It was really a morning in summer, I realized as soon as driving my van out of the garage. Sunny, warm without wind. Lynnwood High where my son had fun of four years hadn't started its new day, so North Road was still very quiet. This is why I always avoid to drive out of our neighborhood around 7:00 am.
Friday is typically slower than the first four days but I did have several meetings. Leaving office at 3:20 pm, I assumed I could arrive at my son's dorm around 4:00 pm but I was wrong. Even not seeing any accident, I was stuck in the tunnel and on the bridge on I-90 West. However, I used the hassle as an opportunity to appreciate breathtaking view on Lake Washington and Skyline of Downtown Seattle.
I followed a Darigold truck for quite a while until traffic became loose. The truck reminded me that I work on a consulting assignment at Darigold for five months in 2006 when they still used the name of West Farm. Since then, I have been almost always buying their products.
Picking up my son at his dorm, I heard his complaint about intensive studies of the three heavyweight courses he was taking in this quarter. First of all, he did share the good news that he got A on ECON201 quiz, then, he said that every night he had to study very hard. When he called me yesterday to confirm to come back home this weekend, his point was to relax for one more weekend and would have to prepare for Final Exams starting from next Monday. However, he brought all books back home today and planned to read chapters in Philosophy textbook tomorrow. He did catch all concepts of Calculus very well but would have to practice more to be proficient in exam. Studying difficult courses in college is always challenging but when a student goes through it, the life will become much easier in the following 40 years. Let's see if my son can be kept in the game. Most of the kids like arguing that they are not interested in difficult courses but the true reason is that they try to avoid the challenges and difficulties. I told my son not to define his interests based on easiness.
However, if he really wants to give up, I won't blame him. He will learn it when he grows into 30s when he finds that he has to re-establish foundation, especially, shakeup his personalities and behaviors. My experience is no matter what are your interests, you have to pursue them rigorously.
My son is a smart kid, at least, he knows that he needs to wrap up this quarter successfully. This is good enough for now. He actually had selected the classes for Autumn Quarter, even I told him that he could change them if he wanted, he said that he would still want to take them. Hopefully, he can take the pressures to prevail.
Finishing my routine at gym, I felt much better than last night. I had been going to gym seven days in row and will keep doing it until we take off to Scandinavia.
By the way, I checked out that tank capacity for Volvo XC60 was 18.5 Gallons, which can be converted to 71.7 liters. So, one full tank gas may cover 700 Kilometers. As I had projected on Wednesday night, total driving kilometers are 4000, I plan to fill up gas every 500 kilos. In this regard, I will need to pump gas 8 times.
Checking out all gas stations along the routes we will drive by, I located 8 cities as following:
Oslo; Halmstad; Bremen; Tilburg; Hamburg; Copenhagen; Norrkoping; Stockholm.
Last time I stopped by the gas station in Scandinavia was near Linkoping in 96. I don't know if that gas station is still there. I recalled it was a Shell or its affiliate in Sweden but wasn't able to find any shell on Google. One Statoil Tomby seemed located in the same area on map.
Go to bed now...
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