All Things Yummy

Today was my last day of lectures… last, final, final day of lectures at the University of Waterloo… And it ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.

My last class was EASIA201R, and because of prof evaluations, everything kinda ended up abruptly. I was able to chase after the prof and chat with him for a while… He’s an amazing guy, with incredibly amount of experience in doing all sorts of different stuff… His advice to me was that if I don’t know what I want to do, going out and working for a while might be good. Good advice, I suppose. I’ll go talk to other profs tomorrow and make a decision.

Anyway, so there it was… last day of lectures… just like that.

I visited the Canadian Geese nest again today. I was there around noon, and the male was out there hissing at passerby… then after watching Blackout / Team Ryouko (which was amazing, by the way… but most enjoyable was those 4 Indian guys dancing… I think they said style’s from northern India… must look it up ) I visited the nest again and everything was gone! Maybe plant-ops or animal control removed it…

WOW! Guess that’s coming to a store near you? Dark Chocolate M&Ms! I couldn’t care less about the Star Wars co-promotion stuff, but just the thought of eating dark chocolate M&M’s… Mmmm… *droll*

There’s a canadian goose making a nest near the south-west door of PAC. I guess it hasn’t laid its eggs yet, since it’s not attacking anyone… but I suppose I better be careful in the future while walking around in that area. It’s fairly high traffic corridor, so chances are it’ll be moved before it’s allowed to finish its nest there… but I’ll check again tomorrow.

I’ve always enjoyed this time of the year. No, not in terms of school, but in terms of season… It’s the renewal of the spring, the melting of the snow, chirping of the birds (they’re starting to come back now… 6AM!), shedding of the jacket, and a brand new start for everyone. I’m starting to notice the thousands of squirrels that inhabit the University of Waterloo campus again, and the snow’s finally starting to melt. It’s suppose to hit 10 degrees later this week, so by the weekend, there won’t be any trace of winter left anywhere.

There’s a huge controversy right now about the WPIRG referendum where the referendum was canceled outright. I was looking for a good flame war… but when I sat down, I really couldn’t find things to say. I don’t know whether it’s because it would be like shooting a fish in a barrel, or because I’ve just grown older and more mature… but the way the entire affair has been handled by Federation of Students have left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

I’m currently in the process of trying to figure out what I want to do. If I were to stay in Waterloo, I think I’ll be doing computational neuroscience which seems to be an interesting and very cutting edge mixture of many different fields… It’s either that, or a job at Centre for International Governance Innovation which also seems very interesting… or maybe it’ll be a mixture of both. This is much harder decision than the one that was made 5 years ago… *sigh*

It’s finally feeling a little like Spring. The ice is slowly melting away, the Canadian Geese have returned, and the thermometer’s finally breaking through the magical 0 mark.

Weather was so nice that I decided to visit the bunnies at the local petting zoo in the Waterloo Park. Since everyone who comes to feed the rabbits brings carrots, the rabbits at the petting zoo ironically doesn’t like carrots all that much… so I was armed with a bag full of Parsley (or maybe Coriander… actually, I’m pretty sure it was Coriander, not Parsley, but I digress). The park was full of people, mainly young family with little kids. All the rabbits liked the parsley except for 2 black and white spotted ones. It seems like they have all grown quite a bit over the winter. Since rabbits all seemed pretty full and seemed to have their mind occupied with something else (birds and the bees - I’ve heard couple of kids asking what the rabbits were doing ) we meandered over to the pen holding the deers, the llamas, and the pecking emu.

The emu used to stalk me across the fence and lunge at me whenever I was near… but it was nowhere to be found. I guess the Canadian winter is little too harsh for it. Of the deers, only one liked the parsley, but the llamas were going completely crazy over it. Since I had so much of the parsley left, I started giving them out to all the little kids who wanted to feed the llamas.

So there I was, handing out parsley (and carrots - a stranger gave me a bag of carrots to give to the llamas) to all the little 3 and 4 year olds. I handed this little bundled up girl a handful of parsley when her mom says What do you say to this nice man?. It felt so strange to be referred as a man. You yourself don’t really see or feel the change. Although you’re the one who’s closest to all the things that are happening, you’re also the one who’s most blind to it all until someone else finally forces you to take a good close look at yourself. 22 years old, 4 weeks until graduating with a degree, I guess I could be a man, though I don’t feel like a man (or an adult) quite yet. That one little sentence put me in a little mental day dreaming, until a little boy who took a carrot started eating it himself. No, the carrot’s for the llama.…

I participated in the Genius Bowl with Lawrence, Astha, Preet, Jimmy, and Rowena today. Genius Bowl is a trivia quiz show held by the Engineering Society. This time, there were 30 teams competing, which meant there were over 180 people packed into RCH 101. I really had no expectations of winning, so we kinda fooled around in GAFF while getting ready for the Genius Bowl.

We figured ties are fun, so we all brought ties and wore them. We also figured that Cowboy hats and Hard hats are fun, but we only had one of each… so that didn’t work out so well. But Preet brought different sparkly hair colouring gel and Rowena brought some face paints, so we figured that’d be enough. This is my first time putting any colour on my hair (only after assurance that it’ll come off - and it did ), but the reaction was surprisingly positive. :p I’m not sure whether it was the fact that I had my hair gelled straight up, or the fact that it was yellow.

