I'm done, I'm done, in more ways than one!

I did my Controls exam yesterday. I thought I did allright. After the exam, I went on a tour around other laboratories in the fluid mechanics department. I learned something really interesting that day, that small insects like dragon flies and bees make tiny little vortexes in the air with their wings and then push off on them some how to make them fly! Very fascinating stuff.

I came home by about 6:00 pm, exhausted. Milled about and then crashed till 9:00 pm then I started working on my presentation which I had for today. I wrote out an outline, reviewed old data and pictures of my project and then proceeded to write notes on how I wanted my presentation to go. I spent time translating text in to Japanese and then finally started putting the presentation together in powerpoint. I was finally done making the presentation by 3:00 am. Spent 1 hour till 4:00 am practicing giving the presentation in Japanese (ad lib) and then collapsed into bed where I would wake by 7:00 to grab a bite to eat, suit up and make it to the university by 8:30. They showed the presentation list and I had my presentation to go at 9:40 to 10:10 (30 mins). Just a note, the Japanese are infatuated with the suit! For a university interview almost all students came in a full suit or close to it. I forwent the vest and went in dress pants and a dress shirt.

The presentation went smoother than I expected. Sure I stumbled on a few words, but those were language barriers (I also made a vocab list of technical words and kept it by my desk for reference should I need any of those back up words :). All in all, it went pretty well.

The strangest thing was that there were atleast 7 professors in the room for my interview. I was incredibly shocked and embarrased, not becaused there were so many professors, but because I made only 4 copies of my resume to give to them! How would I have known that there would be so many professors! Ugh. I thought that 4 was a nice round number and that it wouldn't exceed that. Live and learn... then move on.

Unfortunately, though I know the professors have marked my exam, they didn't mention anything about my exam marks. One of my friends got a little flack for not doing so well on the exam because his professor asked "why were [his] exam marks were so low compared to [his] university grades." I will have to find time to enquire about my marks as I am curious to see how I did.

I got home by 10:40. Zombified because of lack of sleep but at the same time, my body didn't want to goto sleep. I tried waiting it out but that didn't work. By 2:00 I departed from my dorm to anywhere... just anywhere that looked like a nice place to eat. I wound up at a restaurant specializing in food made with soy. I was amazed the food was excellent! Presentation was beautiful and for $15 I was stuffed (and had a small bite for dessert). Too bad I went alone though, would have been much more fun if I went with friends, but I was content none the less. Also a note about Japanese restraunts, the Japanese quite often give you the bill right after you recieve the meal. I felt weird the first few times when that happened because I was so used to asking for the bill when I was done.

4:30 now... I have an appointment at 6:00, I decided to join something totally ridiculus for me in Japan, but what the hey. I'll talk about it some other time. *yawn* Let's see if I can take a 1 hour nap....