Part 21: Independence Day (Galveston revisited)

Wednesday July 4th, 2007.

We left Husky Village early in the morning to go to Galveston. We had it all planned. We were going to watch the 4th of July Parade at 9:00 a.m. and then eat at the Rail Road Museum, to later spend the afternoon at the beach and watch the fireworks at night.

On our way there our plans were literally flushed away. It was raining so bad that it was impossible to see anything more than maybe 10 meters away. Since we were already on the road, we decided to continue on with our journey.

There was not a soul in the city where the parade was supposed to be. I thought that patriotism in the States beat bad weather, but I was wrong. The parade was cancelled, so we had to decide what to do next. There were seven of us, and we couldn’t come to an agreement. Frankly, I was open to any suggestion, whether it was going to the beach or to Moody Gardens or whatever. The only option I didn’t like was to head back to Houston. We asked for directions to anywhere at a gas station and they told us about some Crystal Beach. We headed there, but the road ended at the ferry. When we asked again at another gas station, the man there told us that we needed to take the ferry in order to get to Crystal Beach. So we did. It was still raining really hard. The ferry was fun. When we got on the other side, we drove for miles with no sign of Crystal Beach whatsoever. I tried to text and call Google for directions but I only received businesses with the name of Crystal Beach, not the actual beach itself. After asking in a couple of places and driving around for an hour or two, we finally got to the beach but didn’t get in, because by this time everyone was already tired and wanting to go back. What a waste! I was still hoping to have a good time at the beach, but at that moment the tension in the air was so dense that if you wanted, you would have been able to cut it with a knife. We had to switch places in the cars so that an epic battle didn’t start.

We had to take the ferry back home and this time we saw a lot of dolphins. It was cool. Also, suddenly the raining stopped. Of course, we were already on our way back home.

When we got to Houston we had dinner at a Jack-in-the-box and went to Circuit City. I bought “Monster House” on DVD. It’s the third movie I buy here. I also bought “Catch me if you can” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: The curse of the black pearl” some days earlier.

I took a shower and got ready. We picked Christine, Silvia’s friend, and went to Hermann Memorial Park to see the fireworks. They started just as we got there. The timing was perfect, and the fireworks were pretty cool.

After that, we went to Valhalla, the Bar at Rice, for a couple (a whole bunch) of beers. Ended up pretty drunk, peeing inside the campus. I was not the only one, and it was not the first time (I miss Colorado State).

Part 20: Working hard or hardly working? Working hard… damn.

Monday July 1st and Tuesday July 2nd, 2007.

Ananth told me he really likes what I’m doing. He told me that they’re going to acquire an Adobe Flash CS3 license for me to work. Rocks. I worked really hard on Monday, because I didn’t want to work late on Tuesday since Wednesday is a holyday and Thursday I have my review meeting.

To my surprise, I had my meeting on Tuesday. I was nowhere near prepared for it, but it was still good. Everyone liked the graphical user interface that I’m developing. Tuesday was over and I was free to do whatever the hell I wanted (at least until Thursday).

We ordered some pizzas at night and had a couple of beers. We’re kind of getting used to drinking in the apartments and breaking those nonsense rules.

Part 19: See Galveston

Saturday June 30th, 2007.

Woke up and by noon we were on our way to Galveston. It was raining on Houston, but we had faith that we were still going to have a great time at the beach.

Now that I had been living in Houston for almost a month, I’d heard several times Galveston being mentioned. The common denominator for all of those was: “something, something crappy beach”. They were probably right, but (quoting) “a beach is a beach”.

It was actually not that bad. It wasn’t raining; it was sunny, and that was more than enough for all of us. We had a great time there, and by 7 we had supper and drove back.

At night we went to downtown to a couple of Irish pubs and danced at a club. We rock. I have nothing else to say.

I don’t remember doing anything on Sunday other than going to church. I probably did laundry and played poker. The rest is a huge blur.

Part 18: Rainy days and Mondays always bring me down

Monday June 25th to Friday June 29th, 2007.

Got in the lab at 9:00 as usual. It was raining since I woke up. The computer was compiling for 3 hours straight, and the System Monitor indicated that the CPU was being used 100% - 99% all the time.

Lunch hour. I’ve been eating cold turkey ham, Little Debbie pastries and granola bars every day for almost a month. Could that be healthy in any way?

It’s been raining all week. It’s really depressing and doesn’t get you in the mood to do anything.

On Thursday, like every week, I had a meeting with Ananth, Eric Gauthier and Dennis Vigil (the last two from Iowa State University), regarding the project. Some features I had to confirm and so far everything’s going great. Later on that day I had a meeting with José Florez. He tried to help me install and configure VTK with no success. Dr. Birmanns is out of town and won’t be back until next week.

