Alpha Waves

Hi Readers,

So I'm on a blogging spree tonight. I think I'm going to try and catch up on as many blogs as I humanly can before I fall asleep midway through a blog.

So this quarter, I'm taking a class on Diagnostic Devices here at Stanford. It involves a lab section where you actually get to use a lot of medical devices to try it out. For example, for the CT scan lab, we placed several objects and took CT scans of it. You get the picture.

This past week, what we did was called EEG, or electroencephalagram (spelling might be wrong). This involves placing electrodes on your head, and recording your brain waves as your are performing different tasks. The tasks that I had to do involve watching a picture as it flashed at a predetermined frequency, grinding my teeth and blinking my eyes while looking at a white screen, and closing my eyes and relaxing.

The last exercise, where I had to close my eyes and relax, is supposed to bring out the "Alpha" waves from your brain. This indicates the 3rd most active level of brain activity (after delta and theta waves), and the waves oscillate at around 10Hz. When I did the exercise, I could hear the lab manager say, "Whoa! Look at those massive Alpha waves! Those are humongous!" I would periodically open my eyes just so that I could see what the Alpha waves look like. He's right - they are gigantic in comparison to the beta waves that were recorded with the flashing image.

He also joked that I must have an Alpha personality, to which I merely shrugged my shoulders and gave him a smile. =)

In fact, my Alpha waves were apparently so strong that the comparative phase drift was small. Normally, natural non-event induced waves tend to phase drift over 360 degrees during a measurement. However, mine was so stable that they were complete confined to a 90 degree quadrant. The lab manager said that this is extremely rare, and that I would make a good function generator. He was joking, but he had a point - when they took the Fourier transform of my brain waves, the signal-to-noise ratio and the spurious-free dynamic range was quite substantial.

Now I wasn't really sure what that meant. Is that a good thing? Bad thing? Neither?

So I did a quick Google search about Alpha waves, and it came up with loads of goodies. Tidbits which I'm not sure that I should trust, but I thought I'd post about anyways. Apparently, having large Alpha waves indicates that you are a very stress-free person, and can come up with creative ideas and solutions to problems. It means that I can go from an alert stage to a relaxed stage very easily. All of these sound like me, and best of all - I'm now proven myself (somewhat) to be relatively stress-free most of the time! I'm wondering if an EEG taken 2-3 years ago would have shown the same thing. I think I'm a lot happier and relaxed now than I was during my undergrad.

Anyways, this post was just a random musing on the Alpha waves that they measured from my brain. I'm glad that my Alpha waves were so large, since it could mean that I am very stress-free. Hopefully I'll stay that way!

Till next post!
-FCDH

Epic Roadtrip: Arizona + Utah

Hi Readers,

I have not written a blog post in a long time, because...I forgot. So here's a short post about my President's Day Weekend, when I embarked on what was probably the best trip that I've had in America. This happened almost 2 months ago (and I started a blog post about it 2 months ago..) but I'm just getting around to it now.

Starting a year ago, after seeing a New York Times travel article about it, I began planning for a trip to The Wave in Arizona. To go to the Wave, one must obtain a permit, which are given out in a monthly online lottery process. 10 permits are granted per day, and in the lottery process you can choose 3 days in a month to try your luck. For an entire year, I tried my luck every month, and failed every single month. In October, I received the prized email that I had been waiting for, which gave me 4 permits for the day of February 17th, 2012. I had applied for the date blindly, and by sheer luck it turned out to be the President Day's long weekend. So excitedly, I gathered 3 other people (GA, NO, and AZ), and began planning an epic trip. And an epic trip it was.

Because my hiking permits were for Friday the 17th, that meant that we had to arrive in the area by Thursday night. Therefore, we planned on flying to Las Vegas on Thursday night, renting a car and driving to Kanab, UT, and staying the night there. Potential problems began emerging very early on. We almost missed out flight to Las Vegas, we were delayed an hour in getting our rental car, and by the time we had arrived to Kanab it was 5am. I was worried a lot that first night. Worried that the others wouldn't be able to wake up in the morning in time for us to drive an hour to the Wave and to do the 6-mile roundtrip hike, or just worried in general that something would go wrong and we wouldn't be able to go to the Wave.

