The +X Blog!

Road Trip I

2009-06-21T14:25:00.005-05:00

Road Trip is pretty common in the U.S. It is basically due to the highway system is so well developed and almost everybody has vehicle in the family. Many people take road trip during the Summer. It can be just four hours away or can be days away. For the trip that is less than 4 hours, I don't consider it as a road trip because I can take a round trip in one day. Road trip for me is what I have to at least stay in motel/hotel for a night. For people who enjoy driving, road trip is fun. I don't like driving that much so my road trip experience is limited. Unless I have lots of time to kill, I usually would rather fly or just take short trip in nearby cities.

Last year, I had a month's free time and we had decided to take a long long road trip. Our road trip looks like this:

Leaving: Kansas --> Oklahoma --> Arkansas --> Mississippi --> Alabama --> Georgia --> Florida

Returning: Florida --> Alabama --> Mississippi --> Louisiana --> Texas --> Oklahoma --> Kansas

We even bought an SUV for it. Road trip in small car is painful, especially for this long. The whole trip took us about 2 weeks. It was interesting to drive through those states. We didn't take interstate highway all the way so we get to see many "local" stuff. The things that we saw in the leaving trips are different from the returning trip. During the leaving trip, I found that Kansas and Oklahoma are all plains. We drove through Tulsa, OK and I noticed that there has been some changes ever since last time I went there. It has a new beautiful arena by the local highway. The city is also growing many trees along the road to make the city look nice. But maybe because of the climate in the Oklahoma, the trees didn't grow very well.

Arkansas is where the trees make it beautiful, no wonder it is called the "Natural State". There are full of tall trees along the drive. Because of the high humidity climate, the trees are so green and beautiful. I thought that's image that Tulsa is trying to build for the city. We also got to see how the farmer uses an aircraft to fertilize the farm. There was an highway right in the middle of a farm. When we drove through, there was an aircraft flying so low that I thought there was some kind of flying school nearby. The aircraft flew back and forth and when we drove under it, I noticed that there was something coming out from the aircraft. Well underneath the aircraft is a farmland. Then I realized that it is a farming aircraft. It was quite a sight. It reminds of 9/11 for some reasons.

Mississippi is full of water. I can image there is flooding problem during raining season. We saw some flooding places along the way.

Alabama is full of raged drivers. It was very intense to drive on the Alabama highway. We stopped by Auburn University. The campus seems built on a hill. There are some up and down drives on campus roads. The campus is beautiful, though it is not as nice as the Oklahoma State University campus. The buildings on the Auburn campus are rather dull. The football stadium is huge. It has all kinds of championship pictures outside of it. It would be fun to watch a football game there.

Georgia is also full of green. We drove in the woods for a straight 2 hours. I was so afraid that the gas would run out but we made it out to the city eventually. The highways in Georgia look well maintained and very clean. I did noticed that the gas price went up there.

Florida is full of sunshine. We started feeling the heat even though we were in the car. The drive was rather interesting that we got to see different things like, tall palm trees, beautiful ocean, and high rise buildings. We did run into the traffic when we entered the Orlando area. Kissimmee was our destination in Florida. It is suburb of Orlando and it is close to all theme parks. There are many souvenir stores and hotels along the road. It seems many tourists stay in this town when they visit Orlando. We spent few days there. Orlando alone deserves another article which will be covered in Road Trip II.

Just Hanging Around

2009-06-13T23:31:00.003-05:00

Alright, the economy is still down. Although we see some upward trend in sales order recently, our company has lost so much money year to date that we have another round of layoff. This time is somewhat surprising to me. Usually when a company let people go, it would pick people that are most inexperienced and have least contribution to the company. There were two engineers working close to me that are let go this time. One of them has over 20 years of experience and the other just finished his second years of service and received a master degree recently. In my eye, they are loss to the company, but obviously our management didn't think so.

The first engineer used to be a manager. But after he transfered from another facility to here, he no longer was manager anymore. I used to work for him at the other facility. When I was hired by this company, I could choose two locations to work. Since I know this engineer had transfered, I had decided to come here to join him and learn more stuff from him. He is like a living bible to me. Over the last two years, I have heard him griping about the management. He always wanted to be a manager again but unfortunately it didn't happen in this organization. Our current management is young and inexperienced. They don't make good decisions but to make decisions to cover their butts. Now almost everybody has been trained to work that way if they want to keep their jobs. This engineer isn't one of them. He always drive for results, but not to drive to make people happy. I admire him and want to work with him again someday.

The second engineer is young but is fast learning. He used to sit next to me and we used to come up with some innovative ideas to make the products more efficient. His boss is not the worst in Engineering but he didn't seem to have much contribution. He sure knows how to cover his butt for sure. Our company has a tuition reimbursement program. If you study a degree that is beneficial to the company, the company will pay for your tuition. This engineer just took advantage of it and completed his master's degree. But just few weeks after his graduation, he was let go. I hope he can still get his tuition reimbursement because our company usually pays few months after the semester finishes. His boss obviously doesn't foresee what the benefit of this engineer will have to the company. But instead, he wasted the company's money for paying this engineer to school. I hope this engineer will get another opportunity soon again. He has the talent but just had a bad boss.

Looking around in the company, there are way too many other people that deserve to be gone. For example, one technician even told me that he always works on his own project during working hours. Unfortunately his manager is always fooled by him. This manager is another example that our management doesn't make good decision. In my previous posts, I mentioned that if you can crack jokes with your manager, you can keep your job. This technician knows exactly that. Recently, he is assigned to do a project with me. I found that his work ethic is less to be desired. If I don't come to the lab to check on him, he will not work on the project. He is so passive and always finds a way to slack off. Too many smoking breaks is an example. I have been thinking to report this to his boss but based on his boss's management ability, I doubt if it helps any. I think I will do something different to get my frustration out of my way.

There are way too many people in the company that they are just hanging around everyday to get by. They certainly know the tricks to survive. I am testing my patience of working in this environment right now.

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

2009-06-06T19:00:00.002-05:00

I learned this phrase in a high school text book. But I didn't know this English phrase until several years ago in an ESL class. It is a very interesting phrase. I found it especially useful to whiners. For example, there is an engineer in my company who happens to be a one. He likes to be in control of everything, and always dreams of being a manager someday. Fortunately, our management team has the clear vision that he is not a management material, otherwise things will get ugly. Whenever this guy is in a meeting, he likes to take over, or more precisely, hijack it. I always avoid going to the same meeting with him unless I have to. If he is in the meeting, I usually shut my month unless something is evidently wrong. Last week, we happened to be in the same meeting again. But this time there was a stronger voice in the meeting. You probably can guess what happened, a battle between them was unavoidable. The engineer whiner seemed to lose the battle because of lack of knowledge in that topic. Soon after the meeting, he huddled with a couple of other engineers and whined about the meeting was hijacked. I happened to pass by and heard what he said. All I did was smiled and walked away. What a pot he is!

It is very interesting to watch the news recently. The government in a fast growing country (Country A) is trying to cover what had happened 20 years ago. Many people were killed under the government's authority. The government ordered to block the content in the internet and skip this incident completely in textbook. It even announced the date of May 35th to replace the exact date of that incident. People in my age are furious about it. The whole incident is something that we should learn from but not to forget. Now if we back up a little bit and look at a bigger picture. This very same country has been always blaming the other country (Country B) did to it 73 years ago. Country B invaded Country A and killed a lot of people. Country B did similar thing to deny what had happened and modify the textbook to educate the newer generation this incident didn't happen at all. Country A always demands an apology from Country B and this discussion has been on going for years. Even though both incidents are different in scale, should I call Country A the pot and Country B the kettle? Paper can't cover fire. If you happen to live in other countries, both incidents have been well documented and can be found easily. People will not forget and continue to demand a answer year after year. But because of pride, I don't know what pride it is, these two incidents have never been settled yet. Politics is too complicated to me. But I do believe politics is economics driven. Once these two countries are economic dependent on other factors, those factors will drive for resolution.

Retirement

2009-05-31T14:34:00.003-05:00

Due to the impact of down economy, our company has been restructuring lately. For example, a new president is in house, a VP is fired, and the old president is retired. I want to focus on the retired president this time. He had been with the company for about 20 years. Many older employees seem to like his leadership and are sad that he is retired. The old president in fact is not very old. I would guess he is in his mid 50's. One lab tech jokingly told me that he is even older than him but doesn't have the desire to retire in the near future. Well, he is right. I wonder how many people in the company actually believe that he is done for his career. We had a farewell party for him couple weeks ago and everything that we did to him was assuming he was going to enjoy his life in the country. He also said that he finally can spend more time with his wife as he had been travelling a lot for his job. After his speech, I came to the cocktail table, grabbed a piece of cake, a glass of juice, and offered my best wish to him, "Enjoy your retirement!". Man, I guess I traded my biggest lie of the day for the cake and juice.

Soon after his departure, our lab guys have found that he will be the CEO and president of another company. For some reasons, our lab guys always have some insider news. I always come to the lab and poke them if they have any news for the day. After the news surfaced, many people seem disappointed. Fortunately, the company he is going to work with is not a direct competitor to our company. One of the lab guys jokingly said we should start buying stocks of that company because the stock price is going to grow. Well, if you look at the overall picture, most company stocks are at record low right now. If any company can survive, the stock price will grow. The tricky part is which company is going to survive. But I think the lab tech is right. That company seems to have some promising products.

I have been with the company for 2 years, I think I only have less than 5 encounters with the old president. He apparently doesn't know my name. I have heard many people talking up about him. But in the last two years, he didn't seem to have much accomplished. The down economy definitely has something to do with it. We have been losing market share lately. That's what the corporate people looked at and decided to do something with it. They first assigned the old president to another position and then eventually got rid of him. It is good that they ask him to retire rather than kicking him out of the door. The old president didn't seem to like his new position either. I think it is a mutual agreement that retirement is the best option for him and the company. But for him, it is just the end of one book, and another book title is just on his horizon. Retirement for him? Not so soon.

Electronic Waste

2009-05-25T18:21:00.004-05:00

Electronic waste has become a hot topic recently. One of the reasons is that the technology has been advancing so fast. Take computer for example, the introduction of LCD monitor has been well accepted by consumers, and as its price is getting more and more affordable, people have been replacing their still working CRT monitors for LCD's. Some people try to sell the CRT monitors with low price, some would just give it away or donate to charity, and some may just throw it away to the dumpster. Throwing it away to the dumpster is definitely a no-no because of the lead content in the monitor itself. Cell phone is another good example of electronic waste. Ask yourself, how much people that you know change their cell phones every year? If you don't know of any, hop over to eBay and Craigslist, you will find there is a huge cell phone resell market. Many of them are less than a year old after the model was introduced to the market. Many people just like to keep up with the technology. We are encouraged to recycle the electronic waste to the designated recycling area. Some electronic stores would recycle it for you. The idea is to allure you to come to their stories, and hoping you may be buying stuff from them.

When I was student, I noticed that there were always new computers each year in the university computer lab. I don't know what does the University do to those so called "old" computers, but one thing I know is that the IT department has to keep spending every year so that it has a better reason to ask for more budget in the next fiscal year. I noticed the same thing when I was in the University of Macau as well as Oklahoma State University. Very often, those "old" computers were just kept in storage until the technology is so advanced that they have no use anymore. I have seen rooms that are full of computers and monitors in the University buildings. I always wonder what the University can do with them.

One of the wastes that I consider as electronic waste is the duplication of file and email in our computers. It is often considered negligible because hard drive space is so cheap to even being considered. For some reason, I have this pet peeve that when people ask me to send the same email or file over and over again. I am sure it is in their hard drives but to save their time to digg it out, they would rather sacrificing some hard drive space. There used to be an engineer that I worked with in the company. He is the most forgettable person I have met in my life to date. I remember I had to answer him to same question at least 5 times to make him have a little recognition to it. He used to ask me to share the same file over and over again, and every time he would create a new folder to store it. His reason is that it is better to have multiple backups than none. Man, when I am talking about file, I am talking about gigabyte's of file. I know hard drive is cheap but I wouldn't waste my hard drive space like that. I introduced him to use Google Desktop so that he can search his file quickly. Well, he is a Yahoo stock holder so he opted to use the buggy Yahoo Desktop instead. But since his memory is so short that no matter which software he uses, he doesn't know what to type in to search. It is really hard to teach an old dog a new trick.

Another electronic waste is the group email with attachment. Because everyone in the email list has to be aware of everything, attachment with new attachment will be forwarded back and forth. I hate people doing that especially my company only has 200MB storage space for email. If I don't archive the email quick enough, I don't get new email anymore. In order to avoid this kind of problem, I always save the attachment in a share folder in the network first and type in a link in the email instead. I can't force everybody to do the same, but at least I can eliminate one attachment in the email chain. There is etiquette for everything, and I hope eliminating attachment with attachment will be one of the email etiquettes someday.

We need to be green.

VP of Engineering

2009-05-17T00:56:00.004-05:00

VP of Engineering, the vice president of engineering. What a prestigious title! If you are an engineer working in a decent size company, you will find somebody with that title. Many engineers in my company dream of being a VP someday. Basically when you have this title, y

ou almost have all kinds of authority. For example, here is what our VP of Engineering could do:

1. Have the biggest office in the building.

2. Park his personal car at "company vehicle" designated spot

3. Make sure everybody knows he leaves work early to buy a new motorcycle

4. Drag your boss in and out of any meeting

5. Laugh out loud enough that the whole building can hear

6. Daily visit to the bath room and poo out loud

without ashame

7. Hire dumb manager

8. Promote people if they can crack jokes with him

9. Brag about having 30 years of experience but actually don't understand the 1st law of thermodynamics

10. Buy a PhD degree from Walmart

My company is under restructuring recently. The upper management is identifying where the problems are and do something with it. We had a division president visit last week. He spent about an hour with us in a meeting. He talked about all the positive things like how the company will rebound from the down economy. Everybody seemed encouraged with his co

mments and the direction that the company is heading. I remember that day, our VP of Engineering came in real early, made sure the office space is cleaned and all lights are on. If you don't know, not all the lights are on in our office normally until 8:00am. I know that because my work schedule is an hour earlier than usual. During the meeting, our VP of Engineering was sitting at the front row listening. He had his confident face on, as always. Actually the division president could pick other locations to visit but he picked us because we are one of the major businesses in his group. That's what everybody thought anyway. As a matter of fact, he came here for another reason. Our business has lost too much money recently and the corporate people have decided to do something with it. They have decided to kick some people out of the door during this visit. One of them is our VP of Engineering.

No one would have thought that the VP of Engineering can be fired. At least I never thought about that. I guess there is no bullet proof vest for VP of Engineering. I recall when my company announced a new local president, i.e. the VP's boss, back in half year ago, our VP looked very worried. I didn't understand why then but I know now. He was worried about his incompetence to be exposed. If you are the VP of Engineering, the bottom line is, you need to make sure your people are managing well and design quality products. If you can't accomplish this basic task, you deserve your way out. I am thankful that our corporate people understand it.

Sayonara Dear VP of Engineering. I hope you can find a job with your PhD degree from Walmart.

Android

2009-05-09T20:01:00.003-05:00

The andriods that I used to know are from Dragon Ball that Dr. Gero made of to interrupt the world's harmony. Those are the images in my mind until recently Google introduced the Android mobile operating system. It seems getting lots of attention from the mobile world and is believed to have significant impact in the mobile business. Up to now, there is only one Android phone in the market. It is the HTC G1. The G1 is not the sexiest phone in the world but as a mobile entertaining device, I like it's design, especially the physical keyboard. The virtual keyboard on the iPhone just don't cut it if you need to type on it all the time.

Android is an open source OS, you can download the source code from Google. Google also has the Android software development kit (SDK), so that developers can write applications for it. The apps can be downloaded from the Android Marketplace, just like the iPhone App store. The marketplace is the only official source that end users can download the apps from. Developers have to publish their apps on it first. I was aware of all that and thought that it would be cool if I can publish some apps over there too.

Since I learned that Java is one the Android developing languages and the SDK can be integrated with the Eclipse environment, I decided to experiment a bit of mobile programming. There are so many apps can be written for mobile phone but I want to start simple with a unit conversion app. From downloading, installing, coding, and testing, I think I have spent about one week of my spare time to get it done. Due to my limited knowledge about the language, I couldn't implement all the functions that I wanted into this app. But it is good enough to do simple unit conversions.

OK, now that the app is done, the next step is to publish it on the marketplace. Every developer has to register on Android Marketplace before publishing apps on it. I already have a Google account, so the registration procedure is a snap. However, the catch is every developer has to pay $20 registration fee at the end of the registration procedure. I was planning to publish my app for free anyway, why would I want to pay that fee? Google's official word is that they want quality apps on the marketplace only. Is it really the reason? Or they don't want people jam their storage by publishing all kinds of app? I did some registration fee research on the iPhone app store too and found out that Apple even charges for $99.

Mobile programming is really meant for business. I have learned my lesson about mobile programming and my app will be used by myself only. In fact I may not use it because the emulator is a hog. If you don't plan to charge your app, don't bother to publish it unless you really want to give in this way. But I would rather donate my registration fee to the charity instead.

