In the middle of Exam Week hell right now.

It's a lot worse this semester than last. It could be because my classes this semester are more backloaded this year (piling all the graded work at the end), but also probably partially because I have been less diligent in getting work done over the course of this semester than last.

Right now, I'm sitting with my group, putting finishing touches onto a 17 page stats project that I've dedicated the last 5 days of my life to do. It's really cool, relevant and original, so it's been fun. I just need to be done with it, so I can get on with my other classwork.

Actually, hell-week is a bit misleading - it all started two weeks ago when I worked for 24 hours straight to turn in my China Economics paper. Since then, I've been going full steam, especially this past week. It will be a wonderful feeling of relief when I finish my last thing.

Today is Daiv Hollman's birthday:

If you know him, email him a happy birthday.

Last night he came over because Amy was real good and baked him a birthday cake, which we decorated together. Then we had an intensive game of scrabble.

I usually don't read newspaper pundits, i.e. columnists, preferring instead to get facts from credible sources and interpreting and forming opinions for myself, but I've started reading them. This is mainly because I've been told that much of america (or maybe more accurately, most of america's educated) form their opinions based on certain respected columnists.

Here's one that I read recently from Thomas Friedman, which I thought was particularly entertaining, yet insightful:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/30/opinion/30FRIE.html

Went to NYC this past weekend - it was good to get out of town since I had a particulary hairy previous week at school.

We took the Chinatown bus, because I wasn't in any mood to deal with traffic. The Chinatown bus is actually quite nice, and very affordable ($35 round trip). Even with two people going (Amy and me), I think it turned out at most equally expensive as driving myself, if you add gas, tolls, parking, etc.

We got in late Friday night, dropped off in Chinatown, and immediately went to get food. Yum. I had beef tendons with river noodles, and amy had congee. Roy then met us up, and we hung out, until we were absolutely exhausted.

Then amy and I took the train to her friend Angie's new apartment in Brooklyn. Actually, maybe it's a "condo" because she just bought it... not quite sure the terminology, but it was her recently purchased apartment, and it was beautiful...

Anyways, despite being completely exhausted, we stayed up and chatted for a while

(to be finished later)