Subway

I have been eating at Subway restaurants for over twelve years, and it's been one of the most consistent features of my foodscape. I remember when Subway first came to my hometown of Washington, North Carolina with its strange maps on the wall and elongated hotdog-like sandwiches full of things other than meat. In Washington, where your only other dining options included places like McDonald's, KFC, Bill's Hotdogs, and Hank's All-you-can-eat Barbecued Ribs and Deep-friend Fatback, Subway was this strange Connecticut Yankee creation dropped down into our stripmall as if it fell off a truck on the way to a retirement home in Miami.

It was many years before I realized that the maps on the wall were of the New York City subway system and finally understood the name.

I do not remember the first time I went to Subway. My mom never went there (even though it WAS right in front of the Walmart), so I don't ever remember going there with her. The first time may have actually been when I was on a date. Yes, a date. I seem to remember eating at Subway with my first girlfriend before watching a movie at the theatre across the street. On a subsequent date, we went to K-Mart. I bought a Bon Jovi album. No, I'm not kidding. I wouldn't joke about Bon Jovi. Anyway, perhaps it was the excitement of sweaty hand holding and awkward movie theatre back row shenanigans that earned Subway my unrelenting loyalty for so long. Or maybe it was just those chewy chocolate chip cookies.

The thing I like about fast food restaurants is that it's OK to be alone, and since (1) I was frequently alone and hungry, (2) I really dislike most fast food restaurants (gotta maintain my Charles Atlas figure), and (3) I'm not very good with the whole "buy things at the grocery store so you can eat them" concept, I've always wound up, one way or another, at Subway.

I'm a creature of habit, and all these years I've eaten the same sandwich. The only thing that will change is its length: 6 inches if I'm not too hungry, 12 inches if I'm pretty hungry or if I'm in one of my "gotta eat more so I can bulk up and impress the ladies" phases. Chicken breast on honey oat bread, lettuce, green peppers, onions, cucumbers, salt/pepper (they put them in the same shaker...so clever!), mayo, and an brief spike in blood pressure accompanied with a polite but firm "No, no...I said green PEPPERS" as the server’s hand starts to reach for the pickles (blech). Two chocolate chip cookies. Small Pepsi.

Washington
I remember the old Subway in Washington, where I would go sometimes by myself after I had a car, or I would go with friends to discuss the news of the day after exploring the wonders of Walmart. They added a drivethrough window and it was here that I first perfected the art of eating a sub while driving. I think this restaurant was eventually shut down due to health code violations. Shame. Eventually though, they put a Subway IN the Walmart. Brilliant.

Hillsborough St.
Then there was the Subway on Hillsborough St. in Raleigh across from campus. I used to go there during my freshman year because it was close to my dorm (Sullivan Hall). I remember this one in particular because it was a tiny restaurant sandwiched (no pun intended) between two other stores which had successive addresses (2808 and 2809). Luckily, the post office is no stranger to fractions though, and so they addressed the Subway as 2808 ½. I got a kick out of that. I remember coming here between classes one time and reading a book that a friend had loaned me called “The Emporer’s New Mind”. Louis was always reading books that were over my head. But I remember there was a chapter on fractals, the Mandelbrot set, in particular. I was so intrigued by the simplicity of the formula for generating the Mandelbrot set that I pulled out my laptop and, over a sub and an ice cold Pepsi, wrote a Matlab program implementing it and I actually got it to generate Mandelbrot figures. I felt smart.

ECPI
As a freshman I was working on a startup company and doing a lot of software development with Microsoft's .NET platform. For the hell of it, I decided to take the Microsoft certification exams because I thought this would increase my job marketability later on. In a way, this did actually pay off for me, as I think it was one of the main reasons that I got an internship at ABB, and a lot of good things ended up coming out of that internship. Anyway, I’m now a Microsoft Certified Application Developer, woo! I also earned an A+ Certification for PC repair. I would take these exams at night at ECPI Technical College in North Raleigh, and I'd always cram for them several hours before in the Subway across the street. They were multiple choice and really pretty simple, so just a few hours with one of those exam prep books from Barnes and Noble would do the trick. While nibbling on my cookies I'd flip through pages on Web Services and SQL Server management. Sounds awfully innane now, but I really enjoyed it at the time. It was always a nice quiet evening and at the end of it, I had a sense of accomplishment. I only failed one exam – the one on SQL Server Database Architecture. Actually, I knew quite a bit about this topic, so I was really disappointed when I failed. I never re-took the exam. Anywa, microsoft would send me these little certificates and lapel pins. I think this was more of a money making gimmick for Microsoft. I don’t know that employers really pay much attention to these certifications.

