On Tuesday morning we left early to beat the morning rush in metro St. Louis. We drove through Indianapolis. We got lunch at McD. Seth had trouble deciding what he wanted to eat because he refused all of what he offered though we knew he likes them- it had to be his idea. In the end, he had few bites of fries, nuggets and a burger. We drove through Dayton, OH instead of turning north directly at Indianapolis towards Marshall, MI (as recommended by AAA tripTik). The drive was quite a bit more entertaining than my last three drives between AA and Indianapolis, because there is just nothing north of Indianapolis. We made it to Toledo, OH in less than 8 hours and stopped by for early dinner (really early considering the time difference) at Amanda’s favorite restaurant Abuelo’s. We both thought that the quality had quite noticeably deteriorated since we ate there last. It seemed more authentic TexMex before, but it seemed more generic and “chain-like” this time around. Sort of like food from Applebees or Chili’s. Nothing wrong with those restaurants, just expectations are different.
We arrived at AA little past 6, at our friend Lyle’s home. Sarah and Amanda have had both of their boys within few weeks of each other, so we used to hang out a lot. Garcia’s may claim our friendship prior to their departure to NYC, but Lyle’s have definitely become our dearest friend at AA since. Their soon to be 4 year old boy Jonas peeked out as we approached their door, and from that time until we left, Andrew, Jonas, Seth and Charlie could be found entertaining and bothering each other from dawn to dusk. They were best friends before we left, and they still are. Not seeing someone you like so much when you are so little must be hard. I hope they continue to cherish their friendship for a long time. Amanda and Sarah went to to a bookclub that night, so I put kids (except Charlie who his grandmother helped) go to sleep. Andrew and Jonas slept in a tent together in the basement, and Seth on a mattress next to it. It took quite a while until their adrenaline worn off, but it wasn’t very hard to put them to sleep.
The mission of this trip was to accomplish one thing: Amanda to successfully defend. Though it is generally true that when one has come further along enough to schedule a defense, that his/her dissertation would likely be approved by the committee. It was nonetheless nerve-wrecking to have arranged everything remotely from St. Louis. Jeff (Amanda’s advisor)’s dad had a stroke couple of weeks before Amanda’s defense, and unfortunately passed away few days before her defense. Although Jeff assured that he was going to be there for the defense and that everything will go as planned, we felt that there still may be a lot of uncertainties. From my experience Rackham (the umbrella graduate school that all Michigan PhDs are processed) was fairly helpful when met with officers in person, but Amanda’s experience was quite different in that only people she could correspond to over phone or email were the front desk personnel whose goals weren’t to make students job easier. Then there were committee members, the Engineering school staff, etc. So she spent Wednesday sorting out the logistics for her defense and filing written and oral dissertation forms. I had about a half an hour to visit my old lab with kids while she was at Rackham (but my old boss and few members of the lab was at the conference across the street so I could not catch up with everyone). We also went to Costco to pick up hors d'œuvre for the defense.
On the morning of defense (Thurs, Apr 28), I took Andrew and Jonas to Jonas’s preschool, where Andrew also met and played with this former nursery buddy Carter Ward (and technically River Holman also). Seth went to a first step class with Sarah and Charlie. Amanda took what’s left to clear and prepare her mind for the defense. I dragged Jonas and Andrew to Zingermann’s delicatsen (the best US deli that I’ve been to yet) on the way back to grab the infamous Reuben for Amanda and arrived home shortly after noon. Ro Givens and her kids (Caleb and Sophie) stopped by for a quick lunch at the Lyle’s and we decided that we are all going to go. The presentation was set at 2pm so we (Amanda, Andrew, Seth and I) got ready and drove there an hour early to set up food in the conference room. Thankfully there was another conference room behind it so we set decided to entertain kids there. Michigan starts everything 10min late, but apparently Engineering is even more notorious for doing everything late. One of her committee member showed up at 1:55pm, Jeff showed up at 2pm, along with Amanda’s friends in Jeff’s lab and Doug (Amanda’s co-advisor)’s lab. There apparently was another LDS guy that showed up (I didn’t know him), who Amanda has chatted with when he was considering attending Michigan Engineering PhD program (and so he apparently decided to attend) two years back. One of the committee members Clayton Scott didn’t show up even at 2:10pm, so Jeff called him and he finally showed up. Overall, there were around 30 people at her defense, which is pretty good show for a defense. The defense started 2:15-20pm-ish. Sarah and Ro with their kids showed up around 2:25pm. We were unsure how we were going to go in there, but we decided to take a rotational approach, which worked out well in the end. I was there probably from 30min in till the end (3:30pm?) so I got to see the most of it. After her presentation and a brief Q&A (which was basically throughout her presentation), the committee and Amanda stayed another 30min or so to discuss her defense further. In the end, she passed with flying colors, got some wonderful comments and applause (one said that her first 3 slides were the best MRI intro she has ever heard presented). Edits for her written defense (which is like 300 pages) were pretty minor.
