Walking on Berkeley Campus Thanksgiving Day

After one full day rain, the smoke was gone, the sky was blue with white clouds. It was a beautiful day on Thanksgiving day at Berkeley. 

Sather Tower 

We walked the campus around Sather tower: as the university was on holiday, there were not too many people on campus. By observation, most people on campus were actually tourists or family members. It was a very beautiful surroundings when there is no extremists' rally there. We passed by University library, Oriental Culture Center, Materials Building, Biological Science Building, then hiked to Big C which is right at the Summit of The Berkeley Hills/Charter hill, elevation close to 1000 ft. We had a leisure pace, and took a lot of pictures of the campus and the San Francisco Bay - Bay Bridge on the left, SF downtown in the center, and Golden Gate Bridge on the center right. 

The round trip of our hike was about 12 km in 2.5 hours including a break at the only opened tea house on Bancroft way, and a light lunch at Plearn Thai kitchen. We then went to Whole Foods to pick up pre-ordered Thanksgiving dinner to get ready for our Thanksgiving dinner away from home.

What a great day it was  - the whole family together enjoy the splendid outdoor and a delicious turkey dinner.

Sather Tower

View of Berkeley Campus, SF Bay with Golden Gate Bridge in the back

Sather Tower Court Yard

Material and Mining Building

Biology Building

Foliage

The university library

University Emblem 

Big C

Bay Area - view from Berkeley Hills 

Bay Area in Smoke

We went to San Francisco bay area last week - not the best time to go there due to smoke from prolonged forest fire  "camp fire" at Paradise CA. The area was filled with smoke, and local schools and universities were closed. As we landed at SFO, we could see smoke in nearby hills, and the visibility was really bad, especially near the shore and over the water. 

We had to make the best of the situation.

The treasurer island is in the middle of the bay, accessible via bay bridge. It does not have much to offer, but is a good location to view bay bridge, SF downtown skyline and golden gate bridge. On that sunny day, the bay bridge and the SF downtown were behind the thin veil of smoke! We could barely see the golden gate bridge and the cameras could not capture it. Walking along the McLaughlin east seashore, the view did not improve much.

Bay bridge and SF downtown viewed from treasurer island.

 A pier at McLaughlin seashore State Park @ 3pm on the sunny afternoon

A grey heron by McLaughlin Seashore

Bay bridge in rain

The smoke made the scenes everywhere bleak. The rundown highways, and scattered tents of homeless people at some local street intersections, and even on the patios of some stores, made it more bleak. We actually did get the first hand impact of the despair of some of those people.  I saw a SUV at McLaughlin east seashore state park's parking lot with shattered window and broken glasses. Our rental car was broken in, the next day on the busy Costco parking lot at Berkeley during a 30 minute span we went in and out. 911 dispatcher told us that police won't come to take a look in 2 hours because there were too many such petty crimes. We had to file our incident report online, and that was the end of it.

The smoke disappeared when it rained; homeless situation in the richest state in the country actually is getting worse and worse over the years!

Our rental car was broken in by thief at Berkeley Costco parking lot 

Snapshots of Foliage at N Texas

Patterns in Chaos of Daily Life

Considering daily commute:  people change schedules, family emergency, accidents on the road, and emergency vehicles, all disrupt the traffics in the city. Despite all these and other random changes every day, there are actually patterns in the commute. We don't need software and computer to do the data analytics, everyone of us has a"supper computer" ! All one needs is to pay a little bit attention to what happens on the road, and maybe collect some data to back up observations.

My daily commute is about 15 miles to 15.5 miles deepening on route chosen. There are two types of routes, local streets, and local plus toll way. The following observations are for local drivings.

Traffic pattern changes during the day. If I leave home before 7am, local street + 289 is the fastest route most of the time; even if  there are occasional traffic jams at one or two major intersections. If I leave home after 7am, using local streets without 289 is better.  There are more nuanced patterns, such as relations between traffic lights, yellow light duration ....

Using trip meter B on my car, I also timed my driving accurately, from start of engine in my garage, to stop at parking lot at work. It turns out the best average speed I can get is ~ 30 miles/hour during day time.

