First Week of School = Movies and Glee

Deviating from my usual blog posts, I decided to have sub-sections of my posts, for easier identification of the topic being discussed:

School:
First week of school was okay. This week, I volutneered for the LS Bookstore, for the last time in my life. The Bookstore volunteering has been part of my life whenever a regular semester starts, from the second semester of first year up to now. I met a lot of friends through the bookstore.

CS 268 - Modeling and Simulation - I might enjoy this class. Different from my programming classes before, I guess.
AMF 241 - Stochastic Calculus II - Continuation of AMF 240. Last of the hardcore Maths of AMF.
AMF 272 - Risk Management - Finally, the subject which is one of the core of Mathematical Finance courses (or so I believe)
MA 295J.6 - Advanced Operations Research - Thew new CHED rules require O.R. subjects in undergrad. As we didn't have one in the undergrad subjects, I believe that having this as an elective now is just the right move. And I am enjoying this class!

Movies:
As there's still not much to do, school just started this week, and our projects are just beginning to pile-up, I had the chance to watch more movies.

I watched disaster movies, again! This time focusing on volcanic eruptions. I watched Volcano starring Tommy Lee Jones, which was released a few months after Dante's Peak was released. It features a volcano suddenly appearing in downtown LA. The movie has quite a number of scientific loopholes which makes it somehow a failure compared to Dante's Peak.

Next are three BBC/Discovery Channel docu-drama on Volcanoes. The first one is Supervolcano which tackled the possibility of the Yellowstone Caldera erupting. It is believed that the volcano is erupting every 700,000 years. It is now about 640,000 years since the volcano erupted. And from my research, the caldera is swelling in the last few years (although it has decreased its movement in the past year). Will it ever erupt? We'll never know... yet.

The second docu-drama is Krakatoa: The Last Days. I have heard stories before about Krakatoa, an island-volcano in between the islands of Sumatra and Java in Indonesia. The whole island disintegrated after a VEI 8 (same level as Mt. Pintubo's eruption in 1991) explosion which lasted for days. The docu-drama featured just that, the last days of Krakatoa. Today, with continuous eruption, the volcano is once again alive, now known as Anak Krakatoa, or the Son of Krakatoa.

The third docu-drama I watched is Pompeii: The Last Day. The movie features the 19th century eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in Naples, Italy. The whole city and a nearby city was wiped out. With the collpase of the bottom part of the mountain towards the sea, cities opposite the bay were also affected. The movie ends with a cryptic message, that now people have once again come close to the foot of the volcano, but this time, with the population up to 3.5 million people.

Perhaps the only movie that I watched in the past weeks which isn't a disaster movie is the movie Shelter. A friend of mine watched the movie, and I thought why not watch it as well. It's about a guy gifted with the artistic talent who's stuck in the suburbs as he turned down a scholarship from CalArts due to his family situation. They're not well-off, and he and her sister had been working in low-paying jobs to remain afloat. He meets his bestfriend's older brother, who serves as his inspiration to get out of the suburbs, and live a life of his own, without sacrificing his family.

Glee:
Episode 5: The Rocky Horror Show
I didn't like this episode that much. It's a tribute to Rocky Horror, and I haven't watched Rocky Horror. I don't know the story as well. I liked some of the performance, but story-wise, we don't get much from the characters.

Episode 6: Never Been Kissed
This is another emotional episode, I guess. We get to see more story, less performance, which in itself is okay. It is a stark difference from Episode 5. I believe that this episode is one of the good ones. We saw Coach Beiste's humanity when she cried, and uncovered a human side of her. We saw Kurt's struggles in being the only openly-gay student in McKinley HS. Kurt visited Dalton Academy, where he saw a huge difference in treatment of gays. In Dalton, there's a zero-tolerance policy, which makes gays an accepted member of the community. No bullying, no discriminaton. I believe that Kurt will finally get what he wants with Dalton.

Hanging questions:
1. Will Kurt transfer?
My Answer: Perhaps. I have a feeling that Kurt might transfer, and instead of seeing McKinley HS, we might see both schools featured in the show. We saw how Kurt felt happy and how accepted he feels in Dalton.
2. If ever Kurt transfers, who will replace him?
My Answer: Sunshine Corazon? Another person from school as a stand-in? I really don't know. Rumor has it that Sunshine Corazon is staying with Vocal Adrenaline.