Sense of humor

One thing that I noticed here in the US is the sense of humor among the people. I see many people have sense of humor, and they try to use it as they are talking to the other people. In my country, it was very rare to see someone with sense of humor. I talked to Ryan about it, and he said, "you are right. This is a part of their work ethics." I am very happy about it because I enjoy joking with people that I like.

A few days ago, I went to Natalie's office. She had sent me an email and asked me for the reply regarding my summer forms. I said to her that I came for signing the forms.
She: Why did you come here? What did I exactly ask you?
I: You asked... Hum....
She: Come here. This is my email. I asked for ...
I: I just came here to see you [smiling]. It was a long time that I didn't see you.
She: [smiling] Read this. I asked for a reply.
I: Oh, OK. It is a kind of relay; a physical reply :)

I said that, and she busted out laughing. This was just one example. I talked to a Jamaican boy today, and we also made lots of jokes while talking. 

One more final exam is remained

I took two final exams a few days ago, and we presented two projects today. I have one more final exam the day after tomorrow. And we also need to finish our documentation by Thursday. I feel happier today. I think that the pressure of these exams and projects caused lots of stress to me these days.

I also received Angelina's gift today. It is very cute, but looks cheap. She was very happy today. She is very shy when I am talking to her. She don't look at me when she is explaining something to me.  I wanted to give her gift after our class. However, as I didn't want nobody to see me doing that, so I couldn't give it to her today.

A stupid idea advanced to the shark tank show

Oh, I can't believe it. I read a news about one of the ideas that advanced to the next level of the shark tank show. Among them, I saw a very stupid idea that doesn't worse anything in comparison to my map idea. I don't know how their stupid idea advanced. I will start working on my idea from the summer. Someday, I will show them how stupid they were.

Over re-use

Our professor asked us to meet him the previous week. I had no idea that what was happened. When I went there, he explained me that our team (my team with Indian students) copied and pasted some parts of our documents from previous year teams. They made references to that project, but they copied word by word that was not acceptable. 

I didn't know that. He had asked teams to re-use, but people did over re-use! Instead of understanding something and using it in our project, they copied any part that didn't work on it. Hopefully, the professor knew me well, and he knew that I was not the person who did that. And hopefully he understood the situation, and asked us to fix it. We could be accused for plagiarism. Those who did that didn't even think that the plagiarism was very intense in the US. Ryan told me that an international student was fired from their university for this reason a few years ago. 

I spent lots of time to fix their mistakes. We re-wrote everything from the beginning. I also spent lots of time to make the project myself to make sure that nothing wrong happens again. I wish I were in Angelina's team in the other class, too.

Ryan got his export license

Microsoft called Ryan last night and inform him that he got his export license. Now, he can start his job in Microsoft. I talked to him about the available positions in Microsoft and other similar companies, and he guided me a lot.

 It was always my dream to work in these companies because this kind of experience is completely unique, and I couldn't get it in any other country. However, my previous experiences are completely unrelated to their requirements. Ryan explained to me, "these companies hire talents only. You should show your talents to them, not your previous experiences."

If I decide to enter them, I need to study many topics that I've never studied. Ryan studied more than four months to get an offer from them. He said two important points to me:

First, in his previous university, there were many students who were going to apply to MS. That's how he got lots of information about the interviews, and the process. In addition, he was in the atmosphere of applying to these companies. The same as what we had for applying to abroad universities.

Second, entering these companies is highly competitive. Therefore, preparation for their interviews process is quite like a university's entrance exam. One should study at least 3 months to be able to pass their interviews. Some students study more than eight months to enter Google. Once they enter, they have lots of unimaginable opportunities.

My preference is to have my own company, a start-up. However, it is very valuable for me have experience of working in an environment like Google. It is very tempting to study a few months, and enter the world's best high tech company, Google. I really need to decide about it, but I should wait until summer to see what will be happened to our XPrize project.

It will take lots of time to be prepared for their interviews. I wish someone had told me about it before coming to the US. In that case, I could have plans for that or at least enough time to think about it.

Three hours conversation about a forbidden debate

I had three hours conversation about ga.y and le.s with Ryan last night. He said to me many things about them that I've never known before. He said some of his friends were ga.y, but they didn't know.  And he is able to recognize them after being more than three years here in the US. We also talked about the kind of problems they faced in their lives. It was the first time, that I heard about some debates related to their rights.

Jason Evanish's blog

One of my friends shared me a link from Jason Evanish's blog. I read some of his posts. I really liked his post about San Francisco. I think that I like San Francisco more than any other city for living in the future. I wish my blog become better than his someday.