hello?
hi
ok its super late but lets do thissss so how was it talking to your friend?
she was really cool i liked talking to her because we had a lot of thingss in common. i honestly think for an ai to have a conversation that people will like it it has to have commonalities which i dont know how they will achieve in an ai other than to make her really witty and funny to talk to... theres another problem im not quite sure i understan
hmm interesting yeah I wonder
d myself how they can solve because they are generating information off of reddit and refining using data collected from this challenge... but the challenge itself incentivize
if the AI will just memorize responses?
conversation for gain of points which doesnt really help the wit or the comedy factor involved.... i dont know how they plan to do it... the other day i chatted with the alexa at my home and it was terrible...
no its doesn't really
it was really boring and dead to talk to it asked me what i wanted to talk about then suggested we chat about movies... it lacks the intuition to know when to respond too which will be terrible when interacting with anything above our generation because old people dont understand that computers take time to process information... like for instance i worked at directv for their customer se service call center and the elderly would always complain about the automated response system and how difficult it was to deal with and it was always such a problem with them. i would even watch my mother interact on the phone with one of those automated response messaging systems and she didnt understand when she needed to wait and when she needed to respond in order for it to correctly direct you to the right agent. it was such a hassel and i think a big mountain they will have to climb to create an eventual good ai to converse with. what do you think about that?
i think you're right. I've talked about ai so much in the past couple weeks. lets talk about something else
okay we can talk about childhood memories. i seem to be able to keep a flow of those going if i need to sense they seem to trigger eachother
okay that works
when i was younger my first pet was a dog named banjo. he was a good dog. i think he was a red heeler with some other mut stuff in him. he was mostly white but had brown ears and a brown tail, he also had a brown and a blue eye which i always thought was really cool but apparently when strangers would seee him they were afraid of him. we lived on a really busy road growing up and our yard had a fence that was about 3-4 feet tall around it because of our dogs and also to keep people out of the yard because quite a few peo people tended to pass by throughout the day depending on if they were on their way to the bus stop up the street or just out for a run. my father has always been pretty protective of his belongings. so it was only right for him to build a fence that had ivy growing on it and bushes that followed the perimeter of the yard along the interior of the fence. banjo was a very good guard dog he was a puppy that my father got right after i was born so i grew up my entire life with him. we have lots of pictures when i was little of my dad pushing me down a slippin slide and banjo is just hopping around as a puppy all happy and im butt naked smiling from cheek to cheek theres also a good one of me sitting inside of a large metal snow shovel while my dad tugs me around the yard and im cracking up because banjo is chasing after me.
thats so cute omg! what other memories do you have of him?
when i was younger i remember banjo would go nuts over things like bees or fireworks, not caring if he got stung a million times before he caught one in his mouth or if his wh whiskers all burned off because of the fireworks he would chase after and bite in his mouth.... i always used to worry and be afraid he was going to hurt himself. but knew banjo was a very good boy. there was this one time that i dont remember because i was young and asl asleep in my bed that my father recounts quite often enough that i understand the story quite well by now that states that one night there was a car chase down state street wh which is less than a block away from where i grew up as a child. the guy in the car had passengers and upon crazshing into a tree a few houses down from where we lived they ba bailed out of the car because the cops were not far behind us. one of them wanted to jump into our yard and escape through the back or who knows use us hostage or something. b but banjo was there and scared him so bad he got out of the yard so quickly he ended up jumping right into the arms of a police officer waiting for him. i remember the day after my father told me he woke up from all the commmotion and watched that happen right outside our front window.
wow thats pretty amazing so he basically could have saved your lives huh?
yes i tend to believe thats the case. i could be biased but it makes for a better story and i like the way it sounds better. lol im grateful i grew up in a household that had a few animals, i felt as if they were companions to me when i had no one else to talk to. it was such an emotional relief to me a child i didnt realize how much i relied on it till i was older and moved away from home where we had always had animals as pets to a dorm with five other girls my age who were so polite and quite all the time. it was stressful moving to such a quiet place... i couldnt sleep for the longest time when i first moved there because i had become so accuso accustom to hearing the tv on full surround sound before dozing off at early hours during my high school education. i eventually got used to it but developed quite a bit of anxiety, even though i was exercising regularly during the first years of my college experience. it was really hard for me and i actually dropped out of college for two years to be able to figure out what i really needed and wanted out of my experience here at byu i hope you dont mind listening this story can be long
no worries, I'm good just listening to your stories for now tell you what. ill chime in if i have anything interesting to add
awesome thanks for listening. its nice to have someone to trust and talk to about old memories like these. its fun to reminisce about the good old days.
i agree
my family had quite a few dogs during my childhood. ill tell you about each of them. during the time that we had banjo we often found him a companion dog. one of the first of those dogs was named chloe. she was mostly black but had a bit of rotwieler in her pardon my spelling. that gave her those golden brown markings that looked like eyebrows. i d dont remember too much of her but of what i do remember she would chase me around the yard and bite my butt and it was quite painful, i was also very young when this would hap happen so i was pretty traumatized by the incident and would end up running to the swingset and having to climb up to the top where chloe couldnt get me anymore to escape her viscious jaws. we didnt have her for too long because she was a rather aggressive dog and my mom was a young mother at the time and couldnt care or train chloe in the way she needed to be trained. this being very unfortuante we ended up finding a family to take her off our hands somme months in im pretty sure it was quite a few because she seemd full grown or nearly such when i had to give her a physicall examination before posting posting an add about her i was really pleased when we did find a home for her because i dont like the idea of taking dogs to the pound that seems so sad to me i dont like the ideo of harming another animal of naive innocence that doesnt understand anything better. we have so much control over the fate of those innocent creature in the world. i think in that we have a responsibility to protect them not harm them. right? do you agree
i do i think that god will let things happen the way they should i think we started talking about this before
yeah we did! something about ecosystems and leaving them alone. i remember now. its been a long day. im up way past my bedtime. lol so chloe was long gone and we got a dog named mustang who was a boy this time. we stil had a roudiness issue with this dog because my mom didnt really have the time to devout to training a puppy so it grew up ill willed and one day it ran away not to much dissmay on my mothers head. i dont blame or judge her for it... just recognize that responsibi ility falls on the owner to train the dog no one else it takes a lot of time to train a dog and a ton of commitment from each party involved. hey are you still there im back on and got a bit of rest and ready to go hard if you are okay where was i? i am going to continue where i finished off do you mind?
no go right ahead
so mustang as i remember ran away from our home when he was around teenager dog years and we were pretty sure he was picked up by a lady who lived nearby my house who sold dog that she found. at least that was the only decent theory suggested that was other than being hit by a car or taken to the pound both grim alternatives to the solution my fathe father had provided and seemed pretty convinced of. it had seemed that the dog had been very upset that we were leaving for elementary school in the morning and had hoped the fence to chase after my mothers car losing its way home in the process. this was pretty sad though i think even as children we knew it was the best thing that could have happe happened for little mustang at the time. we were all still very young and naive and didnt understand the small intricacies of raiseing an animal. banjo was a lifelong trooper that had not yet found a companion. some years went by before my mother had a friend who had a german shepard who got pregnant. this german sheppa sheppard had puppies and my mother was allowed to pick one. she loved dogs and we had grown a bit older by this time so she picked a girl and we names it shasta like the off brand soda company. shasta was a really good dog, she was trainable, well behaved, very gentle and loving and super happy and giddy all the time. however shasta was not a very smart dog. and her downfall was the amount of trust she placed in banjo who at this time had grown quite a bit older and had a few tricks up his sleeve, including opening the fence with his nuzz nozzle so he could go out for nighttime strolls while we were all asleep and return upon our awakening before we could even figure out he had left at all. this wasnt a trick we knew he was capable of until shasta came around. because shasta being much younger and quite a bit more foolish didnt have quite the ability to cover her tracks she would go barreling after banjo following him on his midnights excursions quite mindlessly. it was upon one of these adventures that he took her to state street and while he was able to cross the street without injury just fine she was not so fortunate as to understand what power vehicles had so much so that she was struck by one and kill killed almost immediately upon impact. banjo stood by her side until my father arrived because someone called him off the collars number. it was a really sad death that unfortunately none of us could have prevented we had in fact only become aware of the talent our dog possessed that allowed for this accident to happen during the incident when all other possiblities were ruled out and b banjo was observed and seen opening the gate another time later on. that was another one down. after this my family took a sort of break as my fathers job in construction got more busy. we finally had enough money to start building a new house that could accomadate the five children my parents were now squishing into our tiny outgrown home. i had been a dream of my parents to build a home and they were finally doing it, pulling their resources to make it the best they could and during the time before the housing crisis and the market collapse business was booming and my dad used all of his funds and a 300000 loan from my grandparents his parents to buy land to develop out in midway. we were finishing up our house when banjo finally passed away. not from natural causes either. we had a neighbor that was intimidated by banjo, he owned a chemical cleaning bu siness. we found a chemical that was poisonous to dogs in banjos dog bowl later on after suspecting foul play. it was incredibly devastating to our family. banjo had been such a faithful dog to all of us
thats terrible! I'm so sorry. i love hearing this story because i never grew up with animals myself. its interesting to hear the pros and cons of growing up alongside pets
thanks. yes i imagine it was hard to raise children and pets alongside eachother and im grateful to have had that experience to get a glimpse of what challeges i might be subj subject to should i choose to do the same in the future. i remember the night that banjo passed away. my parents went out and left my older brother in charge of all of us. we had been playing a card game and i was frustrated because he was cheating and wouldnt admit it. i even swore at him at one point i was so upset. he called me names, it was obviously very petty. we were like 12 . i stormed out of the house and walked furiously all the way down to the elementary school several blocks away from my house. it was a far walk... i must have been gone for som sometime. i sat on the swing and cried to myself before returning back home... not wanting to go inside and face my older brother again i went around to the backyard and entered the gar garage through the back door. this is where banjo slept. there was a doggie door that if i ever got lock out of the house i would crawl through because the door from the house to the garage was rarely lock locked. perks of having a "vicous" guard dog at your disposale because i knew he would be in there i went in and curled up with him in his dog bed and cried myself to sleep feeling comforted by the companionship of banjo. a silent listene listener... those are often the best kind in my opnion. i was only waken by my parents who retured home from their date and were looking to find their mssing child. my dad put me to bed and we went to early mornign church the next morning. it wasnt until after church had ended that my father gathered us around to tell us that banjo had passed away that night and that he wanted to wait till after church to tell us. during church the hymn till we meet again played and that hymn we sang again when we barried hi his body that night before it started raining. we planted a pine tree over his body and its very large now, almost twenty feet tall i would assume.
