AlbertLiang.net — Blog

Yesterday was the beginning of a new chapter: I moved to Ann Arbor! Off to start my PhD career here… excited and a little bit worried. More excited to be starting a “brand new life,”, but a little worried because there are too many unsettled issues… work that I didn’t finish in Houston, classes I haven’t picked here in UM yet. But enough of that, the trip up here was far more interesting:

There was a brilliant lightning storm the night before. (Note: while I didn’t intentionally copy his idea, I was probably heavily influenced by a similar photoshoot that Tony Yang did recently.)

Checking-in my baggage for the flight went a little bit less than smooth. The check-in agent actually measured my luggage and found it to be too large. The maximum width+length+height is 61″. She told me mine was 62″ and I had to get rid of 1″ or she would charge me $39. (Seriously?) I ended up taking my pillow out of my luggage, and traveled the next 7 hours looking like this:

On the plane ride over (first time takine AirTran… I like them. They remind me of JetBlue/SWairlines type customer service and fun), the gate agent ran onto the plane at the last minute and said, “I’m looking for Cinderella. You left your brown leather shoes in the waiting area. Cinderella, your shoes are at the front.”

Back to my pillow incident… on my 2nd leg flight from Atlanta -> Detroit, I sat next to 2 Air Force cadets, clad in their spiffy blue uniforms, hats, and pins. I, on the other hand, sat next to them in my basketball shorts and bright-blue starry pillow.

Landed in Ann Arbor and my friend Karen gave me a ride! (How nice of her, considering she lives in Detroit!) We went roaming around campus with Eric Yu, pretty much eating the whole way, and ran into this on the floor of the central campus diag:

We hung out at a local pub (Brown Jug?) and the waitress recommended a pitcher of this cider+beer blend (don’t remember the cider name, and the beer was New Castle). It was pretty good! I rarely like beer, but I cider+beer tastes awesome.

Crashed at BW3s for the rest of the night, munching on potato wedges and pepper-infused wings. Saw this:

Finally, the night ended at my temporary residence for the next 2 weeks: (it’s quite comfy!)