Week 2

The Old Wheelbarrow

It all began with following Prof. Thomas’s advice, opening the google map, and throwing a random pin. For a person considered by many to be a “happy-go-lucky” type of person, I rarely feel unease. However, immediately after the pin was dropped, I felt uneasiness and started to psych myself out, thinking all the what-if scenarios. This unrest went on for few days, almost resulting in me wanting to redo the “random” pin. It was then I started to think about social confidence and the potential scares of the pandemic.

Serendipitous Beauty

I selected my point of reference using Google maps. Because of the lack of gas in my car, I limited the proximity  around me to a 15 mile radius, and allowed a family member to choose with their eyes closed. I've always been an admirer of nature, but haven't been prioritizing that form of curiosity. 

Blossoms

Today after work, I randomly pinned a location on Google maps. My pin took me to a beautiful neighborhood in Burbank. It is approximately 20 minutes away from my house and 15 minutes away from my job. Besides going out to eat and visiting the mall, Burbank is not a city where I am accustomed to visiting and much less knowing many people that live in that area. I got off my car, and immediately I noticed a difference between my own neighborhood and Burbank. I walked down the street to even sidewalks, flowers blossoming at every house, and bright blue skies.

An Existentialist Perspective

For this week's assignment of visiting a location through serendipity, I decided to print out a small map of UCLA and toss a hairpin onto it. I was excited to find that my hairpin landed on the Fowler/Janss Steps (soon to be called Kuruvungna Steps) area, so I put on my mask, grabbed a notebook and pen, and made my way to campus. It was a beautiful weekend afternoon--sunny but still cool, and there were a plethora of small groups lounging around in the sun.

Quantum Uncertainty: Pauley Patio & Relativity

Since I live near UCLA right now, I decided to use this project as an opportunity to rediscover some of the beauty of our campus. UCLA is one of the most beautiful places I can think of, and yet I spend most of my time there staring at a computer screen or just getting from point A to point B thinking about my assignments rather than really seeing the nature around me.

So I pulled up a map of UCLA, closed my eyes, and put my finger on a random location. I ended up at the corner of the patio near Pauley Pavilion.

New Discoveries in a Familiar Place

Since traveling is not much of an option right now, I chose my location based on randomization of coordinates within my neighborhood. For privacy reasons, I won’t share the exact coordinates of my location, but I essentially just found the coordinates of the borders of my neighborhood on Google Maps and used my calculator to pick two random integers within the limits that I found. Based on those coordinates, I went as close as possible as I could without trespassing on private property. This picture was the result:

Tихая Bойна

Choosing a random location in Soldotna, Alaska during the winter months may have proven to be a difficult task. My online ‘random location generator’ demonstrated that the algorithms which composed the online software are disconnected from reality. Random locations set in the middle of rivers, lakes, or closed national parks are impossible to venture out into due to the weather and their specific conditions.

Quantum Serendipity: Exploration

I was a little uncertain how to approach this assignment at first, wondering how I could somehow discover something so surprising and eye-catching without being intentional in any way whatsoever. This was made especially daunting as my family had been isolating for the majority of the pandemic, and thus I was limited to the reaches of my own backyard to uncover objects that I had supposedly not seen or experienced before.

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