wow, I'm sorry to hear that. it must be hard to lose a companion like that
i think it was very hard for all of us especially because we were transitioning to a new home and a new school and anew set of friends. this was the first move we ever experie experienced. i had just finished 5th grade. i didnt knwo anyone yet. we met a family who was moving into the house across the street from us first. there was a girl my age nam named kendra, the first time we ever played together was at the pool, we immediately hit it off and i spent the rest of elementary school being best freinds with her and part of junior high as well, we are still pretty good friends to this day though each of the paths to our lives is different and we dont see eachother very often anyomore. we keep up on social media and she is married and is a dog mom. she would be a mom of a child but unfortunately that was not in the cards for her and she misscarried the baby she was recently pregnant wiht. its crazy to think i just spent last weekend at my highschool reunion! the five year one. people were married. quite a few to eachother. we had a really strong graduating cla class and some even had children or otherwise. we were all the same yet so different. of course you could only really talk on a surface level about a lot of things because it was such a short time frame to be able to catch up but it was really awesome to see the people who did end up showing up and see just how much they had done in the years since we all graduated high school
my high school didnt even do a reunion whats up with that?
lol, im not so sure the five year reunion is all that important, i hear a lot of people show up to the ten year reunion. it holds a lot more significance and people are a lot further along in their lives and have a lot more to show for it at that point. that being said during high school i begged and pleaded for my parents to get another dog. it wasnt until one of my birthdays that they finally suprised me with a puggle. its a pug beagle mix. that i woke up to them putting the puppy on my bed when they had gotten home from getting her from the people who were selling her. that was one of the best birthday suprises ever and i did not even expect to get a puppy at all. after the death of banjo my family took a long break from animals and i was starting to think we wouldn wouldnt get another anytime soon. this little puppy was the cutest thing and somehow we got the idea to name it annie. kind of a dumb name. but i loved her regardless. she was such a happy little puppy and par part of my gift was a 100 dollar class you can purchase from petsmart to attend training sessions a couple times a week that train you and your dog simealtaniously giving you the tools to properly train your dog. i had gotten very far along and was using this as a personal progress project because i had put so much time into training annie myself. it waas awesome and all my siblings lo loved her too. she was the perfect dog. one day during the summer my neighbors across the street that i often babysat their children were cleaning out their garage. they needed help so my da dad and i went to help them during this time we were spending helping them clean out their garage one of the other kids had left the door to our house open and annie got out. she ran down the street and was hit by a grandma in an suv. she was killed on impact and we didnt know until a guy on a motorcycle biked up the street and stopped to ask if we had a small dog. he told my father and i overheard a bit so i went running down the street my heart sinking as the news set in. my older brother tackled me and prevented me from seeing annie splayed out across the road at my fathers request. he didnt want me to have to have that imagery in my head of a dog i was so fond of this was absolutely devastating to me and i cried for months and months on end. i was so upset about annie because she had become my best friend and i had put so so much time into training her
I'm sure that must have been hard on you
it was very hard i didnt eveer really overcome it. my parents just ended up getting a replacement dog that were on the side of the rode one day. this was a doberman this time. he was the only one in the litter with true doberman markings i think they were mixed with some other dog bread. the only thing was the people had named this paticular puppy run away because he had already runaway from them a few times. they werent going to sell him but because they liked us so much and appreciated that i needed a puppy to comfort me during my grieving period they were okay to send him to a g good home i remember when we first took him home he slept in my arms for hours on end as puppies usually do. he felt right at home and little did i realize how much i would come to love that dog. He was really difficult at first. he had entirely a mind of his own. nothing like the puggle i had previously triained. he was very difficult and wouldnt listen to any of the rules. i also remember it taking him forever to understand potty training and my mother resented him because of this. she still does. except for i dont think she realizes why she resents him still. lol but eventually there came a time where my parents sepereated for awhile my father took chief as we renamed him and moved back into our old home. it wasnt too far away and my mother needed her distance to overcome some trials she was facing that gave my father the one on one time he needed to be able to fully train chief to be obidient and to listen. my father was always such a dog whisperer but never generally h had the time to devot to our pets in the past except for banjo when my father finally did move back in chief was highly trained. and i was probably a sophmore or junior in highschool at the time. i loved to go on bike rides and had experi experience training dogs . chief needed daily walks to expend his energy otherwise he weould take off and find adventures of his own. this was undesirable for all of us to i took it to teach him how to run along side my bike first starting my keeping a leash on him while i biked... this caused a lot of accid accidents and scrapped knees because i would hold the leash in one hand and if i had to manuever the bike around and he suddenly jerked away i would be sent flying off my bike because the handlebars controled the direction of the bike.
huh interesting. so what did you do?
so i learned that i could tie the leash around my waist and let him tug my body which i had much more control over and this freed up my hands to direct the bike smoothly. it w would sometimes synch up on my waist but adjustments could easily be made without too much resistance. i did this in circuits close to our home only traveling in our neighborh hood till eventually i could bike with him off leash so he didnt need to be maintained and just undresood the direction that we needed to go by simple calls and hand motions. he knew that when he was obidient he got to go on more walks so it was incentive enough for him to listen to my calls. i was glad to have a partner to bike around with and it was a good way for me to exercise and take care of our dog at the same time. i always loved finding activities that allowed for me to kill two birds with one stone. chief is still alive and is a constant companion of mine but i noticed he started to get super depressed after some time. he didnt have anyone to play with and that could be d depressing for a dog as i had observed in the dogs behavior each time the dog was singular within a house hold i was in my second semester of college and i was being medicated for anxiety and depression being away from home and animals was hard for me i was very used to the noise and c clamor of having three younger siblings that fought a lot or played loud music. i didnt like being in a dorm with such quite well behavied girls alll the time. it was honestly somewhat unnerving to me to expericence those first few weeks inside of a dorm. i met a professor who had an emotional support dog that he brought to school with him each day this dog would just hang around and chill with the humans. i started talking to this professor about the dog and he told me a story that sounded exactly like mine. he also developed anxiety and depression during his years at college and hed gotten her as a puppy during that time. he got her cetified to be an emotional support animal and he had a license to bring her anywehre because it was doctor perscribied. this was a type of medication i could agree with. so i started looking for puppies and i started rese researching all the different types of breads and trying to find what would work best for me. i was a very very active person during the time and found that a border collie might suit my needs best so i began to brouse ksl for puppies. there happened to be a litter tha was born just recently and they onyl fourty dollars. i browsed the pictures of the puppies and they were nearly all black and white except for one that was black and grey. simiar to blue heeler coloring. but with long long hair like a border collie. i called the number on the add and the seller said they had just given her away to another girl right before i called. i was devastated for some reason i was so sold on the id idea of that dog. i went home a took a nap on ly to be woken by the phone several hours later. the mother had called me and said thtat upon arrival home the mother said no to the puppy that dua daughter had brought home and that the mother returned the puppy i was interested in. this meant that she was now available and that i could meet up with them to pick her up. i was so excited. i remember it was fathers day. and i left to drive two hours down to salem to get her. when i met up with them they were this awesome family with lots of kids. the kids were sad to see the puppies go because they had helped raise them and had attatchments to the puppies already. the loved the puppies just like i would have so i let them say their goodbyes before i paid for her. let her pee and put her in my car to drive the two hours back home the car ride was long and moon as i would soon learn she would be named was not a big fan of long car rides moon is aspecially sensitive to motion sickness and vommited severa several times during the car ride home she cried and cried until we pulled up to my home . it was already dark out and i hadnt told my dad where i was even going.... he hadnt called me or texted me about my whereab abouts but i knew i would probably be in trouble for leaving without asking and returning with a puppy non the less. i came in through the back door and saw him asleep in the ottoman that he had. he woke up from the noise of the door creeping open and asked me where i had been. i just walked over and set the pupppy down in my lap he immediately fell in love with her... didnt even ask me any questions about my whereabouts or get mad that i had disappeared on fathers day either. and from then on we had a second dog. moon is by far the smartest animal i have ever trained. she caught on to every command almost instantly i ran out of tricks to teach her before too long. i think if i would have been more well versed in training i could have eventually taught her to speak english she was so smart.
thats funny. I'm so glad you didn't get in trouble this is an awesome story
i know me too! it would have been my head if my dad wasnt such an animal lover himself. i trained moon to be my emotional support animal but never ended up getting her certified. i had dropped out of college because of teh stress and no longer needed the certific ation i ended up moving to florida for some time to exerpience the real world and help me aunt open two store fronts on nantucket massachussetts that year before returning to apply for the industrial design program here at byu. moondance has been adopted by my family and she has adopted them too. chief and her spend countless hours chasing eachother around playing and everything is good right now. they are both very happy dogs and they have helped me so much to grow ad and improve myself to be a better peroson and develop skills i can use when i have a real child. its even helped me in my compassion and communication skills because you have to be so calm and clear when you communicate with someone who doesnt speak your langueage im so grateful that i got to raise such awesome dogs and learn from them. i feel like dogs are angels in a sense a pure relief from the world and its disasterous tendencies ar around us. and how harmful that can be to our emotional and mental health. i dont know what i would have done without the companionship of a dog through those many years i struggled to find solace one day id like to own an exotic animal like a big cat and train that. though it would be a whole other level of understanding a wild animal something that is very much differ different than training a docile well trained animal like a dog who has been domesticate dover years and years and years of training i still think it would be very cool to make a connection with such awild animal like that even though there is a possiblity an animal that wild could turn at any moment and wi with such ferocious power could rip you to shreds so should it want to. thats really the only thing that prevents me from trying to work it out any time soon. htat and i would need to be financed heavily to be able to afford that right living spac space for an animal that size anyways. have you ever heard of the shroud of turin?
what is it?
the shroud of turin is a clothe that is believed to have covered jesus himself after the cruxifiction i lisened to a podcast about it the other day and was totally tripping ou out because its soo coool do you want me to tell you about it ?
yes sure why not
so a lot of people want it to be true because it would prove jesus the christ was a real person and thus christianity would be proved. right because of this it has been venerated as such for centuries.. a lot of skeptics however doubt the entire story is real. its come under so much fire that they carbon dated the piece and said is from medieval centuries and thus settled it... science claimed it was not real. however the believeers wont let it slide that easiliy offers an array of infomation to keep the belief alive. a lot of recent modern technology advances help us to gain more and more evidence about the shroud. there is a mark of blood looking stuff on the shroud that has been thought to be the blood of christ himself that are correlated to the marking that would be made on someone w who was crusified but the most interesting discovery happened when during the developing process of photos taken by the first photographer of the shroud. the negatives showed an image of a huma face... this raised that if the shroud is a medival forgery how did they do that? science really hasnt been able to come up with a viable theory for how the image was placed so well upon the shrod. weird right?
yeah it is weird so are you an early bird or a night owl?
for me I am an early bird for sure but I can also stay up really easily unlike some people who cant stay up past 10 or 11pm. I love  to stay up sometime. I dont like to stay up all the time though. If there is something that I think that I can finsh better or be productive even more than I will sleep it out instead of sleeping because it has only brought you main.
yeah that makes sense I am definitely a night owl guy I like to stay up and sleep in
why do you like to sleep in?
