week 14

hello again and i am beginning this post at like 10pm bc ive told myself that i'd at least write the racing sections before the abu dhabi gp LMAOO because yk id like to not have to write about a triple header all in one post again because quite a bit happened!!

and yeah it's been ANOTHER gargantuan three weeks since my last post and i've been kind of reluctant to write this because of my terrible mental state over the past few weeks umm mayhaps due to external factors dealing with other humans.. anyways

let's do a short throwback again..

the last time i blogged: i hadn't submitted my uw/uc apps yet, the cyclone hadn't happened yet, i hadnt been to a robotics meeting yet, i didn't know any hamilton lyrics, and tottenham hadnt won 4-0 at the etihad..

but one thing has stayed constant: I HAVEN'T DONE ANY FUCKING INTERNSHIP WORK uh oh lets think about that tomorrow skulls

1-college applications

the grind continues and ive been told that rea decisions come out very soon and this may be 13 dec for me?? not exactly sure where my friend got the info but i couldn't find a specific date lmao. anyway this will affect my decision of whether I apply to harvard or not so shrug ohwell

ohoh stanford interview tomorrow - i said in my last post!

it went quite swimmingly and i had a very entertaining conversation that included (of course) me yapping about racing for a bit but im sure it's not suitable to post the long version of my interview summary here so i will not do that

on the other hand i kind of have more of a feel of how good supplementals should feel like now, whatever that means but hopefully my gut feeling for how i should write things my way works somewhat

2-competitive stem olympiads

i've been challenged to make usaco silver by december 15 so that's what ive been doing since the start of december. honestly i think im cooked but who knows lmao if i do make silver that'll be one of the greatest clutches of my life

OH WAIT I also did physics brawl on cyclone day LMAOO

i think we finished 28th in division A but im not really sure; theyre still investigating and dsq'ing cheatig teams and the results list just completely doesnt work :( our overall ranking is like 70 something which is certainly not terrible because there are like 1986 teams registered and like over 1000 teams with a nonzero score i think.

in terms of my personal performance i did lose an entire hour to the cyclone and getting myself to a location which i can operate reasonably in (sorry to whom it may concern if youre reading this i only looked where i sat at tlatte and not anywhere else so i didnt know it was the only power plug)

then i read the n3l definition for lift and made all the correct arguments for a problem relating to f1 and proceeded to fucking troll on the simplest logic step twice (missed a factor of 2 and then did addition instead of multiplication) and spent like 50 minutes looking at the steps and finally realizing my error.

then like i solved a circuit simplification problem with like 2 mins remaining yay and that's my entire contribution (1/10 of the team oops) besides from cross-checking other answers

im like genuinely deeply washed at physics despite still possessing most of the problem solving/reasoning abilities; all the formulas and theorems are taking longer to come to me when i try to reason and this is very bad for scibowl but oh well hopefully ill think about these things more over the next few months and that'll help me :sob:

and it's also like theres a chat of mostly sophomores who are taking phys c and they talk about fun phys topics every so often but like sometimes i can't explain stuff well and often that results in more confusion :((( it pains me that i can't help others understand basic things to the extent that i do

f=ma registration is open. if you're reading this and is a student at interlake, you should register to take the f=ma by clicking the following link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScOua6QC73Dc3yCzKjPWASz74-af-TSeEJoiGOzMXl6IelIrA/viewform?usp=dialog

3-f1

another productive triple header

well at least hopefully we come out of tmrw with p6 in the wcc lol

las vegas: pierre always slays here but the motherfucking renault engine is the fucking ultimate bottleneck bro. first it's down on power and alpine needs to run at a lower downforce to be insanely quick on the straights, then it has a short 8th gear so being in the slipstream of other cars makes it go kaboom. for fucks sake :(

anyways pierre than had a change in luck in qatar

sprint quali was cool but i have noticed that pierre is not very good at starts and this time he fell behind hulk :( although tbf max did block him slightly but eh

and the fact that red bull were able to turn their car around from slower than a haas in p8 in the sprint to literally race winners is kinda insane bro what is buemi cooking (S tier f1 knowledge required)

i think pierre should've fought verstappen harder for p8 in the sprint like how he fought sainz in the main race yk :( but it is what it is

that point may come back to haunt alpine tmrw though ermmm

ok and the race was kinda mad bc i missed like the first 20 laps? where actually not much happened luckily for me

and like somehow everything just kicked off after russell's pitstop (approx when i got up)...

i am so confused at checo's spin like....how?

