Monday, 29 December 2008

San Diegan Christmas


For Christmas I went down to San Diego. I was promised warm weather, however it was rather chilly for the most of the time I was down there. But on the last day San Diego turned on its shine :)

St. Nick came and gave me useful presents I thought. Chocolate, memory game, socks, shirts, gift cards... Before that I did slave over the hot stove cooking pierogi :) but thankfully they were already made and I just had to boil and fry them.

As I had been to the Zoo (situated at Balboa Park) before, I went to the San Diego wildlife park this time. It's about forty minutes from San Diego and is nestled in a large valley. It has a big African Savannah part and bigger enclosures for the other animals - so it's pretty cool.

It had a petting zoo enclosure where you could feed and pat deer, antelope and gazelles. Interestingly the smaller antelopes and gazelles definitely had softer fur...

I also revisited Mt Soledad, Cabrillo Point and La Jolla. On Mt Soledad we could see very far. Even seeing the plateau past Tijuana and snow on the mountains to the north west of San Diego.

There were some interesting tidbits - La Jolla had seal pups and seals move funny, I saw a ridiculous car, had a giant meal..

Monday, 22 December 2008

Thursday, 18 December 2008

How do I cope with the cold again?

After it being so mild and so warm for so long, the cold weather at the moment is a bit of a shock. I have to remember to wear more layers as the temperature of late has been in the low single digit range. Sure, this is not really that cold, however after having the vast majority of the year basking in temperatures above 15C, it's easy to forget the best options for keeping warm...

Monday, 15 December 2008

End of the quarter

As of this week, I have finished my first quarter of study and now have three weeks break before the new quarter starts in the new year. Studying for 10 weeks straight, and going over all the material you would usually find in a semester system was a bit of a change. You definitely felt that material went by quicker, however to compensate this meant that you had to put more effort into study and readings. While not a bad thing, it just could cause a little frustration when there were no examples given in lectures to help reinforce the material...

Merry Christmas :)

Sunday, 7 December 2008

Raccoons!


Last night on campus I saw a trio of raccoons scampering around. This was my first sighting of raccoons. They look a bit like large bushy cats.. But the trio of them were wrestling each other and they looked like there were having a good old time...

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Google Streetview Car Falls Off Cliff

Click the arrow facing toward you, i.e. as if you want to go backwards. You shall find that you end up at the bottom of a small drop... Hopefully the google streetview car didn't suffer too much damage... :P

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