I just like that I can wake up when I want to.
yeah i see being woken up by something or someone else is the worst feeling ever because the feeling that I get when I have to wake up is that i feel like I should have stopped or someth something
yeah..
is basically disturbed peace which is going to suck because all of my family is from California oh cool! no i wish all my family was in california hahaha my mom is from Southern california and my dad is from florida
nice those are like the party states hahaha
yeah they are now that you mention it I never thought about it like that hahaha and now they live in the most boring state that does not party
hahahaha they meet at BYU?
yeah they did actually
cool!
yeah my dad was like super yougn and my mom was a lot older than him but things worked out but anyway one of my fondest memories growing up was growing up having a jump on the driveway. there was this huge pile of dirt that was on our drive way for something that I can't remember. I think my dad was using the pile of dirt to fill our back yard and extend it I can't really remember but my siblings and I took that opportunity to use the pile of dirt as a jump. I remember that I had this bike that was pink and we would take turns riding as fast as we could  towards the dirt pile and go up it and then jump a little bit giving us some hang time in the air. I probably only got like 2 feet of air from the pile of dirt but I felt like I was super high up in the air hahaha
hahah nice I think its cool to remember stuff like that because its the simple things that make us happy
yeah totally that pile of dirt was one of the most fun things that we did when we were little I remember that I thought I could hit any jump because of that but yeah its the simple things in life that make us happy
what are those simple things in life that make you happy?
hmmmm the simple things in life I think for me the simple things in life right now are things like the podcasts that I listen to. I love to listen to these pod casts like Stuff You Should Know because I get to learn a lot about one subject that is totally random but it is knowledge and information the knowledge most of the time isnt like a useful knowledge but I enjoy listening to them because I choose to listen to it to learn and learning makes me really happy
yeah that is sweet! I love that
I sometimes think it would be really cool to be a podcaster! I mean you just record yourself you just record yourself talking and you just talk about things that you want and its like the best job ever. I also think the guys that do podcasts and are really popular are not just because they have good content and good stuff to talk about but I think they have really good voices
sorry i had to refresh i think my chat is wigging out
that catch people's attention and something about their voice and the way they talk are I think big factors of why they become popular and their humor too have you heard about pro water drinkers?
no i haven't
they drink water for professional reasons and consult people on what kind of water they shoudl drink at certain meals or certain times during the day its pretty interesting
really thats weird why does it matter what kind of water they drink?
like there is a water that is pretty salty but they are used with a meal that has this meal with meat that is very salty and for somereason this  salty water is very complementary to this meat and people love it i think this is popular in italy
interesting what kinds of projects have you worked on in your major? I remember that you made a lot of cool stuff
the first project that we worked on was ping pong paddles. which we itterated without a user for a few weeks and made all kinds of different methods for playing ping pong effe effectively then during one class our teacher sorted us into groups of three and had us sit down and choose a user to design for at first my group really wanted to choose someone who was an advanced ping pong player who was young and healthy didnt have any phsyical ailments right. so we proposed this us user to our teacher and our teacher immediately said no. he thought it was a bad idea and he said to think of someone else. so we talked about it and we thought that our teac teacher might want us to choose someone with a disability someone who would need the skill of a designer to figure out exactly what kinds of modifaction would make playing pin ping pong  a more manageable sport for them and their paticular needs as a user.
I love ping pong! this sounds like an interesting projects
we thought of different types of debilatating diseases and learned that parkinsons disease cause the patient to shake and their grip to be unsteady. we thought this was a hand icap worth designing for so we proposed someone with stage 2 parkinsons disease to our teacher and he said much better right? so we started on a path that i would not realize
wow parkinson would be hard to do I feel like to design a ping pong paddle for
would change my thinking as a designer from here on out. so we researched a lot about parkinsons and started making solution based on our assumptions of how the disease worked
maybe something that has the anti shaky spoon implemented to ping pong paddles would be cool
we made straps to hold their hand to the paddle and created different ways of holding the paddle all together we can together and tested these ideas out on eachother as a clas refinining them as we went. our proffesoor said greate now find someone in the reall world who has the disease and put these paddles to the test. so we did just that. and it turns out finding people who suffer from parkinsons who are willing to set aside time to help you acccomplish something silly like trying out ping pong paddles was a lot harder than we expected. so because of this were were only able to find two users. both people who were employed at byu
awww thats too bad.
these two men triend out our first round of paddles and hated all of them. pointing out things that we couldnt get from our surface level research. we werent addressing the ac
yeah I feel like if I had parkinson disease I would want to help or care too much about ping pong paddles interesting
actuall problems they each faced because the disease was so personal to its victims often causing a lot of underlying mental problems that could not be physically seen. we learned that they often had control with large motor functions so the smaller motor functions were the ones that caused them to shake and loose control. these were the area s in which they seemed to struggle and needed help. thing that we designed like straps and small finger holes were useless to people who suffered from parkinsons because they couldnt use the small motor functions to preform those tasks and things like that made them frustrated and feel embarrassed that they could not do it. it was very hard to watch and i felt massive ammounts of empathy for these users as we got to learn and grow from them through this experience. we continued to refine our ping pong paddles learning more and more about the users each time we visited them with a new prototype. on one occasion it was actually the first time we visitied patinet one. we took him down to a breakroom that had an extra ping pong table that we could test them out on and
this is a really big process! I feel like this is something that needs to be done all the time with people making stuff though because there are so many bad products out there
as we were trying them out we could tell he was getting winded. we were only halfway throught the prototypes we had brought and he got really exhausted and leaned onto the tab table to make a large move and because of this the table folded in and collapsed because it turned out that the weld had broken on the supports. this was not only terrifying a
oh wow thats scary!
as it seemed that patient ones body was fragile and could potentially receive a lot of damage from a fall that severe. we noticed his imidiate embarrasment at causing the tabl table to fall over we quickly put the table back together and create support by placing a trash can below the table that was just the right height that if he needed to lean on the table agian hi his weight would be supported by the table sorry the garbage can that was holding up the table we had to go through a few more paddles and ending up ending the appointment early because we could tell that he was extrememly winded after about 30 min of play.
thats ghetto but it works
we asked him if we could escort him up to his office. but he didnt even reply to us just turned around and started walking out of the room and back to his office.
oh no...
we noticed his eyes seemed glazed over. as if he wasnt even aware that we were there anymore and we got to the stairs which we had come down from because his office was on the floor above the one with the ping pong table and he started desceding the stairs before we called out to him saying to him isnt your office upstair and calling him by name. he then hesitated and turned around and said oh yes we ushered him to the elevator instead because he was having a hard time and was breatheing pretty heavily at this point. we got up to his floor and walked him to his office. he hadnt really said much back to us during this time until we sat back down in the chairs of his office and this was when we really began to see just how much goes on behind the walls of the mind with parkinsons. he was slurring his words and forgetting how to say things. he would randomly pause mid sentence and drift off before coming back into conciousness and finish the sentnece with a completey fdiffernt topic involved. it was really hard to watch and we saw just how far the stages had progressed. before we played ping pong we had interviewed him and recorded it and the differences were amazingly in stark contrast to eachother. it was incredible to see just how much physical activity drained him. before playing we talked about the medication he relys on to function at normal levels. these pills needed to be taken every two hours, this meant that he often experienced pe peaks and troughs in the medication and symptoms of parkinsons meaning that right after taking the medicaiton he would experience too high levels of dopamine which would cause dyskinesia or random movement. dopamine is what your nuerons use to allow your brain to communicate with your muscles and tell your arm to move or your eyes to blink. so too much of this made it happen randomly and too often and too little of this meant that in a resting position you would be constantly shaking. because of this he would also experience troughs, during these troughs just before he was scheduled to take the next dose he would experience extreme fatigue and not want to do anything inhibiting him from functioning on a normal level. mind you these peopple are normal everyday people like you and me. people who run marathons people who teach classes. people who have kids and wives and grandkids that they us used to run around the yard with at family activities and because parkinsons is a degenerative disease that doesnt have a cure these people have their perfectly normal lives and all their accomplishments ripped away from them in the blink of an eye these people have to slowly watch from inside their body as the body they could once trust to preform tasks and functions no longer listens to them when they ask it to move. no longer hears them when they want to play basketball. i guess thats why this project really changed my life and the way i view the design process as a whole. its truly incredible to me to see just how much power you have as a designer to change peoples lives for the better how much you have the ability to see these people and their struggles and you have the tools and knowledge to help those people lead normal lives or at least come closer to it. how amazing it might be to design something that could suc successfully solve just even one of these problems for someone who has extreme difficulty by no fault of their own and make them experience joy once again. how that might feel to help someone to that extent. i dont think i made the perfect ping pong paddle.. no i really dont thing a ping pong paddle is going to cure their depression. but it opened my eyes that there are real world problems like that and i need to start looking at the bigger picture as a designer to seek out these problems for people that truley need solutions and that i could help innovate those solutions for them
wow thats really cool that you got to experience that. what other things have you designed for in your major
ive done a lot of projects up until this point. i can talk about them in chronological order if youd like. the project that came after ping pong paddles was stools and we were given different constraints this time. again we were placed into groups of three and given 5/16 cold rolled steel to bend and play with and try to create interesti things wtih we were then told that we would need to create a stool with that and one other material. so we had to work together to figure out how to make 10 stools using a reproducible process and selll those stools at a show that we would need to put on each stool needed to be sold for 60 bucks no more no less and part of our grade would depend on our ability to sell all of them. i was placed on a team that the two other people had taken the freshman courses together and they already didnt like eachother so the first couple weeks i spent getting them t to hash out their problems with eachother and create a viable schedule where we could all come together and work during the same time to keep hours fair and so that we could c communicate effectively this basically helped me get them to prototype some things and while one wanted to go overly simple the other wanted so over complicate things and so prototypings was kind of a complete mess. but we learned that the complicated stuff probably wasnt the way we should go with these since we had to reproduce at least 9 more to sell which also meant that they had to be quality enough to sell for 60 so because of this i annexed the far more complicated ideas because my team members were already having enough trouble as it was to get together and spend any amount of time w working with eachtoher as it was we found a design that seemed to be simple enough to i immediately started working on ways to create jigs to cut bend and weld the pieces together so that they would create th the same stool everytime however because of the lack of skill to make it happen in my group i ran into countless problems where the cuts werent the same each time around and because of this the rods w would be too long after they were bent on one side or the other this was so hard to deal with because then it meant that they didnt each fit into the fixtures the same every time and welding was an absolute pain to deal with. honeslty this project was the hardest for me because it wasnt easy to control the level of quality involved.
