Rehan’s Blog 

Well, it has been almost a month since I’ve updated the blog. Annual funding just got over. We funded student groups well over 600,000 USD in money. SLU has over a 100 student groups officially chartered under Student government.

SGA had a 8 hour long funding meeting about this last Wednesday, and another 7 hour long one this Wednesday.We’re done now, and these marathon sessions nearly wiped me out.

Last week, I was part of the SLU math team that competed in the Missouri collegiate Math competition. It was two two and a half hour sessions, one on Thursday and one early Friday morning. I really don’t understand why so many math professors are so chipper in the morning, when most students are groggy and miserable. 8 am classes with Dr. Cantwell vaguely flash into my mind as I write this. somehow, I remember a bit of those differential equations.

The results: my team came in 7th out of around 40 teams and  team B came 9th, which isn’t too bad. Wash U came in 1st and second. Darn Wash U.

Anyway,  the competition turned into a math conference and I by the time I’d recovered from my early morning, I found myself in a rather interesting lecture about the Mathematics of the battle of Trafalgar, where Lord Nelson trounced a much stronger Spanish-French fleet using the very English tactic of divide and conquer. It turns out, the mathematics of the battle supported his strategy.

Math in battle? When math was employed in WW2, Air chief Marshall ‘Bomber’ Harris lost his cool and exploded, “Are we fighting this was with weapons or the slide rule?” Churchill responded, “That’s a good idea, let’s try the slide rule” (I’m paraphrasing, source: A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity by Luke Howard Hodgkin)

On Tuesday, SLU students were invited to an evening with Father Biondi, the president of SLU, and the vice presidents of everything and the deans of various schools at SLU. This year’s SGA is trying very hard to build bridges and cement relationships with the students and the administrators. 

The evening started off with a few words from all the administrators. After this, we dispersed into focus groups, with an administrator at each table. For 3 sessions lasting 15 minutes, we talked about issues that the students have with SLU, the problems they face, etc.  Each session focussed on a certain theme: what a SLU education means, how is SLU staying true to the Jesuit traditions of service and living on or near SLU’s campus. The focus groups changed after each session, so every student got to meet a new administrator. for my part, I got to meet and converse with the General Counsel, the new dean of the school of Medicine and the Dean of the School of Philosophy and Letters.

After these sessions, we had a short social mingling period, where any one could talk to anyone.

 This was a great experience. Ii’m sorry that I missed the first meeting that occured last semester. 

 In other news, the Arena should be opening soon, I’m excited!

 Principles of Mechatronics is a fantastic class that is Mechanical Engineering majors take in their senior year. I’m really surprised, considering how much fun it is, that it isn’t a class that’s offered to sophomores or juniors. I really should see if there is some sort of way we can get some sort of robotics class for underclassmen especially freshmen. What do you think?

So far, in this class, we have worked with Industrial Robots, conveyor belts, robot programming, and contolling PLC driven somethings.

Our mechatronics professor, Dr. Jayaram, assigned us a project to program a robot to perform some sort of complicated task autonomously. We are to use a BOEBOT made by www.parallax.com and come up with something interesting for the robot to do. I haven’t really decided what to do yet, but here are some ideas:

HAHA: This might not be the best way to get an A, but I couldn’t resist:

By the way, I need a name for our robot. Ideas?

It pleases my ego to publicly announce that I am now president of the International Student Federation. I would like to inform everyone that I am corrupt as a president can be, and that I accept Paypal. Kidding.

It’s almost the end of Spring break. It makes me sad to see it flit by with nothing getting accomplished. My trip to Florida was canceled, and I stayed in St. L. I worked, and watched a couple of movies.

10,000 BC: I can forgive historical inaccuracies in the name of creative freedom, but, WOW. There’s no excuse for the types of inaccuracies that persist here.

Jumper: Could have been a lot  better. It seemed like the writers decided that they were past their bedtime and had to end the story immediately.

Doomsday: A British Flick that didn’t make much of a splash. Escape from New York meets Road warrior. Great action. Good Premise. Bad Execution. Did I mention, great action? Rhona Mitra is hot.

I saw an old movie: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with Katharine Hepburn, Sydney Poitier and Spencer Tracey. Excellent!!! It traces out an evening in the lives of 2 families of different races whose worlds collide when a black man is brought home by a while girl, set in the 60s. Fantastically old school. A must watch.

The Abyss: John Hurt, I think. Good movie.

Jodhaa Akbar: An Indian movie about the Mughal Emperor Akbar who falls for a Hindu Princess. Not very good. Nice visuals, though.

It’s snowed more in the last few months that it has in the last three years. It’s wonderful. SLU has given us the first snow day in 6 years (or so I’ve been told). So, we went sledding…………..

The next time we had a chance for a snowday, it was the Presidential Scholarship Interview weekend, and no matter ho0w bad it got, SLU would not cancel school. I probably shouldn’t be the one complaining, because I live across the street (and yeah, it IS hard crossing the street when it’s snowing and there’s zero visibility.

This tuesday, we had some heavy snow come down, but SLU just wouldn’t call it a snowday. Why? Because there was a career fair being held that day. A career fair where half the potential employers didn’t show up. Paul Spica, commuter senator, summed it up well when he said, “It would be hard trying to get a career for a better life when you almost die trying to make it to the career fair.” Well, there aren’t his words exactly, but a long night of doing homework and watching Escape from New York (with Kurt Russel at his finest) have fuzzed up my memory.