Western Blvd.
There was another Subway near campus, on Western Blvd, which I would frequent later after I’d moved off-campus. I remember there was a guy from Syria who worked nights there, and he worked on campus during the day and took classes. He was nice. Actually, the store was primarily staffed by middle easterners. You had to go in if you wanted to get your order right though. They were hopeless with the drivethrough speaker. For my last two years of college, my dining choices often came down to: Subway vs Bojangles. Typically, my health-conciousness would win and I'd go for subway.

Checkpoint Charlie
I spent three months in Cork, Ireland, which did not have a Subway restaurant. It was a dark time in my life. But I do remember going to the one in Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie. I don’t really eat a lot of American fast food while I’m traveling, honest. But when I saw the restaurant I started craving those cookies. And they had ice! I really enjoyed that lunch.

Kinston
During my last year at NC State, I was a TA for a class which we broadcasted to a few community colleges, including one in Kinston. As part of this class, I would actually drive to Kinston and teach lab exercises to a small group of students there. I really enjoyed this, and the pay wasn’t bad. It was a 2 hour drive, and I’d get reimbursed for mileage and paid for the time I was on the road. I listened to a few audiobooks on the road that semester: 1984, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Kinston was small and rural like my hometown, though it’s primarily a military town. After teaching each week, I’d go to the Subway there. The guy that ran the place was always enthusiastic and well-spoken. He must have gone to business school at UNC (at least he had a UNC sticker on his car). Once, I remember him selling me on three cookies instead of my usual two because it was only, he argued, "20 cents more". He said that in business school they taught him that was called a "value added proposition". I’m not really sure what that means. But nevertheless, I sprung for the extra cookie.

New York City
It wasn’t until I visited a subway in New York that I finally noticed that the maps on the wall were of New York City. Candice and I took a trip through New England and we ate at the subway next to our hotel a couple of times. I remember thinking how remarkable it was that the sandwiches were the same price as what I was used to yet clearly the operating costs of the restaurant must have been much higher. How do they do that? Probably has something to do with “value added propositions”.

Utah
The sketchiest Subway I’ve ever visited was in southern Utah, on my way to California. Will and I were in the middle of nowhere. Like, imagine one of those panoramic photos of Mars. Now imagine, in the middle of that photo, there’s a Subway restaurant. The staff was strange--white as the driven snow (figuratively and literally). Actually, speaking of Mars, they looked a bit like extras in the movie Total Recall-- unhappy and oxygen-deprived. The person manning the cash register couldn’t have been over 13 years old. There was this map on the wall with pushpins all over the place indicating all the places where customers had come from. I found it hard to believe that anyone from Togo or central Greenland had visited this particular Subway location.

Berkeley
During my first couple of years in Berkeley, I’d frequent the Subway on San Pablo Ave in Albany. I liked this one much more than the Subway on Telegraph in Berkeley, which just smelled like pot and incense (not that I’m opposed to either, but when I’m eating a sandwich I just want to smell..the sandwich), or the one downtown, which is always cramped and hot. I would sort of wander around sometimes, driving without a destination. Sometimes I did this on Sunday afternoons while my laundry was going at the laundromat. Invariably, I’d end up at the Subway in Albany, talking to mom on the phone. I think this was when she got the idea to put Subway gift cards in my stocking for Christmas.

UCSF
I came to hate these gift cards. Half the time, I would give them the card and they wouldn’t actually apply the money on the card to my meal. Instead, they’d give me “points” or some bullshit. So as you accumulate points, you get free sandwiches and what-not. But whatever, I just wanted to get rid of the card. It got really frustrating because this kept happening, and I could not get rid of my card. Finally, I was at the Subway at UCSF Parnassus and I told the cashier explicitly: please use the money on the card. And when I got the receipt, I saw that he still charged me the full price for the sandwich. So I took note of the difference, and when I came back the next week (Rick and I were going to the UCSF Subway each week when we went to our anatomy class), I just gave him the card and only enough extra cash to cover the difference. I just told him to figure it out. That’s how I finally got rid of that damn card.

The gift card scam wasn’t the only thing that started irritating me about Subway. The thing that really got to me was when they started automatically toasting my sub when I didn’t ask for it. Before Quizno’s “mmm-mmm-mmm toasty” bullshit came along, Subway didn’t even have toasters. Then they started offering the option to toast your sub. I guess most people prefer toasted subs. But I don’t like it. Anyway, now they don’t even ask. They just assume that’s what you want. And half the time they don’t even listen when you say “not toasted”. I think as a consequence of everyone toasting their subs, the bread quality has suffered. It’s not as soft as it used to be. It just tastes stale and flavorless. It’s funny because when I was dating Candice, this was always her complaint with Subway and I just thought she was crazy. But now I’m starting to agree.

I don’t go to Subway very often anymore. I’m not ending our relationship; we’ve been through too much. But it just doesn’t draw me in like it used to. Maybe it’s the decline in quality. Maybe it’s because I live in a place with so many other better options for decently healthy food. Or maybe it’s because I’m not eating alone nearly as frequently as I used to. Or maybe, after all these years, I’m finally just tired of it.