Car Break-in

2009-05-03T14:29:00.003-05:00

Car break-in for me is unheard of when I was in Stillwater. It is probably because Stillwater is quite safe to live compared to most cities in the States. During my 7-year stay in Stillwater, my car had been hit by a drunk driver 1 time, and the wind shield had been written some scraps on it 1 time. Both incidents happened in the same area where college kids like throwing parties. I still don't know who did that to my car because they both happened in the mid night. That place is very peaceful in the day time, but at night it is nightmare, especially if you want to spend some time on your books. I figured I couldn't have quality time there at night, so I made myself have different working schedule than usual. I worked at night and slept in the day time. My schedule was 5pm-8am. It sounds crazy but it worked for me and my car hadn't had any problem after my schedule changed.

I have been living in Wichita for just over two years now. I have seen and heard numerous car break-in stories already. My car has been broken into one time. It was during my road trip when I left my car in my apartment area unattended for about two weeks. When I came back from the trip, the first thing I noticed was the driver side window was broken. I was very disappointed because that apartment area is considered nice in Wichita. I never thought that would happen there. There wasn't anything missing from the car. I only had few CD's and few coins in there. The stereo is anti-theft, so even though it is taken out there is no use of it. In fact, I was suspicious about the the people who worked there. My car was parked in the area that only the residents there or the people working there would know it hadn't been moved for a while. The residents there seem decent. At least they have to have certain amount of income to live there. But the people who work there can be anyone from different backgrounds. Of course, the office manager would deny it but it is still a doubt in my mind. After the lease expires, I moved out of that apartment. The hefty rent increase is another reason of it. For me, it doesn't deserve all the money and risk to live in that apartment. Who knows when my car would be broken into again?

There is a hotel at not very far away from where I live. We had a colleague from another facility visit last week who happened to stay there. I don't know what his rental car was but it had a GPS in it. His car was broken into the very first night of his visit. The GPS is obviously the target and it's gone. Although he may not be responsible for the damage because the company would probably pay for it, all the hassle that he had to suffer surely wasn't fun at all. As a matter of fact, this is the second time I heard that a GPS is stolen from a rental car. The first time my another colleague parked his car in the downtown area and the GPS was stolen too. Valuables like GPS can get your car broken into. There are many news reports about car break-in at the parking lot of shopping malls, so it is never good to leave valuables in your car when it is unattended.

For all the car break-in stories, I have learned that there are mostly two cases that your car would get broken into:

1. You have a dirty car and it has stayed at the same spot for a while. A while could mean from 3 days and above depending where your car is parked.

2. You have a car that has valuables in it and they can be seen from outside. For this case, it won't take long for your car to be broken into.

Manager

2009-04-25T19:08:00.003-05:00

Almost everyone has a manager at work. Many people dream of being a manager someday. I can think of few reasons for that:

1. Higher paid
2. Can yell at or make fun of people with authority
3. Can sneak out of the office easier
4. Have more friendly people around you at work
5. Look good on the resume
6. etc.

Of course being a manager is not simple. I can see managers are under lots of pressures all the time. I remember one thing that I have learned from a management class is that management is an art. I didn't believe it until I have real working experience. To make people work for you is not as easy as to make people work for you happy. You can make people work for you with authority but your people may not like what you have asked them to do.

A manager can be pushy and monitors what her/his people do all the time. That way s/he can always get the results but won't keep the people work for her/him for a long time. This type of manager usually expecting s/he can be elevated to another level quickly and the people who work for her/him will change anyway, so s/he doesn't can how her/his people feel. I call this manager 1.

Another type of manager is s/he trusts what her/his people do. There is only minimal supervising needed. In order for this type of manager do that, s/he needs to understand what her/his people's strength. The bond between the manager and the employee is based on trust. Employees usually enjoy working for this type of manager and the manager can also get her/his results. I call this manager 2.

I have worked for managers 1 and 2 so far. Like most people, I enjoy working for manager 2. Manager 1 for me is too pushy and doesn't make me feel like working. When I worked for manager 1, I used to ask myself every morning that "Do I really like this job?" Usually when you ask yourself this kind of question, that means you want change in your career. I was fortunate that every time I worked for manager 1 was usually short. It was either for a project only or for a short period of time.

Working for manager 2 isn't always good either. Since there is only minimal communication between you and your manager, sometimes you question your importance of existence to the company. You may ask yourself "Does my manager need me?". In this down economy, you may also ask "Am I the next one to be laid off?" So even though you enjoy working for manager 2, it doesn't mean you can keep your job. As a matter of fact, I would work for manager 1 in this down economy. It is easier to make manager 1 feel your importance to the company. Perhaps there is manager 1.5, but I haven't worked for any of them so far.

Love is Love

2009-04-18T22:52:00.003-05:00

Love is Love is an old Hong Kong movie. I came across this movie on YouTube when I was watching some funny videos. There are so many full-length movies on YouTube and Love is Love is one of them. Perhaps this movie is so old that nobody cares about its copyright issue anymore. I think I have watched this movie before, but I don’t recall its story. When I found that it is on YouTube, I decided to watch again. The main reason is the main actor is Stephen Chow, the director of Kung Fu Hustle. I have always been fan of Chow. I believe I have watched all of his movies. Sometimes I watch the same movies several times because everything you will find new stuff in the movies.

When the movie starts, I realized that Stephen was not Chow’s English name back then. He was still using his Chinese phonetic English name. He wasn’t very famous and I believe the main actress in the movie was more famous than him at that time. This movie certainly has certainly helped and influenced him in his career. There are several scenes in the movie that are still very typical in today’s Chow’s movies. For example, in Kung Fu Hustle there was an ugly lady drawing lipstick on her face, you can find the same scene in Love in Love. I was surprised when I saw it but it still made me laugh. I guess good jokes never age.

Besides the humor, I also found this movie touching. It talks about how a wife supports her husband to make him successful. And when the husband succeeds, he still loves his wife even though the wife thought she doesn’t qualify to be his wife anymore. I can relate this situation to myself because my wife and I have gone through tough time in the past. Without her support, I wouldn’t think I can reach this point of my career. I guess this is a very typical story for the people in my age. Most people started from nothing, but with all the hard work and diligence, lives finally can become better. I admit that I am not a movie junkie but I haven’t seen a movie that is so close my live for a while. The movies nowadays are all full of computer effects, but they are more like visual effects than anything. A good storyline can catch people’s heart and it has always been the key ingredient in successful movies. Slumdog Millionaire is a good example.

Company Scandal

2009-04-11T14:19:00.001-05:00

My current job is fine and it is related to my background. I always like a job like that. However, the day-to-day work gets old real fast. The work that I have been given is not very challenging. Even my boss once told me that he doesn't have the opportunity here to best use of my talent. Don't get me wrong, I still like my job. It is way better than the first job that I had, which is only 98% relevant to my background. However, people always look for better opportunity and I am no different.

My company is a global corporation. I have been always looking for better opportunity within the company. Last year my company restructured it's management team. People have reshuffled around and new department has been formed. I found an opening position in the new department that seemed like interesting and can better use of my talent. The hiring manager even came to me to ask if I were interested. To me it is no-brainer, I applied for the job the very same day. Everything seems moved along well, I would get a promotion and a pay raise. Even though my current boss was a little upset but still would let me go. However, the hurtle came from the higher management. My boss always tends to be diplomatic and doesn't like to make decision on his own. With me asking for leaving, he had to ask his boss (the VP of the department) for agreement also. The VP's decision was I can't take the new job. He wanted to keep me because he thinks I am valuable to his department. It is a disappointment to me and I am still upset it.

Few days ago, I stumble across a news about our company. It is a man who tried to have sexual encounter with a 14-year old boy. This man is no stranger to me. He was an executive in our company. I used "was" because he is no longer with the company. Had I successfully switched my job last year, I would have worked in his group because the hiring manager used to report to him. After I was discouraged for switching job, I once thought of contacting this man directly. I thought he can overpower some of the people here. However, I never got a chance to talk to him directly. Maybe it is good that I didn't. To think about it, with the current economy situation, maybe I should thank the VP for not letting me go. Had I switched my job, I would be scared to death by now and worry about what would happen to me. I feel like I can stay in the company longer with my current job. Job security is everything right now.

Top Ten List of Working at Current Company

2009-04-04T13:28:00.001-05:00

I have just completed two years of service at my current company. The company stock price was once about 120, then had a three way split. After that, the highest was once 43, and now is only about 12. I can't blame everything on the company's management because it is global economy crisis. However, this company definitely has some unique culture. Here is my top ten list. Here we go:

10. FMEA is pronounced as FEMA
9. Data is equal to Datum
8. EC is in Diana's Evil-minded Commend
7. If you have a room, you can talk people behind the back OFFICIALLY
6. If you have a 30-min meeting, people will spend 25 min on cracking up jokes, and use the last 5 minutes to make decision. And the decision is always be "We need to schedule another meeting (to crack up more jokes)."
5. If you ask "Can you help me to do this?", your answer will be "Yes, but I won't do anything until my boss tells me."
4. If you need other people's help, always send out an email and copy their managers in it
3. If you are knowledgeable about your job, you can keep your job for a while
2. If you know how to crack jokes with your boss, you can keep your job longer
1. If you know nothing about your job, you can be a manager

Ethanol Bubble Burst

2008-10-27T21:04:00.000-05:00

When I was driving to work this morning, one thing caught my eye at the gas station. The E85 (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline) price is HIGHER than the regular gas. The regular gas price has been declining for weeks but the E85 price stands still. Now that E85 is more expansive than regular gas, does it mean the end of the ethanol boom? How about the those flex fuel vehicles? Do they still have a selling point? Take a look at the one year stock trends of GM (NYSE: GM) and Ford (NYSE: F), maybe we can get a little idea about how flex fuel vehicles can them, if any.

I am never a fan of E85. Although its price had been kept below regular gas in the past, its BTU/Gallon is not as great. Yes, you can fill up the tank cheaper, but does it mean your vehicle can travel farther? If you live in cold climate area, good luck with starting up your vehicle's engine in the winter. Research reports have shown that due to the low energy content in ethanol, the combustion in the engine does not process as great as that with regular fuel.

Here in Kansas, several ethanol plants have been closing. However, the demand for ethanol is still there. Our regular fuel actually is some kind of ethanol blend. Depending on the state's regulation, there can be 5% to 20% ethanol contents in it. Gas station owners obviously understand it. I have seen gas station putting up big signs and bragging about their gas is ethanol free. Of course, a big contributor is that the gas station across the street is selling cheaper, ethanol blend gas.

The major side effect of ethanol is that it drives grocery price up significantly. Due to the ethanol "boom", farmers have been growing more corns than any other crops. The demand for corn has been gone up but the demand for other crops hasn't been gone down in the mean time. We have all learned this supply and demand relationship in our economics class and guess what, we have all witnessed the side effect of the ethanol boom: grocery cost has gone up significantly. The rice I have been buying has gone double in only half a year, which translates a bigger problem to the people who can only make ends meet from day to day. How many people's salary have gone up in half a year? Has the crime rate also gone up? I don't have the figure to show but I am not surprised if it has.

We need alternative fuel and ethanol is not the future, especially if it is made of people's food.

Are you Chromed?

2008-09-25T23:21:00.000-05:00

Google has recently rolled out a new browser, Chrome. I have played with it for some time. It seems to have decent loading speed, nice web page rendering, and best of all, each tab in Chrome is an individual process, so even though one web page crashes (for whatever reason) in one tab, the whole browser still runs.

There are so many web browsers out there, e.g. IE, Firefox, Opera, and Safari, etc. Why would Google want to share this part of business?

Rumor: If you use Chrome, Google can know you better and can deliver better matching ads to catch your eyes.

I tend to believe that because I have a habit to clear up my browser cache, cookies, and history whenever I quit the browser. I can fend off lots of adware or spyware that way, although I might lose some convenience in browsing. It is very simple to set up clear private data automatically in Firefox and Safari, however it is more trouble in IE, that's why I don't use it alot unless I have to. To do it in Chrome is as trouble as IE, if not worse. Google may want to make it as trouble as it can be, so you don't do it.

One scary thing I noticed when I started up Chrome first time is that it can import all of your private stuff from other browsers, including saved passwords! Well, I don't have saved passwords in my browser, so there is nothing to import. But....the question is, if Google can dig up your passwords, so can other hackers, right?

When you are browsing the internet, take the words from my boss: "Be safe out there."

ING Direct is for REAL!?

2008-09-24T00:24:00.000-05:00

ING Direct is offering 3% interest rate for a regular savings account. No minimum balance is required. Most banks have less than 1% interest rate, Bank of America offers 0.2% for example. If you like CD, ING Direct also has great CD rate, like 4.5%. ING Direct is not a brick and mortar bank and it doesn't have the overhead cost that other banks have.

In order to deposit money to ING Direct, you need to link your checking account to it. There is usually no service charge for transferring money back and forth, but check with your bank first. Bank of America doesn't charge a penny as far as I know.

ING is known for their insurance service, and now they are stepping into the banking business too. Remember AIG, another three-letter insurance company that has just run into all kinds of financial crisis. I wonder what ING is up to these days.

iPod Touch

2008-04-12T11:39:00.000-05:00

I don't buy in the iPod hype type of person. It is more of a show off factor. I started using iTunes before I even had an iPod. iTunes is not my favorite music player. I like Winamp better personally. But since the introduction of Podcast, I have started using iTunes. Very soon enough, I realized I also wanted to listen to my favarite Podcasts on the go, so I bought my first iPod, the iPod shuffle. It is the 512MB chewing gum form factor version. At that time it costed me $100. Now you can buy a 1GB version with less than half the physical size for $70. It is tough to invest in stuff like that.

The 512MB iPod shuffle still serves me well. It is a tough iPod. My wife once has done a clean up to it in the washing machine. With all the detergent washing and paddle spinning. It just stopped working for a week then was back to normal. I guess all the moisture content was all gone by then.

When Apple came up with the iPhone, I thought it would be a good mobile web surfing device. I had been using my cell phone to serve the web but the data plan didn't come cheap. Although the iPhone has wifi but it also tags along with a pricey data plan. The unlocked iPhone is not cheap either. I have a cell phone and all I need is a just mobile web surfing device. The iPhone touch is the perfect choice. I got the iPod touch which is my second iPod in my life. I bought it mainly because of its wireless capability. I use it to serve the web more than anything else. After I got the iPod touch, I dropped my cell phone's data plan immediately because the saving from my data plan will eventually pay for my iPod touch. It is not a bad investment after all.

After 2 months owning the iPod touch, Apple was at it again! They introduced a software upgrade package for the iPod touch owners. The software package is free for the new iPod touch buyers but it costs about $20 bucks for the early birds like me. There is no way I am paying for it. It just doesn't seem fair to us.

When people talk about iPhone or iPod touch, jailbreaking is always in the conversation. Jailbreaking sounds like committing a crime or something and I don't know how the hackers came up this name. Zibri has a great jailbreak software called ZiPhone. It seems very easy to use. If you want to get the new iPod touch software and more, you will appreciate Zibri is God! ZiPhone is freeware. He is running his website full time and earn his income from ads and donation. That's inspiring!

Halloween

2007-10-28T23:03:00.000-05:00

It is about time for Halloween. Stores has started selling the Halloween stuff like costume, candy, and all kinds of funny decor. I never had time to enjoy it because I was always busy. I have seen the kids doing trick or treat during Halloween on TV or movies but I have never seen one coming to my place yet. Probably there aren't so many children around my neighborhood. On my first Halloween day in the United States, I was living by myself in an off campus apartment. I was wondering if any kid would come to my place. I worked late that day and didn't see any kids walking around. I saw some Halloween parties in my neighborhood on my way home though. Halloween is also fun for college students besides kids. It is a good excuse to party and release some stress from school. As time goes by, I realized that trick or treat will only come to the family type neighborhood, not the apartment complex for college students. For my wife's first Halloween day here, she also thought some kids would come for trick or treat. She had prepared some candy but eventually no one came. I ended up eating some of them.

This time last year. I came to my company for an interview. There were many people dressed up for Halloween. I was wondering if it is that fun to dress up in the company like that. Do they have lots of pressure? Then last week I received an email from the HR says that there is a Halloween competition in the company every year. The prize is decent but I don't remember the detail because I am not going to dress up that day anyway. This competition may have encourage the people in the company to celebrate Halloween. Nevertheless, Halloween decoration and candy are already all over the place in the company. Particularly the female dominated area. It is good to stop by those places to steal some candy.

This year, we finally has done some Halloween activity. It is pumpkin carving! We went to a friend's house to carve pumpkin. It is my first time so I made some mistakes. We brought a small pumpkin to carve but I realize that the bigger the pumpkin is the better. However, it would take lots of time to clear a big pumpkin up. We have carved three sides of the small pumpkin. It ended up looking like lots on holes on it, not a very good one to say the least. I carved the Blogger logo on one side and the RSS feed logo on the other side. Unfortunately no one there knows what they are. I wasn't quite in sync with the people there anyway. But they are interesting people with different background. They are just like the international students in college but this time they are all out of school and married. I feel like I could see my future from them because we have similar background and family. There were so many children in the house and I found them noisy. Halloween is really kids favorite day!