During lunch I went to the Fine Arts Museum to meet Lydia Linke. We both lived together at the residence halls last year at Colorado State University. She’s from Houston and I was really excited to see her again. After we made plans to meet, I realized that I hadn’t brought a camera with me. There was no chance that I was going to see Lydia and not take any pictures, so I left the office, went back to Husky Village, grabbed the camera and traveled to the Museum. Yes, traveled. It’s really far away from home, but the fact that I had my camera with me and that I was about to see Lydia made the whole trip worth it. I arrived there and met her as planned. We all (her mother and cousin, too) walked through the museum. It was great. I was just hoping that Ananth didn’t call me at my mobile, so I turned it off (quite a solution). After that I returned back to the office to keep of working (or fighting with the simulation).

On Friday, Ananth came back to the office and I showed him what I had been doing the previous days while he was absent. He really liked the fact that I had moved on: I was developing a Front-end using something I’m really good at: Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash. He mentioned that we was about to tell me to go to the Apple Store and buy a Mac, but since I was able to move on, he liked the idea of me working on my own laptop with the language I was comfortable with. Imagine just how dumb I felt.

At night we went to see the Houston Astros vs. the Colorado Rockies baseball game. I was really excited. I left for Husky at around 4:30 in the afternoon. The game was at 7:00 pm. At six I was waiting for the bus outside of Husky. To my surprise, at 6:40 I was still waiting for the god dammed bus! I thought I was going to be very late for the game, but I actually got there during the second inning. When the game was about to end, Colorado was winning 8 to 7 and Houston had 2 outs, and a player on first base. To our disgrace, Houston connected a Home Run and won 9 to 8. I was cheering alright, I mean, Houston won. But I really wanted Colorado to win.

I still had a great time; I bought myself a huge hot dog and a huge beer (expensive ones). After the game they opened the stadium ceiling to reveal an awesome look at the downtown buildings. And then the fireworks started.

Gaby Ale, Morris, Silvia, Gisela and Paulina were expecting me at the Ginger Man Pub over at Rice Village, so I walked all by myself from the stadium to the METRORail station (around 11 blocks, because I walked one station south). There, I was all alone in downtown Houston until a really creepy-looking hobo sat right next to me. He was staring at the emptiness of the night, to occasionally laugh out loud. I was holding my camera and my breath, trying my best not to move or make visual contact. I wondered if I didn’t move, maybe he wasn’t able to see me.

Around half hour later, the train finally pulled into the station. I got off at Dryden and walked to Rice Village. It’s like a 20 minute walk. Around 1:00 am I was finally at the pub with everyone else.

At the Ginger Man Pub they have beers from all over the world. Oh how I wanted a New Belgium Beer. I opened the carte and saw that they had Skinny Dipping! The awesome (seasonal) beer from Fort Collins! I asked for one but to my disappointment they were out of them. Since I was open to new beer-related experiences, I ordered a beer from Canada which I’d never heard about: La Fin du Monde. What a waste of money. The beer tastes bittersweet, with a cherry flavor. Imagine drinking a whole bottle of cold medicine (but without the cool hallucinogen experience). Ça c’été “la fin du monde”, bien sur. After drinking maybe half of it, and about to puke, I ordered another beer. This time it was not that bad, but still really gross; I had to shotgun it to finish it completely.

Oh well, it had been a good day overall.

Part 17: Mexicans, at the shout of Goal!

Sunday June 24th, 2007.

I woke up at 8:00 am. I rushed to meet Gisela at 8:10 to go to church at 9:00. I don’t remember if the alarm clock went on and I just turned it off, or if I didn’t even set it in the first place. I didn’t shower nor had breakfast. We took two busses to get to church; even though it would have been a 5 minute drive if we had a car. If only.

When we came back from church, (and after taking a shower and having breakfast) we decided that this time we were going to go to Galleria for real. So we took the number 4 bus again and waited for the 33. This time it actually showed up and in a moment or two (more like 40 minutes) we were in Galleria.

The mall was really nice. I bought I shirt and a little something at the Disney store for my 5 (almost 6) months-old nephew Eduardo (a.k.a. “Eddy”). Before we knew it, it was already past 2pm, and we rushed for a bar to watch the final of the soccer Gold Cup tournament: Mexico – USA. The bar was full of Mexicans watching the game, aside for a couple of gringos watching baseball on a different TV. Service was less than O.K. because no waiter would pay any attention to us. In a moment, one of the two bartenders turned the TV volume down to a point that we couldn’t hear the game! We were all pissed. He argued that “there were other customers that weren’t there to watch the soccer game”. What a moron. Seriously, we were easily 20 to 1 in ratio. Then the bartender broke some glasses like 3 times so that was funny. When we were ordering, he told us that the chicken quesadillas were more that enough for the three of us: “more than what you three could eat” in his own words. “Swear on it” I told him and he said “It’s a pretty big dish”. What a mistake. I mean they were good but nowhere near “more than what we could eat”. I had two beers and the girls both had lemonades. All this is important. Regarding the game, both teams played fairly good. Mexico’s goal was awesome, but the lame-ass referee from Guatemala gave away a penalty shot. Mexico lost 2 to 1. When the game was over, I asked for the bill but no waiter would pay any attention to us! At this time there weren’t that many people in the bar, probably 20 or 30. When the bill finally came we read it to find out that they had forgotten to bill the lemonades. I handed it over to the bar tender with a credit card in it. After a little while, I was still waiting for the bill to come back, so the bartender looked at me and said “What?” to which I replied “Well, I handed you my bill! There was a credit card inside!!” And after looking for it for a while, he finally found it. When he handed over the receipt to be signed he told me “Is the game already over? Huh, I didn’t even notice”. So I remember someone once told me in Colorado that for cases like this, if you want to tell your waiter he’s done a lousy job, you just have to leave a dollar and a penny. So that’s the amount we left for tip, and we left.