Anyway, so we went to Genius Bowl and started playing. There are 5 question rounds, and Spot Light questions where you can bet up to 5 points in between the question rounds… And guess what? We did surprisingly well! After vaulting into 3rd place after 3 rounds, we were in first place after 4 rounds. However, pesky 3B guys (from Mech? Civil? I don’t even remember now :p ) ended up completing a come-from-behind victory by a single point, so we unfortunately came in second place… Ah well, we had a blast and won $60 in process. Ugh, I think my voice is still kinda hoarse from all that yelling.

As we were the only 4B team (actually the only 4th year team), we also kindly informed everyone else that our last lectures are in 3 days and banged our Iron Rings incessantly. Lawrence actually asked me whether I was drunk… I guess that’s a side that most people don’t see very often, heh.

Hmm, some of the interesting answers included the Isle of Man (which I got, for 3 points!), Frequency Modulation (come on, how could we miss this one?), and the Peregrine Falcon (fastest animal!). Good times. You can find the pictures here.

I’m in the process of trying to figure out whether I should be doing grad studies, or go out and work… It’s a tough decision… Email me for details, maybe we’ll chat and you can give me your 2 cents.

Apparently the number of people enrolled in Engineering and Sciences are decreasing, although the number of jobs are increasing. That brief article mentions that getting people interested in things like robotics will bring people back into the field. However, I think the problem lies little deeper than that.

As a society, it feels like there really isn’t any respect or appreciations for technical work done by scientists and engineers. Many of the things that we do don’t lead to instant millionaires or a feature-length movies. People are more interested in becoming a movie star, a singer, a lawyer, or politician more than getting into business of creating new and better things for everyone to use. Big part of this problem is the mass media, where every single technical problem can be reduced to a buzz word and a gizmo which has features like infinite resolution with absolutely no errors or noises. There’s something wrong with a society where relationship of two celebrities are more important than the next scientific breakthrough. There are many mentions of North American competitiveness and technological edge being eroded, but with people’s attitude so dismissive about science and engineering, what else can you really expect?

I really don’t have any idea as to how this can be easily fixed, as it requires a change in attitude… but at least people are starting to acknowledge that the problem exists. Only if people would start listening to these warning signs.

Today is the first day of the Spring! I’m currently in a mad dash to get all the projects finished so that I can have enough time for all the solar car stuff. There isn’t much school left - about a week of lectures, followed by 3 weeks of exams - and I’m finding myself a bit scatterbrained. It’s getting harder and harder to concentrate, I guess…

I’m also trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life… it’s always an interesting and hard decision. I’ll just wait and see what happens… there’s no point in worrying about it, I suppose.

So, I came across couple of interesting articles today. A report released on obesity in Europe reports the following.

In a group of nations from Greece to Germany, the proportion of overweight or obese men is higher than in the United States, experts said Tuesday in a major analysis of expanding girth on the European continent.

So, for those of you who still seems to believe that America is the only country in the world where the streets are filled with overweight and inactive people, this should be eye-opening data. Canada isn’t that far behind either, especially considering that the data cited in that report was compiled more than 7 years ago.

On that note, I read an interesting report which said that overweight cutoff point in BMI for some Asian people should be at 23 (instead of 25) due to our build. I don’t know whether that applies to Koreans, and I know that BMI doesn’t take into a lot of factors… but my BMI fluctuates between 22.5 and 23 (depending on the season, and whether I’m studying or working that term), so if that is true, then I’m bordering on overweight. Crap, maybe I should start exercising more.

The second interesting article was the one on North Korean cultural barrier being broken through cell phones and Korean soap operas. Although I’ve never personally watched any Korean soap operas, I’ve seen enough friends addicted to it… I guess being able to tell the North Koreans the truth about the world outside is the first step in bringing down or transforming the Kim regime in North Korea.

There are 37 days (or little over 5 weeks) left of school. I have my last final (I guess you could say it’s my final final, hehehe) on April 19th, after which my 5 long years of University of Waterloo Undergraduate program would come to an end. Heh, I’m already feeling a little nostalgic. On the grad school news front, I got the rejection letter from MIT, as expected. Ah well, I guess I’ll either be in Waterloo for grad school, or will be finding a job somewhere in the industry.

Last weekend, I started having problems focusing. Last time something like this happened, it was a case of Posner Schlossman Syndrome (also known as Glaucomatocyclitic crisis) which is a sudden elevation of the eye pressure. I guess I caught it early enough - last time it happened, I was seeing rainbow halos around lights by the time I saw a specialist. So I dropped by my eye doctor and my left eye pressure was at 32, about twice the norm. I started putting drops, and I think it’s fine now… It’s been about a year since it happened last time, it’s just kinda interesting to see your body start to fail…

Anyhoo, I’ve had an interesting weekend… I guess I better get ready for last 2 weeks of lectures.

I wrote my last midterm exam today - one on Korean culture and history. I have two more labs left, one report, and 5 finals… The set of deliverables can be counted using just my fingers. Poking around my computer, I’m finding all these labs and report that I’ve worked two, three years ago… and those times seem just like yesterday. And now I’m scant 5 weeks away from finishing it all.

As for my future… I have no idea. So far, I’ve only heard back from University of Waterloo, which has been expected. I haven’t heard anything from MIT yet, though apparently the responses are being mailed out… I don’t expect to get in, though… Ah well, heh I’ve also applied for a position at Google, Apple, and at MDRobotics. I have no idea what I really want to do, so I guess I’ll just wait to see what kind of response I get. Hopefully I’ll have a better idea soon.

It’s a scary point in life… much more so than the jump from High School to University. Many of my friends are starting to find jobs and have their next phase all lined up and ready to go… but I’m not quite sure whether I’m ready to make that step or not… I guess even after all that experience, not much has changed after all…