By the way, I recently found out the Clayton Berry from Marketing and Communications is the voice of SLU’s snow line. I’ve listened to his voice tell me that SLU would not be giving us a snow day more often in the last month than I’ve spoken to my parents in a year. A guy can keep his hopes up, right?

Surprisingly, all engineering majors have midterms the week before Midterms week. This has caused me to be very busy over the last two weeks, and now, I’m free and have nothing to do, relatively.

ISF is going on an ice skating trip this Saturday. I’ll have pictures to you when I can (my camera no longer works).

On Tuesday, we had an attempted robbery near our campus. Luckily, the Department of Public Safety Officers valiantly gave chase and nabbed the assailants before they could escape. Quote :

“When the two suspects saw the patrol car, they ran from the scene. They were quickly spotted by two other public safety officers already patrolling the area in a separate vehicle.The SLU officers gave chase on foot and apprehended the suspects, who were later turned over to officers of  the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.”

SLU has one of the largest, best trained Campus Safety Forces in the Midwest. SLU’s campus is really safe, reports of Saint Louis being dangerous notwithstanding. SLU’s walkways, parking lots and garages are well lit, and DPS officers regularly check that lights in these areas are operational.There is no campus without crime, but SLU is dedicated to providing us with a safe campus.

Jared Walsh and I debated against SGA Finance committee member Ben Corrado and Finance Vice President John Curry about the proposed increase to the Student Activity fee. For those who don’t know, the student activity fee is a student imposed fee that funds all the activities on campus. Included in these activities are: Club sports, speakers, conferences, concerts, banquets.

The increase to the fee would be a 20 $ increase for the first year and 5% every subsequent year. Jared and I were against the change, but Ben and John supported it. This was a pretty good debate, fiery, and passionate, totally unlike this year’s Senate Vice President’s Debates. Which brings me to my next point.

This year’s Senatorial Elections are dismal. For one, we have only one complete ticket running. It’s so one sided, I wonder why even have posters in different buildings to promote it. Does it matter? Probably not. In my three years here (and looking at SGA’s archives), I cannot remember a single instance of a ticket running unopposed. This is upsetting, because SLU is one of those campuses where everyone is involved. There’s always something to do. I think that this is because of the prevalent influence of the ticket. This discourages people from running independently. I guess we can do something about that next year.

EDIT: (Thanks Jared) ‘We tore up the competition.’ Yes, we did. I was trying to be humble and downplay the clear win, but humility rarely becomes me (ask anyone I know). A lot of people we spoke to after  the debate said that even though they were convinced that they would vote yes, they’re now rethinking that decision.

Here’s a quick update:

1. Rambo was a terrible movie, but a good gore fest.

2. I’m back on Senate, representing Parks College on Student Government.

3.  Presidential Scholars Weekend A is fast approaching. Goodbye, free time.

4. I’ve rewatched the Star Wars trilogy, the original one.

5. I’m watching House MD reruns online. Hugh Laurie is an awesome actor.

6. I celebrated Chinese New Year. I went to Lulu’s Seafood Restaurant, where I saw Lion dancers.

7. Firefox 3 beta 3 is released (geeks rejoice!)

Here are the promised pics from the International Banquet. We had food from 6 restaurants:
- Rigazzi’s (Italian)
- India’s Kitchen (Indian, duh)
- Bosna Gold (Bosnian)
- The King and I (Thai)
- The Queen of Sheba (Ethiopian, West African)
- Lulu’s (Chinese)

For professional entertainment, we had Scottish Dancers, Chinese Lion Dancers, Brazilian Capoiera and Korean Traditional Drummers. The Filipino student association and the Indian Student Association performed traditional dances. But let me allow the pictures to speak for themselves:

After much running around, I managed to get into my Mechatronics Class, and, believe me when I say this, IT’S AWESOME! I’m programming robots!! We are working with a Mitsubishi industrial robot, and running the various simulations is very interesting. Dr. Condoor is taking us to the Ingersoll Rand Factory today, but I can’t go. I’m teaching my first Mechanics Lab of the semester.

We had a snow day on friday, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Aside from dealing with people from Chicago whining about how St. Louis cannot deal with even a little snow (6-8 in), I had a great time. We went sledding on Art hill. What made the whole thing more enjoyable was the fact that the temperature was in the 40s and the snow wasn’t melting (well, not much.) Some of the ISF people and I went to Art Hill, near the Art museum at Forest Park, and sledded. After getting ourselves dangerously close to hypothermia, we got boba tea at St. Louis bubble tea in the Loop. We then headed back home to wastch ‘Perfume’, a great movie. Here’s a trailer:

I went to my first Mardi Gras parade in St. Louis. I must say that it was one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had so far. I’m sorry to say that I missed the parade, but I’ll try making it next year. After spending an hour gawking at the debauchery, my friends and I went to a restaurant in Union Station, Key West Cafe. Their Catfish Sandwich was great, but their Chicken wings in Jerk Sauce was so spicy I couldn’t eat more than 3. And coming from an Indian, you’d better believe that it was spicy.