and then im also deeply deeply perplexed at piastri's lack of pace compared to earlier in the year

aston seems to be mounting a comeback in pace which is nice and williams and vcarb seem to be falling back a bit; stake feels like theyve finally got to grips with their car which is cool (please keep the livery next year i kinda love it)

and in terms of the russell/verstappen things tbh i need this drama and i need a full russell title fight bc that would be absolute cinema hello

anyways not sure if russell actually impeded lawson or something but like if he didn't get a penalty for actually impeding that would be kind of sus tbh

hopefully pierre finishes like p7/8 tmrw i think that'll be enough because haas need to be 3 positions ahead of pierre shrug

also BOTTAS TO RED BULL PLEASE!

4-other motorsports

i heard logan sargeant's going to elms next year so that's another series ill have to start watching (jk i just followed their ins and didn't even bother looking at their schedule) but yeah elms' lmp3 category actually looks really cool

umm and then formula e had its season opener today!!

qualifying was cool as like the cars actually looked faster with 4wd LOL

and the results were crazy cause i woke up just in time i think to see the final duel and it was like 1 tenth apart so very cool

the race itself was blockbuster tbh. this track needs to stay as at a first glance it seems to be quite uninteresting but actually the way they designed the various chicanes has a lot of thought behind it--such as turn 4 being a medium speed, swooping entry to the much slower turn 5 and the angled turn 6 exit (where chaos happened!)

taylor barnard podium was prob not on anyones cards but it was indeed evident that he didn't really have the raw pace today despite having like hella battery at the end, and seemed to also not have the racecraft to pass for the lead (i think any of the top drivers could've won from that scenario tbh although not sure if the mclarens are just slow but bird was hustling barnard all the way)

DAN TICKTUM POINTS WOO

but then kiko are still like only 7th or 6th or whatever in the teams championship so kinda cooked

also i kinda like lola as a team hmmm ive always liked indepdent engine programs just like nio/ert's but kinda sad they're gone now :(

5-other sports

so tottenham is obviously tottenham and we troll very hard. i think honestly that kinda describes me as a competitor too like i am quite astonishingly inconsistent when asked to operate at the highest level ...

like sure drawing roma but drawing fulham and losing to bournemouth while looking completely useless along the way too? can you believe our only win in the past 6 matches is a frickin win away at man city?

and that's boutta become 7 probably bc we're playing chelsea tmrw. bruh so cooked!

also like when i saw mbappe miss the penalty against kelleher i literally screamed noo in the lunchroom :(

hear me out this is what i think is happening: mbappe -> nunez ?!

i also went back and swam for the first time since the cyclone and it was decent although i did get kind of sick on the next day ermmmmm ohwell

wait maybe i stop writing now and complete other stuff tmrw morning

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whoa ok things have been settled but we'll talk about that in a later section probably

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6-gaming

um literally has just been football manager/warzone

in terms of warzone im climbing the ladders gradually but the seasonal ladder is kinda becoming a bit too much for me tbh there are just way too many games for me to play and its more than 30 minutes im spending on it every day :(

but my winrates are going up and im kind of understanding the game a lot more mayhaps

in terms of football manager i started a new save with edinburgh city to like see what i'd do compared to what i did on sm so.. we'll see

but also i kind of lost interest in the save pretty quickly because of various pieces of transfer business (why are there so many free transfers bruh)

but i'm like 7th despite a 6 point deduction 1/4 through the season so that's nice :)

but i havent opened that save for a long while lmaoo

in terms of dorking:

we had quite a few unnecessary losses and as the season moved on we just lost our steam tbh maybe due to the lack of quality in our defensive line and mubama's drop in form tbh. ended 6 points behind the title but yeah.. suboptimal in general and i need to do things to help squad depth next year or else we'll be more cooked than spurs in real life oops

and then we beat liverpool in a 4-3 thriller but lost all steam against chelsea oops 0-3

and then in the league we were just kind of mid through january and february (lost like every 3rd game)

we were tied on points for the lead but dropped back due to losses

and eventually did lose enough points to confirm blackpool as champions on the second last matchday of the season :(

i thought we were going to have a title fight because our last match was against blackpool but it wasn't to be, and it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference because we tied them so wouldn't have won anyways...