But, it turned out to be amazing! We woke up around 9am, and got to the Waves around noon (after an intense 8-mile bumpy dirt road). We hiked for 3 miles to get to the Wave, and it was very worth it! The weather was fantastic this time of year, around 80 degrees and sun-drenched. The Waves themselves were smaller than I had imagined, but it was just so awesome to see what I had dreamed about for so long. We took loads of pictures there and then headed back, in the midst of the tall shadows cast from the sun's rays on all the weird rock formations.

The next day we hit up Bryce Canyon. Bryce is quite indescribable, almost like a fairyland. There are loads of rock formations called Hoodoos, and the sheer extent of them are quite incredible. We spent the majority of the day driving around to all of the viewpoints and taking pictures. We did manage to get in a hike around the rim of the Bryce Amphitheater, and we saw the sunset. The scenery was really beautiful. If it weren't so cold and covered in snow and ice there, we might have been able to do more hiking. Oh well, save it for the next time!

The day after, we hit up both Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park and Zion National Park. The sand dunes were not bad to look at, but the snow covering them definitely made it a lot less exciting. They essentially just looked like giant snowdrifts. However, we spent 2-3 hours there just having fun in the snow. We rolled down the sand dunes, had snowball fights, and built a snowman. It was a really fun time! By the time we left the dunes, there was not much time to fully enjoy Zion (not that we could have done much with only a day there anyways), but we still got to see the amazing scenery there. It reminds me of Yosemite quite a bit. As we left Zion all exhausted, we stopped by an awesome burger place, courtesy of Yelp, before continuing our way to Las Vegas for the night. We had intended to celebrate GA's birthday that night in LV, but we were all so tired that we crashed soon after reaching LV.

On the last day of the trip, we took a detour from the "boring" way back to SF, and decided to take the highway through Death Valley National Park. It turned out to be a very nice and meandering route through the desolate wilderness, one where GA suffered from car sickness (there were a lot of windy turns) and we almost didn't make it back to SF in time to return our car.

The trip was tremendously fun! Here are some pictures. Cheers!

At the Wave!

Bryce Amphitheater in Bryce Canyon

Our awesome snowman!

Overlooking Zion Valley

Me and NO

-FCDH

Le Sigh

Hi Readers,

I just kinda had a fight with my boyfriend and now I feel awful about it. Absolutely awful. I wonder how he puts up with me and my stupid antics. I didn't even give him a chance... I was just throwing out my arguments, and not listening to him at all. 

Ever had that feeling when you know "oh crap, I took it one step too far?" Well, it happened to me today. I didn't realize how much of a jerk I was until afterward. I wish I could take it back...I just want to hold him in my arms right now, and tell him how sorry I am to make such a big deal out of nothing. 

The worst part is, he's been joking recently that he didn't realize that I was so mean when he first met me. Now I'm starting to wonder - are they jokes?

I'm remembering some of the horrible things that I've done in the past to different people. 

Maybe inherently I am a bad person. Why did I keep on pressing my argument, even after he has apologized over and over again, and has taken all of the blame on himself? 

I am starting to see some traces of my dad in me. My blood runs cold at the thought. Maybe genetics cannot be averted after all. 

I will have to watch myself more carefully in the future, to make sure I don't just lash out at the people I care about the most. How could I let this happen? 

-FCDH

Stanford Quals!

Hi Readers,

I started writing this post 35 days ago, before I actually took quals and found out my results. The fact that I haven't finished it until today speaks volumes as to how busy I have been. This quarter has just been waves and waves of shazam and I'm finally starting to dig myself out of all this crap. I just turned in 2 final projects, and I have another final project and final hw set due on Monday. After that, 2 finals stand in my way of snowboarding and other spring break plans. Yippee!

