Next week's all my mid terms, but I'll still be bringing my camera everyday to uni anyway! These photos here have been taken in the past 2 weeks or so. Lets start with some shots of my campus. Some interiors. The first one is in the Bronco Student Centre, its a double storey building with a lounge for students to hang out on the 2nd floor and a cafeteria below it. There are also many conference rooms or activity rooms that they use to hold orientations and workshops.
That's the 2nd floor. I haven't sat around here at all. I usually sit in the cafeteria below.
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As you can see, there's Subway and some Sushi that I will never try due to price. Anyway, nowadays I sit around more in the Marketplace but I don't have nice pics of that yet. Its the busiest place in campus and at 12pm everyday, you need to wait 20 minutes in line for food. I pack my own food so I'm not affected.
Moving on.... this picture is of the corridor outside my biochemistry lab. Its in Building 8, go here for the exterior shot.
I shot this photo while waiting for lab to start.
Autumn is starting to kick in. Leaves are dropping finally! But the trees are not yellow and reddish as you see in most photos. They're still rather greenish brown.
This one was shot in the quad. I also finally got a chance to take a photo of the two other types of residence areas in my uni. The dorms...
And the suites which is the most expensive accomodation.
Oh yes! The University Farm in front of my housing area is once again changing! I don't know why but they're laying out pumpkins on the land. I think they're trying to dry them up or something.... Its all covered in pumpkins!
Once again, they're NOT grown there..... they were just layed out... I have no idea why! Maybe its just Halloween. Its on 31st October btw. Here's a closeup. The pumpkin's are quite big!
Oh yes, the sunflowers have now withered down. Only a few are left standing. So fast! I wonder what else are the people up to in the farm. Its so interesting to see what they plant!
Since I got here, this particular pink flowered tree has been flowering. Its not the same one as Malaysia. This one grows cotton like balls after the flowers are pollinated. The pink flowered trees are everywhere!
On my way walking to Starbucks for a drink, I was above the freeway. Its quite photogenic because of the S curve...
Next are three types of birds I found around the University Village. I have no idea what they are called. None of these are in Malaysia. The first is a super super cute looking grey round ball bird! Its only about 15cm in length. I think it feeds on the berries.
Then one day while walking along the sunflower row, I spotted another grey bird catching bees out of the sky! There are lotsa bees on those sunflowers. I need someone to ID these birds for me. I should be asking the people in the Zoology Club that I have yet to join.
Lastly is a hummingbird! there are lots of them around here! Its a lucky shot I got.
The best sunset ever since I came to California happened two days back. I didn't have time to process them until now. There was a biochem quiz that I needed to study for. The quiz was pretty simple. Quantitative analysis had a surprise quiz too, and despite what horrors quantitative analysis is all about in the lab, its fine in the class. So far we've only been doing stoichiometry and statistics.
The weather is getting colder and colder each day. Two days back, the temperature was 9 celcius in when I got up at 6am. I walked to uni and I could see vapour coming out when I breathe. In the aft, the temperature rises to probably about 25 celcius, then it drops in the evening again to like 18 celcius. So while I was shooting the sunset, I was freezing away under my jacket. It was sooo cold and the wind was blowing! Here's one shot from the car park beside the student village. I stay in the block on the far left.
Chea Ean said the clouds looked like cotton candy!
The clouds were too wide for my lens to capture all of its splendour. So it was time for a panoramic photograph! I don't have a tripod here with me so image alignment was quite bad. After some careful Photoshopping, things turned out not bad! I took over an hour doing this on Photoshop! My com takes 15 minutes just to merge the whole thing. Its a combination of 9 images merged together, covering about 150 degrees. Oh the wonders of Photoshop! I REALLY REALLY need a tripod!!!
The white fence is going in the south west direction. My block is somewhere on the left and the University Farm is on the right.
Here's another image I conjured in Photoshop! Its called a high dynamic range (HDR) image. HDR technology has been used in the latest games and it makes things look more realistic. Film and digital sensors have a limit to how many tones of brightness it can capture. The amount of tones a device can capture between complete overexposure (total white) and complete underexposure (total black) is called dynamic range. My camera has a dynamic range of about 5 or 6 exposure values or stops. Film has more, maybe 7 or 8 and that's why digital still can't match it. Compact cameras have a dynamic range of 4 or 5 stops. However, this combined image has about 10 stops of exposure! that's way better than film and it looks much better too! Its actually 3 images combined. One exposing for the sky, and another exposing for the foreground. These three images were 2 stops apart. Anyway, it shows the farm with a gazebo in the middle of it. Once again, it was a pain to align these images without a tripod. I REALLY REALLY NEED ONE!
Well, that's all for the sunset. Today's sunset doesn't look as good. Im beginning to dread going out at night because its just too cold! All I do is sit in my room and enjoy a cup of hot chocolate and chat on msn!