Green Eyed Monster

2007-09-30T22:37:00.000-05:00

This is a new term I learned in the company. A green eyed monster is someone with is always jealous of something. For some reasons, most people in the company post their diploma and patents in their offices. I didn't know what is the intention of that, maybe they just have to put something on the walls to make the office look better. I was looking for something to put on the walls when I got my office. The office looks kind of plain when there is nothing on the walls. Now I have a calendar, a white board, some posters, and reference guides on the walls. I don't think I would post any of my diploma or achievement in my office. My office walls are already crowded and don't want to make another nest to incubate green eyed monster.

One day I walked in one of my co-workers' office. I saw he drew a little monster on his white board. The picture drew my attention because he painted the monster's eye green. It looks kind of cute that's why I brought that up to him. And the question came, "ah, a monster with green eyes, what does it mean?" I said I heard of it but I don't know. He was kind of surprised because of that. Maybe this is a common term in his world. He explained to me why people shouldn't be a green eyed monster and all that and I agreed with him. As I have worked in the company for some time, I realize that he actually is a green eyed monster himself. He is a very experienced engineer and wants to be manager someday. He is doing all kinds of managerial work but nothing is helping the work he is supposed to do. Our company sells units by season and his project already missed the season. But he always has some kind of excuse and his manager always listens. How amazing that is! His manger is not very good by the way. He doesn't have enough background for his job. The green eyed co-worker always thinks he should be doing his manager's job. His office is a green eyed monster incubator where it has all kinds of diploma and certificates on the walls. I become to think that he got them for the title, not the job he is doing. I could be wrong but time will tell as I stay in this company longer.

Another evident characteristic of the green eyed monster in my company is he likes to belittle people who are higher level than him. He disagrees with people have longer experience than him and said they should have done the job better. Well, the outcome is other people could finish their projects and he missed the season. He thinks he can manage better because he has more books in his bookshelf (I assumed). Evidently he is not quite there yet. He has an aggressive personality and is talkative. A common thing I found about management people is that they are usually very calm and don't do a lot of work. His aggressive personality doesn't do him any good. But to be honest, I hope he can take over his manager's position because I like aggressive people and he doesn't need to do a lot. His manager does not have the experience as he has. I don't report to his manager but I have to work with him some time. It is hard to work with people who think they know everything but actually they don't. Speaking of that, I think I am a green eyed monster too because I am belittling people who have more experience than I have. I am a hypocrite.....

Saturday Morning

2007-09-09T13:47:00.000-05:00

What would you do on Saturday Morning? In the old days, I had school on Saturday morning. I needed to go to work on Saturdays for my first job in Macau. But things have been changed over years. Many jobs are only 5 days per week, especially the government jobs. Here in the US, most jobs, including schools are 5 days per week. So what do the people do here on Saturday morning? A better question to ask is what do they do on Friday night? There is a TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) saying. It means Friday is finally here and people can get away from their daily routines. Many people here enjoy their Friday nights. They go to movie, bars, get drunk, and have a good night sleep. Some students may drive back to their hometowns or catch up their school work. Needless to say, the next day is off and they don't need to wake up early as usual. So what most people do here on Saturday morning? I would say they probably spend the time in the bed, sleep.

If you can wake up early as usual, here are other things to do on Saturday morning too. Going to the Farmer's market is the one that comes to my mind. Farmer's market is a place where the local farmers sell their home grown products, mostly vegetable. For some reasons, the farmer's market here only runs twice a week, mid week evening and Saturday morning. The Saturday one is bigger and has a variety of things to buy. It closes around noon so if you want to get fresh vegetable, you'd better go early.

Where is the best place to have breakfast on Saturday Morning? In Macau, I would say it would be the Dim Sum restaurants. There are only few Dim Sum restaurants here and they are not very good. There are good Dim Sum restaurants in New York City, but not here in Wichita. If I happen to wake up early on Saturday, I would go to a bakery cafe to enjoy my breakfast. As a matter of fact, it is quite common to the local people too. The cafe can be as busy as the Dim Sum restaurants in Macau on Saturday morning. I'd like going to Panera. It usually has a nice and comfy atmosphere, has a variety of bakery, salad, and soup, free refill of any drink, and free wifi. The coffee is not quite up to par to Starbucks but it is not too shabby.

I bet many people here like to go to Panera too, including the vice president of my company. I happen to find him there on Saturday morning. He was sitting at a corner by himself, wearing shorts and sandals, and had a laptop on his table. He seemed as busy as he is in the office. I heard he is not coming in next Monday. He may be busy for his next trip. He travels a lot. But I was a little surprised he comes to the cafe to work (I assume). As a VP of a company like him, he should have a nicer and comfier place to work at home. The noise in the cafe is disturbing sometime. He may want to get away from his family for a while and get something done over the weekend. Some people don't like working at home, he maybe one of them. The odd thing is every engineer or manager in my company is assigned a laptop. I think the company wants us to work 27/7. Who would do it anyway? But it is always nice to have a laptop especially for business trip.

I am just an average Joe. Unless I have something important to do, Saturday morning is always a good time to stay in the bed.

Football Season

2007-08-27T23:28:00.000-05:00

September is around the corner, which means it is the football season. I like watching football, especially college football. They college players may not be as skillful as the pros but they always play with their hearts and the pride for the school. American football used to be a stranger to me because I wasn't familiar with rules. I used to mixed up the American football with the British Rugby. But after several years of being a football addict, the difference between them is apparent. American football is a tough sport. There are lots of body contacts and hittings. It didn't give me any good impression though. On the first day I came to OSU, I saw an accident on TV that a wide receiver tried to catch the ball and ended up twisted his elbow. It looked very painful and disgusting. Then on another day I went to a small grocery store and tried to ask the cashier some questions, he showed an impatient face to me because he was watching a football game on TV. I thought he doesn't like foreigner but then I realized it is because of the football game. I understand more as I become more a football fan. I don't remember how many times I have shown the same impatient face to my wife. Hopefully she will become a football fan someday too, then we can share the same joy.

Interesting football games are always on cable channels. I couldn't afford the cable bill when I was student so I used to go to the University dorm or laundromat to watch. And I am not a big TV fan either, so it doesn't bother me too much if I only have the local channels. Most of the time, I only watch the News and weather forecast, and local channels are good enough for me. Now that I have started working, it is time to enjoy the life whenever and wherever possible. Since I can't go to University dorm anymore, I have just ordered the cable channels for the upcoming football season. I can finally watch football games comfortably at home. Watching football game at home is always good because it doesn't matter how hot or cold the weather is, you can still watch every single down of the game. I used to be season ticket holder and went to OSU stadium to watch game live. The first few games are usually on sunny days and the last few games are usually on chilly days. I'd have both sunburn and cold as a season ticket holder. The pregame activity is always fun on campus but the problem is the parking and the post game traffic. I wouldn't mind going to the game again but the weather better be nice, or I would rather watch the game on TV.

This year, OSU will play at Georgia for the season opener. A lot of expectation is on this year's OSU team because they have got the weapon to be a national power. However, Georgia is always a tough team to play with especially in Athens. They have a 92,000+ capacity stadium and it will give an edge to for them. OSU players better focus and play tough in order to get a W out of this game. This game will be on ESPN2 on Saturday and I am looking forward to it. On football season Saturdays, my entertainment is always TV, TV, and TV. Life is good!

Adam's Inn

2007-08-11T23:58:00.000-05:00

Whenever I travel by car, I always stay in motels. The room conditions are usually so-so in motels. They always give me some dirty feeling but because of the low cost, I prefer that over regular hotels. The last motel I stayed in was the Days Inn in Enid, Oklahoma. That is the worst motel I have ever stayed in. The overall building looks old and lacks of maintenance. When I entered the room, I felt like no one has vacuumed that floor carpet for a long long time. And because of summer, I felt steamy inside. The hotel staff should have done a better job preparing the room for us. I usually don't have high expectation for Days Inn, but this one is absolutely way below the average standard. The only positive side is that the staff is friendly. I don't think I will go back to that motel though.

When I travel by air, I either stay in my friends place or hotels. Looking for a comfortable and convenient hotel can be time consuming. It is usually pricey too, especially in big cities like New York City, Washington, D.C. and so on. Last week, we went to D.C. for few days. Hotels in D.C. are expensive or the locations are not convenient. When I search for hotels, I also pay attention to the hotel neighborhood, make sure it is located in a safe area. Very often, the low priced hotels are located in a bad neighborhood. It can be dangerous if you come back late. This time, my wife found a special place in D.C. to stay - The Adam's Inn. It's got lots of positive reviews from the people who have stayed there, even the TV has recommended it. Its location is kind of convenient, about 10 minute walk from the nearby metro station. It is also close to the national zoo too but we didn't go there this time. I wouldn't say its neighborhood is very safe, at least I don't feel that way. So we always came back before dark. This inn is originally an apartment building. The owner has renovated it for public use. But if I lived nearby, I may not be pleased with that because it draws so many strangers in the area. I noticed that its next door neighbor has steel bars on the windows and doors. They must be for security reasons.

This inn is kind of old. It is literally an old building. When I went inside, I reminded me the home stay feeling when I was college student. It is a suite type apartment. The tenants share the same living and dining rooms. Some share the bathroom too but we chose the private bathroom option, just have to pay a little more. Everything in the building was decorated nicely. There is not much bright light inside and it has kind of spooky feel. We can't hear any noise from other tenants after 6pm. I thought we were the only tenants in the building on the first day, but everybody came out for the breakfast in the morning. It is strange that we couldn't see or hear anything from them at night. Speaking of breakfast, it is the best I have ever had in hotels. There is nothing fancy but it has all you need for breakfast, bread, bagel, coffee, tea, cereal, and so on. Unfortunately, the breakfast only runs from 8am to 9:30am. Some people complain about it because if you have an early flight, you will definitely miss it. I remember Days Inn's breakfast runs much earlier than that, but I won't compare the Days Inn's breakfast to Adam's Inn in terms of quality.

There are different kinds of entertainment in the building. In the movie room, there are lots of video tapes and some DVD's. Unfortunately, I don't know if it was the video tape machine's problem or the tapes' problem, the picture quality was not clear. I tried to play some DVD's instead but there was not disc in the boxes. Apparently, they might be stolen by the tenants. Shame on them! There are lots of magazines all over the buildings. Wireless internet is also available. If you don't have laptop, there is also a computer for public use. We didn't need to wait for it whenever we used it at night. Like I said, we barely met other tenants at night there.

Although everything looked neat at Adam's inn, we found lots on short hair in the bed sheet. It's like somebody has shaven on it and left the hair there. I also found some bugs in the room. They are the bugs that you can easily found in old houses. They didn't bother me a lot but as far as a hotel is concerned, it is a no-no. We stayed there for two days and it was just ok for the cost. If you pay a little more, you could stay in some 4 star hotels easily but you won't get to experience this special inn. And I don't know why, the tax is kind of high. It is 14.5%, while the sales tax is only 10%. I still don't know if I was cheated or not. My only suggestion to Adam's inn is its internet booking system. It is not up to par compared to other internet booking systems out there. I felt insecure when I gave them my credit card information there. I guess I will keep track of my credit card activities in the next few days to make sure nothing goes wrong.

To sum it up, Adam's inn is for leisure seekers. If you come to D.C. for business, go look for somewhere else.

July Golf

2007-07-28T21:52:00.000-05:00

This July I golfed a lot. It is almost once week and sometimes twice a week. There is a golf league in my company. We get to play every other week. I started playing golf not long ago since I took the golf class at OSU. Golf is considered expensive sport for most people in Macau and therefore it is not common there. But in Oklahoma and Kansas, it is a common sport. It can be still be expensive if you want to join some private golf clubs. But public courses are abundant in these two states. And now that I have started working, it is more affordable than ever!

I wasn't very interested in golf until I have started playing it. It is a totally different mindset of game compared to the physical sports like basketball, soccer, and so on. Golf can be physical too but for the most time it is not. The fundamental skills for playing golf is critical. Some people can somehow get away from it with some expensive golf clubs. But I opt to be a more skilled golfer rather than relying on the equipment. All of my golf clubs are either free or purchased from the low priced resale shops. They are not as decent but they can get me started with the game. I won't be buying any expensive ones until I have found out the limitations of these golf clubs. One of my woods is literally made of wood. It is obviously out of date but it can give me the distance I want. Nowadays, the woods are made of some light weight materials like titanium, and the hitting surface area is larger so it is easier to hit the ball. I had hard time hitting the ball with my "wood" club at the beginning and then I realized that there are many problems in my swing. The "wood" really has helped me to swing better. One thing that beats me in the league is that most golfers can't swing very well but still have decent score. I think their clubs have helped them a lot. My skill level is still below average right now. My goal is once I feel like I have full control of all of my clubs, I will make those people open their eyes, and prove them skill is more important than equipment in this game.

Golf and tennis are similar, require good etiquette. But I have seen another side of golf and I am shocked about that. There are many good golfers in the league and they do something that I don't like. First of all, many people smoke in the golf course. It is full of grass in course and there aren't so many ashtrays or trash cans. I am really afraid they will burn the golf course some day. Another problem is drinking. I didn't know people can drink beer in the course and even the club house sells beers. What's the point of that? I thought sport and alcohol can't be done at the same time, apparently this rule is not true for golf...... The most disgusting thing I have seen in golf course is people actually pee there! So you if somehow hit the ball nearby some trees, it would likely get pee washed. Golf maybe is too common here and people seem to lose respect for the game. Or maybe I am still too new to this game and only know the surface of it. I never thought cigarette, alcohol, and urine can be part of golf. The golf league has already opened my eyes.

July 4th

2007-07-04T18:58:00.000-05:00

July 4th is the Independence day of the United States. It is a national holiday. Fireworks are everywhere in the States. Each city, no matter what size it is, you will see fireworks at about 10:00pm to celebrate the day. I have seen the fireworks in Stillwater, Norman, Oklahoma City. I would say the Stillwater one is the nicest. But it is still nothing compared to the fireworks at the Fireworks festival in Macau though. Those are spectacular! Besides the large scale fireworks, people here can also do small fireworks during the 4th of July week. You will see and hear fireworks burning everywhere, balcony, backyard, lake, and river, etc. I am not very favorable of this policy because the fireworks can cause fire easily. But there does not seem to have any control of it and accidents caused by fireworks are always reported on the News. I guess it is fun over safety here.

This year, the 4th of July is in the middle of the week. People in my company usually take vacation for the whole week, first half, or second half of the week. However, I am sticking with my work schedule because I want to save my vacation for later use. The lack of people in the company apparently is problem. I see no productivity at all for the week. Peoples' minds are just all for vacation. I think it will be better off if everyone takes vacation all together. The people working in the office are just suffering and hoping this week will be gone soon. If the 4th of July comes like that next time, I think I am going to take the vacation too. I don't want to suffer again because of the vacation schedule.

I remember last year this time, we went to Texas. It was kind of fun experience. I still remember Tokyo One, the Japanese restaurant in Dallas. I wish we can go there again some day. But since we are in Wichita now, it is more difficult to go there compared to Norman. Norman is a peaceful place and Wichita has more stuff to do. Both have its advantage. I guess I will miss Norman more when the football and basketball seasons come. There are more news reports for the OSU team down there. In Wichita, most of the coverages are for Wichita State, Kansas State, and Kansas. It is no doubt because we are no longer in Oklahoma. The fun part of working in Wichita though is there are more OSU alums in the company than Norman. I can say Orange Power proud and loud!

My Cubicle

2007-06-17T21:38:00.000-05:00

For many entry level positions, company usually assign cubicles for the new employees. However, when I first started working in Macau, the company gave me a meeting room. It was mainly due to that company didn't have cubicles. There were several desks but they were all full. My manager thought I would work outside often and a designated desk was not necessary. However, I ended up working 80% of the time in there. Had I worked there longer, he would have made a good decision. Unfortunately, I quite right before everything got rolling. Sitting in the meeting room wasn't any fun. I felt like everyone in the company hesitated to stop by. The worst of all, I didn't have any computer in that room back then. It was kind of boring and unpleasant experience. Besides the meeting room, I didn't like the job that much so I finally decided to come out and find a better career.

When I first came to OSU, I found myself a desk in a lab office. I worked with several people in the same room. It was fun experience as I was able to interact with more people. All of sudden, the office became a fun place to me. I even stayed in the office late every day just to hang out with people. But as the class and research got rolling, I started to miss the meeting room I had in Macau. I really needed that room for me to concentrate on my work. The office was so distracting at that time that I had to put on my headset to work.

After I finished running my experiment in the lab, I requested to move to a nicer office. This office had cubicles! I like working in cubicles. I had worked in several offices when I was at OSU, but the cubicle one was the best. It was not as distracting as other offices in the lab, and I could still keep hanging out with the people around me. I didn't have the boring feeling as that meeting room in the Macau company either. That cubicle led me to my graduation and it was the last office I worked at OSU.

In my company right now, I am still working in a cubicle. I like it most of the time but its location. It is right in front of my boss' office. I feel like I am being monitored all the time. He is a busy person and has many visitors. The traffic in front of my cubicle is terrible. When I came to this company for an interview, I was told that I would have my room. But I told them that I don't need it because I remember that unpleasant experience I had when I was in that meeting room in Macau. Maybe they listened to me and decided to offer me a cubicle instead. But to tell the truth, I think it is because all the rooms in the office are already full. Again, I don't mind working in cubicles but my cubicle's location is just terrible. I hope I can move someday.

