my first "real" spring break (and a very busy one) in 16 years

I'm back at UC Santa Cruz for the spring quarter. Given that I had been out of school since 2010, this was my first spring break in 16 years!

Because my ECE 255 comprehensive exam on the 19th was my last exam of the quarter, the break started a day early for me. We went to Davenport on the 21st as it's become one of our new favorite places. The three of us then headed to West Cliff Drive and went for a stroll there. One interesting sight we came across was the natural arch at Lighthouse Field State Beach. It seems no one really talks about this feature because the natural bridge at Natural Bridges State Beach is a lot more famous. Our plan was to go see that one afterwards, but all of us were a little tired and wanted to go home.

We were pretty busy for the next few days as we had to file taxes. The funny thing is I ended up helping my parents with their taxes even though it's usually the other way around. It turned out TurboTax could pull the required information directly from stock brokers, and this saves a lot of time because manually entering the data would take much longer. Because I'm more well-versed with software, my parents asked me to do the rest of their taxes for them. :P

Some time ago, the UCSC Genomics Institute put out a request for proposals for seed funding awards. Dad suggested I apply because genomics is closely linked to AI and data science, and that could be helpful in case I decide to pursue a Ph.D. It wasn't just writing a paper because I also had to do research on how AI could be applied to genomics. Even with help from my father, getting a decent draft took many hours.

Both the taxes and the proposal took so much time that I didn't get to do much else last week other than check out the new Havenhythe expansion in RuneScape and shop for groceries. However, the break ended on a high note as our family friends Jeff and Sheila invited us to their house for lunch on the 30th. It was also nice to see Sheila's brother Howard's family for the first time in over seven years. We couldn't stay too late because I needed to head back to campus, but everyone overall had a good time.

For those curious, I'm taking courses on bioelectronics, AI security and digital signal processing this quarter. Only the DSP course has exams, although the other two are heavy on papers. In any case, these are the last ones I need to pass to graduate. :-)

Currently listening to: "Buy Me a Rose" by Kenny Rogers