Today the weather was good and I had an hour break between classes. As I walk from my apartment every morning, I'll pass by a row of sunflowers in the University Farm. I badly wanted to take pictures of them but the sky was always not as blue as I wanted it to be. Finally, that moment arrived today! I was psyched! I grabbed my camera and went to class earlier than usual. Here's the row of sunflowers... it goes on for about 200 meters along a fence adjacent to a road.
Some close ups...
Also, other flowers are planted in the farm. I don't know what this one is called, but its quite common, even in Malaysia.
Then I'll cross the field. They play alot of soccer here. So far I have not seen a game of American Football. We were all expecting to kiss soccer fever goodbye but that didn't happen! This was shot on the way back from class today. You can see some mountain range in the distance, don't know its name though.
After the field, theres about another 700m or so distance to cover without much scenic views. Then on to other interesting sights in my uni that I usually don't see on the way to class. They are out of the way and I decided to take some photos during the 1 hour break. The weather was fantastic! Here's the student centre (there's another international student centre with free cookies and coffee anytime). The groud level is actually a dining area with outlets such as Subway sandwiches and others. I have yet to buy any food from here. Too $$$. The 1st floor consists of many halls to hold functions. We usually just sit around in the cafeteria while we wait for our next class.
Another 5 minutes worth of walk later, you'll find yourself in the Engineering Meadow. Its a field in front of the engineering school.
The pointy building you see in the distance is not the engineering school, the engineering school is behind me when I shot the photo. The pointy building is called the Tower. The building next to it is the Classrooms, Laboratory, Administration building or CLA building. I don't have classes in either of these buildings though. The CLA and Tower have been used as locations to shoot films for Hollywood and some commercials. Gatacca is probably the most famous movie shot here. Here's a closer look at the Tower. It was built based on a desert theme... and I don't know why it has that pointy thing.
Right beside the CLA building is the Japanese Garden where I shot the ducks in the last entry. Here's how it looks like.
Further away from the Japanese Garden is the Rose Garden. It has a gazebo in the middle of it and roses surrounding it with a circular path around the gazebo. One particular path is filled with names of students who have graduated from Cal Poly (well not all, only those who chose to BUY a brick with their name on it). Under the gazebo is where Kellogg's famous Arabian horse (forgot the name) was buried. The bricks inside the gazebo also have names of the deceased family members of the Kellogg family.
Across the Rose Garden is the duck pond. Its right beside the dormitories.
That's some of the scenic places in campus. Its sooo big I haven't even seen the southwest side, that's where the horse ranch is. I'll go there this weekend. In the mean time, enjoy the cuteness of the squirrel again!
Yesterday I found USD 3 on the ground. So I decided to treat myself to a 'good' meal of Panda Express today! Panda Express is so called "gourmet chinese food". Its actually just like economy rice, only that its not economical at all and the variety of dishes they have is nothing compared to a simple chak fan stall in Malaysia. I ate a Panda Bowl which is the cheapest thing there. It consists of a bowl of rice plus one vege dish and one meat dish. That will cost you USD 4.35 (tax not included). Oh yea they throw in a fortune cookie too with a message inside. The portion is alright. Taste? You guessed it....... Sucks.
The huge campus is unsurprisingly filled with critters. After all, it seems like a park with buildings. I wanted to
shoot landscape and building photos but the sky was all white with clouds, so i decided to shoot animals instead.
1st i went to the Japanese Garden. Its a small pond with lots of ducks, tortoise's and "koi's" (meaning unoriginal
japanese koi). Suddenly I saw something move, something HUGE! I moved closer slowly and found this!!
Its a Great Blue Heron! I was soo delighted! It was rather shy all the time and kept hiding away from me. There
were other people walking around too, even a family with a baby in a pram. Is my uni a local tourist attraction on
weekends?? I do think so now. Then on to the many many ducks there, mallards to be exact. Here's a male mallard...
they must be very jealous creatures... but then again, mallards pair up for life.
Here's another doing some maintenance.
There were an equal number of female mallards. They're pretty boring in terms of color but this is the best shot of
the day.
I don't know if they ever ate any of the fishes in the pond, but I didn't observe that happening while I was
there.
Then I moved on to the Kellogg East walk. Its a small track through a bush. As soon as I got in, I startled a
little squirrel eating a nut on the floor. It ran up onto a branch and I very slowly moved myself closer to it.
Thankfully it didn't run away and kept on munching on its nut. Then I noticed, its SOO CUTE! The tail is SOOO
BUSHY!! I felt like squeezing it!!! But u can never catch them since they run so fast...
Then all of a sudden my phone rang and the poor cute fella ran off. A new found friend called. I was so delighted!
I'll have to come back to Kellog East walk and finish it some other time. I think I'll go after lunch. Hope to
shoot some nice landscapes when the sky looks better. For now, just bear with the animals!