We waited for the number 49 bus that would take us back home but never came. While we were waiting, a skinny black guy wearing a long t-shirt (long, long t-shirt) came to us, asking for money. Even though it was true that in the beginning we didn’t understand a word he said, we were pretty damn sure he was asking for money. We pretended we didn’t know any English and after a while he left. “Un dinero” he kept on saying, “un dinero”.

We kinda got lost for a while, there on our way back. Since we didn’t get on the bus we were supposed to (because of the lame bus schedules that end at 6 or earlier), we weren’t exactly sure when to get off the bus we were on. When we saw that the bus was taking a turn in the opposite direction, we did. We then guessed where we were based on our knowledge and orientation in Houston. That, until we saw “You are now reaching Houston city limits”. Where the hell where we?! After walking for about 5 blocks we discovered we weren’t actually far from a known place. We ended up finding Beechnut street and a bus stop that would take us home.

At night I did laundry. There was a huge storm going on; the kind of storm you don’t even dare to cross the street. Lightning was striking really near every second or so. After that I played some good ol’ Texas Hold’em with Carlos and JC. JC won but I was so close; I had more than twice the chips any one else had for almost all night. We’ll play again on Wednesday.

Another day over. Seems to me that these past few weeks have been going away faster that usual. In no-time I’ll be back in Monterrey. What’ll happen with my plans to go to Colorado?

Part 16: What’s a nice place like this doing in a girl like you?

Friday June 22nd and Saturday June 23rd, 2007.

In the morning nothing new really happened; you know, got to the lab at 9 am, turned my computer and laptop on, built some code (or tried to), waited for half an hour for my laptop computer to really finish turning on.

At 11:00 am Dr. Adol and I attended a conference called “The Internet’s underground economy”, by Rob Thomas (not the artist), founder of Team Cymru. It was pretty interesting as well as entertaining. It talked about how unsafe credit card information on the Internet really is, as well as some other things. Also, there was a free lunch, so that was really nifty too.

In the afternoon we went and bought some beer at the Foodarama (now we know better) and spent the rest of the afternoon and night playing “never ever have I ever” in the girls’ apartment. Always a fun game. We were there, all talking and laughing, in a cheerful environment. Suddenly I began to feel cold, so I tried to reach for a blanket to cover, because my bed was freezing. It didn’t take me a while to realize that it was already morning and that I had slept on the rug. When was the party over? There had been no actual transition between me being in the party and me falling asleep. Blacked out. Can’t remember a thing. Hung-over as I could be, I managed my way to the top of the bed, still in the girls’ apartment, to sleep next to GabyAle. She looked at me with that “I told you so” kind of face. She later told me all the things I had said last night and all the things that happened in the party that I was supposedly at. Funny stuff. Too hung-over to really care. Plus, I didn’t do anything to regret, aside from a couple of comments maybe.

I got to my own room, took a shower and had some breakfast. I’m really running low on food, the only thing I really have left are the Mac & Cheese.

In the afternoon Gisela, GabyAle and I wanted to go to Galleria, so we took the bus number 4, to later take number 33. We were at the bus stop waiting for bus 33 when suddenly a huge storm fell on top of us. We had but one umbrella so we were group-hugging under it. We were soaking wet. A nice Latin American family rolled down the car window and asked us where we were headed to. They didn’t give us a lift, because they weren’t headed there, but they did give us an extra umbrella. They were really nice. I wish I could repay them what they did. Anyway, but 33 never showed up so we took bus number 4 back to Husky Village. We decided that we were going to go later to Galleria when the rain dispersed a little. And it did, alright, but too late to go to Galleria, because the service stops at 6:40 pm for the bus we needed.

We ended up going to Downtown to search for a nice restaurant. Everything was closed. What the fuck is wrong with Houston’s downtown where everything closes on weekends? Working schedules for most businesses are from 9 to 5 from Monday through Friday. Don’t they realize that that is the same time when people are at work? We found a Popeye’s and had some crispy oiled something. When we left the place, it was already closed for new customers.

At night we ended up watching “Monster House”, then computer-animated movie that was on theaters last year. It was freaking cool! I love kids’ humor that has adult jokes hidden within. Too hidden for a child to realize what’s going on.

The movie ended at around 1:45 am so I left the girls’ apartment before 2 am. No rules broken this time. I feel I’m making accomplishments as a good citizen of Husky Village. As if I even cared.

Part 15: Smells like someone “arted” here.

Thursday June 21th, 2007.

