Day 3 At Berkeley

I met Andrew in the morning. I was introduced to him by William. We met outside the place where I stayed (YMCA Berkeley). Then William brought us to the Church in Berkeley, there I met some Full-timers. If I remember correctly, they are Mike, Sophia, Silvia, Esther, Timber, Tina, Amy and Sarah...sorry if I missed anyone...haha. After that, Andrew brought me to UC Berkeley. He graduated from there a long time ago. I guess I am fortunate to have him to bring me around. He's also Indonesian...I guess that's one common ground...lol.

Below is a picture of how it looks like in the library. When I stepped in, I could feel smartness oozing from the books and walls. Even though it looks old yet it gives me the feeling that our (NTU's) modern library still lose out to it.


I went to the Mining and Metallurgy (Hearst) building. It's equivalent to NTU's Materials Science and Engineering building.



Here they call it Mining and Metallurgy...lol...somehow I feel a bit old hearing that.

Then I saw this interesting building...


It's Tan Kah Kee Hall! A Singaporean's name in UC Berkeley! Cool huh?

Then there's Haas School of Business, a pretty famous business school.


As we walked we saw this.


Whoa...NBC news van leh...there must be some interesting things happening there.

True enough, there was a crowd outside.


So what were they doing? I walked towards them and I heard people shouting. It looks like a demonstration...something I've never seen before in my life.

It looks like everyone's looking upstairs...


Hm...what could it be?


It's a student up on a tree. Apparently, the students are against the university expanding their lands as it would destroy the trees. Hence some students decided to do something about it...apparently, one of them went up and stayed on the tree.

It was pretty nerve-wrecking as there was once, the tree started to shake. Then the people around started to shout "Don't cut the tress!" this is so as if the tree was cut, they tree would fall and so would the student on top...which isn't going to be pretty.

Whoa...it really looked like a scene from one of the movies. I have never seen such a demonstration before.




Then we walked back to Sather Gate.


After that, we had lunch at Gypsy's Trattoria Italiana.


For me I had the Chicken Marsala.


It's pretty nice and again, the portion was pretty large for me...lol.

After lunch, Andrew brought me around to view UC Berkeley.

Here's the Eucalyptus Growth...it's like a small park for the trees.


Then there's the Graduate School of Business. It's like Singapore's NIE.


Then Andrew and I went to Unit 2 Residence, the place where I will be staying when school starts...ooo...it's getting interesting...haha.

When I reached the place, I was pleasantly surprised. The place looked like some condo and there were a lot of international students walking about...cool!





After that we parted and I went back to my room. After a while, I went out to eat dinner. For dinner, I ate at Bongo Burger. I had the Cheeseburger Combo.


It was nice. The beef patty was different than that in Singapore. The fries was also nice. The drink tasted like lemonade, they call it Hi-C...don't know why it's pink in color though...haha.

After my dinner, I went back and rested.

I realized that people here like to eat fries, burgers, hot dogs and soda. Hm...I would say that with such a diet, it's important to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables...else it might get "heaty" and that's not good.

Also, in Berkeley, the afternoon is pretty hot. So much so that I got sunburn...lol. What a contrast! In SF, it was pretty cold even though the sun was up. I guess SF is near the sea, hence the wind cools the place, unlike in Berkeley where the same sun makes me feel hot. In SF, I had to wear my windbreaker even when the sun is up...haha.

Time: 8.23am, 19th June 08 (Thursday)