thats a pain
i was having such a hard time managing how things were amde and i couldnt do all the work myself so i relied on the help from my team members. one of them being not motivated because we didnt choose her more complicated design the other not being motivated because he didnt care about the quality and just wanted the p project to be over but we ended up getting finished up with it and sold all but two of our stools at the show which i then sold to people after the show who just didnt have enough money to buy o one then so it ended up working out okay and i was glad when it was over
that good im glad that you got that project finished sounds awful have you been on any cool trips lately?
yeah I actually have! I went to disneyland and Los Angelos with my boyfriends family during Chistmas break!
oh fun tell me about it
so at first I was scared to go because I thought my dad wanted to spend our christmas together because it been a long time since everyone in my family was together in utah my brother who is usually in San Diego  CA was in town so it was a really important time for us. Even though he wasn't too far away in California he was way to busy to come visit us even during Christmas sometimes. anyway my Boyfriend thought that it would be easier for me to come down before christmas time because the transportation would have been simple. I would just go down to Las Vegas with my boyfriend and his brother as they were going to go down there to visit their mom. that just made sense for us to do that but that would have meant that I would miss christmas with my own family and I didnt want to do that, my boyfriend didn't want me to do that , and definitely my dad would not have wanted me to do that. So we just decided that  I wanst going to go with them to disneyland. but later we kept talking about it and we found a plane ticket the day after christmas for like 40 bucks one way trip. So we decided to buy that ticket anyway and I didnt let my dad know about it. Well after I bought the ticket I told my dad and he was totally fine with it. Concerned a little
hmm yeah sometimes my parents would say that its totally fine but then get mad at me later did he do that?
bit but he was fine. umm no not really he just was kind of disappointed that I was leaving the day after christmas but he and my mom thought that it would be a good idea for me to go on this trip because they thoug thought that when you go on road trips with people you get to learn about that them well
yeah that is true I was told about that too and I think its a great advice I love road trips anyway hahaha
hahaha yeah totally well I got my ticket and flew to Las Vegas and my boyfriend pick me up from the airport and we went to the strip during the day and I couldnt go to their house and say hi to his family yet because I was doing this art piece of his family and it was almost done and I didnt want to work on the art at his house because I wanted it to be a surprise.
oh cute!!! what was the art piece?
it was his family. I used a picture of his family when he was a wee little boy. I edited his dad out though hahaha.
why?
because his parents are divorced and his father is basically dead to them
oh.. ok go on
yeah so we went to go eat and he took me to a Gordon Ramsey Burger place in one of the hotels there and let me tell you it was the best burger I have ever had in my life
ohh that sounds so good!!! was it expensive?
yeah it was pretty expensive. the burger was like 25 bucks but it was sooooo good it was worth 25 bucks in my opinion
oh hahaha nice!
yeah and we also ordered sweet potato fries and it was really interesting because they put powdered sugar on top of it and it was actually way good. The sugar really helped bring out more flavor from the sweet potato. And they had this sauce that came with it and I can't remember exctly what the sauce was called but it was really good
man... you are really making me hungry now
hahaha sorry but I recommend you going there there is always a line but its worth it if you go during the day then the line should be really short
ok thanks. Next time I go visit Ill try it
oh and my dad was super jealous because he idolizes Gordon Ramsey I told you that my dad loves to cook right?
yeah you did
He watches all of the Gordon Ramsey shows and right now he watches the Kid chef ones and he loves it. so after that we went to one of the places in the strip where we could sit down so that I could finish my drawing. It was really funny because as I was doing that a few people came up and complemented me on my art and they were really impressed.
hahaha nice I think  when people random that sneak up on me to say something mostly creeps me out but sometimes it feels good
yeah I really appreciate it when someone goes out of their way to compliment or tell me something good because it takes courage it takes a lot of courage because the rejection that you feel if that person is mean hurts pretty bad and it discourages a lot of people and I think that is something that needs to be addressed in the world I think that people should be kinder when someone talks to them on the street
yeah I agree with you there I think that will make the world a nicer and more fun place to live in and I think that it will also destroy a lot of barriers that are created by being a different race or from a different country and things like that
yeah totally people just needs to chilll out a bit and just enjoy life
true hahaha so did you finish the art piece?
yeah so we finished the art piece and we drove home and it was so nice to see his family again! It was the second time that I've met his mom and sister because they lived in Las Vegas at the time and they came up once up to Provo to visit my boyfriend and his brother for Thanksgiving They were really excited to see me too
oh good! that would have been awkward if they weren't happy to see you hahaha
hahahah yeah something that was really interesting is that they were planning to move back to Provo area when we were done with the trip. So literally after the trip we would get back to Vegas and load up the moving truck the next day and move back to Orem
oh no way that is a busy break
yeah it was a big deal for the family because my boyfriends mom really wanted to move back to the valley so that she could live closely to her children
thats funny because my mom wants me to leave the house
hahahah yeah everyone is different yeah so when I got there more than half of the the stuff in the apartment was packed and ready to go. it was really fun to hang out there that night because we watched a lot of korean shows with the family and this was the first time I was really exposed to korean. I want my boyfriend to teach me it but I think he is just lazy. He tells me that all we have to do is just speak it to each other but he just defaults to English without knowing
yeah its probably hard to do that because English is his default language and he doesn't have to think about  it
yeah
maybe you just need to remind him over and over again until he starts to do it
yeah I probably will do that honestly because I really want to learn how to speak korean because I want to teach it to our kids one day when we get married and have children I think carrying on the culture is really important and I want my kids to have the diversity so that they can carry on traditions and also to expand their minds
that will be cool I hope your boyfriend shapes up and teaches you korean hahaha
hahaha be better so the next day we packed up and started our trip to Los Angeles. We were also going there so that we could visit my boyfriend's little brother's mission which he served in Long Beach California. and everyone in his family wanted to meet the people that he served and see the area that he was in.
oh so fun! I would love to visit my siblings missions one day. I want to go visit New York because that is where my sister served
yeah super cool!
go on
so the drive was really fun because I got to just talk to his mom the entire time and we got to know each other really well and I was also able to get to know my boyfriend on a different level because his mom told me all the funny and embarassing childhood stories hahahaaha
hahahah those are the best stories
I know right? I loved listening to the stories and I still tease my boyfriend about them when we finally arrived to LA we decided that we would hit Huntington Beach first because the weather was amazing and it was going to be a little bit before we could check in to our resort that we were going to stay at. so when we got to Huntington beach my boyfriend and I went first to the beach because we had to walk a little bit because we had to park in the neighborhood and his family was just changing to their swim clothes. Little did I know that they were planning a surprise for me. When we got to the beach and his family found us I saw that they were carryin carrying some food and something big but I thought it was like a small tent or a big towel or something when I was look at the horizon of the ocean my boyfriend says hey happy 100th day of dating! and I turned around and there was a huge glass cylinder about 4 feet tall with like 9 inches wide filled with folded paper cranes
no way! thats so awesome did he fold a thousand of them?
right? yeah he did how did you know?
oh the only connection I could make was that there was a book I read in elementary school that was called a thousand paper cranes or something like that and in the book if you fold a thousand paper cranes you are granted one wish i think
yeah you are exactly right I should find that book and read it
yeah its good! its a really short childrens picture book though
oh ok so I was super taken back and blown away that this beautiful thing was given to me. I watched him fold these cranes right next to me all through winter semester and he told me that it was for a family friend and it totally made sense that he was doing that I was secretly hoping that it was going to be for me but I didnt really pay attention.
hahaha no way so he was doing this right in front of you the whole time and you had no idea
yeah hahahaha he tricked me really good this paper crane thing took a really long time I think he said that it took him more than 16 hours of folding time
holy cow... thats dedication right there he must really like you
yeah apparently hahaha yeah so he gave that to me on our first 100 days of dating. SO CUTE I mean who does that?
well that makes sense because Koreans do cheesy stuff like that haha
hahaha thats good! Americans should do that kinds of things more often because it gives people more reason to remember the people they love and appreciate them a lot omore like Mother's day there is only one day a year and their birthdays to have a day set aside for them but I think there should be something so that we can remember to show them more appreciation
yeah we only do have 2 days to show them how much we love them but we should show that affection and love everyday if possible by the small and simple things
yes so true. so any way it was also really funny because people around us thought that I got engaged or something like that so they were cheering and stuff. SO FUNNY
hahaha no way
yeah and I had a feeling that he was going to propose to me there or at Disneyland
did he do it?
hahaha no I would not have let him to be honest because we've only dated for 100 days man I can't believe he was counting hahaha
hahahaha looks like you really do have an awesome boyfriend. I need to be more like him
thank you Im grateful for him after the gift exchange my boyfriend and his sister and I walked around the beach and took some pictures and ran around then when I wasnt looking my boyfriend picks him up and runs and jumps in the ocean with me in his arms and got us soaking wet. this was december time so even though the sun was out, the water was freezing cold and I hate being cold I got so mad at him
hahahaha thats awesome I would have done the same thing to my girlfriend to be honest
hahaha well I hope she breaks up with you
hahahahha
yeah then after that he picks up his sister and throws her in the water so mean
hahaha thats awesome
when we got out of the water it was really nice actually because of the sun and because we were running around I didnt feel that cold after the beach we checked in to our resort and the resort was really really nice! We were also like 5 blocks away from Disneyland which we were going the next day
oh cool! I loved Disneyland when I was a kid
yeah me too but going there as an adult is a totally different exerience hahaha
hahaha yea i bet
man but this was the worst disneyland day ever
why?
well because it was during christmas time literally everyone and their dogs from everywhere around the world came to Disneyland and it was sooooo crowded it was insane We didnt even has shoulder room by the time it was later in the afternoon
what I don't think I remember seeing that many people there
yeah me neither
were the lines super long for rides?
yeah... it was so not worth going and spending the amount of money that we did paying for these useless tickets because we only were able to ride like 5 different rides maybe not even that I think it was like 4 we waited in line for like and hour and a half on average it was so bad.
mannnn that is bad
Space Mountain ride was the last one and we wait for more than 3 hours because one the line was insanely long and two the ride kept breaking down so there was a lot of delay
wow....
yeah it was horrendous but the best part about it was that the whole family was together for the first time in like 4 years or something because my Boyfriend and his siblings went on a mission back to back and it was also their second vacation ever.
oh good! second vacation ever? thats crazy
yeah I know right? his mom had to work a ton and they never got time for themselves as a family so anyway the fireworks were really cool because it was synchronized with the music and stuff. oh and we ate a lot of burgers like a ton while we were there I dont know why hahaha
hahaha nothing wrong with that. Burgers are great!
