Happy Birthday

Hey COSMOS,

I turned 16 today, I was born on July 18th, 2008. Supposedly I can get a license now, although I just got a permit a few day before COSMOS and have driven a total of 0 hours.

Thank you everyone for making my birthday golden.

This is the first birthday I've spent away from my family, but also the first birthday I've spent with so many people - friends from my cluster, friends from my suite, RA's, more COSMOS students, mentors, professors, TAs, everyone.

Started off with a surprise singing of happy birthday after breakfast after Paul offered me a piece of gum to distract me. Sarah made for me a card and collected the signatures of everyone in our cluster and more.

The card had a paper cube on it, supposedly a "4x4" for my 16th birthday. x] Inside were the signatures and messages from various COSMOS buddies embedded in colorful stars, swirls, and borders.

At lecture we spent way too much time on one math problem, but it was still fun watching Jon try to measure the width of a dancing laser dot on the back wall. Walking back from Lecture, Paul lent me his speakers and we played and sang songs on the way back - notably songs from High School Musical and Cascada. At lab, Peter gave me a Happy Birthday Pencil. My group worked on our group project, only to be hindered by difficulties in software. Hopefully these issues can be resolved before the end of family visitation.

Matt, our RA, came into our suite with a cake.

(My birthday has been pretty cube themed so far. You guys really notice what I like, haha)
The cake looked really nice, Matt spent a lot of time cubifying the once-round cake and mixing colors of frosting.

It tasted excellent. :D Half of our suite is also ordering some more cubes and cube materials off eBay from Paul.

I've never had a dance on my birthday, and it's really a great coincidence to have the first one overlap with it. I had a great time there, and I'd like to thank you all for the last song, it really meant alot to me.

Thank you everyone,

I've never enjoyed a birthday with over 150 people before, and today, I savored every last bit of it.

I love you COSMOS!

William Chen

Shout out to everyone leaving or staying for Family Visitation! Have a great weekend!