Bernie Zang

Ahh yes, tis the wonderful time of year when I make my yearly pilgrimage to my parent’s house in Morgantown, WV.  I’ve only been here 4 days and I’m pretty sure I’ve gained a few pants sizes.  The weather here is unusually warm and I’m quite peeved that there was no snow for Christmas (heck, there’s no snow anywhere).  While the usual Morgantownish sorts of things have been aggravating me, there are always certain things that come as a surprise.

Every year my parents and their friends get together to celebrate fake Chinese Christmas.  This holiday usually involves dumplings, spring rolls, and hot pots.  I tend to avoid this gathering every year due to the lack of people of my age.  However this year, the food called to me and I decided to go eat and escape as soon as humanly possible.  This year, however, I was pleasantly surprised; my 2 old friends, Bo and Cindy, decided to make an appearance.  Both Bo and Cindy are children of friends of my parents.  During my high school days, we spent many a weekends together in Bo’s basement playing ping pong and pool, and watching movies.  I must say, lots of interesting memories.  Anyways, I haven’t seen them in about 4 years, the last time being another Christmas party.  Bo, who is about 4 years younger than me, is probably the most changed.  He’s quite a bit taller and in much better shape than I am.  Cindy on the other hand, hasn’t changed at all.  Quite an amazing feat for someone who is as well traveled and successful as she is.  We had a great time catching up and for a couple of hours it was like we never left and it was just another weekend in high school hanging out.

People rarely get the opportunity to whole heartedly relive past lives, but for me that night was just that.  For those few hours all my worries were replaced with something that I haven’t really experienced for a while.  Once you leave home, it’s hard to go back to a state where you don’t think about your responsibilities and look towards the future.  But every once in a while it’s good to clear your head and just spend time with old friends.

For the 2 people who actually read this, Merry Holidays and see you all in the New Year!

Over the past few months I’ve been working with some friends and fellow students on the planning of a symposium at my college. This is the 3rd year that it has been running, and I do have to say, this is going to be the best year yet. This year we have Peter Norvig, head of Google Research, and Joyce Bromberg, head of workplace innovations at Steelcase, keynoting for us. Also different from previous years, the symposium will be a 2 day event and is going to be held at the Nittany Lion Inn. You can check out the website at http://gradsymp.ist.psu.edu .

This Friday is the submission deadline so I urge everyone who is a student at Penn State to submit something