I agree except Im a vegetarian, but I decided to give up my vegetarianess to enjoy all the food and stuff because we were going to korea town like the next day
did they enjoy disneyland though?
yeah I they did for the most part. They would have enjoyed it a lot more if the lines weren't so long. It was really hard to see everything that the park had to offer but they still think that the money they spent for the tickets to the park were totally not worth it. even if they didnt have so many people they said that they would use the moeny somewhere else. but it was good because it was something to check off the bucket list for them
yeah the tickets are so insane they are like 200 bucks a pop
yeah super expensive
what did you guys do after that
the next day we decided to go to Korea town and see all the things there. we went to this appliance store that was just all korean stuff and they had so many rice cookers half the second floor of this place just had rice cookers for days. they were so cool though! some of them just had the simple rice cooking abilities but some of them that were super high end had self cleaning features and would talk and alert the cook that they were done cooking his mom wanted or needed a brand new rice cooker because the one she had is leaking water when she cooks.
yeah the korean rice cookers can be really cool and have a bunch of features. my mom has one and its like the one you are talking about. it tells you how long the time it takes to cook is left and it talks to you and stuff kind of creepy its like the question prompts for the chats hahha
hahahah yeah for sure well since I am an industrial design student grabbed my sketchbook out and started to sketch some of these rice cookers for notes and learning and a worker there who was korean gave me the dirtiest look and i think I made her nervous because I was sketching these
oh hahahaa
so I put it away. Ohhh the best part about this store was that it had full mattress sized heating pads and blankets when I was staying over in Las Vegas I had a bed that had the heated pads and it was so nice and toasty and it really relieved my back pain that I had I really wanted one but they were all really expensive but they bought me one for my birthday which was coming up in January
awwww that is so nice of them!!! you are so lucky!
yeah I am really lucky to have this wonderful family while shopping we would walk around and see the sights of Korea town and we would walk in to Korea bakeries and eat yummy pastries and desserts and then we would move on to th the next store and check stuff out we also ate lunch and dinner ther
what did you eat?
oh man lunch was so good! We went to a place called BBQ chicken in korea town and this place is a chain restaurant from korea that selling deep fried chicken. Oh man this is the food that I want everyone to taste before they die. It was so good. it was the crispiest and the most tender and moist chicken I've had and the sauce that they used to were so delicious
yes korean chicken is the best I wish there was one in Utah I would go there all the time
my boyfriend told me that the reason why these chickens are so crispy is because the chickens are deep fried twice
oh I actually did not know that
yeah cool right? its worse for your health but it tastes better in your mouth yes I wish there was one in Utah I would go there too man its so good I want to go back now and eat it
what else did you guys do
on sunday we visited his younger brother's mission and we had such a fun time meeting them. I never served a mission but I kind of wished that I did. the people were so happy to see his brother and they were so happy to meet us and they all thanked his mom for raising such a great young man to help them and serve them it was really cool to see the amount of respect that these people had for his younger brother because they were much older than he was but they looked up to him for example of faith and service So cool
I am so happy that you were able to see that. it looks like he served a great and honorable mission. You can tell by the members reacting to his visits
yeah totally we also got invited to one of the families for dinner that night and it was really interesting
why was it interesting?
because this family was cambodian and I never had any cambodian food before. the closest thing I had was probably Thai food and I love Thai food but I only got the tastey stuf like curries and Pad Thais
true. what did you eat there at the home?
we had this fermented fish sauce and that was really interesting because the smell was so bad. It was hot garbage but the taste was really good! the flavor was not anything like how it smelled
kind of like blue cheese
yes exactly I also had this bitter melon soup and that was actually really good and nutty they stuffed beef and glass noodles in the bitter melon. I never had bitter melon before but it was an interesting flavor and I loved it rice was of course served
hahaha of course sounds like you had a great time eating cambodian food
yeah I was really glad that I got to try something that most others do not get to eat at restaurants. I thought it was also really cool that they had a mango tree, a clementine tree, an asian pear tree in their back yard.
oh cool!
right? i would love to live in a climate that I can grow stuff like that year round. I love raising gardens and growing my own food
yeah me too I want to have a couple fruit trees I would love to have a mango tree that would be the best thing ever
I think the same! well then after that we were heading back out the next morning to Las Vegas but that was the day that we checked out of the hotel and we were basically homeless. So I asked what we were doing that night and they told me that we were going to a public korean sauna in korea town and that we will be spending the night ther
oohhh I love those! I remember going to those places when I was a little kid back in korea did you love it?
i LOVED it when we got there the lot was full and we were the last ones allowed in the  spa because it was new years eve and everyone wanted to come for some reason well after we parked and checked in they gave us a pair of very loose shorts and a loose t shirt and a hand towel. I went to the girls room and we all changed ther in  to these comfy clothes then I saw that there was a public bath equipped with medium tubs and hot tubs and ice baths and showers that you can stand up on or sit on a stool and shower apparently the showers in korea back in the day were common to have a sitting down style which makes sense!
yeah I remember that! man you are giving me so much nostalgia
It was super nice to sit and relax and take a long hot shower and the shower head was adjustable and I could take it off the rack. they also had a sauna and a mist room there were 4 floors to this place and the locker room and the public baths were on the firs floor the second floor had heated floors and mats and there were 4 room that I could see one was an ice room that was like at 40 degrees, then I saw the clay room which was 199 degrees in there, and the the jade room which was also 199 degrees and then there was the fire room which was up to like 275
that is so hot! how can you go in that room and not die?
yeah thats what I said! it was really interesting because I would see people coming in and out of those rooms drenched in sweat well we decided to go check out the clay room first and it was so cool!
why? was it covered in clay?
yeah it had these clay balls the size of a small marble and it was the most comfortable and soothing thing ever I would just lay down and sink my body in to it and it was actually really warm and I didn't think it was too hot because I was just laying down relaxing controling my breathing and closing my eyes to meditate and I knew that that is the reason why people love coming to these places in to these burning hot rooms because it is relaxing and meditating I fell in love immediately
wasn't it gross because of all the sweat and stuff?
yeah I didnt think about it too much until the cleaning people kicked us out of that room so that they could do maintenance. Apparently on busy days like that they clean every 2 hours or so
oh good i was like that cannot be sanitary
hahahah yeah
what was your favorite room?
my favorite room was probably the clay one because it was the more comfortable and it wasn't as hot as the other rooms because the clay soaked up a lot of the heat and it wasn't hot to touch those balls compared to the jade room the floors were super hot
did you go in super hot one
yep!
how was that?
it was actually not that bad. I could definitely fill the difference in heat between the other rooms but it was really interesting because the inside was made out of wood and the wood was not that hot I could lay on it and my skin didnt burn. BUT
but what?
these wooden floors needed to be nailed down and the nail heads on the wood hurt pretty bad if you touched them
ouchhh what was your favorite thing there?
my favorite part was that on that same floor there was a restaurant that served you all kinds of korean food and it was soo good. We would go chill in these rooms and then go rinse off in the baths then get new clothes and come back up stairs and eat food that we wanted to . and rinse and repeat it was the best spa ever
that does sound nice you said this was in LA?
yeah
you stayed there over night?
yeah we did on the second floor there were these mats that you could use and the room was very warm because of the heated floors so I slept really good despite not having a mattress. It was also interesting to see that there were more than just koreans there. There were all kinds of races that would come and enjoy the wonderful experience
that is interesting I guess everyone enjoys spas
yeah oh and another thing is that you can basically live there. You can get a membership there that will let you in all year and it is cheaper than living in a house in LA because it the cost of living is so high some people actually take the advantage of living there
makes sense
yeah then the next day after a really nice vacation we left to Vegas, packed up and loaded up the truck and drove back to Utah Valley
that sounds like the best vacation ever
yeah it was definitely one of the best that Ive been
thanks for sharing I learned a lot hahaha
hahaha you are welcome
did you serve a mission you said?
you I never did why?
oh I was going to ask if you had any crazy mission stories or antyhign
I dont but I know my Boyfriend had some crazy experiences want to hear those?
yeah sure
so my boyfriend served in one of the most dangerous cities in the US. Oakland and while he was almost a year in to his mission he opened up an area that has not been touched a while because of the low baptism and investigator rates but the mission president felt that it was time to go back in and see if anyone was ready to receive the gospel well this area was west oakland and this place is crazy dangerous. murders happening like everyday and the police hardly even bother to go and patrol there because they would just be cleaning up bodies and it is actually not safe for the officers to go in there that much
oh my that sounds scary
there was this one time that my boyfriend told me that they were walking to an appointment and a cop pull up next to them and aked them "do you know where you are?" and they replied yes and the policeman told them that they should leave and get out of there because it was too dangerous but my boyfriend just thanked him and told him that everything will be alright the officer did not like the answer but just drove away because he couldn't do anything about it
what a police officer told him to leave because it was too dangerous
yeah super scary anyway my boyfriend and his companion took a member from their ward to help them out with lessons so that they could like fellowship them to church if they ever came after their time was up with the member they were dropping him off. They drove around the block and they stopped at a stop sign when suddenly they saw a mob of people at every corner of this 4 way intersection and they saw two cars parked and drivers side door open in the middle of the street and there were two guys up in each others faces
what stuff is about to go down!
yeah it was they just ignored it and drove past them in order to get to the members home because they thought that it was just another frenzy in good old West oakland well they got a bit more than they signed up for hahaha
what happened?
so they helped this member up the stairs to his house because the member was basically blind and had cerebral palsy and as they waited on the porch for the member to get insid my boyfriend looks over to check out the fight that was happening like 50 feet away down the street and when he looked over to the member to check on him for a second and then he turned back around to see what was going on and one of the guy that was fighting in the street pulls out a freakin gun and started to shoot the other guy point blank
whattttttt no way
my boyfriend was expecting to see blood everywhere because he said that the guy was like 4 feet away from the target but missed all of his shots
maybe he was trying to scare him or something
yeah maybe but the crazy part is that my boyfriend and his companion and the member didnt even freak out. While the member was trying to unlock his door with his key my boyfriend and his companion were kind of excited for the fight happening so close to them because they heard so many stories about how bad west oakland is and they kind of wanted to experience that for themselves so that they could have cool stories to tell to other missionaries and friends and family back home well they got to only enjoy that for a couple seconds because other people that were standing and watching at the intersection pulled out their guns and they all started to shoot at each other
what!!!! no way it was a shootout?
