dislike sunny warm days for 2 months, and having your main purpose be taking kids to the beach and theme parks, but somehow the staff was missing some chemistry this year, so it just wasn't the same. Maybe it's because it was my second swing through with it, who knows, It's a job, but I shouldn't complain, it is far better than many!

After the summer's end, Cat came out and we did a short trip down to San Diego, that was a blast, we got to hang out at this little hostel in Point Loma and do some nice sight seeing along the coast.

So if you haven't heard, I made it into grad school, and I somehow managed to make it into Berkeley. How that happened... I still don't really know, but I'm here. So I won't go into much detail about last semester, but it's probably the most stressed I've been in my academic life. I was talking to a law student tonight at dinner, we spoke how we wanted to have our higher education really challenge us (this is before we were in of course...), and how idealistic we were about school... well fall 2006, all of that was shattered. School was hard and relentless. The challenge had turned into a battle. But luckily for me, semesters come in the form of 4 months. As I told many of my friends at home, I love Berkeley, I just don't exactly feel the same way about the courses. But I can pretty reassuringly say that this is the place I should be, and I definitely have no regrets about continuing onto grad school. I know through last semester Cat and I had alot of challenges to face with a new school and a new job, but we helped eachother through that.

Last semester really gave me an opportunity to try some new things though, I started windsurfing, and did quite a bit of camping around the area. Finally bought a snowboard, and did a little painting. It was nice to have a chance of pace, and it's definately been that from my experience as an undergrad. My network of friends were gone, constant student organization meetings were gone, and a feeling that I had to be a senior "role model" were gone. Not saying that I didn't value those things, I really did. After all, that's why I loved Georgia Tech so much. But having a change was nice and refreshing.

So as the semester winded down, I prepared myself for my hardest finals week since... well in my life. I'm not sure if that says much about my academics as an undergrad... but I argue it's a different playing field of peopel in a grad program. So after making it through my final, I hopped onto a plane (literally 2 hours later), back to Atlanta. I was able to relax and spend some time with Cat and the family. Then about a week later, I had another challenge before me. Venezuela. I was totally pumped about going, yet a bit apprehensive. I'd traveled abroad before, and traveled abroad alone before. But this time, I was taking those two attributes, and adding the traveling abroad, alone, and feeling like you're going to get robbed at any moment.

That threw an interesting curveball for me. Lukcily I spent a good bit of the trip with a few very cool aussies that I had recently met. We climed Mt. Roraima in the Southeastern part of the country, a truly awesome experience. I'd really recommend it to anyone. But, make sure you read the alititudes in meters not feet. (3000ft is a little lower than 3000m, whoops) So that little escapade lasted about 10 days, then I made my way back to Atlanta. (does anyone remember that American airlines commerical with the biz man in latin america releived to see that shiny bird at the airport...) well replace that biz man and that plane, with me and a Delta plane headed back to Atlanta.

So the spring semester arrived, came, and is now almost gone. To be quite honest, this semester has been a vacation. I've loved every minute of it. I've gone snowboarding at least 5 times, gone to 3 conferences, and have had the chance to take control of my life again. I don't know if this is the eye in the storm or not, but I really must say that spring 2007 hasn't been to bad at all. I for the most part enjoy my clasess, and feel pretty comfortable in the groove that Berkeley has placed me in. Also, I of course feel really fortunate and lucky for being able to have this lifestyle this semester, and hope that with some hard work, it will continue to be at this pace.

Spring break was last week, and I again followed tradition and had a week full of random little trips. Catherine had been out to visit for the week before, that was really great having her around and being able to explore around Berkeley and other parts of the Bay Area with her. Then spend a few nights at her company-expensed hotel in the city, not to shabby either. After that, it was back to Chicago to visit a few h.s. friends, then to Washington to meet up with others going to East Asia-Pacific for this summer. Oh yeah, I slugged together this proposal last fall, and somehow they awarded me money to research abroad this summer. Wow, I get pretty lucky. Let's hope it doesn't run out at the wrong time! But I'm really excited about that this summer, we'll see how things go. But for now, I will end this super-fragmented post, and hope the next one will be a bit more concise, detailed, and not span over a year.