Speaking of cubicle, I found this song that best describes my feeling now. Enjoy!

Wild Animals

2007-06-03T23:27:00.000-05:00

One of the strangest things I have observed when living in Oklahoma is that wild animals are everywhere. In Stillwater campus, the most common one is squirrel. Squirrel is not a common animal in Macau. When I first came to Stillwater, I was very surprised that squirrels are everywhere on campus. They look kind of cute. I wanted to have one as my pet when I was kid. But because I could see them everywhere, I lost this interest. Sometimes I can find some dead squirrels too. They are mainly killed by vehicles. Many of the times, the squirrels are agile enough to avoid any traffic accident. But accident is unexpected, because so many vehicles on campus, some squirrels are unfortunately killed.

Speaking of dead animals, you can always find some dead animals on the highway. You can find armadillo, raccoon, deer, turtle and fox etc. Needless to say, the wild animals found on highways are easily killed by the the high speed vehicles. I don't really know if the state government cleans up the dead bodies but I have seen some hawks, crows, and some meat-eaters stopped by to take some bites. It reminds me how the people treat the dead bodies in Tibet. They put the human dead bodies in an open field and let the hawks eat them. It is a very gross scene but I don't against it. At least it provides a food source for the wild.

I don't really know the name of armadillo in Chinese because I had never seen it in Macau. It looks like a big rat with scale on the body, not a very attractive look. Raccoon, deer, turtle, and fox are more familiar to me, at least I have seen and heard them before. If you drive on highway at night, you can see them easily. Deers are the easiest to locate because their eyes are shiny. They look like two small high lights in the dark. When the first time I saw that I thought it was a ghost or something, little scary. Sometimes they jump around the highway and cause traffic accidents. So it is common to see a sign on highway to warn the drivers beware of the deers. When I took the driving test in Macau, I also studied this sign but never thought it would be any useful. In order to avoid hitting the deers, some people put some kind of whistles in front of their vehicles to scare off them. The whistles go off as long as the vehicle's speed is fast enough. I have thought about buying a pair of them before but since I don't drive that often at night, I don't need them.

Because there are lots of greens in Stillwater, snakes are everywhere. Snake is not my favorite animal. One time there was a snake ran into our lab. I wasn't there at that time but it scared the hell out of one of the ladies there. Another snake story was when we came back to the apartment in the evening, we found that there was a snake staying in front of our door. It is dark brownish color and about 3 foot long. It was standstill but still scary. I called the police to take care of it. The funny thing was, the police was also scared. The last (hopefully) snake encounter was when I was walking to the bus stop, I found a snake just laying in front of me. It is greenish color and I didn't know how long it is because only the middle part of its body was exposed from the grass. I could just jump over it but I took another route to the bus stop instead. When I think of it, it is still frightening.

If you happen to go to the lakes area, you will see another kinds of animal too. Unfortunately, snake is one of them. But the most common one is the goose. Be careful to walk along the water sides because there is goose poo everywhere. It is very easy to step on some of them. Besides goose, there are cranes occasionally. They usually just standstill in the water as we usually see them on TV. One of my strangest wild animal encounter in the lake area is the owl. One day I went to the lake for jogging in the morning. When I was jogging across a bridge, there was an owl sitting at the bridge hand rail. It was only 2 foot away from me. I didn't realized that until I just passed by it. It is quite big, about 2 foot tall and half foot wide. I was afraid it would flight to me but fortunately it didn't.

Now that we are in Kansas, the common wild animals we have seen so far are squirrels and rabbits! Yes, there are rabbits jumping around nearby our apartment. They look very cute and I grew up liking them. I used to have rabbits at home when I was kid. The rabbits here are grayish color and rather small in size. I was thinking to take one of them home but I think it's better to let them live outside. Hopefully I won't see any dead rabbit in the parking lot in the future.

Allergy

2007-05-18T22:09:00.000-05:00

Besides tornado, I bet the worst thing of living in the central America is the allergy problem. Almost every year in this time, I have allergy problem. It seems I am allergic to grass, pollen, and house dust. My nose just keeps running. This time it is even worse because I also have itchy eyes. If the runny nose stops, the itchy eyes come. There is no break for me. I thought once I am asleep, the allergy problem does not bother me anymore. But I was awakened by the itchy eyes. I have tried to take some medications but they do not help me for the long term. I hope the allergy problem will be gone soon after I get used to the Kansas air. It is not a pleasant experience.

I remember my wife first came to Oklahoma. She had allergy problem too. She had runny nose, itchy and watery eyes. She looked really awful. After one year, her allergy problem seems gone. Even after we have moved to Kansas, she does not have allergy problem either. I guess her body has been trained when she was in Oklahoma. But one thing I do not understand is that I had lived in Oklahoma for 7+ years and my body still can not get trained to resist the allergy problem. Research result says if you keep using the same pesticide in your house, the roaches in your house do not die. It is because the roaches have developed a pesticide resistance gene generation by generation, they become accustomed to the pesticide eventually. My wife's body seems to fall into this category but my body does not. Well maybe it is still too early to say, I have just lived here for a month. Hope that it will get better.

I have tried different kinds of way to stop my allergy, including medication and nose spray, but the most effective way is to wear a mask. It really filters out all the allergens going to my nose. My runny nose stops quickly once I put a mask on. However, mask can only help the runny nose problem, I still have to suffer the itchy eyes. My eyes are so itchy that I had to get a bottle of eye drop for it. I did not know the eye drop for allergy can be that expensive. It is about 5 times the price of the contact lens cleaning solution. But I am glad that the eye drop seems to help. I will get catch a good night sleep today and hopefully I will get better tomorrow.

Family Reunion

2007-05-13T20:44:00.000-05:00

I grew up in big family. I don't recall when was the last time everyone got together. Everyone just seemed to have different schedules. I always try to meet every family memeber whenever I go back to Macau. However, I have one sister who has moved to England and I hadn't met her since I came here. I had a graduation ceremony last week and she could get the vacation days to come over here. So finally we could meet again. She stayed here for totally 2 weeks. I think she has experienced what it is like to live here in Kansas: transportation, shopping, sightseeing, and weather. Transportation is just not as convenient as England. You have got to have a vehicle to go around. Grocery is generally cheaper here. There are not many sightseeing places. And the best of it, there was a tornado last week just an hour way from us. It rained almost everyday when she was here. It was kind of strange because I don't used to see this kind of weather in Oklahoma. She had to stay in my apartment for the most of the time because of the transportation and weather problems.

I took her to OSU for the graduation ceremony. I wanted to let her know what kind of school I had lived for 7 years. We walked around the campus and took some pictures. She didn't seem impressed with the campus, I don't know why. When I first came here, I was so amazed that the OSU campus is so big. Well, you have to consider that I am from the University of Macau, which is just small. I also tried to bring her to Eskimo Joe's but because of the waiting line was too long, I took her to Bad Brad BBQ instead. She seemed intrigued by the decoration in the restaurant. Bad Brad BBQ is one of my favorites in Stillwater. I am glad she liked it there.

This time, she also came with his son, Andrew. I had seen him on pictures and it was my first time to play with him. He is a very cute boy but kind of naughty in my eye. He likes throwing stuff around which I hate the most. My apartment was messy when he was here and I didn't bother to clean it up until he is gone. It is hard to keep a house clean if there are children in it. We went to eat out several times and he made all kinds of trouble in the restaurants. But he is not the worst I have seen. My another sister has a boy who likes throwing stuff too. One time I was sitting with him at the same table and suddenly he threw a tablespoon in front of me to break a glass. Everyone in the restaurant was looking at us. I felt so embarrassed at that time. His mom was sitting in another table and didn't get as much attention as I did. I think she knew his bad habbit and avoided eating with him in the public. Since that time, I always try to avoid eating out with kids. Andrew is no exception, but thank God he is better. My wife seemed enjoyed playing with Andrew. She always likes playing with kids. But all of her nicely done decorations in the house were basically wiped out by Andrew. I hope this time she has learned how to decorate the house when there is kid visiting.

I really appricate them for coming. Two weeks may be a little too long for them to stay in Wichita but I hope they enjoyed their stay. After we sent them off, the house becomes very quiet. Andrew really made a lot of noise and my wife missed him alot. Everything should be back to normal this week. I really don't know when we will meet them again. Hopefully it will be anytime soon.

Cross-Platform Programs

2007-04-15T20:37:00.000-05:00

Because of my work, I need to write computer programs. The programs are more engineering oriented, just to speed up the calculation routine for those engineering equations. Very often, the Visual Basic function in Excel is good enough. Unfortunately, not all engineers are Excel savvy. In that case, they may need a simple, user friendly interface to interact with them. Besides that, a program with a interface can always attracts more users if the program is intended for other people to use. I have written several programs with interface front end. I have realized that maintaining the front end is more time consuming than the calculation engine behind it. Programming the front end is an art. It has to be likable for most users. And because different users have different computer habbits, a common front end that can fit all users are not easy to make. On top of that, there are several operating systems on the market, a program that can be used for different platforms is an other challenge.

I used to program in Visual Basic (VB) a lot because it is easy to use. But as soon as I realized VB program can be only used on Windows platform, I have started looking for an alternative. The latest VB compiler (.Net or 2005) seems to solve the cross-platform problem. But when I think of switching to Mac OS or Linux, I will lose my programming ability, the latest VB compiler doesn't do any good for me. Java seems to be a decent cross-platform language and most Java compilers are free, like NetBeans or Eclipse. Both compilers can be used on different operating systems (OS) because they are written in Java. I have tried both compilers and like Eclipse better. I believe NetBeans is a decent compiler but because my computer is kind of old and Eclipse just can load faster.

My front end programs usually only have some buttons, text boxes, lables, drop down menus, etc. I am sure Java or VB can do more than that but those are all I need. I have learned Java by myself for several months. It is not as simple and straight forward as VB but with the online tutorial, sample programs, and the help of Eclipse, I am able to get myself up to speed with my VB programming skill. My first Java program is the Gax Unit Converter. It converts some common engineering units. There are many other unit conversion programs out there but I realized that I really need a tailor made conversion program that can fit my need, i.e. let me change the conversion factor, add, delete or modify the unit conversion library. The program is written in Java because I want to use and maintain it no matter what operating system I will be using.

The downside of the Java programs is they take longer time to load. I believe the .Net program has similar program but I haven't tried to run any them on Mac OS or Linux yet. The loading speed seem to be ok in Windows. That's without a doubt because it is a product from the same company. I heard about another operating system called Java Desktop some time ago. The Java programs should run faster on it. But Java Desktop doesn't seem to compete well with other OSes in the market. Nevertheless, since I can maintain and run Java programs in different platforms, I will continue programming in Java as much as I can. The loading speed problem should be taken care of once the computer hardware speed picks up.

Apartment II

2007-04-06T14:13:00.000-05:00

This time I didn’t want to live with anyone I know. I found a roommate-needed post on campus. It was a two-bedroom apartment and one of the tenants was leaving because of graduation. The location and facility of this apartment was the best that I had stayed. It was close to campus and had a swimming pool, a balcony and high speed internet. The apartment inside was very neat too. I quickly decided to move in to this apartment. I was very happy in the first few months and my roommate wasn't always home and I could invite some friends for party or movie. Then there was the management problem. The apartment had something that needed to be fixed but the manager didn't seem to be very nice. He didn't seem to like foreign students. I have heard many bad things about him from the former tenants, some of them are local students too. Maybe he is just mean. He is a very tricky person too. Usually we pay the rent by check. But he asked the tenants to write the check to his name. It is suspicious so we didn't do that. We always wrote the check to the renting company's name. But there was another problem. Don't forget to get a receipt when you pay the rent. One time my roommate didn't get the receipt because the renting office seemed to be busy. Few days later, the manager told us that we didn't pay the rent and had to pay a late fee. Well, we definitely fought for it and the manager didn't succeed. He showed an impatient face when we asked for a receipt ever since. Because of such bad management, I decided to move again. This time I don't have any specific requirement, just wanted to find a cheap and close place to live.

Very soon enough, I found a room in a building close to the campus. Notice that I said “room” because it is literally a room, not an apartment. The building had 8 rooms, 4 on the first floor and the 4 on the second floor. Each floor had a common bath room. Basically it was like an “off-campus” dorm but no one cleaned the bathroom for the tenants. The building was kind of old and seemed collapsing but the best thing for this room was the rent was really cheap. It was half the rent of what I used to pay to the previous apartment. The living condition for this building was the worst I had stayed. It was very dirty and the space was limited. I didn’t mind that because I always stayed in the office. I was happy living there until the neighbor problems happened. Because it was an off-campus renting house and the rent was so cheap, there were always some strange people moving in and out. Most of them usually didn’t stay long but their short period of stays usually caused lots of troubles. The worst thing was the bathroom problem. For some reason, they didn’t think other people were sharing the same bathroom with them. They made the bathroom as nasty as it gets. Sometimes it was even worse than the public bathrooms. I had cleaned up several times for them but this kind of patience didn’t last long and I decided to move again. This time my focus was on a better neighborhood.

My wife was with me at that time. We found an apartment that is a little bit far away from campus. It was the farthest apartment that I had lived but it was the largest. We liked this apartment a lot because the neighbor was ok, the apartment is spacious, and has a large kitchen. The rent was not too expensive either for that size. We stayed there for about 1-1/2 years until I graduated. That was the coziest apartment I had in Stillwater. The only thing I would complain about that apartment was the wall construction was kind of old. The walls were not insulated well and therefore I had the most expensive utility bills in that apartment. Just one week before we moved, our neighbor upstairs seemed went crazy one night. She was yelling and running inside and outside her apartment. My guess was she had taken about kind of drug. Since she was just above us, it was very disturbing. I called the police and they came to take her out. The other day I saw her in the daytime, she just seemed a normal person.

We are no longer in the Stillwater. But when we look for apartment, neighborhood is always our first priority. Now I come to think of it, the dorm is really nice for students.

Apartment I

2007-03-26T16:57:00.000-05:00

Finding a suitable place to live is always challenging. I have moved to different kinds of housing during my stay here in Stillwater. Stillwater is small town, so some of my moves are just within walking distance. The farthest move is just like 10-minute drive. I have moved 6 times in 7 years. It doesn't include two of moves for the summer internship. The first place I stayed is a dorm. It is a two-bed room and I shared it with a Malaysia student. It was his last semester as an undergraduate student and it was the first semester for me at OSU. He seemed to be a pretty busy person, both socially and academically, while I was just struggling to survive the first semester. Living in the dorm is very easy to make friends, I was able meet lots of people from around the world and I used to hang out with some of them. However, there is a privacy problem. Sometimes, it is very difficult to do what I wanted to do in the dorm because people are always walking around. I used to just stay in my office most of the time instead. By the way, the dorm has public bathroom too. Every floor has two public bathrooms. Since there are different people in different ages in the dorm, the bathroom sometimes gets nasty. Especially during the school break, when no custodial staff is working. Soon after one semester, my roommate graduated and I decided to move too.

My second place to live is an off-campus apartment. I wanted some privacy at that time so I rented a single bedroom apartment and lived by myself. Very soon enough, I started to realize living in the dorm is very convenient. Living off-campus, I had to call or go to the utility companies to turn on the services for my apartment. I didn't have vehicle at time and I had to apply in person for some of them . My bike was the only transportation I had. I remember the natural gas company is very far away. It is like a 30-minute ride and I almost got killed by a truck on the road. I will never ride the bike on highway again. Another problem of that apartment was the neighbor. There was an alcoholic living in front of my apartment. He was very annoying and I didn't want to talk to him at all. Soon after few months, he left and I felt a little relieved. Besides the neighbor problem, I didn't like that apartment that much because there was a parking problem. It is not easy to find a parking spot if I came back late at night. The neighbor always partied a lot in the area too. So at that time, I went to work at night and slept in the daytime to avoid all of the trouble. I felt like I enjoyed it but not for too long. Most of the time when I came home, I felt lonely. I stayed there for a year and decided to find a roommate to move again.

This time I found a roommate who is from Hong Kong. We had many similar hobbies, like playing tennis, driving around, and playing video games, etc. I thought he would be a good roommate to stay with. We found a two-bedroom apartment to stay. Very soon enough, I discovered his laziness. He doesn't clean that often and I had to do most of the cleaning jobs. At some point, I had enough and started to ignore it. I thought he might realize that the house is very dirty now and he needs to do something. He used to live in the dorm too and might think somebody always pack the trash for him no matter where he is. He is a spoiled kid indeed. Very soon enough, I moved again after one semester. This time my goal was to find a neater roommate.

This story will get very long, I will continue next time…

Long Week

2007-03-16T17:55:00.000-05:00

Last week was the longest week in my life. I had got everything ready for the final defense more than a week ago but there is an unofficial rule here at OSU says that we should have at least one week for the committee members to review the thesis/dissertation draft before we can defend it. But I doubt how many professors actually read the draft before they come to the defense. It is an oral defense. What I need to do is to give an about 20 to 30-minute presentation about my research, and then let the audience to ask question. It may be a culture at OSU, the audience usually doesn't ask question. In some defense, there is even no audience at all. Well, it may depends on what topic you're presenting and the schedule of the defense. If it is in the morning, only few people would come because graduate students usually stay up late to work and don't get up very early. It may be an advantage if you have some foes around and you believe they may give you hard time. A morning defense usually can get rid of this kind of trouble unless your foes hate you so much that they have to come to screw you up. I had a morning defense this time and few of my colleagues came. They are not my foes and they didn't ask any question. I appreciate them for coming though.