yeah it was while they were watching all of this happen my boyfriend had a couple bullets wiz past his head and hit the wall behind him and at that moment he realized that it was not safe poking out his head to watch this "show" so he yells get down and he pulled his member down and they took cover and short while later people that were there got in their cars and drove off
oh my gosh!! did anyone get hurt?
yes, what was sad is that they heard "mimi got shot, mimi got shot" so the only fatal thing that happened was that a little girl that was riding her bike there got caught and died... the people responsible for this did not get hurt of they didnt turn up in the scene
holy cow..
yeah i was so sad when he told me this story because a little girl got killed because of this stupid gang fight
that is insane I feel bad for that girl...
me too but at least now that she is a better place
yeah true. Thank goodness for the plan of salvation
i know right?
did he call the cops or anything?
yeah so after it was safe they called the cops immediately and my boyfriend told them every detail of the fight and the shooting and they took his information down. and like 2 weeks later my boyfriend got subpoenaed to come to the court and testify and stuff like that
woahhh he did that as a missionary?
yeah he did he had to get coaching from a lawyer about how to present himself in court and how to talk about things there and what to say and what not to say and what to avoid in a question and all that
that is so crazy so so so crazy
yeah I know right? he has seen some crazy stuff other than that in the mission
what else happened in his mission?
hmm lets see he told me about how he would see these asian gangs driving in a honda accord with rifles sticking out of the window he told me that he would hear gunshots everyday day and night sometimes a coupel blocks away sometimes only a street away from wheree they were standing and talking about jesus
did he ever get robbed or anything
no he didnt thank goodness he told me that basically all the people that were just citizens to gangsters to drug dealer to pimps knew who the mormon missionaries were and they never messeed with them they alwasy called them the jesus people and they actually respected them for being out there preaching the gospel. mind you bascially everyone there were african american and they all shared the same christian beliefs and even though their choices were bad they still believed in Jesus and they respected the missionaries for that plus they knew that they carried nothing valuable than a bag full of book of mormon and pamphlets
hahaha jesus people, thats cool yeah and thats true, I hear that missionaries carry iPads now but only in certain cities
yeah not all have ipads it makes sense that his mission didnt get it because there would be so many robberies and mugging if they saw missioanries pull out their ipads in the middle of the ghettos
yeah  for sure
he also told me that he made friends with the gang members and drug dealers there he said that he once approached a man close to his apartment and he recognized him because he stood in the same exact place almost everyday
drug dealer
yeah but a really intense one he told me that he got really close with this drug dealer and they would say hi to him all the time and the dealer would greet them back and one day they were able to share a scripture with him and the scripture really soften his heart and offered them protection if there was anything that was happening to them. that is so cool!
i know right
yeah it was super cool to hear that
nice
this drug dealer was like if anyone is bothering you, you just tell me and Ill kill em and he told me that he lifted his shirt and saw that there were two guns in his pants
huh no way
yeah and they told them "nah man we dont want you to kill anybody for us. that would not be good" and the drug dealer replied "elders my hands are already covered in too much blood, I dont think Jesus will have more punishment for me because I am already an infidel and I know I am not making it to heaven
oh come on i doubt that
but I am going help you guys" you doubt what?
that you're not going to make it to heaven oh i misread that i just reread that i understand now
hahah yep this guy was insane but a little while later we didnt see him for a long time and we asked the guy who knew him and he told us that he got killed by another gang member
wow scary
yeah it was crazzzzzy
sounds like it
he had a great time though yeah it was a wild story. thought it would be something interesting to share but thats the end of that. can i talk to you about something else now? i could tell you about my favorite place to eat in salt lake city. i used to live on the east coast right. and i was pretty used to eating seafood. and seafood was my favorite things to eat. still is i really enjoy fish though i might also give that up now because i dont like the thought of commercial fishers depleteing the fish in the ocean its rought
yeah lets hear something more uplifting
but anyways i ate at many sushi houses and different restaurants up and down the east coast some the top of their class. but last year i got taken a date to a restaurant calle takashi have you heard of it?
no
its this sushi house up in slc its pretty expenisive so i wouldnt always recommned it but its super good stuff so if you are ever going on a really fancy date you could go there and it would be awesome and really impressive your date takashi doesnt take reservations you just have to go and hope you get a seat
ooh ok ill keep that in mind oh no way
but since so many people like it if you go around dinner hours the wait can be close to two hours its insane
I guess popular restaurants like that won't waste time for reserved seats because people can not show up
people come from all around to go there to eat sushi because its so goo
holy cow
yeah its pretty good
its like the gordon ramsey burger line you were telling me
some of the best sushi ive had yeah ramsey burger was sos so so so so good
how much are their rolls?
around 15 to 16 for 5 pieces prettty expensive. but soo so worththe price. so i can tell you about an ice cream scoop im working on designing.
yeah do it
so we had an assignment for my studio class for industrial design right this assignment asked us to pick a kitchen utensil something that wasnt complicated like a blender or a toaster were talking handheld super simple kitchen spatual, cheese grader or in my case ice cream scoop ill tell you the truth though. the only reason i chose the ice cream scoop was because i knew that during user testing and prototyping id have to use real life situations to test its effectiveness. i love ice cream so i found this to be the perfect opportunity to eat ice cream at least twice a week lol and i did just that i went around to local and commercial ice cream parlors, namely baskin robins, rockwells down near center street and cold stone to see what ice cream scoop scoops they currently used and how well they liked each and if they were super hard to use or caused uncomfortable things or if there was anything that was a pain in the butt to deal with when scooping ice cream all day often back to back for hours at a time i learned that often times the parlors used a standard ice cream scoop which is designed for a forward pushing motion. however because they had to keep the buckets of ice crea cream in these deep freezers they often had to reach down into it putting their arm into a vertical position rather than the horizontal position they would need to push the ice cream scoop forward they way they would need to use it properly for the way it was designed. so because of this they often turned the scoop around and used it backwards to scrape the ice cream out of the pale. this created what seemed to be really uncomfortable wrist positions for the user. i photographed these positions so that i could prove why the way i intended to innovate a backwards scooping ice cream scoop could be helpful for those working in a commercial ice cream scooping setting. this made it possible for me to look at biomimicry solutions where not only animals in the wilderness found methods of digging but also how we as humans had looked and the pro blem and already developed solutions these solutions were found withing the mole first who used a claw with sharp fine points to dig this led me to a conclusion often stated in simple physics that the finer the tip or point that the pressure was placed on the exponentially tougher scale of higher pressure t to finer tip ratio right so because of this my ice scoop had three points on the front of it to put more pressure on a smaller point and in hopes and theory penetrate through the tough ice cream easie easier than a flat point breaking through a surface might be. right so the second idea i mentioned earlier came from an excavator that was basically designed for backwards digging this also employed backwards digging. sorry claws if youve ever seen one they have replaceable teeth on them which allows them to break the surface of the dirt a lot faster the backwards digging wasmade possssible by the curved body of the handle right so i decided to create just the right amount of curve on the handle of the spoon too in hopes to nuetralize the wrist position so there was less tension on the wrist and that would help eliminate and stress caused by the uncomfortable tension i was telling you i photographed earlier if i could do this i imagined that i could help create an ice cream scoop that could be used for long periods of time allowing the user to service customers faster and have a better overall atitude or demeanor towards their job. so whats next well i tried to 3d mill it out of insulation foam to test the proportions but the will we had didnt have a deep enough drill bit to be able to drill out the entire ice cream scoop without breaking it and unfortunately it broke while i was milling it. but it broke into two pieces that i could hold together and feel its level of comfort in my hand. the handle had a great diameter and that seemed to be super comfortable to ho hold however i learned that because i had to reduce the size of the scoopo itself the scoop was not porpotionately big enough to fit enough ice cream. so ive been trying to itterate that part of the schoop and find a way that i can prototype it without the scoop breaking
this is quite the process holy cow you are have really done a lot of work so far
so because of this im still looking for a good way to prototype this. i think ill look at 3d printing first we have some 3d printers in our studio i hope to employ that would be an easy and cheep methond to test and iterate an ice cream scoop after i find something that works well ill make a mold for it
yeahhh I'd love to try it too test it out
in solidworks creating the negative version and printing the in castable resin that burns out when you pour aluminum into it
you major sounds like such a blast
once i figure that out ill investment cast the mold in aluminum and try injection molding the plastic into the mold to make awesome little ice cream scoops that ill have to ma make sure still work with the material change. im hoping it does cause i could use that to put towards the products offered with my kickstarter project
yeah I hope so your kickstarter project sounds so cool!
this would be helpful because its already a pretty well liked project by some poeple that ive consulted with the form is nice and if it works good and things go through well i can sell them and make a profit off of my design a possibly patten somehting
that would be awesome! and you can make so much money too
i think it will be so cool to figure out how to get pattens on different products i make i think its necessary to my success i can work with byu patten law to create it i know the law school offers help to students i dont know if it cost money to do or if its free to us but i think its worth taking the time to look into especially if it ends
yeah getting  patents are really important or else people can easily take your idea
up being a super easy process if you know what im saying that would make it really worthwhile to look into so is the industry huh
that is a good idea
did I ever tell you about my boyfriend's lung?
no tell me about it
so he has whats called a spontaneous pneumothorax which is basically a spontaneous lung collapse that will happen randomly for some reaosn it happens to tall and skinny people and since he is 6 foot and he is like only 140 pounds it makes sense but the doctors dont know what causes it he had his lung collapse on him last winter semester and we were dating and that scared me so bad i didnt really know how to help him and he didn't need my help apparently becuase he told me that it was his 4th TIME getting this illness I was like what are you crazy?? can you breathe?? he told me that it was like breatheing through a coffee straw but only in short breathes
woah that sound super intense!
it was crazy because he couldnt' even sleep on his back or anything for a week
oh shoot thats crazy was he alright?
