Hmm, it's been a while since I updated this thing. First term went pretty well this year, although I'll probably post about it later, and make this post about more recent things.

CHMMC is going well. We planned for about 30 teams, and we have 29 teams registered as of the regular registration deadline. The first drafts of the tests are almost ready, our sponsors have agreed to donate a good number of prizes, and it looks like we've got enough money to cover everything. Hooray! The only big thing left is planning the day of the contest...whee!

In other news, I'm in Asia visiting my dad and brothers who now live in Brunei. On the way here I spent half a day in Hong Kong, which was supercool. I took a train and a ferry to get a good view of all the tall buildings in Hong Kong. I wandered around a bit in a touristy area, and ate lunch in a superlarge shopping mall. It would be good to go back there and see more of the nontouristy bits.

Anyways, my family and I went to Malaysia to see the rainforest, which was supercool. There were some ridiculously huge caves, and one had a fairly wide river inside. We only saw a little of a couple caves, and apparently if you make reservations ahead of time you can spend a day going through the longer caves with a guide. There were also plenty of pretty stalactites and stalagmites and other cool formations. Also, one cave had a ridiculous number of small bats. Around sunset they all left to go hunting and there were so many of them they looked like long whispy quickly moving gray clouds in the sky. I got some pretty nifty videos using 40x zoom. There were also lots of all sorts of plants and insects and birds (the birds were usually hidden in the trees, but they were quite noisy). The weather was warm and superhumid, but I enjoyed it because I was a little tired of the cool dry weather that's in Pasadena at this time of year. The superdense vegetation was also a nice contrast with my usual adventures to the Mojave desert.

Anyways, now I'm back in Brunei. The beach looks very enticing, but I hear there are superextrapoisonous jellyfish, so nobody really swims there :-( My brothers are cool, and Zach, the littlest one, is supercute. (The last time I saw him he was just a couple weeks old and so he wasn't cute yet then.) Zach currently enjoys screaming superloudly and superhigh-pitched when he's happy, especially when Sasha (my 8 y.o. brother) is around. Yikes! Also, I'm nineteen and a half years older than Zach, and nineteen years older than Natan, my half-brother on my mom's side. Also, I have four brothers and no sisters. Generations are so weird sometimes...

Anyways, off to work on the contest, my JC application, and my paper. Lots to do this break!