and in terms of the fa trophy we AGAIN lost in the final ... due to a red card in the first half ... and it was just impossible to make amends so we ended 2-1 down with QPR winning :(

so we do end up 2nd in the league by quite a long way to 1st and 3rd so we do get automatically promoted. im happy and proud that we have 3 promotions in four seasons, but im not feeling so good about our chances in the championship because my squad depth is DEEP FRIED. like ive taken a look at my squad and realised that we have the same issue as tottenham: aggressive playing style that risks injuries and significant quality difference between starting lineup and bench...

and well our defense is just bad in general while the depth thing is mainly an issue at the front.

also remember the fm wc champion tactics? i don't think its actually working too well for me because of the one forward system. i think having two forwards might be the play and that might be the tactic that i run for quite a bit of the season this year probably esp against the good teams.. hopefully trying something new will yield something cool!! i still need to think about the exact formation though oops

7-school stuffs/clubs

cooked for my internship like genuinely oops i hate using word for doing my lecture transcriptions it is actually so terrible to use. im planning to switch to overleaf after im done with this month's content probably

chem club got cooked by the cyclone

JOIN US ON DECEMBER 12 THURSDAY FIRST MEETING IN 1716 :)

we will probably have food

in terms of other stuff i indeed have gone to robotics !

i'm just generally quite impressed by the organizational structure and despite like being EXTREMELY late to the party i still feel like i've learned stuff just by doing hands on work last friday and getting time to observe others and think about how to do some things (some engineering type shit)

hopefully i do get more like time to try more building stuff in the next 2 weeks but that's not looking too probable with how the meetings are planned to work.. but meh maybe i can ask for some things to happen

despite knowing that i wont be contributing a lot there im still excited about the prospect of going to comps :) cant wait for kickoff asjfuhqerghqoei

8-scibowl

indeed berkeley happened and apparently mira loma is going to be in amador's regional and it's SO COOKED because they're probably as good as cca this year ....

in terms of the scibowl schedule for us this year i am still yet to figure that out but it definitely will include things like

SMH League Cup - t1 w/o

Niskayuna Winter Mirror - t2/3

Niskayuna Winter Invitational 2 - t1 w/o

Texas Science Bowl - t1/2 (3 if past waitlist)

Interlake MOSFET Mirror - t2/3

and then also we need to figure out how practices are going to work....

oh it's also probably time to talk about mathbowl lol

i think rohan solos the field probably, and as his teammates we are extremely lucky tbh but also all of us made contributions--sohil got at least 20 ppg in rr, while i started to get a few questions in elims too. i think in general it was a very educational experience because i got to witness math buzzing strats live and kind of push myself to match that a bit so that was cool

and of course winning was cool :p

9-scioly

mason happened

um i dont know how my optics short answers didn't get graded cause some of them were clearly correct... but it's whatever and i wouldn't have top 6'd either way :(

and i didn't expect a chemlab t3 but wau ig i did kind of get carried

and WHOA i fr got carried in geomapping LMAO

and im like just super duper angry at myself for missing astro because this was my ONE CHANCE TO DO ASTRO :(((

anyways

oh also im literally so sad about not winning the taylor trivia because i wouldve had it in the bag if i had fucking skipped the debut section. like HELLO IM SO COOKED :( it's okay i got stickers though they are so cute help

10-music

being indoctrined with hamilton rn

also listened to a few debut songs -- picture to burn/shouldve said no/teardrops on my guitar

and i think i like shouldve said no the best loll but apitw is still my fav debut song xd

also my spotify wrapped came out and its kind of surprising? idk

i have 49495 mins over the year, 34k of which were directly taylor. however, minnz was 2nd and probably also had 10k mins from me. and then Hans Zimmer somehow?? maybe i just had a kfp phase LMAO; and then Leclerc and ts piano covers finished the top 5

also you would never guess this but fortnight somehow topped my listens with 451 and ttpd/peter backed that up which was coool

and then dwoht and treacherous (INSTRUMENTAL VERSION!) were 4th and 5th respectively which was really cool to see

11-misc

this post started like yesterday at some point and now im posting this lmao um maybe i shouldnt be doing this at 12:40 am!!

anyways cooked for my awakeness tmrw morning

also collomb's back so i might actually have to lock in in french :(

and also im deep deep deep fried for internship ummmmmmm

and i kind of want to start posting semi regularly again maybe once every two weeks (once a week was way too ambitious oopsie!)

so hopefully next post will be 12/21 so right after winter break begins (HOLD ME TO THIS HELP)

i think im done here then. i might need to go sleep (i definitely need to go sleep) so good night

also i started the 80000 hours book i got from tjpho. its kinda cool and the author writes like morin skull but i like it so far-