yeah he had to sleep up right on a chair with pillows on his lap yeah he was totally fine for some reason he knew how to handle himself
crazy im glad he is okay
yeah he had this happen to him 2 times before the mission and then a third time in his mission he never went to the doctor when it happened to him the first time because he didn't want to go tot he emmergency room becuase they didnt have insurance or anything like that so he didnt want to financially burden his mom
huh thats so sad
yeah its so sad
i feel for him how did he manage getting to school without dying
so he just toughed it out for like a month and a half
i know if i were in his shoes i would dies die
he had to walk really slow and he had to to finish school
holy cow thats such a long time to be sick
I dont know what his drive was but my boyfriend is really driven when he wants something he will do anything to get it yeah
wow what an amazing guy you got yourself
he told me that the first time was the hardest one yeah thanks hahaha
what else does this guy doc? do is he like some sort of super human
he actually found out about his lung collapsing on his mission yeah i think so hahahaha
tell me about how he found out
so when he became a district leader after 3 months in his mission and at the same time he was called to train a brand new missionary from Burma plus he had to open a brand new area in Oakland that I was telling you about he told me that it was a really cool calling that his mission president gave him but it also stressed him out a lot because it was a ton of responsibility on his plate so on a tuesday when he was on exchanges with his Assistants he was preparing for a district meeting for his district and when they prayed to finishe their studies and stood up he said that there was this really sharp pain that he felt before the mission and he knew exactly what was going on. The Assistant was really worried about him but he saw his face and body language and he suggested that they go to the doctor. but my boyfriend refused to go because one he had this before and he knew how to take care of himself
woah. crazy
and two he didnt want to burden the family more so he just told the Assistant that he had this before and that he would just have to wait for like 3 weeks for it to heal the assistant was not having it so he forced him to go see the mission presidents wife who used to be a nurse and she immediately sent them to the emergency room so that he could get treated
thats good she was a nurse
so they drove to the nearest hospital and they checked in . they immdiatley took an x-ray and they told him that his lung was coolapsed about 80 percent on his left side yeah she was because of her that he knows now exactly what is going on
woah how was he even breathing?
also because he was a missionary the church paid for all the medical bills and he told me that that really put a lot of stres off of him he was breathing only through his right lung the right lung was doing double the work. overtime work hahaha
so do you think it could happen again any time soon
so the doctor offered him 2 methods one he can just wait it out for him to heal like he did before or two he can get the doctor to puncture his chest cavity 3 ribs from the bottom and put a tube in it for the air to flow back out of the chest cavity and to pump air back in the system he just chose to wait it out.... he told me that he didnt want to burden the church more medical finance but I think he was just a wimp that didnt want to have a hole in his chest for a week hahahahaa
wow thats so manly
I dont know about that its either manly or stupid
what do you think about it?
I think a mix of both is what he has hahahaha mix of both
lol
after the doctor and the emergency room they went straight to a burger joint
i don't thin you are giving him enough credit lol sounds manly to me 100% tough guy
the doctor told my boyfriend that he should be bed ridden for a week for the lung to start closing up his hole but my boyfriend refused to sit inside and do nothing for a week so he still went out and did missionary work like he would normally he was just really really really slow at walking and they had to drive very slow because every bump on the road and every step with his feet would hurt his lungs like crazy and he couldn't breathe very well which I think is nuts I dont know who he was trying to impress I think if I was him I would have stay inside and waited for myself to heal like the doctor said to do
yeah me too
but who knows, like I said my boyfriend is really driven and if he wants something he will get it and I think missionary work was that. He wanted to serve the Lord whole hearted
that would be pretty dang painful in my option
and I dont think he wanted a lung collapse to stop the work
wow i love this story
or again he might have been just stupid and thought he was invincible but who knows
has he had any other injuries?
I like to believe that he is driven and I think  that he is definitley driven yeah he has a lot of it he once broke his elbow doing extreme sledding hahaha when he was in high school his friend got a car and it was his first friend to ever have a car
what! elbow that seems like the worst bone to break
and it was winter time and they wanted to go drifting and what not I mean who doesnt like to have some fun in the snow you know? and drifting like in the movies is fun
yeah i get it
so they hooked up their saucer sled which was basically a  roudn sheet metal and they punched a hole through the edge of it so that they could tie a thick rope through it and then they tied the other end of the rope to the car then they drove around in the middle of the night like 2 am, 3 am in the night on the freaking streeet!
lol
and they had them ride the sled on the back going like 25 30 miles an hour
sounds reckless and fun
yeah I think it would be super fun too except I would go on the street or go that fast!!! if you hit something that will throw you up int he air youare  done for nothting to protect you anyway after they thad their fun on the street they decided to build a ramp at a church parking lot because his friend caught some air hitting a small mound of ice they build a huge ramp and a catching ramp so that can land smoothely its really dumb becasue professionals calculate jumps like this exactly so that the stuntman can be safe my boyfriends friends did not no math hahaha or they didnt know how fast they should go in order to jump correctly well my boyfriend was the volunteer to go first he got on the sled and told him to "hit it" like they would say when they would go wake board or wake surfing in the summer
hes wild
when that happened his friend gunned the car forward and they picked up speed so fast and my boyfriend hit the jump but he over extended the jump and he landed right on the flat ground and he told me that he hit the asphalt and not the snow and landed on his elbow really hard and later he found out that he fractured his elbow like 3 inches
wooooooooaaaaahhh
but that didnt stop him from breaking other bones like his pinky toe, his right wrist, his left ankle, concussions
how did you find out
do you want to hear something else that was crazy? oh he went to the doctor this time
yes duh
ok so he got hit by a car once on his bike he was on 9th east of provo and he was riding up hill on his bike and it was green for him to go but then there was a guy turning and didnt see him so he got hit
what
when he got hi hit he told me that he flew straight up in the air perfectly and then landed on his feet perfecly no injury except his bike was totally in wreckage was not able to salvage the bike so he got a new one
how old was he
which was a more dangerous bike because its a fixie he was like 18 or 19 i think
hes nuts
so thats my wild boyfriend foryou
you sure he's going to live till you die?
i could telll you a lot of crazy storeies about him lol no im not at all it frightens me a lot but hes a really smart guy and i have a ton of respect for him so im sure we will be fine. so i never told you about the detailed experience of my time in nantucket did i?
no i don't think so where is nantucket
so i told you i went over there to help my aunt open up two jewelry stores i think earlier. well when i was out there i was there for quiet awhile and i worked in tow differen
oh yeah
differnt locations on the island and ill give you a little backround on the island if you will the island is 14 by 3 miles long and is off the coast of cape cod
ok thats really small actually
its up aways from marthas vineyard if youve ehard of that
i can run around the island in 20 minutes never heard of it
its above new york and you have to take a 2 hour ferrie from the mainlaind to the island if you want to go out there. otherwise you have to be super rich and fly your private yahtct in lol no plane or yahtcht but thats by boat
hahah i was like fly a yacht?
i got confused for a second there. my apologies so once you get into this island there are roughly four places you can go theres a beach on surfside this is the side of island that faces the atlantic ocean so you get these huge waves and clusters of seals hanging out in the water which means lots a lots of great white sharks aka jaws was filmed around here lol
ooh scary
i was actually pretty terrified of that idea so i didnt get in the water too ofent unless there was a lifeguard around
big fish kind of scare me because they have so much strength
and no seals in sight
yeah I remember that you told me that you were scared of sharks
also i found out seals are actually pretty dangerous and can bite you and infect you because their teeth are pretty yucky actually so its a good idea to steer clear of them to that actually brings up a funny story
oh grosss
so when i was living on the island my only source of relief from my aunt was to go on runs that i would try to do daily or nearly that often i would run from the house we were living down to surfside beach and run along the beach i was dying of heat and the grey lady which is like a huge amount of fog that roles over the island and creates this nice isulated blanket on the island
that sounds like a good way to destress
which is honestly super surreal because its definitely quieter than normal and sometimes you can only see a couple feet in front of your face this time in paticular you could see a distance about 20 feet ahead of you and i was running down to the beach in the morning and no one else was awake yet and so it felt like i was on some alien planet with no in habitants
that is so eery I remember that happened one time in Utah in the winter and it was hard to breathe because the fog was too thick
and it was so nice a peaceful to run through the fog the condensation gathering on my skin helping me sweat mroe and cooling me off significantly i reached the beach and you couldnt even see the ocean from the edge of the sand it was so foggy
wow I bet that was a cool experience
so i slowly walked through the sand feeling the tension it created rolling out the nearly sore muscles in my calves and legs. it felt so good to walk through the sand after a good run one of the biggest things i miss aobut living by the ocean honestly. i really really vibe running next to the waves crashing it gave me energy and refreshed me
niceeee I love running on the beach and the sand in bare foot
so im super hot and i decide to jump into the waves to cool off they seemed so cold and refreshing and nothing is better than getting a nice salt bath after a good workout
it feels so good on my joints everywhere
so since the waves were so large there was a technique you had to use to get into the water so the waves didnt crash down on you super hard and break ontop of you you had to dive below the crescent of the wave and through it and pop out on the other side. so i did this which gives you a period of not being able to see anything for a minute because the water in nantucket was very very dark and murky unlink the water in florida t that was crystal clear and basically glass like and warm this water was much darker and also very choppy so i popped up on the other side of the wave and am just wading in the water letting the sweat leave my body and cooling off
that scary. The water is like that in Korea and california
im looking around but suddenly i get this really tense feeling im the only one on the beach no one else is around. so i became sort of frightened. i look over to my left and no more than five feet in front of me a dark head of a seal pops up and he looks over at me
oh my
wading in the water right next to me
goodness
i freak out cause im like oh great this guy is alone what is a shark chased him away from the pack and is somewhere near me
yeah holy crap that is so scary
so my heart drops because the last thing i want to become is a fillet of fish meal for a 20 foot great white and never be heard from again.
fillet of fish meal lol
so i let the next wave carry me into shore and after i get safely all in one piece onto the sand where im a good distance away from the water line i look back and my seal friend is gone. how scary is that. its almost as if i hallucinated it but i probably just scarred it and it took off after i swam away to shore. that was a very frightening moment to be all alone on that beach and experience that. i wonder if i would get more accustomed to it and not be so afraid the longer i lived on the island the lady that we lived with her name was dianne and her husbands name was george and they were an older couple could have been my grandparents age
I don't think you will get accustomed to that kind of thing just because you live on the island. I think you will need to actually experience more wild animal encounters to be used to it
she participated in triathalons on the island and would wake up every morning at 5 am to either run bike or swim
wow healthy lady
she would go to a shallower side of the island to swim 5 mile distances and hasnt been eaten yet yeah i know she would eat only paleo diet which was also vegan no meat it was pretty inspiring to me because she didnt let her age affect her
yeah she didn't at all
she was always a super big idol to me i always look to her example of how i want to be when i am older
she is an idol to me now jeez
i dont want to let my age define me so thats surfside.