It’s been two days that Ananth hasn’t come into the office (Tuesday and Wednesday). I have a mixture of feelings: on one hand I feel really relaxed that I can work at my own pace without being watched; on the other hand I feel that the more time he’s not here, the more work he’ll be wanting to see achieved when he returns, and that is a very dangerous situation.

I think I’ve made some progress, I mean, before he left I was not able to compile anything, and I was running a Java-enabled programming environment. Since he left I was able to figure out how to download the C++ plug-in, install it, add the include files, add the binaries and compile a “Hello World” program. I haven’t been able to render anything, but the basics, I got them.

In the afternoon we went to the Contemporary Arts Museum. Personally, at first I didn’t want to go, because I have a problem with contemporary artists: you see, when you hear about classic artists you can have certain confidence because the work you’re looking at has prevailed through time, and the artists that should be forgotten are already forgotten and only the best ones still stand. In contemporary art, you can’t. Anyone can be “contemporary”, and anything can be called “art”.

There was some interesting stuff in the museum, but nothing to be really amused. Taking pictures wasn’t allowed inside, so I didn’t take any. Plus, we had someone on our backs all the time, saying “Do not touch” every time we came near a piece of crap, I mean, art.

The only cool thing in the museum was the gift shop. It was full of curious things and mind games and whatnot; really eccentric stuff. We spent a lot more time in the gift shop than in the whole museum. I think we were there for a couple of hours at most.

Later on, we went back to our apartments and into the swimming pool. At around 9:00 pm I left to take a bath and went to the gym. I watched the Mexico – Guadalupe soccer game. Mexico won 1 to nothing and passed to the finals against USA. It’s going to be interesting. Sadly, Mexico has been playing tremendously awful, so I don’t have my hopes on. The goal against Guadalupe was awesome, though.

I really want to go to Colorado; I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Every day I think about it a little bit more. I’ve searched flight tickets and they’re not that expensive. I should go. I really should.

Part 14: There’s nothing new under the sun

Monday June 18^th through Wednesday June 20th, 2007.

I think it’s a little bit frustrating how I’ve really learned a lot this past couple of weeks but can’t really reflect that knowledge yet. I feel I should have known so much more before I started this summer program. Anyway, I’m learning and I guess that it could be worse.

These past three days I’ve been reading a lot of manuals and tutorials, and clicking here and there to get used with the interface of the terminal window and the new program I downloaded: Eclipse SDK. It’s the first time that I see a good GUI in a Linux program so far. I’m not saying that Linux programs suck, but the terminal window does.

These three days I’ve gone to the gym. Hopefully I will continue to do this and make it a habit. In Monterrey I go every once in a while, even though “the gym” is inside my own house. Usually I just use the treadmill and the bench to work out the abs (with no results if I keep up the drinking).

Now I realize that since I’ve been drinking less beer, that’s probably the reason of my weight loss (I’m losing weight according to Betty); just maybe. I’m not skinny, not even thin, but I better start drinking to look healthier.

Wednesday night at Husky Village was good I guess. We had “Italian dinner” provided by the residence staff. By the time I got there, there were only some lettuce pieces and some tasteless spaghetti. It was free though, so I can’t really complain.

After dinner, Texas Hold’em was on! I had been wanting to play ever since we first arrived but no one really seemed to be interested. Finally yesterday we got together and played. A couple of hours later JC and I were the only ones playing, and since it was taking way too long, we split the money and took half and half. It was good. Headed for the gym and nothing else really happened.

Looking forward for the 29^th when I hopefully will be going to an Astros game.

Part 13: Mexicans, breaking the rules? That’s got to be a first.

Saturday June 16th, 2007.

Everyone left to visit NASA. GabyAle and I weren’t carried away with them because, at least personally, I didn’t want to go. I remember when I was a child I once went to NASA and it wasn’t impressive. That tour would have killed any child’s dream to become an astronaut.

It started with a bus ride, where they told us: “Over there, in the horizon to the right, there is a platform.” Followed by a museum where they had pictures and videos of rockets launching and the people who crewed them. I also remember there was a video of the Challenger exploding. Not a nice thing to see.

Anyway, I had my reasons not to go. So GabyAle and I went to the Health Museum. On our way there we saw this old black guy arguing (more like actually fighting) with... well, nothing. He was just standing there, yelling at the air (or his own reflection on a bus sign panel); really cursing out loud. Everyone at the bus stop, we just stared at each other and laughed nervously. "As long as he threatens a ghost, and not me, it's all good" said a tall black guy, laughing "I can even help him catch it. C'mon, hit it!" mimicking as he caught the ghost and held it for the crazy man to hit it.

The museum was pretty cool. They have all these mind games that are truly not for any kid. Yes, it’s all for kids, but really, I feel more like an old kid than a young adult (maybe wrongly).

At 5:03 pm (I know because a museum employee told us so) suddenly there were no people in the museum left but GabyAle and me. So we were told that the museum had closed at 5:00 pm.

After a while the rest of the people returned from NASA with beers, and so we all got together to drink a play cards. That was until someone tried to open the door.

