Last Thursday May 7th  was my brother-in-law’s college graduation ceremony. Peter  graduated from Colorado University of in Boulder with the Electrical and Computer Engineering degree.  So we drove to Boulder to attend the ceremony and congratulate him.

The last graduation I went to must have been 6-7 years ago, and I don’t even remember whose it was. So, I don’t remember much of what usually is going on at the ceremony, but I remember it is pretty long and boring… hahaha. Hey, I didn’t even go to my own college graduation, if that means anything to you…  Anyway, I feel for Peter to finally graduate after many years of working and attending school at the same time, and especially all the hard work toward the end for the graduation project.  Therefore, I want to go to his graduation ceremony to share the joy. So, here is the journal of the last week event that I meant to post sooner but didn’t have the time.

My brother Bao, my sister Linh, and I left Colorado Springs around 5:00PM to beat traffic for an hour-and-half drive to Boulder. It was pretty congested in Denver, but wasn’t too bad. We got to the university around 7pm. There were lots of people, coming and leaving. Apparently, there were several graduations on that day from other departments.  The graduation ceremony for Engineering department is scheduled at 8:00PM. We entered to the indoor stadium where the ceremony would be held at to meet up with Peter. Only few people were here. It was still pretty early.

The stage

For students

For family

Huge speakers

Peter came and met up with us at the stadium. We snapped couple shots of him in his graduation gown before all the people came pouring in.

Peter

Peter and Linh

Cap and gown

There was still plenty of time before the ceremony began, so Peter gave us a tour in the Engineering building, and showed us the senior project that his team had been working on nights and days. It was an automated shopping cart system with a LCD monitor onboard. It automatically scanned grocery items as they were added to cart via RFID technology, totalled the amount, and could perform the check out process right from the cart.

Advanced shopping cart

Grocery items with RFID chip

Model poster

It was almost time so we headed back to the stadium. It got crowded now, and the air got warm pretty quick. Gosh, a strong perfume odor came from the women sitting in front of us were unbearable.  Linh started sneezing.  Up above the stadium, graduating students were forming long lines around.  The ceremony started on queue at 8:00pm. There was live music playing by a quintet band as the students entered the stadium.

Quintet band

Students lining up

Show begins

Many graduating students with various engineering degrees came in and filled up the chairs quickly. Peter matched in with his friends, pointing and waving at us. He ended up on the opposite side from where we were sitting.

Matching in

With friends

Students

Ph.D.

After that, things got very boring. Speech after speech. Recognitions and Awards. Forewarn about for not shaking hands due to Swine Flu. We were sitting there, bored and hungry. But we got an interesting game to keep our mind occupied from thinking of foods: we hunted and snapped pictures of people doing funny stuff with our cameras. There were mucho mucho picture snapping opportunities here. Yarning. Snoozing. Nose picking. Strange pose. Reflection from bald spot… Too many to list, and probably too offensive to show you… hahaha.

They started to do roll call, and students walked up, one by one, to receive their … diploma holder. That’s right! They didn’t actual give the diploma at the ceremony; it will be mailed home. Then, there was new game. We started to guessing where the family of the about to announce was sitting at… Some family were pretty funny with their cheers. Some brought cow bells. Oh yeah, and there was air horn. I haven’t heard that loud and obnoxious sound for a long time.

Going up the stage

It's about time

More waiting for the rest of the students to come up… We just couldn’t forget the name of the last guy, Ha-sim. He got the loudest cheer. It probably wasn’t a congratulating or sympathy cheer but more likely people was just happy the ceremony was over… But it didn’t end yet! There was another speech afterward, but eventually the event came to conclusion around 10pm. As the faculty took off, family and friends were  pouring down to the stage for picture opportunity, and standing around, hugging, and congratulate each other. We finally swam through the crowd the get to Peter and headed to our car.

Hasim

Show ends

Then another fun began, waiting to get out of the parking lot since everyone tried to do the same thing at the same time. It was chaos.

We were so hungry, so we went to downtown Boulder to look for place to eat. Bao remembered there was a Mediterranean restaurant that had really good food in the area. We spent about 40 minutes driving and walking to look for it. Until we found the restaurant, the kitchen was closed just about 5-10 minutes before we arrived. All other restaurants in the downtown stopped serving hot food after 11pm. The downtown was small but actually quite nice. It had a pretty nice walking area, people were hanging around, mostly students though. It was quite lively for a Thursday night.

We ended up eating at IHOP. I was so hungry so I decided to go for steak. I have to say, the food there are still as bad as my previous two IHOP dining experiences.  I need to make a mental note to myself to never eat steak from IHOP again!!… Bao dropped me off at home around 2:00am. I took a nap for few hours and got up at 7:00am to get ready for the work day.

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