Although the committee members also sit for the presentation, they don't consider themselves as audience. They consider themselves as iron chefs and ready to put me on the grill. People always say that you will get grilled in the defense. That's very true. The committee members always have some tough questions to ask. Very often, those tough questions are not directly related to your research. Like I said, I doubt how many professors actually read the draft for the defense. The questions are tough enough that the committee member can embarrass you and other members will join the questioner and start adding all the seasoning. It is called the grill time at that moment. Usually if your adviser senses that, s/he may ask some easier-to-answer question to get you out of the fire. I think every responsible adviser should do that because it also defends her/his ability and demonstrates s/he has guided a qualified student. If the student fails, it may hurt the adviser's reputation. It is my point of view anyway. Some adviser wouldn't care about the students especially if s/he is already tenured. Once a professor is tenured, it is as good as gold. It is very difficult to get fired. But the tough part is it takes long time to get tenured. My adviser is already tenured but he still cares about his students. I had four different defenses with him and he made all of them easier for me. Thank you so much.

At OSU, Master students have to find at least 3 professors to serve for committee, while Ph.D. students require at least four. I met with one professor about a week before my defense. He told me that he just failed a Ph.D. student before I met him. Man, it must be tough for that student and I think it is mean. He said the student spent too much time on something that he is not good at and he got grilled and burnt from that. Later on, I found that that student share one of my committee members. That professor seems very nice and I was shocked he agreed to fail that student. Well, that may be the main reason the last week was longer than ever. I double checked my draft and presentation slides and made all the modifications to make them more defendable. That professor actually asked some unexpected questions in my defense, but they were not tough enough to screw me. I survived the final defense and I have earned a suffix for my name. My mission at OSU is finally accomplished!

Head Butt

2007-03-05T18:15:00.000-06:00

I am not sure if my school's basketball players read this blog. Last time I mentioned they should watch Slam Dunk to get their motivation back. In the Kansas State game, they did show some effort and won it. However, one of the score leaders (No. 4) in the team might have also learned something else from Slam Dunk - The head butt. Sakuragi in Slam Dunk is famous for his head butt attack. He doesn't use it for basketball but for fighting. I'm sure No. 4 was provoked by the other team's player but still, he doesn't need to put on a show like that on TV. It is just a selffish act on his side. He must have forgotten he was representing the University. On top of that, it was the senior night for him and he was supposed to have standing ovation from the fans when he gets subbed-in. Unfortunately, he got rejected by the referee instead. I hope he has learned something from it and won't do this silly thing again.

Basketball

2007-02-27T18:29:00.000-06:00

Basketball is one of my favorite sports but I am not good at that. I started playing since high school, mainly because there was a test in the physical education class that everyone had to make 10 lay-ups in a certain time. I had several classmates just like me, were newbies. We were kind of forced to learn this sport. Everyday after school, we stayed in school to practice hard. We didn't have any good instructor and just tried to put the ball in the basket every trip. The practice wasn't very successful and all of us didn't get a good grade from that test. But strangely, all of us were hooked by the sport ever since.

I had several basketball injuries. The most serious one is on my lower back. It hurt so bad that I couldn't even walk normally. It is due to muscle spasm and damaged disc. I think it started when my classmate fell on my back when we tried to get a rebound ball. He fouled me technically because he was over my back. Unfortunately, it was just a pick up game, the foul didn't count but the pain stayed. Since then I had played basketball with lower back pain. I didn't pay too much attention to it because I was still young. But after I get older, the pain is no longer not as endurable anymore. At some point, I had to decide what's the most important in my life and go with it. Basketball obviously is not my option and I haven't play it for a while. I still like watching people play though.

The men's basketball team of OSU had a great start this season. But it is been in a slump recently. There are many speculations for that, like team chemistry, lack of depth, lack of effort and coaching experience, etc. Watching them play had been fun in the last several years. The school has a strong basketball tradition and many students and fans are crazy for that. This season hasn't finished yet but it had been a disappointment in the last couple weeks. They had been hammered by the best and the worst teams in the league. The effort and attention were just not there. It's frustrating to watch them play. They seemed look better in the last game. Although they still lost, I was pleased and encouraged with their effort.

If I got a chance to encourage them, I suggest them to watch the anime "Slam Dunk". It has motived many people to start playing basketball, including some of the people I know. The story is about a high school kid who was a newbie to basketball. He joined the basketball team was because he wanted to impress a girl who is in love with basketball. But after some time, he realized he has become to love the sport and really wanted to be good at it. He practiced hard everyday and became recognized by the local sport media people. Sadly, because of some contract issue between the author and the publisher, the story didn't wrap up well. I wish the author could rewrite the ending someday. But it is still a good story. I strongly recommend it, whether you like basketball or not.

UFO

2007-02-15T13:18:00.000-06:00

In my first year here. I used to stay in the office late. I had no car and it's dangerous to ride on a bicycle in the dark, therefore I usually worked back to my dorm. The office is about 1/2 miles from the dorm. On the way in between there are apartments, labs, offices, and open field of grass land. I liked walking on the grass because I didn't want to walk on the road and got run over by the drunk drivers. One day I was walking back after finished the work for the day, I saw a bright light coming out of the horizon. My initial thought was, man, I finally got the chance to witness something special. I have heard the mystery of UFO for years from the states and have thought I would witness by myself someday after I came here. I was kind of curious but hesitate to head to the bright light. My thought was what if I got caught and became one of the alien specimen in the earth, I would lose all of my memory. Remember the movie Man in Black? But my curiosity overcame my fear, I moved forward cautiously.....As I got closer and closer, the light became brighter and brighter but I never seemed to reach there. I stopped, closed my eyes, took my glasses off, rubbed my eyes. All of a sudden, I found the answer. It is the sunrise! What a disappointment, isnt' it? I think I was just dead tired and didn't realize it's already sunrise. Right now I'm already here for more than 7 years, I have never seen any UFO or had that UFO feeling again. Maybe UFO is just a hoax after all?

But the UFO mystery comes back to my mind recently. I realized that there are hundreds of UFO related videos on YouTube and Google Video. Even better, the videos on Google Video can be downloaded. I have been downloading and watching lots of UFO videos lately and started to understand more about UFO. It's been a conception to the public that UFO news is never treated seriously. It never gets lots of coverage in our daily news reporting. And I believe that's why some people believe it but some don't. In one of the Google Videos, the host David Sereda explained why UFO's are so illusive and how they could fly in a high velocity. I don't understand everything he says but most of them make sense to me. They should make sense to most people with college physics background too. He said one thing that stuck in my mind is that UFO's can travel in different light spectra. If they are traveling in the infrared or ultraviolet spectrum, they are invisible to our naked eyes. However, if they traveling in the visible spectrum, we can spot them out and recorded them in photos or videos. I guess that's when those UFO pictures and videos were taken. Another video mentioned that our modern cameras are able to record images near the infrared spectrum. What we need to do is just to switch our cameras to the "night mode". If we shoot the sky in the daytime using the night mode, we would have a greater chance to spot out something that we couldn't see in the normal mode. I guess I have kept this in mind and will try it whenever I get a chance.

Another stunning video I found from Google Video is a recording of a conference in Mexico. There was a Mexican journalist presents a list of UFO/alien pictures and footages. I couldn't imagine this kind of conference can ever happen here in the states. In his presentation, he also mentioned the UFO's are in other spectrum. There are some pictures that stun me are some aliens were captured in the pictures. And they are not too far away. Some aliens were just captured in someone's back yard. Incidentally all of the pictures were taken in the dark. They are not easy to spot out in the pictures but become obvious after some infrared analyzing. Near the end of his presentation, he mentioned the link between the UFO's and our ancient age. He predicted that there would be a change in the earth in 2012 and that's the end of the Maya calendar. Everything becomes interesting all in sudden. I remember Nostradamus predicted 1999 is the end of the world. This is the second time I heard about this kind of prediction. I really look forward to the year to come. Maybe we will figure out all the secrets about UFO by then.

Conference

2007-01-30T22:49:00.000-06:00

One of the unique things about being a graduate student is you get to go to some kind of conference. It is either you have some published paper to present or your academic advisor is generous enough and wants you go and expose to all the conference atmosphere. It always sounds cool and interesting to go to conference and I used to look forward to it before I ever got to experience that.

My first conference was in Atlantic city few years ago. It sounded real fun because it is another gambling city in the states. I’m not really into the gambling stuff but usually a gambling city has lots of fun stuff besides casinos, like a variety of restaurants, malls, etc. Unfortunately, the conference ended up not much fun for me. The main reason is the schedule of the conference and location of the hotel. Very often the hotels nearby the conference center are all booked and you don’t have reservation early. I went there with a group of graduate students. We never know if we are going to the conference until maybe one or two weeks before that. It all depends on our advisor’s decision. At that time, we were lucky to have a chance to go. We had a hotel in Cherry Hill that is like an hour away by train from the conference center. The conference starts at 8:00am daily and one top of that, we needed to catch a cab to the train station. We got to wake up early like 5:00am or 5:30am in order to catch a cab and the train. After the all the meetings finished by the end of day, we took the 8:00pm train back to the hotel. It is the last train of the day by the way. And we still need to find a cab to go back to the hotel after arrived Cherry Hill. After spending little time on eating and all that, it was like 11:00pm-ish when we got back to the hotel. Then we could start taking turns for shower. What time did we get to sleep? Maybe about 12:00am or 1:00am….. Don’t forget we need to get up at 5:00am next morning. So let’s imagine you only get to sleep for 4 hours and have to seat in the seminars all day long try to learn new stuff, there is not much information I can digest to say the least. It was an exhausting trip after all.

There was another conference last week in Dallas. Since it is kind of close to Stillwater, about 5-hour drive, we took a university van down there. This time our hotel is still away from the conference center but it is only 20 minute drive. Compared to the Atlantic City trip, it is less exhausting. However, this time I had more seminars that I wanted to attend and most of them started from 7:45am. Needless to say, I still need to wake up early, about 5:30am every morning, but we can get back to the hotel earlier too. The problem is there is not much interesting things around like Atlantic City. It is hard to find a decent restaurant nearby. Maybe we just didn’t know. After eating out 4 days consecutively, I really looked forward to going back to Stillwater and fixing something by myself.

The seminar schedule and hotel situation are just part of the conference stories. There are some more stories that I like to write too. Something like being student to attend an international conference like that, how people look at you. It surely is not an exciting story but it is an experience to share. Well, maybe I will write about this kind of story someday.

Winter Storm II

2007-01-18T08:06:00.000-06:00

Unbelievable! After a severe winter storm hit Stillwater a couple months ago, another one just came last week. But this one is different. It was all about ice. The previous one was just snow. Ice is a lot worse than snow but all the roads become slick. It is very dangerous to drive on. Unless your car is a 4WD, if you hit the break hard, your car will drift. Yes, drift like Takunmi kun in the Initial D anime but at a very slow speed. It is still dangerous though. You may not die but your car could be damaged. There is a technique for driving on ice. First and foremost, drive slowly. Drive with low gear, try to use the gear to help stopping the car besides the break. Or unless it is absolutely necessary, just don’t drive.

This ice storm last for 3 days. The accumulated ice is about 2 in thick and is slowing melting. The current temperature is still under freezing point and only the sun in the day time can help melting the ice. Walking on ice is very difficult. It is like walking on an ice rink with your normal shoes, and the surface is not smooth. A little slope can get you fall down easily. What you need to do is to glide on the ice, this can reduce the chance of being slipped.

I hate ice storm. It is very difficult to get around especially in this small town of Stillwater. Public transportation is basically nonexistent during the weekend. The storm started on Friday and ended on Sunday. I was stranded at home for three days because I didn’t want to take the risk to go outside. Fortunately, I had enough food in the refrigerator to fill my stomach. I ended up spending the whole weekend on my dissertation and TV. I was hoping to watch the OSU basketball game on Saturday. But the team’s fight couldn’t take off for Lincoln, Nebraska because of the ice on the run way and the ice kept falling down. The game was postponed to March eventually. The OSU basketball team is very sensitive to this bad weather condition because it has claimed some lives from the OSU family before. It is good that they didn’t take the risk this time. It is just a basketball game after all. No one in the OSU family wants to suffer this kind of tragedy twice in their lives.

Besides the road condition, ice storm can also cause power outage. If the power line has too much weight of ice on it, it could break and the power transmission is gone. There are some power outages in the east part of Oklahoma. Many people here have small power generator that runs gasoline. It is basically for emergency like power outage or for some outdoor activities. But students like me don’t have this backup equipment. Fortunately, Stillwater was safe. In such cold weather, bad road condition and out of power, I can’t imagine how could I survive? Thank god it is over.

New Year's Day

2007-01-09T08:53:00.000-06:00

The year of 2006 finally came to an end the year of 2007 has already started. It seemed like my 7 years of stay in Stillwater has passed all in a sudden. Seven years ago, it was the year of millennium. People worried about the possible Y2K computer problems. It could be as minimal as it’s time to die for your 286 machine or as significant as missiles miss fired. Because of the time zone, the first modernize country to the year 2000 is New Zealand. I guess the New Zealand had the spot light for all countries in the world at that time. The countdown event there was on TV here in the US. I didn’t have TV at that time, so I went to the laundry to witness the event. I guess everyone was holding their breaths when the clock ticked to zero. Fortunately, nothing happened. There was no missile miss firing but fireworks. People there celebrated as usual as every year and with the sign of relief. The start of 2000 is also the beginning of a new chapter in my life – Graduate School at OSU!

New year’s day is usually Winter break here in the US. Before I married, I used to spend my Winter break in the office, day and night. It was not necessarily for work but it was just more interesting with the internet there. I lived alone at that time and it was no fun to spend the holiday at home by myself. The office was actually a good place to hang out because there were some other international students like me always stay there. I have spent the same kind of Winter break for several years until I got married. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy that kind of life but now that there is somebody home, I have a second choice. Since I stay home more than I used to, I have started to watch more TV. Very quickly, I got hooked by the college sports. I used to like NBA but I don’t find it interesting anymore. I liked NBA because of the star players like Michael Jordon, Kobe Bryant, etc. But I find college sports more interesting because there is a direct link to myself – the OSU Cowboys! It is always exciting to see the Cowboys play on TV and hear the commentators call the school name of Oklahoma State. OSU is not academic sound but the sports can get some national exposure for the school. I always root for underdog and want it to proper. The University of Macau is an underdog school in Asia and I like it. Oklahoma State University is an underdog school in the state of Oklahoma and I love it!

Believe it or not, I watched 5 college football games on New Year’s day to start the year of 2007. Yes, I enjoyed it but I found that I had spent a little too much time on it. I was supposed to start finishing up my dissertation according to my plan but it was the New Year’s day and there were plenty of football games on TV, I couldn’t resist. Now that my wife has gone home for vacation, I can spend longer time in the office again. I have to get it done quick and start the waiting game early. Oh yes, my advisor always has me wait for his review and I have to put this into account for the road to graduation. Fortunately I’m closing this chapter. I still don’t get it and I feel sorry for his other students. If you asked me what’s my New Year’s resolution for 2007, it is graduate and start another chapter of my life.

FON Wireless Router

2006-12-22T16:28:00.000-06:00

There is only one phone in my office and my desk is away from it. If I want to talk on the phone and look something up in my computer, it is very trouble. I either have to move my laptop near by the phone or use my cell phone. I don’t want to use my personal cell phone for business so I usually move my laptop to the phone instead. But there is a catch, the Ethernet cable! If I move my laptop to the phone, I have to hang the Ethernet cable across the office. It is very dangerous for my officemates and my laptop. I could use the wireless network available in the school, but the signal is not very good in my office. So I decided to hook up a wireless router in my office. I found that FON had $5 router which was a real good deal compared to other brands in the market. The catch is the FON router shares the part of my internet bandwidth to other FON members, which I don’t mind doing it. Given that FON had decided to raise the router price to the current $29.95, I quickly decided to order the $5 router before the new pricing has came into effect.

The FON router is palm-size small and looks very cool. I guess everybody is in love with the white color after the success of iPod. After I placed the order on the FON website, the router finally came to my apartment after a week. I quickly skimmed through the installation guide and couldn’t wait to bring it to the office next day…..

The installation was pretty straightforward but for some reasons I couldn’t connect to the MyPlace network. After the router is hooked up, the router sends out two signals, one is for public access called “FON_AP” and the other is for private access called “MyPlace”. I’m supposed to use the MyPlace connection because I can take full advantage of the band width and have a secure connection, but I could only connect to FON_AP. Although I could adjust the FON_AP band width in my FON account but I was not happy with that. Why I couldn’t use the private MyPlace connection even for myself!?