Let me explain to you a little bit of background on Husky Village. There is quite a list of “don’ts”: including possession and consumption of alcohol. The person in charge is Sara Beth, “not the nicest person in the world”. There is constant surveillance by the R.A.’s and they can break into your room; they do that from time to time specially at hours when no one is in the apartment. And if that wasn’t enough, there is a strict rule forbidding opposite-sex people staying in the same apartment after 2:00 am.

So there we were, really late, all drinking and yelling until we heard someone at the door, and before knocking, he/she tried to open. We all inside saw how the knob turned but since the lock was on, he/she couldn’t enter. So we all “silently” RAN to hide the beer and ourselves, since we weren’t supposed to be in the girls apartment after 2:00 am!

GabyAle opened the door but no one was there. So after a moment of two, we kept on drinking, a little bit more silently. We stayed over though, because no one should see us guys walking out from a girl’s apartment. Stupid rules. I mean, we would have still probably stayed there over the night, but since there is a rule against it, now we’re doing it obligated.

Well, that’s what I get for living in the residence halls.

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Sunday June 17th, 2007.

I woke up without a hangover, which is good when you try to go to church in the morning. After church we guys prepared the breakfast for the girls and in the afternoon we went shopping for groceries and such.

I think it’s just too much that we’ve been here for two weeks and buy food every other day: we’ve already been to two WalMarts, Target, Fiesta, HEB, Foodarama and CostCo, so many times it’s not even funny. I guess I’ve been eating a lot, but I’m loosing weight because it’s almost just tuna and turkey.

We went to Ross, dress for less… I still don’t know how people keep going to those places. You can probably find one good item every tenth time you go there. After laughing when I saw the 5XL shirts that were larger than a regular beach towel, we left.

At night we just got together and watched Pirates of the Caribbean, the first movie on a laptop and that was it.

Part 12: I’m hungry for RICE

Friday June 15th, 2007.

I don’t think I did anything impressive (or even useful) at work, but in the afternoon there was a dinner at Rice University and my friend GabyAle was invited. Since she could bring family with her, I went as her husband.

Rice University, for those who haven’t been there, is like Hogwarts. There you are, in this huge campus (that has only 3,000 undergrad students) with big fields and beautiful buildings.

Up until this point, we had been living at Husky-fucking-Village for two weeks and without a drop of alcohol; so the first thing we did was to go to the bar. Had a couple of beers and headed on to the dinner.

After the dinner, we returned to the bar and I saw what I never thought I would see again: New Belgium Beer!!! They had Fat Tire and Mothership Wit. So I had one of each and we all went on an alcohol hunt.

Our first stop was HEB. So we went inside and grabbed some beer and stuff. At the checkout, this Mexican guy named Guadalupe asked for our ID, so Paulina grabbed her voting license to what ‘Lupe’ said he couldn’t accept because he couldn’t have way of knowing it was an official ID. So I showed my license, but same thing happened: “Those are Mexican IDs”. Morris then showed his Visa, and when Lupe didn’t accept it, I lost it. “The Visa is NOT a Mexican document! It’s issued by the U.S.” I told him, “Here, this is my ID from Colorado” but he wanted a Texas ID, so we all got pissed that a guy named Guadalupe that spoke worse English than any of us had just looked down on us for being from Mexico. What a douchebag. The manager told us the same thing so I told him that we were going to Fiesta to get the beer, and we left.

We arrived at the Fiesta just to find out that the liquor store was closed, so we went to a gas station, bought alcohol there and that was the end of it. We should have done that in the first place.

Fuck you, Guadalupe. For a moment there I almost told him “I’ll show you my ID when you show me your green card.” But I wasn’t looking for a fight.

We all returned back to the apartment and got hammered. It was a good day after all.

Part 11: My mom told me not to talk to strangers

Thursday June 14th, 2007.

That’s the last time I talk to a stranger on the bus. This tall, black guy with almost no teeth started the conversation: “Are you Mexicans?” After that he wouldn’t shut the hell up! To be honest, I think I understood a tenth of what he was saying. He started talking about race and heritage. “I’m also South American, we could be family” he said, to which I responded: “We all descend from Adam and Eve” doing my best not to correct him by telling him how mad it makes me when someone in the States calls us Mexicans “South Americans”. He went on and on about races, languages and nations, to change the conversation to religion. He said he was a Jehovah’s Witness and that the final battle was about to begin… THAT type of conversation. I was tempted to stop the bus and wait for the next one, but I didn’t want to be late for work. Finally we reached the transit center and I ran for it.

Dr. Jose Florez is a programming virtuoso that helped me on compiling the code. Actually I didn’t even compile it, but he helped me on making the computer TRY to compile. So now I have an actual response from the program.

At 11:00 Ananth and I had a video conference meeting with Dennis and Eric, both in Iowa and working on the same project. I think I got served. Eric had already compiled the code and run the simulation. At the end I guess it wasn’t all that bad, now I have a lead on how to do the next step.

Eureka! After lunch I finally was able to run the simulation. It’s a good day. I can’t help thinking on how clumsy Archimedes must have been. I mean, not dumb at all, but seriously, I would feel a little awkward running around naked every time something awesome happened.

