Yesterday (7/31) was an awesome day
In the morning, the Oracle interns got to go on a helicopter ride around San Francisco. This was my first time riding a helicopter. I was surprised how smooth the take-off and landing were. The helicopter just gently rose from the ground without any noticeable acceleration. The same with landing. I later learned from the Oracle college recruiting director, who has both a airplane pilot's license and a helicopter pilot's license that a helicopter is also safer than an airplane. Even if the engine fails, the helicopter can still land, and it can basically land anywhere - it doesn't need a long runway like a plane. He said that for his helicopter license test, after doing maneuvers in the air for a couple hours, for one of his final tests, the examiner turned off the engine and then told him to land the helicopter! Maybe a helicopter is safer, but it's also much harder to fly than an airplane, according to the college recruiting director. He said in his opinion, flying a helicopter was about two orders of magnitude harder than flying a plane. See pictures of the helicopter tour here.
After the helicopter ride, we went to Medallion Steakhouse in Burlingame to eat lunch. There, I sat next an intern from Harvard, Amy Tai, who is also into cubing. We did a few team solves, where the teammates alternate making moves, and we also chatted about the Rubik's Cube competition she's planning at Harvard on the weekend of Oct. 2/3. She told me Bob Burton would be the official World Cube Association delegate. She also said she had to contact Tyson Mao in order to get official approval for the competition, and in the process, Tyson had invited her to go rock climbing and to eat dinner/hang out at Lars Petrus's house!!! I couldn't believe it. Lars Petrus is arguably my biggest cubing influence, being the inventor of the method I first learned to solve a Rubik's Cube back in 2004. I had always wanted to meet him some day. So I asked Amy if I could come. She texted Tyson for me and he said sure. I was sooo excited!
I met Amy and Tyson at Planet Granite in Belmont. Also there were Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi and Shelley Chang, both well-known California cubers, and another cuber, William Chen (not the one from WP), who's gonna be a freshman at Harvard next year. Tyson, Macky, and Shelley all had gym membership, which allowed each to bring one guest, so Amy, Will, and I got to go rock climbing for free! The three of us were all newbies - I think this was the first time rock climbing for Amy and Will, and this was my fourth time (the other three times, in order were (1) at David Bentrovato's birthday party at Diamond Gymnastics a lonnngg time ago, (2) at Project Graduation in '08, and (3) at Hopkins during my latest visit). Tyson, Amy, Will, and I bouldered (this is climbing without rope or harness - just a landing pad and lower heights) for about 45 minutes while Shelley and Macky did some top rope (that's where you're attached to a rope and one person is on the ground holding the other end of the rope).
I mostly just tried the climbs marked V0, which is the easiest level (the scale goes up to V16 apparently, though the highest I saw was a V12). Some of the V0s were surprisingly challenging; given the difficulty of some of them, I would have expected V negative one and V negative two levels as well. I tried a V1 later, and during one of my movements where I was hanging from my left hand with my feet planted and reaching my right hand to the next rock, I felt something pull in my left shoulder. After that, I more or less stopped bouldering because my left shoulder was bothering me too much.
Shortly after that incident, Amy, William, and I took a belaying class, which taught us how to tie the proper knots for securing the rope to our harness and the proper technique for pulling slack while on the ground holding the other end of the rope for a climber. We then did some top rope climbs. The top rope scale goes from 5.1 to 5.15, with letters being added for finer gradations, such as 5.10a, 5.10b, 5.10c, etc. [The 5 before the decimal point just means if you didn't use a rope and fell, you would be seriously or fatally injured. The number after the decimal point is the difficulty.] The technique and movements required for top rope were a bit easier than for bouldering, but the climbs were much higher, so endurance became a significant factor. I did a few 5.7s and 5.8s and got halfway up a 5.9 before running out of energy - my fingertips were burning so badly. I was also afraid to pull too hard because I didn't want to injure my left shoulder further.
I was pretty tired by the time we left. My forearms burned, my fingers were sore, and the skin on my hands was dry and chafed. But I really enjoyed all the climbing and want to climb more. I actually like the soreness climbing gives you in the fingers, hands, and forearms, since I don't usually feel soreness in these parts of my body unless I cube way too much. It was a good forearm/hand/finger workout.
Macky and Tyson left a bit earlier to buy food to eat at Petrus's house, so Shelley drove Amy, William, and me to Lars's place in Mountain View.
It was unbelievably thrilling to see Lars Petrus for the first time in real life, and I took a picture with him right away.
Then we sat down at the kitchen table and cubed and chatted while Tyson barbecued some chicken breasts and beef steaks for us. Macky had brought some ghost chilis, so Tyson cooked Macky's chicken with them.
I asked Macky why he wanted to eat something so spicy and he said it was just to entertain Tyson.
Tyson eating steak. Macky eating chicken breast. Tyson's was cooked regularly; Macky's was cooked with the ghost chilis.
Macky taking another bite of his chicken breast.
Macky taking it all in. He also has a Smirnoff Ice to cool him off if he needs it.
During dinner and while barbecuing, Tyson was blurting out random Swedish words he had learned, which greatly entertained Petrus. In the process, I also learned one Swedish word - skål (which sounds like a blend of skull and skoal). It literally means "bowl", but it's also the Swedish way of saying "cheers".
I also tried some Petrus beer.
Petrus is Swedish for Peter, hence the depiction of St. Peter and the slogan "the key to heaven".
Though I'm a pretty bad beer judge, I thought it was a pretty decent beer, having much more beer taste than the Keystone Light people play beer pong with. Lars also told us there's a Petrus wine, but it's French and the cheapest bottle is like $800.
After dinner, we went to his living room and watched a cubing documentary called "Piece by Piece". I had seen the trailer for it on YouTube, but had never seen the full documentary. I was very surprised when I saw my name shown in it for the 2x2 WR. Apparently, this film was shot in 2006 shortly after I had set the 2x2 WR.
The story behind the short documentary was very interesting, too. Lars Petrus and some of his friends had just seen a movie or something and were kinda drunk, and his friends started showing off his cubing skills to random strangers. One girl was particularly impressed and thought this would make a great subject for a film she and her friend had to make for a film class at Berkeley. Petrus told her to email Tyson Mao, which she did, but Tyson didn't take her seriously due to a poorly written/sketchy email. So he just directed her to Dan Dzoan instead. That's why Tyson isn't in the film (except for some footage from a Stanford competition), and Dan Dzoan is featured prominently. It was a pretty nice documentary, though there were a few inaccuracies. Apparently, the short film was even shown at the Tribeca and SXSW film festivals. Recently, Aditi Sonajirao told me she had seen my name in a cubing documentary. I was surprised because I had seen quite a few cubing clips but had never seen my name mentioned in one. So this documentary must have been what she was talking about.
Afterward, we watched Dr. Horrible. Hadn't seen it in two years, but it was still wonderful and I still knew all the songs.
It's a brand new day...
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