I looked over the installation guide again and also the user manual that I got it from the FON website. Neither of them helped to solve the problem. I emailed my problem to the FON technical support but there is no answer. Man, it is more than two months already. If I had to wait for the FON reply to get the router to work, I would simply just tear it apart some day. Just for fun. I finally found a forum on the FON website to discuss all sorts of FON problem. Evidently, my problem has been asked by several people. But sadly there is no definitely solution for it. I have tried many of the suggestions in that forum but most of them didn’t work until I found this one:

1. Try to set your NIC card to 169.254.255.2, Gateway empty, DNS empty.
2. Connect the LAN cable of the FON router to your PC's NIC directly.
3. Connect to 169.254.255.1 in your browser.
4. Login with username (“admin” or “root”) and password (“admin” or “root”).
5. Changed the configuration of the private WLAN to WPA2 or WPA instead of WPA/WPA2 mixed. WPA works for my case.
6. Hook up the router again according the installation guide, everything should work fine.

I believe sharing the wireless is an excellent idea but FON should have a better support for its customers. Maybe FON just wants to spread their routers out as many as possible and take care of the technical issues afterward. My advice is if you’re not tech savvy but want to join the FON community, hold on to it until it gets mature.

By the way, today I got an email from FON about getting a free router. The catch is you must be invited by someone who has a FON router like me. So, if you like to get a free router for your own, leave a comment to this post and state your name, email and which country you are located, I will send an invite to you. I don’t know how many invites I can send but it will be first come first serve.

Self Service Gas Station

2006-12-18T16:54:00.000-06:00

It is very common in the US but I have never seen it in Macau. If you have debit or credit cards, or some kind of gift cards, you can pay at the pump. Even if you don't have any of them, you can still go inside the store, pay there, and ask the clerk to turn the pump on for you. I guess the winter weather here plays a role to have self service gas station.

This is one of the gas stations in the Asian district of Oklahoma City. The most Asian population here is Vietnamese. We usually go there to shop for some Asian grocery and eat. The Vietnamese noodle is outstanding. If you ever get a chance to visit Oklahoma City, don't forget to take a bite. By the way, in Vietnamese, noodle is called Pho.

Winter Storm

2006-12-07T13:49:00.000-06:00

There was a winter storm here in Stillwater last week. The winter storm is usually referred to heavy snow and slick road condition. It was so severe that OSU had to close for two days! It is the first time ever since I came here. I remember the school closed early one time when there was a winter storm couple years ago. But this time, the school closed for two entire days. I believe most students were happy about that because they got another long weekend for the semester right after the thanksgiving weekend finished. As it was the busiest time of the semester, most students could catch up their projects and study with this extra time. If I put myself in their situations, I would be thankful for that too. However, I have already finished course work and I don’t have class anymore, I don’t get much benefit out of the extra long weekend. Actually I was upset about the storm because I had scheduled a qualifying exam with my committee for that day. Since the school closed, we had to postpone it. It is always better to take the qualifying exam early because it will give you a better idea about when you can graduate. And scheduling the qualifying exam is a royal pain. I had spent two weeks to get a hold of all members to decide when they are all available but because of the storm the exam got cancelled and I had to do the scheduling again!? What a nightmare!

My wife and I basically stayed home all day when the storm hit Stillwater. But since we just got a camcorder, I decided to take a video for the storm. The video includes the moments before the storm arrived, during the storm, and after the storm in our neighborhood. I have uploaded the video on YouTube as private video and I will try to put it on this blog too. I found that interesting to make a video. The Windows Movie Maker is very easy to use to process the video footages. I don’t know if I would make a video blog some day because making a good or even average video takes a lot of time. I may post some videos once for a while given that I already have the resources to do it.

Besides all the fun parts of winter storm, it can be tragic too. A sad story happened in the state of Oregon last week. A CNet employee, James Kim and his family were trapped in the winter storm. His family was rescued but James was found dead after he left his family to look for help. He used to do the audio product review including the iPod. I still remember how he took the old iPod apart to replace the battery. He did a very fine job for CNet and I will always miss his product review.

I remember several years ago, we took a road trip from Oklahoma to Illinois during the winter time. We ran into a winter storm when we were driving on the highway in the state of Missouri. The road condition was bad and the visibility was terrible. I had to drive at 20MPH on a 80MPH highway in order to have comfortable control of the car. Since we hardly see anything in front of us, I decided to just follow a semi-track in front of us. That way the track can steer the way out of the storm for us. Along the highway, we saw many cars were trapped in the ditch and some tow tracks and police are helping them out. I thought if we didn’t drive carefully, we could be one of them. Fortunately, we survived and found our destination safely.

James’ dead also reminds me the TV programme “I shouldn’t be alive” on the Discovery channel. It shows some real stories that how the people survived the tragedy or accident. One of the stories is about the two skiers trapped in a snow mountain and how they survived. The programme also explains how the cold weather and snow can damage the human body if they don’t have proper protection. It is sad that James was not as lucky as the people in that story. It is a big loss for the tech industry and my thoughts are with his family. Rest in peace, James.

Thanksgiving

2006-11-27T12:39:00.000-06:00

It was the Thanksgiving week last week. All students in the US had a long weekend from Thursday to Sunday. Local students usually go back to their hometowns to together with their families. International students may travel to some nearby cities or just stay in town. As I remember, I have never spent my Thanksgiving outside of Stillwater since I came here. It is mainly due to I am always busy during this time, either class work or research, I usually spend the holiday working. Most of the graduate students in our research group are like me, spending the holiday in the office. Our academic advisors realize most of us would stay in town, they usually invite us to their houses for a thanksgiving meal and have turkey. It slowly becomes a tradition in our group.

Speaking of tradition, I think one of the things that I usually do is to watch the David Letterman show. Don’t get me wrong, I watch it every now and then usually. But on Thanksgiving day, his mom is also on the show. What Dave does is to guess what kind of pie his mom has made for the day. It is nothing very special but I found it interesting. And I also realize that his mom is getting older and older very year. I hope Dave can keep this tradition for a long time.

Besides the long weekend and family gathering, Thanksgiving is also famous for the Black Friday sale. It is called Black Friday because it starts early on Friday morning before the sunrise. Thanksgiving day is always on Thursday. On Black Friday, most retail stores have super sales. They only last for several hours, from early in the morning to noon. Many people would line up in front of the stores before the stores open to make sure they can get the things they want for low price. The price will be back to normal after the hours. I also know that some people would sell their things later to make some extra money. The reselling is becoming even more popular because of the availability of eBay.

I usually don’t go to the Black Friday sale because I prefer spending more time in the bed. But this year, my wife and I had decided to get a camcorder from Wal-Mart . Wal-Mart is a 24-hour retail store so we can wait inside. There is designated area for the sale. The sale started at 5am but we went there about an hour early. When we got there, only few people were waiting and the Wal-Mart staff were still preparing for the sale. When I was waiting, I was questioning the wisdom of coming here so early to shop. But as it was getting closer and closer to 5am, I started to feel the excitement. We had spotted where the camcorder was and prepared to make a bee line to it. Suddenly, I heard “Go”! Everyone was rushing to get their stuff and my wife quickly got the camcorder. Yes, we made it. Mission accomplished!

Since it was fun, we decided to go to another store. This time is Staples . Staples is not a 24-hour store so when we got there, we saw many people were lining up outside. Thank God the weather wasn’t terrible or we would have gone home instead. I think shopping in 24-hour stores is better for the Black Friday sale because we can wait inside the stores, especially for the cold weather. At Staples, I got some cheap computer stuff. They are useful but are not necessary to me at the moment. I thought I could sell them later if I decided not to use them.

On that night I saw the news on TV showed that there were some fights in some stores because people were cutting line. We were lucky that we didn’t get into any trouble this time. Overall, I think it is fun experience. We may do it again next year.

Coffee Maker

2006-11-14T13:47:00.000-06:00

I’m not a regular coffee drinker, but I do drink coffee every now and then. There is one thing about coffee that I don’t like is the caffeine. My heart bumps so hard every time I drink the coffee. Maybe that is the way that keeps me awake. I like the coffee taste but just don’t like the heart bumping feeling. Fortunately, there is decaf (decaffeinated coffee). It has the same good taste as regular coffee but without the caffeine. This kind of coffee definitely can’t keep me awake but I do enjoy having it.

The first thing I noticed about coffee here in the US is that people use coffee maker to brew coffee. I had been wondering why they would use coffee maker to brew coffee. Isn’t instant coffee is a much quicker way to do it? I used to drink instant coffee when I was in Macau. It is just so convenient. There is even 3 in 1 (coffee + creamer + sugar) instant coffee. What you need to do is just to pour hot water in it. How simple it is! But here in Stillwater, the variety of instant coffee is limited. I have to spend an hour drive to Oklahoma City to shop at the Asian store. I’m not coffee addict so there is no reason I would spend an hour drive just for the coffee.

During my late Masters Degree years, I had to stay up almost everyday to write my thesis. I finally gave in and got the first coffee maker in my life. It was the cheapest and smallest coffee makers at Wal-Mart. I wasn’t married at that time so a small coffee maker was enough for me. Since then, I have accustomed to brewing coffee at home like everybody else here in the US. I realize that if I use coffee maker, there are a lot more coffee varieties compared to the instant coffee even in this small town of Stillwater. In addition, the coffee tastes richer and better. That coffee maker is abandoned in my apartment right now. It is so old that every time I brew coffee from it I have stomach ache. It needs some kind of clean up job but cleaning up a coffee maker is not simple. I don’t want to bother doing it.

My current coffee maker is my second one that is more sophisticated. It pressurizes the water and forces the water steam to go to the brewing basket. The traditional coffee makers like my first one use a little water pump to do that, so you can hear the “bob bob bob” sound in those coffee makers. Because of the water steam, the coffee is coming out hotter compared to the traditional ones. There is also a frothing tube with this coffee maker that can make cappuccino coffee. But I don’t make cappuccino that often because cleaning is a hassle. Nevertheless, I like this coffee maker better and enjoy every single cup of coffee from it. If I had to go back to Macau some day, I would bring it with me. Hopefully it can still brew good coffee by then.

Job Searching

2006-11-04T18:03:00.000-06:00

This is the third time in my life I face this problem. The first time was after I graduated from the University of Macau. I was able to graduate without any academic problem but the job market at that time wasn't that good. It was good to get a degree but in the mean time I also worried about my career a little bit. At that time, it seemed to me that graduation was equivalent to unemployment. I had one interview but couldn't get the offer. I don't recall if I had sent any other applications besides that because I had planned to come to the US in six months. After one or two weeks of staying at home, I got a phone call from my academic advisor. He introduced me to a building construction company and all of a sudden I got a job! So thank you Dr. Wong, you landed me the first job in my career. In that company, I met an outstanding manager. He really knows how to teach and manage people. If I hadn't planned to study abroad, I would have stayed in that company with him. I hope he is doing well in Macau.

The second time when I looked for job was near my graduation from my Masters Degree. Unfortunately the job market in the US at that time was not good either. It was mainly due to the after 9/11 effect. I guess the economy really hurt at that time. I tried very hard to find a job. I sent out resume, went to job fair, and attended company information session, etc, almost all sorts of way to get to contact with a company recruiter. At that time I also got one interview but still had no offer. But I didn't feel as bad as last time because I knew that I had to compete with other local students. The language was my disadvantage. I was just hoping to gain some interview experience instead. But as time passed by, I was about to gradate in any time soon but still didn't have any offer yet. My advisor asked me if I would stay for the PhD degree because he had got some new research funding. Well, what do you do? There was no one I could rely on here but had to find a way to survive. I decided to pursue another advanced degree.

After 4+ more years of staying in school, I'm about to graduate again. I guess it is also time to find a job too but I don't feel as much pressure as I had before. There is almost a guaranteed job offer for me due to the summer internship experience. Besides that, I have also got some emails from other companies that want to talk to me. Oddly enough, I haven't sent out any application this time. All I did is just to put my resume on the school's career services website. Is the economy booming or the career services finally comes to work? I also put my resume on the career services before, but I had got no email from recruiter at all. I guess all the work that I have done becomes to pay off. If you have done significant work in your field, a job offer is almost like a by-product. It just comes by itself. It is always good to be on the driver seat. I'd rather have the chance to choose the company rather than the company chooses me.

My focus right now is my dissertation. I'd like move it to the striking distance as close as I can. One thing that beats me is that can you believe it takes 3 weeks for a University professor to review 30 pages of a dissertation draft? That's freaking ridiculous! My professor is on the driver seat for my dissertation right now. I don't want to push him too hard or he can screw me as easy as a finger snap. I have to be patient. It is the biggest hurdle for me at the moment and all I can do is to wait.

Homecoming

2006-10-20T22:17:00.000-05:00

Once for a year, most Universities in the US have a homecoming week. In the whole week, there are very kinds of activity. Most of them are from the fraternities and sororities, so called the greek houses. There are some from other school orgainizations too but they don't put a show as big as the greek people. They spend more than a month to decorate their greek houses. All of the decorations are hugh, enough to cover the front wall of the entire building. The idea of most decorations are about the history of the school, the football game in that week, and the school tradition. Many alumni usually come back to the school by this time to have fun and see some old friends.

The school newspaper says the OSU homecoming is the greatest in the nation. It is somehow hard to believe because the OSU campus is not as big as others. I have never been to other school's homecoming event though. I may be disappointed if I have. It is quite a fun weekend on campus because there are so many things going on. We just finished walking around the greek houses. Everytime I saw the hugh decoration, I was wondering who made the design, how many people were involved, how much did it cost, how many hours did they spend there, how could the students manage it while they need to spend time on study.......Really, I have lots of questions. I really look up to those people who put a show there. I don't know if I would do it if studied college here. When I was undergraduate student, I was just busy with part-time jobs and study all the time. Maybe I just missed this kind of fun for my undergrad years.

The homecoming event is usually wrapped up by a football game. That's another reason so many people come in town. My wife and I were in the football game last year. The opponent was the University of Texas. It was the no. 2 team in the nation back then. OSU.....well, we started with new head coaches and new systems last year. Nothing went well. I didn't expect much about that game. But surprisingly, the OSU team got hot early. They could scored many points......well for the first half at least. We had fun for the entire half. But OSU couldn't keep the momentum going in the second half and was defeated eventually. By the way, the Unversity of Texas got the national football champisonship last year.

This year, the opponent is the Texas A&M university. It is also a ranked team and OSU is still un-ranked. But many people think OSU will beat A&M because OSU put a show last week against the University of Kansas. OSU trailed by 17-0 in the third quarter, and all of a sudden they scored, scored, and scored.... to beat Kansas. I was listening to the game over the radio and was about to put my headset down in the third quarter because we couldn't score at all. Fortunately I kept my orange blood flowing, and stayed listening to the game. I would definitely regret if I gave up on the team. I will be listening to the A&M game tomorrow again because I don't have the ticket this year. It would be fun to go though. Hopefully, OSU can pull an upset. Go Cowboys!

Texas Hold'em

2006-10-06T11:09:00.000-05:00

There is a popular poker game called “Texas Hold'em” in the United States. We can always watch this kind of poker tournament on TV. The winning rules are similar to what we called the “Show Hand” game in Macau but the procedural rules are different. I'm not going to write down all the rules here in detail because it is not my point of this article. More importantly, I don't recommend people to gamble. As you may know, Macau is famous for casinos in Asia. Being grown up there, I have seen or heard many problems that are caused by gambling, e.g. suicide, kidnapping, homicide, divorce, you name it. And I understand how many losers make a winner. Yes, the winner is always the casino and the losers are always gamblers. At least this is what it says statistically. Since I grow up in Macau, I also know how to play some card games somehow. I'm not a pro but I may play with some friends or relatives during the Chinese New Year. It is all for fun for sure. We don't make a living out of it.

Once for a while, there is poker tournament on campus here at OSU. The winning prize is something like iPod, TV, some electronic stuff. Any student who is interested can participate. There is no entrance fee needed. Just go and play until you lose all of your chips. Actually there is nothing to lose because you will have free chips too. But I don’t join this kind of tournament usually because it takes too much time to win it out. For this kind of armature tournament, if you are patient enough, you can almost stay in the game as long as you want. You may not be the winner though. It takes another step to do it.

However, I also joined the tournament this semester. It was not because of the prize. I didn't even know what the prizes were before I went there. I found that there was free food in that event and that's the main reason I joined. I was hoping for some pizzas but even better, there were chicken wings, potato chips, and pretzels. After finished my free dinner for the evening, I started playing the tournament. I was so ignorant that I didn't even know the procedural rules. I wasted some chips at the beginning but I played very patiently, won little by little, and let other people beat each other. Fortunately, I managed to go through the first round and made it to the final table. How amazing it was! This was not what I expected.

So I stayed for the final table, watched the football game on TV, and filled more chickens into my stomach. In the final table, everyone played conservatively. They didn’t make the call unless they had some really good hand. As time went by, no one was really taking the lead but the clock kept ticking. The organizer said we will be forced out of the building if we don’t have a winner by 2am. It was about 1am at that time and I was getting sleepy. Yes, I was still there because I was patiently playing the game. But the sleepy factor kicked in and I decided to make some bold moves. I was really testing my luck at that time but it seemed like the luck was gone for the night. It was about 1:30am. I finally could go home to sleep. According to chips each person had, I didn’t think they could finish by 2am. But I didn’t bother to find that out. The poker tournament was fun overall. I had nothing to lose but could enjoy some chicken wings. I guess the worst thing about the poker tournament was it took too much time!