AND I PASSED THE QUALS!! FIRST TIME TOO!!! I was unbelievably happy when that email came. =)

Anyways, this post is going to talk about my experiences taking the qualifying exams at Stanford. When I came to Stanford , the EE department head (Professor Mark Horowitz) was very adamant about it not being a big deal. He said that first years should not worry about passing or failing their first time, and that they should just treat it as a practice their first year. I think he's slightly out of touch with the EE students. When do we not freak out about anything? Especially a test that is, even if only symbolic, a somewhat traumatic experience for all who go through it.

Here's what the quals nominally entail:
-10 oral exams with 10 different professors, each 12 minutes long.

Here's what the quals actually entail:
-at least a month of frantic studying
-a complete 8-hour day of running around to different rooms
-lots of sighing
-sarcastic professors making fun of you
-well-meaning professors unintentionally making fun of you
-having absolutely no idea if you passed or failed

Here are some tips and hindsight:

Studying
-A quals study group is a great idea. I usually don't work in groups, but studying for quals in a group is a phenomenal idea, since there are many people at Stanford who are smarter than you.
-I started really studying for the quals a month before I took them. This really was not enough, and I should have started studying earlier, so I could cover more. It was pure luck that I passed the first time.
-Do not study your group 3 and 4 more than your group 1 and 2, even though you might not be very good at them. The group I ended up doing the worst on was group 1, while groups 2, 3, and 4 ensured that I passed.

Professor Selection
For quals, you must make your professor selections from the list that is given to you that year. There are many different fields your professors can be chosen from. All quals students have to choose 20 professors to distribute into 4 groups, and 10 quals professors will be chosen from those 4. Students will rank their groups from 1-4, with 1 being the most preferred, and 4 being the least preferred. 4 professors will be chosen from group 1, 3 from group 2, 2 from group 3, and 1 from group 4. The maximum professors from any one field that can be chosen is 4.

Given knowledge of this, it is possible to "game" the system a bit, by selecting professors in special ways. For example, if there are 6 professors in the field that you specialize in, you can put 5 of them in group 1, which will ensure that the 6th will not be picked if placed in any other group (because the maximum 4 professors from group 1 will have been picked already). If you game the selection process carefully, it is possible to minimize your chances of getting professors in areas that you don't want. My four areas were devices, physics, E&M, and circuits, and yet I managed to escape with 4 professors in devices, 4 in physics, and 2 in E&M. Sheer luck! I would have performed poorly on circuits.

The Arbitrary Scores
I tried to smile the entire way through my quals, but it was hard for many reasons. For one, you have absolutely no idea what criteria by which the professors are judging you on. You don't know what the right answer is, whether or not there were more parts to the problem that you didn't answer, or whether you made a good impression on the professor or not. You are struck by the arbitrariness of it all.

And that's really the word of the day: arbitrariness. When I received the final breakdown of grades by professor, it completely floored me. Here were the big shocks in the scores:

1. My group 1 professors (Devices) gave me the lowest scores. I had Professor X (anonymized in case we were not supposed to reveal this information), who I thought I did relatively well on. 1.2/10 after curving. How I got that, I had no idea, and still have no idea. Professor Y asked me if I was in signals and systems at the end of our session. Ouch.
2. Physics and E&M profs love me. At least, I did better than 75% percentile of students on all of them. I had no idea how to answer Professor Z's question, and made up an answer, and the professor told me at the end of the session: "your answer was wrong. You may leave now." 8/10. WTF?
3. I performed either extremely well or extremely poorly. It was either below 25th percentile, or above 75th.

I lost complete faith in the quals system after the scores were published. Some professors that I thought I did well on didn't give me good scores. Some professors that I thought I failed gave me fantastic scores. How this is supposed to measure your ability to do research, I have no idea.

But that's over. It was a very traumatic experience, but one that all Ph.D EE students will be able to complain about for years to come. And I passed! That's the important thing. =)

Till next post!
-FCDH

Twisted

Hi Readers,

I feel like there is a giant weight above my head, ready to drop and crush me.