Using these patterns, I have less stressful commute, no need to "hurry up and wait", no need to frustrate about 1 second late to beat a traffic light (since it will be the same I beat it or not due to  the next traffic light); it will make my car's gas efficiency better as well. My SUV's real local gas efficiency beat manufacture's EPA number!

NFL season is half way now, and NBA season just started.

At the beginning of the season, Patriots lost 2nd and 3rd games of the season, some sports writers started to question if they were going downhill all the way. On the other hand Jaguar had a hot start, beat Patriots in the process, some people were asserting that they turned around. There are many such "jump to conclusions" comments from sports writers and fans. My observations over the years of following NFL records is that, it takes 8 games, i.e. 50% of total games played to have a good indication on how an NFL team will perform for the season. For the aforementioned teams, after 8 games, Patriot is on top of AFC east, and Jaguar is at the bottom of AFC south.


Similarly in NBA, my observation from following the win-loss records is that it takes 20 games (25% of total games played) to have a good indication on a team's season performance. I saw the "jump to conclusions" by sports writers on Thunders at the beginning of the season,  (0 - 4 start) ,they are  now  7- 5.  Even the NBA elite player like LeBron James, was not immune to the "jump to conclusions", when Lakers was at 1-6 earlier in the season. Now Lakers is 6-6.

There are many more chaos in life that do have their patterns, and statistical expectations. People don't need Artificial Intelligence to find them, average high school student level intelligence should be sufficient as long as one wants to find the patterns.

Colony Half Marathon and Five Milers 2018

We ran our second Half Marathon and Five Milers by Lewisvile lake on October 27th, 2018, Lily ran half marathon and I ran 5 miles. The process was the same as previous year, we arrived at race site in dark, watching Sunrise, listening to local high school student singing national anthem and then ran our races separately. The half marathon started 15 minutes ahead of 5 milers. Due to record breaking rains in October, the half marathon trail by the lake was flooded, and it had to be changed a week before the race, 5 milers trail was changed as well. 

Learning from last year's lesson, I changed my training before the race - I did not practice 5 miles the week before the race, only 5k; I also kept my pace during the race at 6 minutes per kilometer or about 9 minute 36 seconds per mile. I experienced some muscle tightness at left calf and thigh during mile 2, I kept my pace and ran through it, I was a little bit slower when running up slopes. There were two persons running just slightly ahead of me when I was about half mile away from the finish line, one old gentleman (apparently in his 60s at least) and a younger lady (age between 30 ~ 40). I was still full of energy, felt really well, I accelerated! and passed both of them before the final quarter mile! In fact I ran the fastest the last 3/4 mile (~ 1km), and achieved my personal best for 5 mile run at 49 minutes 30 seconds - met my goal of finishing within 50 minutes, but did not achieve the stretch goal of 48 minutes.  

Sunrise before the race

half marathon course included a run-around the park 

After my run, I stood near the finish line watching other runners finish, cheering them up, and checking on half marathon runners and waiting for Lily to finish. The first half marathon finisher completed his run in 1 hour 20 minutes gun time, but his real time was 1 hour 16 minutes.

Watching half marathon runners crossing finishing line was very interesting and sometime amusing. Many early finishers, within 1 hour 45 minutes, raised their arms when crossing the line, and then quickly checked their watches to find their real run time; there were two or three runners really close to each other near the finish line, they were basically racing each other like they were running 100m dash! There was this one young man finished in about 1 hour 26 minutes, as he saw the timer at the finish line shown 1'26", he was so happy, he jumped into air to celebrate before crossing the finish line. Lily finished her half marathon in 1 hour 59 minutes, 4 minute slower than last year; but she was not as exhausted as last time. In fact she looked normal right after the run.

We did have sore muscles that night and next few days. Sunday, the day after race, instead of running we walked around our beautiful community. Lily was surprised that the community and the community park was so beautiful which she ran through during her training numerous times and did not see.

We practice to run fast, but we also need to slow down from time to time to enjoy our surroundings.

This runner was so happy that he finished the half marathon in good time,
he jumped into the air before crossing the finish line

Crossing finish line

finishing the run in 2 hour gun time, but real run time is 1 hour 59 minutes

a photo to commemorate the event

foliage in the neighborhood

foliage

the pond