In the afternoon, Ananth told me that he was impressed that I had “made this much progress in such a short time”. I beg to differ, but who cares, my boss just told me he likes what I doing.

On my way out I had a quick meeting with Stefan Birmanns to discuss the different software packages that I could use to implement the 3D environment of the simulation. After that I was already late to meet everyone at the museum of Natural Arts. It was really cool.

Part 10: Score!

Wednesday June 13th, 2007.

Still trying to do something with the code and working my way around Linux. It’s not that bad actually.

Dr. Ananth invited me for lunch, so we attended that food drive I had bought the ticket for. It was good: 2 hotdogs, a soda, chips and a cookie, plus, the feeling that you’re supposed to be helping someone by engulfing that food. Anytime, hungry people, anytime you want.

At night we all went to the Mexico – Panama soccer game at the Reliant Stadium. For a moment there, the stadium was Mexican soil (as if Houston wasn’t Mexican enough). During the game, both teams played horribly, but Mexico won 1 to nothing and that’s what ultimately matters.

Part 9: Now I can only go up

Tuesday June 12, 2007.

They say that after one hits rock bottom, one can only go up from there. And up I went. I Met Stefan Birmanns, who has the coolest accent ever. He is from Germany and specialized in virtual reality and such. It’s really impressive what he does. Plus, he has the most awesome toy ever: a haptic device. It’s an inverse robotic arm that lets you “feel” things that are in a virtual 3D environment.

And about eating cold chicken: never again. I’ve decided that I’m going to eat cold meals (meant to be eaten cold) for two months. I’ll leave the hot stuff for dinner. So I brought myself a turkey sandwich and that’s pretty much what I’m going to have every day.

Talking about lunch, I still haven’t got used to having lunch at noon. Why would anyone want to eat so early, just to be starving again by 4:00 pm?

Today a nice girl came knocked on the office offering hotdog tickets for this food drive or something. They were 5 bucks. I mean, I don’t want to look unfriendly, but I’m not sure if I want to spend 5 dollars on a hotdog. She told me that if I wanted to help without buying the hotdog, I could simply bring canned food. I didn’t want to spend that much time explaining to her that living as a foreigner, canned food was the only thing that kept me alive, so I bought the hotdog and that was it.

Part 8: Rock bottom

Monday June 11th, 2007.

Same old, same old. So I did nothing. Really, nothing. I can’t compile. I haven’t got my computer back from the IT department. Dr. Ananth has emailed me saying that he might not come today to the office, and seriously, that’s fine with me.

Dr. Ananth is here. Crap! Now I have to do something. I went to the IT department to check how the computer was doing.

The I.T. department is this room in the 6^th floor (2 floors below me), and it’s run by David Ha, a middle-aged, nice guy from Saigon, Viet Nam; unfortunately, being a nice guy doesn’t mean that I find him useful. I can’t understand a single word he says. I think it’s English what he’s speaking but can’t be sure. For all I know he could be cursing and yelling me to go away. Still, I made an effort and had him explain to me how to log in to the node-cluster-super-computer-mombo-jombo. It was probably not all that hard, if only I had understood a word he said.

At lunch time I had one of those depressing moments of your life, where you know you just hit rock bottom (oh how I miss those in Ft. Collins). I took the chicken I had brought, from the fridge. Dr. Adol told me the first day that there’s a microwave oven over at the other side of the corridor, inside an office. So I went there, at around 2:30. Obviously by that time everyone else had already returned from lunch and was working. So I timidly went inside the office, passed a couple of cubicles with people in them, and reached this ancient-1950’s-looking microwave oven. I assumed it was a microwave oven because there was a coffee maker there too. I opened the door, and to my surprise it opened from top-down. I mean, when have you ever seen a microwave oven’s door that didn’t open from the side? So I put my chicken in there, and closed it. Next would be to decipher how it works. I just pushed 1,0,0 and then the huge, 1950-jukebox-style button that said “start”. To my surprise, instead of the normal “Ññññññññ” sound, came out something like a “pffffffff”. For a moment there I thought it was some sort of oven for the lab’s samples (Not sure it isn’t). So after the minute was over I took my chicken with me and ran to my office. I didn’t have a fork, napkin or anything, and the chicken was half cold. So there I was, eating cold chicken with my hands, by myself.

Part 7: Oh Zebra, aren’t you a bitch!

Sunday June 10th, 2007.

Woke up and went to church at 9:00 am. The priest danced the Hokey Pokey. Don’t ask. It was cool actually.

In the afternoon we went to the zoo. It was great. I really got impressed at this animal that’s called “forest giraffe” or something like that. It was half giraffe, half horse… and half zebra. Really weird, and yes, it does have three halves. Then we saw some more impressive animals: an antelope with stripes like a zebra, some deer with stripes like a zebra, and some other animals … with stripes like a zebra. Ok, so after a while we decided that the zoo’s zebra was everyone’s bitch.