I am torn between two desires, and I don't know what to do.

I want to freeze time, and savor what I have without having to worry about the future.

I want to bury my head in my arms and scream in frustration.

My insides are twisted with uncertainty.

Tears.

Stress.

I want to run away from all that plagues me.

One thing at a time.

Quals.

Pull yourself together.

Relationships.

This is not a time to be weak.

Life.

-FCDH

Speed Bumps

Hi Readers,

I feel like I need to write this post to remind myself how to be happy by myself. Being in a relationship, I'm becoming too complacent about my own personal happiness, more specifically the source of my happiness. I must remember how to derive happiness from other places and other activities than just from him. Life passes at an unyielding pace. I've become so used to going at a breakneck speed through life, that being in a relationship is throwing my sense of happiness all off-kilter. I must come to realize that other people travel at different speeds through life.

In the past 2 months, I have come to find that the road through this relationship is littered with speed bumps. Like the stereotypical bad Asian driver, I lack hindsight, and believe that the last speed bump I passed through will be the last. Naturally I get frustrated with all of the speed bumps, because it necessitates a repeated process of acceleration and sudden braking as the speed bump comes into view. At the current moment, I find myself in a state of mind where happiness is only garnered when one has reached the destination point. I find myself constantly frustrated with the speed bumps, not because they are there, but because I keep putting the expectation into my mind that I'll be able to speed, and keep having that expectation broken over and over again.

I have forgotten what I used to do when I didn't have a car. I used to walk or bike, and enjoy taking time out to smell the roses or to appreciate the scenery. I would explore paths through the forest on a whim, and enjoy the journey itself as well as upon reaching the destination. The world is still full of unexplored wonders. But now, all I do is wait around for the next time I'll get to see him? On average, I shouldn't be feeling less happy than I did before I was in the relationship. It is a paradox.

I love being with him. It's simple, easy, and I can find happiness with a phone call and a short drive. But I must stop myself from turning into this domesticated animal, dependent on others for my own happiness. Since he has put up his speed bumps, I must somehow learn to put up my own speed bumps, to prevent myself from being disappointed. More than that, I need to remove the destination from view, in order to stop my expectations from hitting a brick wall over and over again.

Let me turn off the GPS system and go for a joyride. Destination unknown.

-FCDH

A Year's Summary

Hi Readers,

So much has happened in a single year, both in my own life and the world around me. From the Arab Spring to the earthquake in Japan, billions of lives were dramatically changed all around the world. Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed, and the war in Iraq was ended. Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann became household names, and Rick Perry's political career took a nosedive.

On Jan. 1st, 2011, I didn't know what my future post-graduation held. I thought I had equal probability to go into graduate school or industry. For grad school, I expected to be in UC Santa Barbara or Berkeley. Stanford didn't even factor into my calculations. I had applied to Stanford simply because I had ordered an extra leftover transcript and I thought it shouldn't go to waste. Look where I am now. Funny, eh?

Did you know that I was interviewing for full-time positions? I had interviewed until the final rounds for a position for Mitsubishi in Japan, and for National Instruments in Texas. A part of me thought I would go to industry for sure. Why not Japan? Why not a clean break from my past? Was I too scared to go through with it? Is that the reason why I chose to come to grad school?

I couldn't have seen myself entering another relationship so soon. I didn't even know anything about California. Sure, I had heard that there were more gay people here, but then again who knows? Am I even attractive to others? Could I even get anyone if I wanted to? I knew only one thing - I would learn how to face the world bravely, alone or not. But I was scared shitless.

My resolutions for this year.
-Learn Surfing
-Visit South America
-Learn Arabic
-Summit Half Dome
-Visit Redwood, Mt. Lassen, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Joshua Tree Natl Parks
-Visit Chinatown in SF! (haha this one should be easy to achieve)

New Years is always a time for anxiety and excitement. I am curious to see what the next 365 days will bring, and what the future me will think of the current me.

-FCDH