Ireland, week six: Gift of gab

July 27, 2015July 27, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

Saturday 7/18

Got up around 6 am for a day tour on a coach bus to Cork and Blarney with two friends. Our first stop was at the Rock of Cashel in Tipperary, which was also

called St. Patrick’s rock. The main attractions there were drab gray walls and a cemetery.

Then headed on to Cork. The bus driver/tour guide was from Cork so he drove us around his city before heading on to Blarney. We got there around noon to “beat the crowds,” but there was still an hour long line up Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone and obtain the “gift of gab”.

Ireland, week five: In Dublin fair city

July 17, 2015July 27, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

I’ve been busier this week, so there aren’t as many pictures this time. Apologies!

Saturday 7/11

Woke up at 7:15 am to visit Howth with

a friend. We took the bus to Blackrock, where we caught the DART (the Dublin version of BART) to Howth. The town was cute and smelled like seafood and fish. Mmm fish. We stopped by the famous Howth Market but it wasn’t completely set up yet so we walked around to the edge of the dock and at the lighthouse.

Ireland, week four: Independence days

July 10, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

Saturday 7/4

To celebrate American independence day, I boarded a plane independently to Edinburgh, Scotland. I was awake at 3:30 am to catch my flight, and couldn’t

believe how many other people were also awake, on the streets and in the airport lines.

The weather in Edinburgh was horrendous when I got there, but thankfully the plane landed without issues. I tried to keep my spirits up as the bus took us to Old Town. My socks were sopping wet within a couple minutes of walking around, and the wind rendered my umbrella useless. I began to feel like the whole trip was going to be miserable, so I headed straight for the hostel.

Ireland, week three: Flying by

July 3, 2015July 3, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

Saturday 6/27

Being sick while traveling is the worst. My train ride was miserable because of my sore throat. It didn’t help that everyone in my group of four had to wake up before 6 am today to make the 7:00 am train to Killarney. We got to the train station just in time, thanks to a lack of traffic at that ungodly hour, as well as our taxi driver’s willingness to drive at 80 mph on commercial roads.

When we got to Killarney, it was windy and rainy, so I was grateful for my

windbreaker. We were still slightly unsure of what we should do, and so far I was regretting our “let’s just wing it” attitude in planning the weekend trip. But we found a tourist office where a nice man recommended that we stay in a hostel that was closer to the one we originally booked, which was 3 miles away from the town center. We walked to the hostel he recommended and checked in. Good thing too, because there was a shuttle bus two blocks away that was able to take us to Killarney National Park.

Ireland, week two: Fresh oysters and free sightseeing

June 26, 2015June 27, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

Week two of my study/intern abroad experience in Ireland. Short and simple for now.

Saturday 6/20

Our plans to visit Galway for the weekend were so last minute that I was surprised most people in our 12-person group were able to wake up on time for us to make the 9:15 bus. It was a rainy and dreary day, but we spent most of the morning on the bus, where I took multiple naps. Upon reaching the Galway bus station, some of us grabbed brochures to search for cheap tours. We found one that would take us to the Cliffs of Moher today and to Connemara tomorrow in a package deal. Today’s bus left at 1 pm, leaving us with just enough time to grab a quick sandwich at a nearby restaurant.

Opposite the Cliffs of Moher: Sun came out right when we got there!

The drive to the Cliffs of Moher took over an hour, but we stopped by a couple photo stops on the way there. The beautiful Cliffs apparently served as a filming location for the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie. We enjoyed taking pictures on the precarious cliff edges, which left us with barely enough time to see the tower on the opposite side of the cliffs before reporting back to the bus. On the way back, we stopped by the Blackhead area, so named because of a random “leprechaun” face in a stone cliff wall. Such imagination. Upon returning to Galway City, we checked into the laid-back Kinlay Hostel. My friends and I ended up sharing a room with a French PhD candidate and her cousin.

Ireland, week one: Hop on, hop off

June 19, 2015June 27, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

As some of you know, I’m in Ireland for the summer, studying and interning abroad with other UC Berkeley students at University College Dublin (UCD). Here are my brief updates for the first week:

Monday 6/15

Didn’t sleep much on the plane because of the mandatory screaming baby on-board. Since I was taking my flight with KLM, the movies on the plane had Dutch subtitles. Dutch sort of looks like German, but not really. Had a layover in Amsterdam. I forgot how many famous Dutch people there are: Anne Frank, Van Gogh, and that crazy writer from the Fault in our Stars.

Just arrived in Ireland. Most of the signs are in two languages- English and Irish. Irish is one of those languages that I’m too embarrassed to even attempt to pronounce, despite being able to sound it out phonetically. Too many strange accents and marks. Everything is green, green, green, which I love!

How to earn an identity

May 31, 2015May 31, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

Of course, you are not your job. Related article: http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/3-tips-to-avoid-being-a-job-title-commodity/ — Of course, you are not your job. Related article here.

I recently wondered in another blog post, “what makes someone a computer scientist:

the act of writing code or the programming mindset?” I could ask the same of any other field, and it all boils down to the same questions: how do you adopt a new identity? when can you give yourself a new title? One obviously has to do more than take a class or fiddle with some code to be a “computer scientist.” So I came up with these criteria to test whether one has earned a new identity:

Why we should watch out for unassertive language

May 24, 2015July 10, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

Last semester, I was looking through a graded midterm I had received back when I realized that my professor had added up my total points incorrectly, leaving me with an 82 instead of a 92. I turned and marched back into the classroom to demand my points back.

I approached my graduate student instructor and asked in a small voice, “Could you help me count this again?”

“Sure,” he said, and pulled out his phone to add up the numbers. He poked at it for a while, so I said, “I think it’s supposed to be 92.” For some reason, I felt uncomfortable hearing myself add I think in front of my sentence when I was sure I was right. Eventually, my GSI said “You’re right, good catch. That’s a big point difference.”

My coding journey thus far

April 30, 2015September 22, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

console.logbunny I figure the completion of my final assignment this semester for Computer Science 61A (the introductory computer science course at UC Berkeley) is a reasonable checkpoint for me to reflect on my involvement in programming. For our last class project, the last few lines of directions read “Assuming your tests are good and you’ve passed them all, consider yourself a proper computer scientist!” Sadly, I failed all the tests for the extra-credit question. Even if I had aced every problem, I don’t believe that adding tiny bits of code here and there to the massive skeleton provided by the course instructors necessarily qualifies me as a “proper computer scientist.” Heading into the future, I want to cling to Professor DeNero’s hand, crying “Don’t leave me!”

What we should really learn in college

April 27, 2015April 27, 2015 karenalin6Leave a comment

When I took AP English in high school, our teacher would begin every class by asking, “Any questions about the reading from last night?” At first, no one would raise their hands, and he would punish us for our silence with pop quizzes on minute details of the plot. Eventually we discovered that if we asked more thoughtful questions, he would reward us with informative answers, long enough to take up more class time and stall pop quizzes. Despite the stressful nature of the class, I realized that our teacher was training us in the art of asking intelligent questions, which became one of the most important skills I ever had to use in college.

Oops, I'm a rabbit

On being human