March 2006 - 1:25AM

So after that last post, not much is really new, except the fact that the end of my college career is coming up really fast! These past two weekends have been pretty ridicilious. Cat and I went down to St. Simons/Brunswick, GA over this past weekend, one to visit that area of the world, and secondly to DJ Anna Fincher's wedding, and to say the least, I'm pretty impressed with that little part of the world. I definately can see why so many people like to travel down there. It's the more relaxed version of any beach I've ever been to. So that was only a two day affair, after getting back on Sunday, it was a big rush to get everything together for my three day trip to California (which convienently fell on the three days that I have class)... So I finally got done with all of the work around 3am, and just enough time to catch a 2 and a half hour nap before leaving for the airport for my 7am flight.... sweet. So arriving in California was pretty nice, flew into the Bay, great weather and all.... took the train over to Berkeley, and then started my adventure there. I met up with one of the current students and went out to grab a bite to eat at North Campus..., I was rather surprised how unattractive the buildings were on their campus, but I think the surroundings of the bay and the weather definately make up for it. But on that same token, it makes me really appreiciate how nice everything is here at Georgia Tech! So long story short, I got the campus rundown, and heard alot about the program, and pretty much like everything I see so far. Day 2 was pretty similar, and got to sneak in a workout, and a night in Oakland with Silver and Adam, checked out this Jazz club that Sibal apparently raves about... It was well... fun at best, maybe I just wasn't in the mood, after all I was preparing to leave on another 6am flight the next day. So instead of going back to Berkeley, I opted just to be dropped off at the Airport at Oakland around 12:30am. I found a nice spot by the baggage claim, and made camp and slept till about 4:50am. By that time, the place was stirring a bit, and I thought it would be a good time to suck it up and get myself ticketed and to the gate. So from that point forward until landing, I slept probably another 5 hours on the plane, stopping in Chicago just long enough to write the DX agenda, grab lunch, and marvel at the midwest's cold weather. So here I am again... back in the lab trying to catch up... and ALMOST completely one full week of Georgia Tech without attending ANY class at all... but unfortunately, I am going to break that streak by going to my 8am tomorrow.... lame I know. But 9 hours from now, it's back to the road to head to Charleston for my last Delta Chi formal... It's been a good run.. Asheville, Savannah, New Orleans, and Charleston... not a bad list of places to visit I'd say... I'll be updating again next time... which will be April... which is the last month of school at Georgia Tech!

February 2.0 : A New Beginning?

Welcome back to Febuary, so in my previous post, I had alot of questions to be answered in my life. And since then, alot of answers have come back my way, and yet... now I have that many more decisions to make in life. In the short time... things are as normal, still taking advantage of the last semester of senior year, and starting to get sentimental about the good things about being an undergrad, and thinking about how the bad things about being a student, well are the things that i'll look back on in 5 years and miss. But the past week has been pretty exciting in the fact that I now know my options for the future of my education, and essentially the future of my life. I was accepted today to the University of Washington - Seattle, and last Monday to UCalifornia - Berkeley... the former being one of my fave destinations, and the latter being that dream school that I never knew I'd be accepted to.... So looking forward.... and I'm sure you're wondering... so paul, what are you going to do? At this point, I really have no idea, but at this point, I'm ok with that uncertainty... I am just really happy to know that I've been accepted to a masters program, and have a shot at doing what I love, or at least think that I like to do. I am trying to plan college visits within the next few weeks... and if those go well, well I just might be in Northern California next fall.

So that's it for now, I just wanted to throw down a quick update, nothing very witty, deep, or exciting, but damn it feels good to have that behind me!

Welcome to February ...

So since my last post, I should preface that being 23 isn't all that bad so far! It's been quite an exciting week. I've had a good bit of fraternity items of business that occured this past week, namely Regional Leadership Conference and then our own Georgia Tech initation, I guess from all of that, there was bound to be some type of release point... and that release point is what we call the post-initation social, and was the site of Paul Supawanich in his rarest form in the United States to date... so I will let you assume what you will from that statement, but let's just say that it's been a rough Sunday.



As far as everything else goes, I have turned in all of my grad applications, almost all of my scholarship applications, and have made my summer plans. So all in all, I've started the beginning of the rest of my life. Which is pretty fine by me, I am loving this thing they call senior year, and probably because I have my hands full in just the right amount of things, but still leaving plenty of time to get to know the younger crowds, learning to try many new things, and trying to stick with the goals that I laid out for myself over xmas break. So I just got my new turntables, they are Numark TT-1s, which is a far cry from the Technics 1200s that I would have liked, but still, for how good I am (not very), and for what I'm doing (screwing around for fun), it's a good match for me. I'm hoping to get to do some good jobs here in the upcoming months.

In other news, classes are fine, not quite as much fun as last semester, but I guess you can't always win at school, espically schools like Georgia Tech. But on top of the usual grind, I'm taking a personal training class, to hopefully become PT certified someday, and also trying out a handful of other new things (going to the kayak club meeting tomorrow), learning to use photoshop, and going to try to get the new ambassadors to socialize.

I'm also pretty pumped because of my travel plans for the next couple of months. Of course I place travel pretty high on the Supawanich priority totem pole... but here's the list (leading out for 6 months): March: Charleston, Savannah, Grand Canyon, Bryce N.P., Zion N.P., Stillwater, OK. April: nowhere May: Seattle, WA, Calgary,AL, Glacier N.P. May: Los Angeles... where I will be working the same UCLA program that I was last summer. Hopefully by that time, I'll have the rest of my life figured out a bit better than I know now..

goodnight for now.