Berkeley is Cheap

So the latest round of protests on the Berkeley campus is over the recent 30% hike in tuition, bringing in-state tuition to around $10k. That definitely sucks for those paying the bills, but people really need to view this in a broader context. The cost of attending a four-year college needs to be weighed against a handful of other factors including: availability of need-based aid, average debt upon graduation, quality of education (student/faculty ratios and all that jazz), average time to graduation. The folks at Kiplinger put together a ranking every year that does some of this:

Kiplinger's Best Value Colleges

Woah! How about that? The various University of California schools rank right at the top of this list of the most economical schools in the nation. How can that be? Berkeley is, after all, the most expensive university on this list! But the university covers 88% of students' financial need (meaning, it provides that much in grants, not loans). Furthermore, 1/3 of this tuition hike is going towards financial aid, so those who are really in need will be taken care of.

Also, keep in mind that this only lists the top 100. So any university on this list is a deal. A couple universities not on this list are the University of Michigan, which charges in-state students about $13k, and Penn State, which weighs in at $14.5k.

Now, I went to a cheap school (NC State). It's often cited as one of the best value colleges in the country (Princeton Review ranked it 2nd!). Tuition there is currently around $5500/year. But it actually falls slightly behind Berkeley on this list in the only two metrics that (in my opinion) truly matter: percent of financial need met (81% versus 88%) and average student debt upon graduation ($14,930 versus $14,453). Furthermore, I doubt anyone would argue that NC State is a better school that Berkeley. Hell, according to the Chinese, Berkeley's the best public school in the world (and 3rd overall). Wouldn't you expect it to cost a little more than average?

So yes, Berkeley will cost you a lot if you have a lot to pay. The philosophy of a public university is that it should be financially accessible to everyone in the state while keeping the quality of education as high as possible. The only way to do this is to make people pay in proportion to their income. Private schools do it too. Sure, "tuition" might be the same for everyone, but poor folks get some or all of that money diverted back to them.

If you're rich you might complain about this policy. But as a general rule, if you're rich, you really shouldn't complain about things. If you're poor, you've probably got nothing to worry about because your financial aid will go up to cover the tuition increase. Those folks in the middle--the ones who's FAFSA tells them they can afford X but for whatever reason X is just too high (I was in this category)--are the ones who will suffer the most (and generally ARE the ones to suffer the most in any economic crunch). But if you do well, there are scholarships. Apply for them! There are tons of them out there. And as a last resort, there are loans. College loans! What a wonderful concept: pay for college at a later date, when, thanks to your degree, you can actually afford it!

Nobody should ever say "I can't go afford to go to such-and-such college". I believe that if you're a good student you can attend any college in America. Period. But you've got to work for it. That's the American way.

iTunes U

I find this absolutely amazing: http://www.apple.com/support/itunes_u/

You can watch entire courses from about 100 universities in virtually any discipline...free. MIT has been doing this for a while with OCW, and a few other universities followed suit. But there are so many today, and to see them all together in one place is really astounding. It really raises the question (which has been around since the beginning of the whole distance ed thing): what will happen to conventional brick-and-mortar classroom instruction? What does it mean to go to a top-tier university, when the essential product of that university is freely available? I'd say undergrads these days get a substantial portion of their education from textbooks and the web anyway. The classroom is mostly there to provide a framework and set the bar for evaluation. So now students have the option to watch lectures from the best teachers in the world. And they can repeat/pause/fast-forward...whatever. Even assignments and tests are posted online. So who needs a professor?

The really great thing is you can download these to your iPhone or iPod and watch them on the go, and you can even speed them up and cram entire lectures in 20 minutes. David in my lab has been watching a polymer rheology class from Michigan Tech at 2.5X. He's gone through an entire semester of lectures in a few weeks. This reminds me of when Neo first plugs into the Matrix and they download a bagillion martial arts styles into his brain. Except David emotes.

NCSU is conspicuosly absent. Come on, Tom Miller.

Berkeley Science Review

So, this semester I joined the editorial staff of the Berkeley Science Review. I'd seen the magazine around campus before and was always impressed with the quality of the articles. Now I understand why it's so polished: A LOT of effort goes into it. The articles each go through around 5 revisions. We meet with the authors one-on-one (typically more than once), all the editors read and discuss each article fairly thoroughly--once at the beginning and once at the end of the process, and each article gets combed over by 3 different editors, who provide feedback to the author at different stages. It's been a pleasure to work with the staff and the authors, and I've learned about research topics at Berkeley that I probably would have never had any exposure to otherwise. Our latest issue is out. You can check out the articles online: http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/

Also, the BSR recently won Best Publication of the Year from the ASUC (student association here at Cal). There are a lot of publications here on campus, so this is really an honor!