I attended NSBE’s Fall Regional Conference in Buffalo, NY this weekend and I must say I had a great time! Ourchapter won 1st and 3rd (unofficially) place in the Academic Tech Bowl (ATB) events; our two teams were Hustle and Flow. Hustle, unfortunately, was bustled by Columbia in the semi-finals, but the Flow was just too much and defeated Columbia for the championship trophy, free trips to the national convention in Columbus, OH, and free Microsoft Zunes. If both teams had made it to the finals, we were debating whether to play a real game or have some fun and have both teams not answer any questions. After ATB, there was a drawing and I won a new TI-89 Titanium calculator. Ironically, when the drawing was being held for the calculator, the guy reading the tickets was having trouble and I blurted, “If you can’t read it go to the next one,” not realizing it was my chicken scratch he was having trouble deciphering. Thankfully he knew well enough not to listen to me. I didn’t get to see much of Buffalo; we did have a chapter dinner at a restaurant named King’s Court, but it wasn’t that great. I ordered the 16oz Porterhouse steak and was able to eat all of it. What does this mean? It means King’s Court is cheating on their scales. If I can eat an entire 16oz steak, something is wrong; my stomach is definitely not that big. On the way to Buffalo, we stopped at a place called Roy Rogers. They sucked, too. They’re barbecue sauce was SOUR! This food was worse than some of the fast food I had in Africa. Our chapter also won the chant competition. What’s this you ask? Well, on the morning of opening session, each chapter gets about 30 seconds to perform their chant. Our freshmen made this one: Inny meeny meinnie moNSBE engineers gon’ be makin’ that doughI know you want it, so let’s get on itInny meeny meinnie moMIT is where ya’ll wanna goI know you applied, and got denied…you got DENIED!!We didn’t think this was cocky enough, so someone decided to add some action. So during the final DENIED, we ripped up fake applications! The expressions on the faces of everyone in the room were priceless! They already hate us and we just made things worse. Thankfully we didn’t go through with the idea of handing out MIT graduate school applications to folks before the chant. Ironically, our cockiness was rewarded with an award for the best chant. What did we do? We didn’t show up to receive the award….we left earlier that morning. This was all a continuation of our cockiness shown at the fall zone conference earlier in Rhode Island. We had to leave early, so when it came time to do a chant at the closing session, we yelled our trademark “MIghTy!” and walked out. Again, the expressions were priceless! Getting back to FRC, we closed Saturday night with a banquet where we picked up our 1st place ATB trophy. 3rd place was not awarded because no round was held to decide the winner of the prize; although, we did receive the most points in the competition. I decided to steal the trophy instead of letting it go to waste, so we had 2 trophies. The keynote speaker at the banquet was one of NSBE’s founders, Anthony Harris. I spoke with him and the chapter took a picture with him. That was cool. I’ve written a lot, and I probably haven’t covered half of what occurred, like my crazy spy adventure, or my visit to Niagara Falls, which pales in comparison to Viagra Victoria Falls. Also, Canada has a better view of the falls along with attractions like casinos, ferris wheels, and a space needle tower-thingy. I did buy a couple of Christmas ornaments, one for home and one for the NSBE Christmas tree. This conference has inspired me to run for the regional finance chair position. The job is pretty much what I do as public relations chair for MIT, talk to companies and bring in financial support. Speaking of which, I had lunch with Qualcomm and Legal Seafood today. I ordered some shrimp, which cost $14.95. Why did I only receive 8 shrimp? They tasted great, but for that price I expected more. I’m feeling stressed, so I think I’ll continue my string of violent sports (pistol, fencing) and try kick boxing on Wednesday and relieve myself on someone. (That last part just sounds nasty.) I’ve never broken a bone in my body (surprisingly). I’ll let you know if I break any Wednesday night. Oh well, I’m done writing. By the way, I felt guilty and returned the 3rd place trophy (if you were concerned), although not before getting a few good pictures with it. Good night, good morning, goodbye.