Know Your School

2006-10-04T13:09:00.000-05:00

Although life is always busy, it is good to spend some time to know your school. Generally you can get most of the school information from the school newspaper, from academic to athletic. I don't remember we had school newspaper in the University of Macau though. Sometimes you will find out the student government will have some parties or events for students, more importantly the free food! In some occasions, you have to really explore the school by yourself.

Last week, there were couple of students here found a tunnel underneath a building. The tunnel is supposed to be for the building maintenance people and the door for that is usually closed. But on that day, the door was half open and those students went inside just out of curiosity. According to what they said on the newspaper, it is a very long tunnel from one end to the other. Inside was dirty and they found some dead rats too. When they approached near the other end of the tunnel, they heard someone was approaching to them and they were scared to hurry back to the entrance. One of them realized that he hit something on the head when he rushed out. His face was full of blood because the blood dripped off from the top of his head. It looks pretty scary on the newspaper. I was wondering is it an early Halloween article? They seemed to have quite an adventure but they said they won't do it again. Wow! if I were them, I wouldn't do it either. But in my high school years, I actually did similar thing. There are many caves in a small mountain in Macau, which were being used during the World War II. I went inside with several classmates also just out of curiosity. Inside there was dark, humid and was like a maze. There were so many exits but some of them were actually locked. It was scary when we went to an exit that was locked. We had to head back to find another exit. Fortunately there were many open exits too. None of us were hurt. But if you ask me will I go again, the answer is NO. It was a scary experience. We couldn't see anything 3-ft in front of us and we didn't know what we had stepped on.

The OSU Stillwater campus is very widespread. There are different kinds of tree on campus. Last time during my Macau professor visit, he told me there are some chestnut trees on campus and he used to get the chestnuts when he was student here. Well, it is the blooming season for chestnut now. I actually went to collect some chestnuts last weekend. The chestnuts I used to eat in Macau have brownish shell and yellowish meat. They are the same here but I realize that they are actually growing in big, spiky green shells. Each green shell could have several chestnuts inside. From the look of the spiky green shell, I wouldn't think there are chestnuts in it. No wonder not so many people know that. Roasted chestnut is the best way I like but I don't have any cooking utensil to cook it like that. I also like boiled chestnut which I can handle it in my apartment. The taste is not as sweet as I used to eat in Macau. But it is my first time to eat chestnut in the US since I came here, I was already satisfied. When I come to think of it, I may make another trip to collect some more chestnuts again.

Intramural Sports

2006-09-22T21:47:00.000-05:00

If you like playing sports, I guess the fun part of studying in the U.S. would be joining the intramural sports. I have started playing every year since 4 years ago. It was a tennis doubles tournament. The first time I was kind of hesitating to sign up because my general impression was I had to play with some big and powerful guys. Asians are generally smaller than American. But since that was my last semester for my masters degree, and I hadn't decided I was going to PhD degree at that time, that was my last chance to do it. My roommate at that time was from Hong Kong. He also hesitated to sign up because of the same reason. He was afriaid to lose. Then I asked him one question "Do you want to lose this chance?" He was about to graduate too. The next day he came to me to sign up together. How sweet it was! But unfortunately, we were defeated in the first round. Both of us were upset.

After knowing I am going to stay here for the PhD degree, I have decided to sign up the intramural sports every year. The second time I also sign up for the tennis doubles tournament. This time my partner is from mainland. He was not afraid to lose at all and was very enthusiastic. Guess what? We advanced to the second round automatically because our opponent forfeitted the game. How lucky it was! In the second round, we even beat a team. That team was not as good as us but one of their guys wanted to cheat to win. He called many inbound balls out. But cheating can't win, we beat them. Man, winning feels good. We finally lost in the third round to an Indian team though. I had never thought we would play with an Indian team in the instramural sports because I always expected some big, strong American guys. This time I and teammate were very happy with the progress and decided to sign up again every year onward!

In the third year, not only did I sign up the tennis doubles, I also signed up for basketball. Basketball is a league play that means you get to play certain number of games even though you lose every game. I thought it would be good experience for the Chinese team because they were always defeated in most sporting event. I contacted one of the Chinese team player to convince other people to play together. It was kind of stressful for me at that time because they were not very cooperative. If we didn't have enough people to show up on the game day, I had to pay a fine for that. I was glad it was over and since then I have decided I won't take the charge again.

This year I sign up for the tennis doubles again. I have a new teammate this time. He is a professor here at OSU. He is a very good player. I can hardly beat him. So far we're having fun in the tournament, and he seems enjoying it too. It is good for him because it is the first time he joins the intramural sports. The bottomline is we are on the way to the championship game. There is nothing can beat this college experience.

"You're Retarded"

2006-08-29T11:42:00.000-05:00

Last summer I learned K san always says that "Someone is retarded!". If you are retarded that means you are incompetent, cannot do the job that has been assigned to you. K san always says C sensei is retarded, or sometimes "Captain Retard". Working with K san certainly has taught me many interesting terms that I would never learn from books. They are interesting but may not be necessarily good to use often. However, I think I can use "You are retarded!" to many people that I have seen or worked with.

If you are from Macau, about late 20's or older, you would probably agree that the people working in the Macau government are retarded! I don't know how the situation has been changed lately but when I was there many people used to hate the people working for the government. Why? because they always think they are superior people, getting high salary but don't want to be bothered by the normal people like me. When you go to the government departments to ask for help, most of time you would get embarrassed by them first. Very sadly, many people in Macau want to work for the government because it pays more than the industry and is stable. This may be one of the reasons that I decided to come to the States because the industry here pays more and I don't want to be retarded!

Besides C sensei, I have met a retarded person lately here at OSU. He is J.J., the head of the Access Services at the library. I found a bug in the library article request system that it doesn't allow me to modify my request. Then I found J.J.'s email address on the same web page for reporting bugs. After I sent him and email, I quickly got his reply saying that:

"Only active requests can be modified. All of your requests have either been completed or cancelled."

What the heck! When did you deactivate my request? Right after that, I logged in to the library website to check my request again. It was still active! I replied his email again to let him know what I saw in my account. I even put my request detail in the email. Then another quick, bogus reply came:

"The request below is over a year old. It would be better to place a new request."

What are you talking about, J.J.? I submitted the request just last week! Okay, I knew what you're driving to, J.J. You are the head of the department. Your system is perfect. A student like me shouldn't waste any of your time.

I consider myself a program developer. If someone found a bug in my program, I would be more than happy to know that and try all my best to fix it. That's what I think a good programmer suppose to do. I decided to reply his bogus reply next day because I was fixing to go. Here is what I wrote him:

"If the request shows on your system is over a year old, something must be wrong because I made this request last week. I guess I will walk to the library to find someone to resolve my problem. Thank you for your help anyway."

I haven't got any email from him after that. Now he is happy because there is one less person in the world would bother him again. And I have just found out a "Captain Retard" in the OSU library, how great is that! It is always better to know someone is retarded than someone you don't know because you know how to deal with them. J.J., now I know you're retarded!

New York City

2006-08-22T10:06:00.000-05:00

New York City! It is the famous city in the U.S., which people usually see on TV. The time square neon lights, the high rise buildings, and the statue of liberty, etc., all of them are in New York City. After I have come to the States for more than six years, we finally had a chance to visit this Big Apple.

Remember the first day I arrived Oklahoma, it was a late evening in the winter. I had a friend pick me up from the airport. From the airport to the campus is about 1-1/2 hour drive. I was so excited in the car and kept looking outside the window. Maybe I was trying to find the time square neon light in the middle of Oklahoma, but all I could see was dark open field. Then I recalled what my professor in Macau told me, "OSU is a good place for study." I became to understand the real meaning at that time. Six years have passed, now I 100% agree with him, because besides study, there is not much I can do in Stillwater.

People in New York City have busy lives. Most people work in down town but live in other area. They need to wake up early everyday to beat the traffic. For our friends who live in Staten Island, they need to get up at 6:30am everyday in order to arrive the company by 8:00am. Why? because it is an hour+ commute. Remember when I worked in the summer, I could get up at 7:00am, had my breakfast, and still had plenty of time to drive to the company. There is basically no traffic problem in Oklahoma compared to New York City. But the New York City public transportation is very good and convenient, there are buses, trains, and ferries everywhere. If your car doesn't run there, you always have second option. But in Oklahoma, I would be stuck if my car doesn't run. The public transportation here is bascially nothing. I am always thinking about having a second vehicle for back up, but a poor student like me can't afford it right now, so this will be my first plan after I get a job.

Walking in the New York City reminded me the time I used to go around in Hong Kong. People in Hong Kong walk very fast and the people in New York City do the same. I used to be able to catch up the Hong Kong people speed before I came here, but after years of living in Stillwater, I had hard time catching up the people in New York City. Maybe I'm just getting old.

This New York City trip really has opened my eyes. I didn't have this feeling when I travelled to L.A. several years ago. Maybe I didn't stay there long enough. And thanks to our friends Joyce and Yong, if not because of them letting us to stay in their apartment, we wouldn't be able to make this trip. Now I feel like I have been to the real America.

End of Summer

2006-08-12T10:55:00.000-05:00

The summer schedule in the United States is different from that in Macau. In Macau, it is from mid June to end of August. But in here, it starts from mid May and ends in the mid August. I spent all three months in Norman for an internship. Finally it comes to an end.

I can’t wait to go back to school because it is time to finish up and get my way out of there. Being a graduate student at OSU has given me lots of research experience that I would never have in Macau. There are many research projects that would have hard time to find sponsorship in Macau. I really like what I have learned. But being an OSU graduate student does not have the same financial support as most other universities in the States. At OSU, graduate student’s salary is mainly from research funding. If your research project finishes before you graduate, you will be in trouble. As a matter of fact, this situation always happens because your academic advisor wouldn’t let you go until the project finishes. It would be an ideal situation if the research project finishes with your thesis at the same time. I haven’t seen it happens yet. Another source of income for graduate students is to become teaching assistant. It is not a guaranteed appointment depending on the availability. In addition, being a teaching assistant usually doesn’t help you to finish the thesis. For me, if there is no research funding, it is just for the money to pay my bills. Another downside of being a graduate student at OSU is you get to pay your tuition. You only need to pay “in-state” tuition which is a lot less then the “out-of-state” tuition but it is still a lot of money. That’s how much of generosity OSU can extend to the graduate students.

Let’s talk about other universities. There are too many universities in the States that treat graduate students nicely. First of all, once you are admitted to be a graduate student, your financially support is guaranteed throughout your study, no need to worry about when the research project finishes and the teaching assistant waiting list. Another nice thing is you don’t need to pay any tuition at all! But the catch is those universities are more difficult to get the admission. There are a lot more students who want to study in this kind of university and therefore the entrance requirement and competition are high.

I used to appreciate the OSU financial support until I realized other universities have much better benefit. And the worst thing is I have to work my butt off every single day to keep my advisor happy in order to get my paycheck. But when I turn the table around to ask him to review my thesis, I usually don’t get what I want. Many professors like to keep their graduate students as long as possible because they can do the job for you with minimum amount of money, sometimes it is even free of charge. It is much better than hiring a post-doc to do the same kind of research but with more money paid. It is ideal for them. I think I had enough of it and it is time to focus on finishing up. The end of summer is the just beginning of the thesis writing journey.

Podcast

2006-08-05T12:23:00.000-05:00

Podcast is a popular term nowadays. But I learned this term last summer because Apple added the Podcast feature in itunes back then. I have been using itunes before Podcast came up. Believe it or not, it is not because of music, it is because I can use itunes to organize my research papers that are in pdf format. I learned this from the MacWorld magazine. The search function in itunes is excellent for searching papers if the paper descriptions are entered properly. But I don’t do it anymore and I don’t suggest anyone to do that either. The major problem is when you upgrade your itunes, the new version can’t recognize your pdf entries. I have tried many ways to recover them but didn’t have success. Now I use Access to organize my paper collection instead. It doesn’t have the simple user interface as itunes but it does the job, and more importantly it doesn’t have the upgrade problem. Well, maybe I should say it doesn’t have the program yet because it is a Microsoft product! Entering the paper descriptions in itunes took me lots of time. Since itunes is a music player, I could conveniently play music with it while I was entering my paper entries at the same time. That’s how I have started using itunes as my major music player.

Podcast is a recorded radio or video show. It can be made by anyone who is interested in podcasting. In itunes, I have found many interesting podcasts, but not all of them can survive for long time. Making a podcast is like a hobby. It takes time and money to do and it is hard to generate revenue from it. If there is no sponsor support, the podcast usually ends soon. I have also thought about making a podcast with my friend in Macau but I haven’t talked with him yet. Maybe it will not happen soon because I figure that I need to pay for the bandwidth. The more people download the podcast, the more bandwidth it consumes. If I want to have bigger bandwidth, I need to pay more money for my host company. That’s the main reason I haven’t done anything further in podcasting.

I can’t believe Podcast has been part of my daily life in a year. Currently I listen to some podcasts from Hong Kong: Talkonly, Moshow, Pagazine, CMM, and HKPUG. I also listen to some podcasts from the U.S. too: ESL Podcast, Yogamazing, TWIT and MacWorld. Some of them have sponsor or company supports, and some of them are just some guys looking for fun. Talkonly is one of the “looking for fun” podcast. It is an interesting IT program but it seems that it will be gone soon. I can’t even download their full length podcasts anymore. The people there have started looking for donation to keep them alive. If you like the podcast program, it is really sad to see it gone. There used to be a podcast from Hong Kong, Dr. Bull and Dog Nurse, where the people swear a lot but their stories are very interesting. Dog nurse always talked about his stories when he was in the prostitution business. But he is nurse right now, believe it or not! The stories are educational most of the time if you listen carefully. Too bad the program ended last month. I am still missing it. Its podcast link is still in my itunes and I am hoping that they will have a special episode some day.

Most podcasts are updated once a week. Sometimes I feel like it is too long to wait for the next episode. I haven’t done much in podcasting so I don’t have any idea how much time it takes to make one episode. But I believe I will have my own podcast some day, probably it will be after I finish my school. Then I will feel the fun or pain being a podcaster. I hope I will have fun most of the time. But once I start to feel the pain, I think it is a good time to end. For me, Podcast is for fun after all.

Free Services

2006-07-14T19:48:00.000-05:00

For the last several days, I have been trying to upload a beef noodle picture on my “Time to Get Away” article, but so far I haven’t got any success yet. I don’t know when it will work but I don’t think I will try anymore. Blogger.com, in essence is a free service. I don’t know if it is a bug or the limitation of Blogger.com. But I won’t complain too much because it is a free service. If the uploading doesn’t work anymore, for the worst case, I may switch to other free blogging services which do not have this problem. But how long can a free blogging service last?

I remember in the 90’s, there were so many free web based email services. The email accounts that I have registered includes hotmail.com, yahoo.com, homestead.com, usa.net, etc. I had reasons to sign up these email accounts. Hotmail was very famous back then and I needed a web based email account. Yahoo and Homestead offered more storage space, like 6MB, while Hotmail only had 1 or 2 MB. USA.net was purely because of its name. I wanted to come to the states so badly that’s why I wanted to have everything related to the USA, including email account. After several years, Homestead and USA.net are no longer free services. Hotmail and Yahoo are still around because they have big company supports. Gmail is a new comer and I like it the most. It has the largest storage space and the interface is very user friendly. I can also download the email using POP3 for free. Hotmail also has free POP3 but I have to use the Outlook Express or Outlook, which is not my cup of tea. I try not to keep important email in these email accounts because it will be a mess to do the backup when they suddenly announce to have service charge. I think the destiny of free blogging services will be somewhat like email. Someday, they will start putting ad’s on your blog, like they are already doing on your email account. If the revenue from the ad’s can’t cover the cost, they will eventually have service charge. I hope this day will not come soon, but whenever I can’t login to my email account, page can’t be displayed, or can’t download/upload files, etc. I always think that the companies are adjusting their systems and start to charge us.

Being an engineering student, I understand that free service doesn’t serve well in physics and something has to return. Fortunately, the “equivalent exchange” is dynamic that means it may seem free service to you right now but after several years you may realize that you already pay for the service. A typical example would be to get a free cell phone from the wireless companies. The companies always ask you to sign a one to two year contract or you will have to pay the early termination fee. It is a fair trade actually.

I decided to write in Blogger.com because it is a Google product. Google has many free good products, like Gmail, Maps, and Desktop, etc. I hope Google’s strategy can keep this “equivalent exchange” dynamic going otherwise many people like me will suffer. Thanks Google! Please let me upload pictures again.

Time to Get Away

2006-07-06T20:19:00.000-05:00

It’s been hectic in the office. After all the personnel changes, people gradually come in the office more often. Our group is so-called “Advanced Technology”, which is supposed to provide support to other people whenever they have technical problems. But I didn’t see many people come in to ask question when C sensei was here. Even though when people come in to ask question, they usually directly go to ask K san. Both of them are full of themselves about their knowledge, but K san is more diplomatic, and he has more friends than C sensei has in the company. There is one thing that becomes annoying me about K san. After C sensei has left, he always spends lots of time talking about how bad C sensei is as an employee. But sometimes he gets to the personal thing too, like talking style. I don’t remember how many times I have heard the same story from him anymore. One thing I am sure is that K san hates C sensei very much, and now he is very happy and enjoying C sensei is not in the office anymore.