It seemed surreal that it finally was all over. I was pretty ecstatic about it. She was certainly happy, too but more in disbelief that it’s actually done. I cannot tell you how hard it has been to see her suffer and me unable to help. Writing code is a very isolating process that others can do very little to help. The problem is so beyond complex it wasn’t even remotely possible for me to give any useful inputs. I may have listened to her reasoning processes to help her clear minds or to help come up with possible solutions to her calculus, but it really is all magic to me. She ran out of greek alphabets to use in her equations! I know she’d say she couldn’t do it without me, but the reverse is all true. She has really done this all by herself. Even professionally speaking, reading codes written by others is really a practically impossible task at this level, so her advisor really could do little to help figure out nuts and bolts of her algorithms. She’s been under a lot of pressure especially the last few years after Seth was born, struggling with constant guilt not being able to give undivided attention (not time-wise because she has been a full-time mom, but effort-wise because she was exhausted). Working on research project that she enjoyed little (note, everyone hates their projects by the time they graduate), living on low-income in a small 900sqft apartment in yet more isolating yuppy neighborhood. Many has asked and continually to ask her/us what her plan is now that she now has PhD, but we are really now starting to figure that out. It was inconceivable to figure out what we wanted to do in a state of mind that we were until she has actually defended. Now that it’s over, Amanda’s more hopeful, enthusiastic, and energetic about her independent career as an engineer/educator. We’ll see where this path will take us.
We originally planned that we leave AA that evening, which is what ended up happening. We were worried that we were rushing out of town, but it ended up working out just fine. I think we would miss AA and friends regardless of how abundantly we had time to spend and say farewell, and we felt that we were able to do that sufficiently. We felt we were able to catch up with most of our dear friends while we were there, at the bookclub, Meg Motts visiting us, etc. After defense we went back to the Lyle’s, packed up and went to dinner at the Palm Palace on the Carpenter Rd. Nathaniel and Ro et al., were also able to come along so we had one wild party with 6 of our children. We missed Sarah’s mom because she left for the Royal wedding viewing party (as she’s a canook, and so is Sarah). We will probably be back for her graduation next year.
So we left AA at 7pm EST, and arrived at Dunes Park, IN at 10:30pm, checked in, and went to bed. The next day we made a trip to Chicago. We had to leave AA so early because I had to pick up my passport at the Japanese consulate in Chicago. We didn’t want to drive/park into downtown Michigan Ave (which was a wise choice), so instead we parked at the Dunes park train station and rode the offpeak train to the Millenium park. We arrived at the consulate right before the lunch break, so I could get my passport, registered to vote and pick up some paperwork to apply a Japanese citizenship for a child#3. The consulate was located in the XXth floor in the high-rise behind a Neiman Marcus, in a small office. This 250sqft reception office had a metal detector that was placed in the side of the room, instead of at the entrance. Spatially, it didn’t seem to do its job as anyone interested in actually bringing any firearms would probably be interested in first shooting its target rather than making a detour trip to the metal detector. Regardless, the security there was visibly bored out of his mind, because he was the only non-Japanese that was there that didn’t speak Japanese (and you know Japanese only speaks Japanese when they are amongst Japanese). He seems to have a very proficient knowledge in the bible, and cited many scriptures off his mind about the end of the days and the natural disaster (yeaup, that kind of a dude…except lot more sincere and actually not too crazy). Andrew is very vocal about his faith and relationship with Jesus, so they hit off in the conversation about how he wishes all the world and know that Jesus loves you always so don’t disappoint him, etc.
We were going to go to Pizzeria Uno (the original, not the gimmick Pizzeria Uno that has a watered-down chicago deep dish pizza) but got too hungry to walk all the way over there (counterintuitive but would make sense if one knows that the line to wait for seats). So instead we took a bus to the Shedd Aquarium (which totally makes sense because there are a lot of restaurants in that area…not). The coupon wizard (and PhD now), Amanda found a buy-one-get-one-free, so we got in there for 50 bucks instead of 80 bucks. The place, in my opinion, has sketchy business ordeal because prices on the board shown above the ticket booth only has displays options for combo tickets which are significantly more expensive, and you could only get a price for normal tickets if you ask for them. Anyway, the place was awesome, as expected. We had lunch, which was actually pretty awesome, too. Then we took a train back to the Dune Park. BTW kids loved trains. They had so much fun on the way (they both sat by me and Amanda several rows ahead) and fell asleep like half standing. Friday nights are movie night, so we got Little Caeser’s Hot N’ Ready and watched “Honey I shrunk the kids” which I’ve never seen it before, and it was so awesome and 80’s that I watched to the very end.
The following day, we stopped by at the Dunes, where we went with Tomo 5 year ago. Kids loved running around the sandy mountain. Andrew did really well climbing up mountains all by himself. It was quite difficult on those sandy slope. We also stopped at Mt. Baldy, the tallest sand dunes in the Indiana Dunes. It was quite a different sight from when we visited with Tomo. It definitely lost lots of sand. Maybe 20%? I am afraid it is no longer the most impressive sight on the Indiana Dunes. After we visited the dunes, we drove back towards St. Louis. We stopped by at Springfield, IL to visit Lincoln’s presidential museum. It was really well done. Springfield is a nice little town, we will be back for more to see the rest of the town in a near future, I hope.
