SF: UC Berkeley

Hub arrived in SF two days after we did. As it was early evening, CY drove us to the University Of California, Berkeley because it was 15 minutes from her house. I had a photo of the sign that listed the number of world prizes UC Berk (also known as Cal) has won, but you know what, I've lost nearly 1000 photos through bad transfer from memory cards to a new hard drive. Don't ask me the details, I'm still upset over it. Whatever, you may know  that UC Berk is rated among the top 4 universities in America/the world (it is the best public university in USA) but did you know that it has won 70 Nobel Prizes, 45 MacArthur Fellowships, 11 Pulitzer Prizes, 20 Academy Awards, its lab discovered 16 chemical elements, more than any other university in the world, and its student-athletes have won over 100 Olympic medals? Moreover. the university has over 130 academic departments and 700 student groups. According to a recent report, UC Berk has the highest number of top-ranked doctoral programs in the US. Take that, Harvard and Stanford and Yale and MIT. Oxford and Cambridge who?

The UC Berk campus lived up to my expectations. It was exactly like how I imagined it to be, from the movies and books. The whole campus still has this strong liberal feel, 5 decades after the Free Speech Movement and Vietnam War protests, which started right there on UC Berk. We drove past sorority and fraternity houses which are so distinctive of American universities; I've always wanted to experience sorority life but I know I'm not wild enough for it. It's very hard to park and the campus is huge (499 ha/1232 ac) so by the time we parked, the daylight was nearly out. We did walk to some of the buildings and walked on the streets but it was too late to get the UC Berk T-shirt that I've always wanted. Maybe because of that, I ended up buying half a dozen Stanford Uni shirts and caps a week later, only to give them all away. While I was thoroughly awed by Stanford and wished I was smart enough to study there, I think I'll be more at home in UC Berk. It's my democrat leanings. Besides, UC Berk is more casual and fun.




This is Phi Gamma Delta House.


Phi Kappa Tau.


Pi Beta Phi








There's a Daiso too!


And a dim sum truck. The guy's dim sum are just USD2.50 each basket but he was closing so we couldn't get a bite.


Protests are daily affairs.


In both UC Berk and Stanford, there were many buildings named after Chinese/Asians. Asian students seem to outnumber other students in UC Berk, while at Stanford, there were less Asians.




These signs with telephone numbers just remind me so much of university days.



I always walk away from universities happy that those dreams about not being ready for exams are just nightmares, and that there is life after uni but as I walked away from UC Berk, I couldn't help but thought: What if I had studied here instead?