Week 1 Blog 1: Hello My Name is ...

Born and for the most part raised in New Jersey, I'm a 3rd year Mechanical Engineering undergraduate in UC Berkeley and still getting used to the Californian sun. While my major focus and research is in controls and robotics, I keep myself sane through hobbies like swimming, golf, photography, and music.

I love shooting street photography with my film camera, and no matter how many times my friends tell me it's not efficient to use film instead of digital, I will always have a soft spot for the results I get with in black and white on the busy streets of NYC and sunny SF.

I am also constantly exploring different genres of music for listening pleasure as well as for producing my very own. This was an accidental discovery when I was taking a course here in Berkeley during my second semester. When the professor asked for any artistic rendition of a certain chapter of the German epic, the Nibelungenlied, I decided to make a little soundtrack of the main character's death scene. I had a lot of fun with that project, drawing influences from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, and got an A too. That's how I began to play around with music software more and create my own.

Creating something completely original can be a very tough and time consuming and challenge, but it's the process of developing the moment I captured on film and the reaction of my friends listening to my new tracks that really helps me explore my creativity beyond the limits of the physical world of engineering.

There may be more about me that you'll find out along the course of the semester, and I hope to get to know those who visit my blog too.