I want to be healthy like that when I am old
there was also sconset which was way out of the other side of the island and my aunt had a shop there that was a little boutique/shack in a hotel that had an outdoor pool and a patio next to a bar and that was only about 50 feet to the ocean. it was so nice to work there especially because kids my age worked there as lifeguards and waiters and waitresses so i mad some friends while i was there during my down time in fact nantucket had a visa agreement with people from the upper eastern countries like bulgaria and moldovia that students could apply for a lottery to win a visa to come ou out and work for a summer and then travel for a couple months where ever they wanted to go in america.
yeah that lottery stuff is really tough to win so many people enter
it was pretty cool in fact there were a set of twins and always a super tall girl that i became friends with that said when they first saw me they thought i was also bulgarain because they said americans are never that pretty lol plus i had similar skin tone and facial characteristics to them so they thought i was one of them until they heard my awful american voice then they kenw i was america.
americans are never that pretty hahaha
they because some of my best friends on the island and i enjoyed working with them because they each had very interesting stories and came from such culturally diverse backrou backrounds that they had very different perspectives that i felt i learned a lot from getting to know them there is also the very tip of the island thats called madaket and there is a really big old hotel there thats super fancy that serves the best of the best of the best oysters on the island thats what everyone said
was it haunted? haunted hotel are legit hotels*
no it wasnt everything even though it was old was really well kept up because there was so much money on the island
old money
kids who lived on the east coast would go there just to work a summer job that would pay their entire 40 grand tuitions
theres lot of old money in the east what the heck you can just make a living off of that
yeah just caddies or valleting cars serving or selling in shops there were a lot of workers around amking good moeny i wish i could just do that every summer but you would definitely need good connections to make it work and a nice place ot live
I would actually love that
yeah it was really nice im jealous of people who get to live there year round they are lucky and have it made. on the east coast i mean.
yeah seriously that would be nice to not worry about finances
so then theres the wharf were you come in on the ferry thats also kind of the central hub of everything like where all the cute little shops are thats where the tourism is and where all the town events happen and get this so nantucket is the orginal whaling community
the original?
so the water used to be shallow enough to walk on a land bar out to nantucket in fact this is how its first inhabitants got there
thats cool
they were indians and they were the first people to whale
I feel like you would need big guns to whale and I wonder how they did it back then
they would use these huge towers they would make on the beaches to spot the whales then they would sent a crew out on the canoes they would build and spear the whale until it dead or close to it then i cant remember how they would get it on land
yeah
but they would use its blubber to light candles and fires
ohhh got cha whaling back then was a hardcore gig
infact whale blubber was the main source of lighting until the lightbulb was invented so this lead white men out to the island where they started whaling from there too their
did they over whale?
ships got more and more advanced and they would use them to chase the whales into the shallow area creatived by the way the island was formed and this is how the would kill th them at first
oh ok that makes sense
theres this think iside of a whale is that part of the gut
I was like they can just swim away
its called an ambergris.  found in sperm whales its the vomit of a whale that is a necessary ingredient for perfume and is worth a ton of money if you ever find one on a beach your garaunteed to be rich i think they sell for around 70 grand depending on the size thats roughly the size of a cantelope. crazy huh? its a lot of money if you ask me apparently it helps make the scent last longer pretty cool
that is so crazy thats a lot of dough
anyways so that really cool history about nantucket is you know that really famous book moby dick?
yeah i never read it though i don't read that much to be honest
that origanated from a story the author heard while on nantucket... actually the recently made a movie about it called the heart of the sea have you heard of it?
never you hitting me hard with these trivia trivias
yeah you should watch it sometime supposedly its suppossed to be pretty good stuff anyways so another cool fact is that as they got more and more evolved in whale hunting they would use these engines that ran off of oil that they had to build these huge oven for this would also help them process the whale fat so they wouldnt have to go into shore every time they caught a whale but as they would get these whales their ships would g get weighted down
mmm that makes sense
then they would carry the goods acrooss the seas to europe and sell it there and because they were taking all the whales of the ship their ship lost a lot of weight which is d dangerous in the big open sea because i you are in a storm and the waves are big and your ship has no bouancy its more likely to capsize.
so if the ship is lighter its bad?
yeas
ok
yes so when they stopped in europe they loaded cobblestones into the bottom of the ship to weight the ship down. and thats what would allow them to sail back home to nantucket saf safely because of this they would have to unload the cobblestones onto the island so to this day the streets in the town are completely cobblestone
huh that is really interesting
and it is such a wreck to drive on
oh hahaha i bet.
and they have serious issues with handicap accesibliity that they are always trying to figure out without ruining the histroical authenticity of the island itself
how is it hard for handicapped people?
its actually pretty interesting because their wheels can easily get stuck between the cobblestones
oh ok t
also there are mandatory building codes and you have to build your house out of ceder shingle style because thats how all the buildings are and same thing with the authenticit y side of it actually this is an interesting story because the whole reason the island is like this and also very popular with the rich is because during the 2008 housing bubble when the economy crashed a really rich investor decided to buy the entire island he saw a vision for what the island could be and made a lot of rules kind of like an hoa so that he could presserve this image he had for the island one of the bigger things is that when you are on the island you wil never see anything like a target or a gap or a yves st lauren even
because he wants to support local shops?
this island is only aloud to have local and small business owners that can own shops there because he wanted to have it not be taken over by department stores and ruined he w wanted to create a very special unique experience for rich billionaires to go and support small businesses and it also made those items more desirable and expensive because they were typically hand made or hand crafted
that is actually really cool!!!! I like this guys guy
specialty items that you could only find on the island so there were only small business owners my aunt being one of them was a gemologist who specialized in pearls so i helped her with her shops on the island and on the wharf we had a lot of neighbors. Let me tell you about them
okay lets hear it
there was a girl on her 20 who was graduating in communications in college and was opening a store called something like the smiley button that sold childrens clothes and her logo was a big red button and the sowing was the white smile. she was obviously funded by very very rich parents. there was a woman across the way from us that sold really expensive scarves and cashmere sweaters she was a drunk hahaha literally not a day went by that she wasnt drunk. in fact that was the case for most of the people that lived there year round. a lot of the vacationers that came to nantucket came for just pleasure so they would also just get drunk on the island and this created an ecosystem for the people that lived there that caused them to become alcoholics
ahaha thats so funny
yeah I guess haha there was also a man named pete who was on the other side of us who took the large deep sea fish that they would haul up onto the wharf to sell because you could make a lot of money selling an huge yellow fin tuna
yellow fins are so tasty
so he would take their bodies and put paint on them and take large sheet of bucher paper and lay the fish down on the paper he had yellowfin he had groupers he had crabs he had all sorts of fish prints
that is so cool
in fact he even had the print of an 11 foot shark
woahhh that is so big
it was huge and occupied the entire cieling of his tiny litttle shop on the wharf the first time i walked in there i looked up saw the shark and said pete
hahahaha
one day im going to buy that shark
haha how much was it?
then he proceeded ot tell me that it was worth 30000 dollars or some outrageous number and i was like yeah... duh i can do that just you watch so i continued alongside these people on the wharf selling my aunts jewlery
woah thats a lot of money and you are confident
and by the time the season was over i became pretty good friends with all of them and it was the day we were closing shop to return back to florida for the winter that we said goodbye to pete and the rest of the people who sold on that wharf and i walked into pete shop to say goodbye and he handed me a present i knew it was one of his frames an i knew this paticular size cost upwards of 100 dollars
awwwww that is so cool!
i said no pete i cant take this he said unwrap it so i did and it was a smaller version of the shark i wanted i was so flaberghasted
awww thats so awesome what a nice guy
i couldnt believe it! i nearly cried it meant so much so much to me i was so grateful because i thought it was such a beautiful piece later that year my aunt returned to nantucket for christmas stroll and when she returned back from nantucket she brought with her yet another present from pete this time it was a trio frame of all the fish local to florida. there was a yellow fin tuna a grouper and i cant remember what the other one was called. it meant so much to me that during the short time i was there i had made such deep connections with such good people that bring me to the wharf doggie
the wharf doggie?
there were an inhabitant of the wharf it was owned by a retired man named bob bob lived on the wharf above a shop so he got to charge the residents a decent sum to be able to sell stuff during the summer this pretty much allowed him to hang around including his dog without having to work for an income i loved having his dog on the wharf even though it was kind of stinky and it didnt seem like he washed it too often to be honest but it was good company non the less
what was the doggie's name?
i got to know him from his dog which for some reason i cant remember the name of unfortunaltely but one day he was bringing out oysters to everyone to eat and my aunt told me to ask him where he got them and he said he found them himself so i asked how how did you find them and he said well why dont i show you sometime?
cool! did you hunt to oysters?
then the next sunday he took me out to near madaket where there was shallow ponds that the water would flood into from the sea he taught me how to feel around for them with my feet and to see air bubbles coming up through the sand once you thought you found one you would dig down into the ground with your foot because the water was at least thigh deep in some areas once you would feel the clam youd dig it out with your foot
oh funnn it sounds like a chill job my grandma used to do that in korea because they are from a fishing town
i swear we caught more than 50 clams and when we got back to the wharf later in the day he cleaned them out which generally take a day for them to purge the mud inside of them by using salt once they purged all the mud and silt he would take and boil them and once they were boiled he would scrape out all the meat inside of them and put it into a pot and mix in all kinds of other ingredients like garlic and different veggie s he would create a yummy concoction and scoop it back into the shell before he handed them out to everyone on the dock it was awesome and tasted sooooo good and i learned something neat from him
mmmmmm that sounds so good have you read any books lately?
ummm yeah!
what ones
Its ready player one. Have you read it?
no tell me about it
so its a science fiction and it about a kid who lives in the future. I think its like 2070 or something like that when the earth resources are scarce and the rich are the only ones that really control everything well this kid grew up in a ghetto in Oklahoma this ghetto consisted of trailers that were stacked on top of each other and its was called the stacks obviously he was very poor but he was able to play a game called the oasis.
interesting
this game let you enter a world of endless possibilities. you could become a mage, a knight, a jedi, a fighter pilot, a world war 2 veteran hero, and anything you can think of you can be you can be in the world of Lord of the Rings, to Dungeons and dragons, to harry potter, to star wars. you name it well this kid was obviously very poor and all he did was spend time in the oasis. Oasis was really cool because they also had school in there where it was immmersive and it was free
thats cool sounds like an interesting book
if you were in the physiology class you can take a tour around the cardiovascular system in a magic school bus, if you want to check one of the moons that orbit around saturn he did not have the time to explore other world and level up and get good gear well the biggest thing in the book was that the creator of the game made a contest.
wow so cool
the contest was that there were 3 easter eggs that they would have to find and whoever finds all the eggs first would inherit all of the creator's fortune and would own the Oa Oasis basically if you owned the Oasis you owned the world because everyone played the game the only thing that was going for him in the Oasis and the contest was that he had a great knowledge of the creator and everything that he liked plus all the geeky and nerdy stuff you can think about he knew hey gotta go thank you so much for talking with me and listening to all my stires stories