On our way we saw a statue of Hermann and learnt a little bit more about him, but the main thing was that the statue said: “George H. Hermann, THE MAN”. So, he’s the man and apparently there’s no doubt about that.

Too sunny not to go to the swimming pool, so we did.

Part 6: Hermann and Katy, sitting in a tree.

Saturday June 9th, 2007.

Driving around town, sooner or later you realize that everything (well, pretty much a lot of things) is Hermann Memorial. There are Hermann Memorial buildings, statues, and hospitals. So who’s this Hermann? Do people of Houston really miss Hermann Monster that much?

This day we went shopping to Katy. So if when you reach Houston everything is Hermann, when you reach Katy EVERYTHING is Katy. I’m sorry, but this is just too much. I mean, I live in Monterrey and we don’t have everywhere “Monterrey Ave.”, “Monterrey Plaza”, “Monterrey Mall”. Everything has its different name, but in Katy, everything is Katy.

So we went there: to Katy, Tx; passed Katy Ave., to Katy St., to Katy corner and saw some Katy rocks and Katy grass, until we got to Katy Mills, which is a mall full of outlets, or at least that’s what they made us think it was.

I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty big mall and has a lot of stores, but it’s no outlet mall. Aside from maybe 5 stores, the prices are the same as any other regular mall. Still, it was good; I bought only what I needed to buy and nothing more.

Part 5: WTF?!

Thursday June 7th, 2007.

What am I doing here? I don’t know anything there is to know about the project. I spent the whole day reading code (the project is about a computer simulation written in C++) and I still can’t decipher anything. I can’t compile it either, so, tough luck.

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Friday June 8th, 2007.

Same thing: reading, reading, and more reading. I now know what the code does, but haven’t been able to compile it. I’m afraid Dr. Ananth will find out that I don’t know what I’m doing. I love programming, I nailed the interview, I understood what the project was about, but my lame-ass laptop won’t compile the code.

So I think Dr. Ananth realized what was happening because he got me to backup everything and install Linux to a computer that was in the lab. So I called IT department and did so. They took the computer and that was my day.

Too much stress… Thank God we have a swimming pool. We’ve been at the swimming pool nearly every day.

Part 4: My first day, now for real.

Wednesday June 6th, 2007

I woke up, got ready, wore a fancy suit, and by 6:56 am (says so in my bus ticket) I was on the bus. I had to be at 7000 Fannin Street at 8:00 am. Everything would have gone great if only I hadn’t written the address wrong! The night before I checked how to get to 700 Fannin. So I got off the bus at the TMC Transit Center and took the MetroRail north to Main Street Square. To give you an idea, it’s as if you took a train north for half hour. I was far… really far away from where I needed to be.

I got there, with my fancy suit, directly into downtown and not in the medical center, to the corner where the building should have been. After 10 minutes of walking in circles I called Dr. Moreno. He told me to look for the only building that was taller than 20 stories high. “I don’t know how to explain it to you, Doc, but there are more than a few”. So I called Dr. Adol, and after a little while he realized that I was lost and way off from where I was supposed to be. I took the Rail back south and met him at his office: the building just next to the TMC Transit Center. How dumb I felt.

I got late for my meeting, but everything went smoothly from then on. And after nailing the interview with Dr. Ananth, I started immediately, got my badge and got to work.

Part 3: “First day of school” or so I thought

Monday June 4th, 2007

6:50 am. I woke up to go with everyone to the Medical Center. I still hadn’t had a place to go, so I went back and forth in the Van with Dr. Moreno; dropping everyone to their respective locations. I went to Rice University and the Methodist Hospital. In one word: Pretty-fucking-neat.

I had lunch in Texas A&M, with the rest of the people that actually were attending there. After that I got the call from Dr. Adol Esquivel, he coordinates the summer program from here. He studied med school in Monterrey and now works at the Medical Center for the UT. The call was about an opportunity of involving in a project. Pros: it’s a really huge deal, it’ll most likely be published in an important medical journal, and it can open several opportunities for a PhD; cons: it’s not meant to be only for seven weeks, and it’s really hard work. After thinking about it I accepted (plus, I have nothing better going on in my life).

He scheduled me a meeting with Dr. Ananth Annapragada, PhD in Chemical Engineering that works for UT. So well, I’d see Dr. Ananth on Wednesday.

For the rest of the day nothing else really happened. Everyone else had their first day at work, I just went back and forth in the Van, just thinking how badly I wanted to get to my apartment so that I could write and send Dr. Ananth my Résumé.

Got home, sent it, and waited.

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Tuesday June 5th, 2007

Did nothing. Really. Seriously. Ok I waited for Dr. Adol’s email that was going to tell me where and when to meet Dr. Ananth, so I got it, and it said that Dr. Adol wanted to see me at 8 am at 7000 Fanning St, so that later I could meet Dr. Ananth at 9:30 am. Got some papers to read so that I wouldn’t go there not knowing anything about the guy.

In the afternoon I went out to jog for a while. Walked around campus and that was it.

Part 2: Residence Introduction

Sunday June 3rd, 2007

Woke up late, but not that late. Still tired from the day before, we had to attend yet one more "pep-talk" at 3pm, so I got my tuna ready and ate something (something horrible). This time the meeting was with Sara Beth, which is in charge of all residence halls or something; in Derek's words: "not the nicest person in the world".

She is what people call a two-face. She looks like she would be nice... in a creepy kind of way. You know, like when someone is smiling but her eyes are too wide open and the eyelid does that little tingling. Like that. She told us about the do's and don'ts around Husky Village. Examples of DONT'S include smoking, drinking, and possession of alcohol; examples of DO’S include not smoking, not drinking and not possessing alcohol and alcohol-related objects.

So after that super-talk we were introduced to our RA’s, or as in Sara Beth’s words “the captains of fun” (yey, just what I needed). My RA didn’t look that bad; actually, she looked hot, until she opened her mouth and revealed that she’s majoring in Christianity. Plus, she’s a bitch.

When all was said and done, we had a pool party! That was basically us and a swimming pool. I though that in order to have a party you needed music or something, but just us was good enough, we really needed to relax. Plus, the water really helps you to clean your ears when they’re full of shit, ‘cause that’s all we had heard the previous hours.

After the party we had a meeting with Dr. Moreno. For all of you who don’t know who Dr. Moreno is, he’s the one that coordinates this summer program from Monterrey. The one that coordinates it from here is Dr. Adol, whom I had still to meet.

At that meeting I realized that even though I had come to the program I still didn’t have a place inside it. For you who may not know, I was rejected from the program in the beginning but then accepted just 6 days before it started. So I was there, at that meeting, listening to what Dr. Moreno had to say when he realizes, there, in front of everyone, that he had assigned 5 people to go to the Methodist Hospital where he only had 4 available spots. And guess: Who was the last of those 5 people to get assigned? Who else. He told me not to worry, that I would have a place somewhere. Well, I didn’t worry that much.

Later on, Gisela needed to buy some stuff and so some of us decided that we wanted to go to Wal-Mart as well. But not the same Wal-Mart, that’s for sure. We asked for directions and got to another Wal-Mart; much closer and better. With real food, clean aisles, nice people, and yes: shopping carts.

Part 1: Got here

Saturday June 2, 2007

Houston, day 1.
6:30 am. Woke up to go to Houston. Got dressed and got my stuff in order. I was supposed to be there, ready, at 7:15am. And I was, if only I had gone to the right place... I was at campus, when I should have been at the School of Medicine (If you don't know Monterrey, those places are FAR away). I got there and I was kinda still on time. Got some other suitcases in the Van and got my stuff in Silvia's car.

If anyone told you "You'll be driving to Houston", you would open GoogleMaps, Yahoo!Maps, MapQuest or anything of the like, and you would find that to drive from Monterrey, MX to Houston, TX you should be spending somewhere around 7 - 8 hours. Oh how naive... When following a van full of people that need to go to the bathroom at every town, and being followed by a truck with slow people that wanted to buy stuff at every single gas station along the way; the whole trip was around 14 hours.

Finally, we got there. Tired as hell, we got out rooms (Husky Village section), went to WalMart (WalMart section) and finally unpacked and went to bed at around 2 am in the morning.

--- Husky Village section ---
Arrived and went inside the Community Center. Got a little introductory meeting led by some guy named Derek, who thinks I'm a nice guy. How do I know? because out of the blue he asked my name and said "Sergio, you are a nice guy." in front of everyone. We all stared at each other, but hey! I'm a nice guy and that's what matters. After that we paid and got our room keys. I got to my room, and to my surprise it was NOT a five-star hotel. More like a 2 star motel. I mean it's nice (enough)... it definetly would had been better if my key opened my door, if I could actually close my room, if my blinds opened and closed and if my smoke detector wasn't lying on my desk without a battery and with the power cables hanging from the ceiling. It's all good. I reported those little issues to the person in charge, later to find out that "I want to report something" in Houston means the same thing as "please ignore me, these rooms are great". One thing they did tell us: "This is a very unfriendly, unsafe zone. Don't go out late, and don't go driving places you don't know, and whenever you come to a stop, lock the doors and roll up your windows". This place sure makes me feel welcomed. Should I worry that I'm living in an unsafe area where I leave my palm, laptop, iPod and money at my room, which I can't lock?

--- WalMart section ---
I had never been to a WalMart of the like. It was THE worst WalMart I'd ever seen. When we finally found shopping carts (by taking them from between cars in the parking lot) we went inside. There was not a single aisle that didn't have boxes and stuff in the floor. I want to think that it was clean-up day, but that only would make sense if that WalMart was 24/7, but it wasn't, it actually closes at midnight. Items were opened, cans were dented, people were mean and everything was dirty. It was just as if someone had lived there and was moving out. We got there at 11:15 pm so we only had enough time to grab whatever stuff we needed to survive until we found another WalMart to go to. I ended up with a lot (a lot) of 50c tuna cans (had to open boxes to find the ones that weren't dented). Tasted awfully by the way.

First day over. At least we all survived.