It was a long weekend last week. I got 4 consecutive days of holiday. They were not really holidays for me because I didn’t get paid for those days. But if no one is working, I don’t feel like working either. We ended up having a trip to Dallas to spend the “holidays”. Dallas is about 3-hour drive from Norman. It is a bigger city. There are professional football, basketball and baseball teams, etc., which we don’t have in Oklahoma. But we didn’t go to any sport game because it is off season for football and basketball, and I am not fond of baseball that much. We drove around to visit several Asian grocery stores and restaurants, that’s what my wife is most interested in.

Our first visit was a Japanese restaurant, Tokyo One. It is a buffet type restaurant which means you can eat all you can. It is a little pricey but the food is out of this world. There are all kinds of sashimi (raw fish), teriyaki (barbeque), sushi, noodle, dessert, shell fish, crab and oyster, etc. And they are all like just out of the kitchen, the sashimi is very fresh. I have been different Japanese restaurants in the states and Macau, but this one beats them all. I particularly like the teriyaki, don’t forget to put the teriyaki source on. It is fantastic! I also like the coffee cake. It is nicely done. They also have hot pot, but we didn’t try that because we were busy with other food. Before you pay the bill, they will give you the green tea ice cream. Unlike other green tea ice cream that I have tried, it has very strong green tea taste. I like it alot. We wish our stomachs are a little bigger so that we can eat more. Tokyo One is a highly recommended restaurant. We definitely will visit again.

Another restaurant that I like is a Vietnamese noodle restaurant. We also have Vietnamese noodle in Oklahoma, but this one has the Cantonese noodle too. My favorite Cantonese noodle is the curry beef egg noodle. I miss it so much after I come here. Whenever I go back to Macau, I always go to noodle restaurant to have it. The beef noodle in this Vietnamese restaurant has the same taste that I used to have in Macau. And the cost is reasonable. It was a very satisfactory dinning experience.

Besides eating, we also went to Six Flags. It is a theme park that features the Looney Tunes characters. It has all kinds of exciting roller coasters but we didn’t ride any of them because my wife is scared. Instead, we tried some mild rides. We ended up spending almost a whole day there, most of the time is for waiting on the line to get on the ride. There is one thing that I don’t like is the food and drink are outrageously expensive, and the theme park doesn’t allow people to bring their food and drink from outside to the park. I guess it is a way to make money out of the visitors. I really miss my curry beef egg noodle.

Packing

2006-06-23T18:53:00.000-05:00

I was busy packing last week. It is not because I'm travelling or moving, but I had to pack C sensei's stuff in the office. Since he was fired by the company, he was escorted out by a security guard on that day and couldn't have any chance to pack his stuff. But he is allowed to come pick up his stuff once we have screened out what belongs to him and what doesn't. Well, I'm the lucky one to do this job. C sensei had worked for this company for 8 years, he had accumulated lots of things in the office. I had to find out what is still useful, what is trashable, and what is his personal stuff. I ended up using 20 6"x6"x12" boxes to pack everything. It took me almost a whole week to do that. It was no fun at all.

The good thing is you can learn many things when you are packing someone's stuff like that. The first thing I have learned is that C sensei is a very wasteful person. I found many notepads that were only used in the first few pages. Some of them have never been used at all but they are at bottom some old documentations. Clearly he was not going to use them because he wouldn't know where they are. I like recycling, therefore I have torn those pages out and kept those notepads in the office for future use. I have also learned that C sensei is not an organized person. I found many similar documentations in different area of the office. They have the exact same folder names! Last summer it seemed to me that he is a forgetful person, now I can prove that.

Besides C sensei's personality, I have also found some interesting things while packing. I found his paycheck where it has his social security number and the amount of salary he earned every two weeks. The salary was directly deposited to his bank account so the paycheck is just like a receipt. The social security number is a personal information which I'm not going to do anything with it. But the amount of salary he got is kind of surprising me. It is just too low for a Ph.D. I would expect it is more than that. He once told me that this company doesn't pay as well as others. I thought he is just greedy, but now I totally agree with him. Another interesting thing I found is his evaluation form. The company seems to evaluate the employee every half year. I read several of his evaluation forms, and I found that he struggled at the beginning but had improved. That's what a good employee suppose to be and I'm glad that he once was, because K san said he is never a good employee. I believe K san has some prejudice to C sensei even though he says he doesn't.

The last thing that strikes me the most from C sensei's stuff is I found that he might be overwhelmed by the work. There are many unfinished projects that he had to do but evidentaly he didn't finish them. Each project is hugh and takes lots of time and effort. I feel sorry for him about the amount of work he had been assigned. If I were him, I don't know if I could handle them simultaneously. I think what he did was to leave the unfinished projects alone after he thought his job is secure. Well, evidentally there is no secure job in the world and he had to leave. I still feel sorry for his family. Hope that he can regroup himself and find a job soon.

Sayonara

2006-06-09T18:11:00.000-05:00

Since the new boss, M san has taken over our group, something starts to change. He surprisingly fired C sensei two day ago without any notice in advance. On that day, only me and C sensei were in the office, K san went home early because he had headache problem. In that afternoon, M san came to our office and asked C sensei to go to his office. In the mean time, I also had something to do in my old boss, O san's office. After I finished my stuff with O san and went back to my office, I noticed that C sensei was already there. He was strangely backing up his files in CD's. It is strange because he usually backs up files in some network folders instead. And after a while, the human resources manager came to our office to talk to him too. It was my first time to see her in our office. I didn't see that at all last summer. I didn't understand what was going on and had to go home because it was already time. C sensei on the other hand was still there backing up his files.

All mysteries were revealed in the next morning. I got a voice message from C sensei. He told me that he is no longer with the company. I think that his work ethic can't keep him in the company for long under the new boss, but I didn't expect it happens so soon. I feel relieved because he is no longer in the office. It is not enjoyable working with him and most of the time he gave me lots of pressure. He always pushed me to do something that is not beneficial. And talking to him is like talking to a wall. It is always a one way conversation. But I feel sorry for him. He once told me that he is still in debt. At that time he didn't seem worry that much, but I believe he does now.

K san on the other hand, was surprised but very happy. This may be the best offer he has got from the company. He doesn't have to suffer working with C sensei anymore. Now he can enjoy complaining about C sensei without any worry. The atmosphere in the office also has become less tense after C sensei is gone. We used to put our guard up whenever C sensei came into the office. He always had some strange idea that is not beneficial but takes time to accomplish. I avoid talking to him because I didn't want to offend him. But K san doesn't hesitate to do that if his comment is bogus. However, C sensei usually didn't express his idea when K san was in the office. Instead, he usually talked to his buddy on the phone or chatting on the internet to kill the time. Almost everyone in the company believes that C sensei is a worthless person. If O san wasn't a nice person, I believe he should have been gone long, long time ago.

I'm fortunate to have a chance to witness this story. It makes me realize that a Ph.D. degree doesn't mean a promising future. A Ph.D. degree is a some kind of recognition and surely is difficult to get. But people will not look up to you because of the degree. They care about more the work you are doing than the work you have done.

Personnel Changes

2006-05-25T19:55:00.000-05:00

It is almost three weeks since my summer internship has started. Everything is about the same as when I was in this company last summer. I am working in an R&D group. There are only 5 people in the group: the boss, O san; two coworkers, K san and C sansei; one technician, J san; and myself. O san has his own room and J san always stays in the lab. K san, C sensei and me work in another room. I can see that K san and C sensei don't get along. K san used to be a regular engineer but was asked to join this group two years ago. After he has joined this group, he is trying to know and learn as much as possible, but C sensei is a type of person who doesn't like sharing. K san always complains to me about he doesn't know what's happening in this group. Even me, a summer intern knows more than him. He also doesn't show any respect to O san and C sensei because he thinks they are not capable of doing the work that he is good at, but unfortunately he has to take the heat from both of them.

Since last summer, K san has figured that I can help him to solve many mysteries in this group, we have been writing to each other to exchange information. As time goes by, we have become friends. He once told me that he wants to go back to what he used to do because he is sick of the people in this group, mainly becaues of O san. He doesn't get along with O san either but he is his boss. He thought he will to transfer out soon after this summer.

But everything is going to change from today. O san has been asked to move to another branch company from next month and we will have a new boss who happens to be K san's friend. K san was excited all day and was too happy that he didn't have any mood to work. C sensei on the other hand looked upset because he once told me that he stays in this company is because of O san. I asked him if he is leaving with O san. He said he will propose for that. If it doesn't work out, I don't think he will stay in this company for long time because he is not a productive person, always talks but doesn't work. As soon as the new boss figures that out, he may get laid off. He also has the intention to quit, which I think is a better scenario than being laid.

Now I can do some aftermath. I remember on the first day I started working this summer, O san was saying some strange things to me. Here are some examples:

"You thought you can find a company to work for the rest of your life. It is not true anymore." -- I thought he is talking about the general trend, but actually he implied to himself.
"There may be a better opportunity for you in the branch company when you graduate." -- He knows I will ask him for an offer after I graduate, and it turns out I need to move to the branch company too if I want to work with him.
"This time I like to introduce you to M san." -- M san is the director of another department. O san didn't introduce him to me last year. But I figured that M san is going to take over our group after O san leaves, in order words, O san wants me to officially meet my new boss in advance!

Well, O san is a well-organized person. Evidentally he knew what he was saying. So far, I have talked with M san one time. He seems like a nice person and intends to resolve the problems between K san and C sensei. What I can do is have my fingers crossed and hopefully everything will go well.

Commencement II

2006-05-13T14:11:00.000-05:00

It is commencement season. Many university students finally earn their degrees at this time. The OSU semester schedule is a week ahead of the OU schedule, therefore we had the commencement one week earlier. Last week, we moved to Norman for my summer internship. Norman is also where OU is located. Last Friday was the OU commencement, I was curious to know how different the OU commencement is compared to OSU. We decided to go check it out since it is not too far away from our our apartment.

Usually each university invites a special person to speak at the commencement. OSU had the President Bush this year, and OU had a news anchor Katie Couric. Before Couric's speech, she received a honorable degree from OU for the achievement in her career even though she didn't graduate from there. We were there listening to her speech until she finished. In my opinion, her speech is more interesting than the Bush's but it is not more likable. I was enjoying her speech until it got too lengthy, and even worse, she talked down OSU when she mentioned Bush gave a speech at OSU a week earlier. OSU and OU are in-state rivals, and they don't like each other, especially in sport meetings. I think Couric has done enough research to know that, that's why she talked down OSU in her speech in front of the OU people. She didn't even mention the name of OSU and pretended clearing her throat to skip that. Obviously most people there liked it. I tended to leave before she finished her speech because I lost my interest in her story after she talked like that. I stayed at the end simply it is because of my wife. There is no enough orange blood in her body yet and she didn't feel anything special about her speech.

I am not sure if it is appropriate to talk down other universities in a school commencement. But Couric's speech definitely lost my and many OSU fans' respects regardless of the success in her career. Many OSU fans had complaints about her speech in the forum OrangePower.com. Couric is surely a professional anchor in many people's minds. But a honorable degree from OU has revealed what her true personality is. This is exactly what the famous Chinese proverb says, "Water melon always leans to the bigger side." I guess no matter how you look, where you were borned, and how wealthy you are, etc. this human characteristic is universal after all.

Commencement

2006-05-09T20:17:00.000-05:00

The semester is finally over. Everyone is busy moving out of town. But this year many people stayed until Saturday because there was a special person came to OSU to speak at the commencement. It is the President of United States, George W. Bush. Because of his visit, people from other cities also came to Stillwater. Despite he is not a very likable person, many people in Oklahoma still like him. He got the Oklahoma vote in both of his two elections.

I'm not a political person and Bush is not a favorite president for me, but I felt proud that he spoke at OSU. I had never been to a commencement at OSU before. It is always early in the morning and I am a night person. The schedule just doesn't work for me. But because of him, I also went to the commencement this year. I even secured two tickets for me and my wife two days earlier to make sure we would have a seat for that. This year, the commencement was at the football stadium. On the day of his speech, it was a drizzling morning but there were still a lot of people showed up for his speech. It was not as many people as the OU vs OSU football game but more than half of the stadium was full. It could be more people if the weather was better.

I never pay full attention to president's speech at any time. This time I couldn't do that either. But his speech was very interesting at the beginning. Here is what he said:

"Laura sends her greetings, and she's disappointed that she couldn't be here with me. She was even more disappointed when she found out I had planned a romantic dinner for two -- at Eskimo Joe's. She also said she had one question to ask the students here today: How Orange are you? If you read the papers, you know that when some want to criticize me, they call me a cowboy. This cowboy is proud to standing here in the midst of a lot of other cowboys."

His speech raised my eyebrow because he mentioned several Stillwater features in his speech. Eskimo Joe's is a resturant franchise originated in Stillwater. The owner is an OSU grad. "How Orange are you?" is a recent champagne from the OSU athletic department. By the way, I got a free "How Orange are you?" T-shirt from the spring football game. But because it is too big, I have pinned it on the wall inside my apartment. And Cowboy is the OSU mascot. His name is pistol pete. It looked ugly and scary to me at the beginning. But the more I look at it, the more I like it. Everyone wants to see pistol pete in any sport game.

The rest of the speech is very typical to me. I saw people around us felt bored. After the speech, many people started leaving, including us. We had to move to Norman on that day to get ready for the summer internship in the coming week. But before that, I went to the protest section to take some pictures. Because I knew that every time Bush is in the public, there must be some kind protest. This time is no exception. It was my first time to see both the President and the American protest in a single day.

Finals Week

2006-05-01T17:45:00.000-05:00

This week is the last week of the semester. Students are studying for their exams. There is a pancake tradition here at OSU that the school has free pancake and drink for the students who stay up late for their exams. It started several years ago but has become very successful and been welcomed by most students. Simetimes, even though I don't need to study for exams, I still go there to eat.

I do have a final exam to study this semester. It is scheduled on the last day of the week. I wish it could be earlier so that I can have fun early. Speaking of exam schedule, I remember the final exam period is whole month-long in the Unversity of Macau. So when I first came here and learned that the final exam period is only one week, I was so stressed to figure out how to study well for the finals. But after years of study here, I realized that the exam schedule here actually works better for me. I really got spoiled from the University of Macau.

After this final exam, my course work requirement for my doctoral study is completed. I don't have to go to class, take exam, do homework anymore. All I need is just to finish up my dissertation. So this class probably is my last regular class in my life. I still remember the moment that I saw my sister crying in her first kindergarden class. I was standing outside of classroom and watching her through the windows with my mom. My mom was trying to tell her to stop crying using some kind of hand signal. At that time, I felt like school was a scary place. How come so many children were crying? Well, after one year later I was old enough to go to kindergarden. I guess I did cry too but don't remember why. My overall kindergarden years went very well for me. I had good time and was a favorite student of many teachers.

My kindergarden school is a sub branch of my elementary school. I stayed in that school for my elementary school years, mainly because it is very close to my house. Believe it or not, it is only 2 to 5 minute's walking distance. The school is in the middle of a neighborhood. Most students live close to each other. My elementary school years also went well and I had lots of fun at that time.

Fast forward to now, my last class is about to finish. It is a little bit sad to tell the truth. I guess I had a typical professor for my last class. When I define "typical", I mean a professor is old, always talks something that students don't understand, and doesn't like being challenged by students. At least this is my impression from most of the classes I've had. I guess I am already used to being tortured by this kind of professors and have learned a way to survive that's why I miss that. But on the other hand, I don't wish to take this kind of class again, because it is not memorable after all. I would call it an experience in my life. I like graduate classes because the professors are usually more open to discussion. The course work for graduate classes sometimes could be overwhelming but I usually got something more than a letter grade at the end of those classes. Wait a minute, isn't what a class is supposed to be?

Family First

2006-04-28T13:01:00.000-05:00

I would have never thought I would get married after college. It seems too early for most people in Macau. Right after college, it is like a 45 degree change in my life. I have to face the real world challenge and deal with different levels of people. It surely takes some time to develop a career and I didn't think I would have time for a family yet. But oddly enough, this is not the case in Oklahoma. Many students get married right after they graduate from college. Some of them even have their family before they graduate. I am not talking about the marriage due to pregnancy but it is just a general trend here in Oklahoma.

In the first couple years when I was here, I didn't understand why the students get married so early. Even now I still don't know why, but I become to understand that it is important to have someone to talk when you come home every day after work. Living with a roommate would seem to work, but I had no luck finding a good roommate. It is always a hassle when you or your roommate graduate earlier. You have to find a new roommate to share the apartment rent and it is like a gamble. The new roommate may not be as neat as you are. Even if you think you are a nasty person, there is always someone that is nastier than you. Of course it is possible to have a good roommate, but the chance is odd. At least it is for my case anyway. I ended up living alone in a smaller apartment so that I could afford the rent. Living alone is good because no one would mess up your aparment and you can mess around with the apartment and no one would really complain about it. It worked really well for me at the beginning but I became to feel bored as time goes. I ended up spending more time in the office than staying in the apartment because it is more interesting. The apartment was just a cafeteria and motel for me.

Living alone wasn't easy, especially when I struggled with my study. As Pumpkin and I are getting old, and I am seeing most of my colleagues getting married even though they are younger than us, the marriage idea came to my mind. When I said old, it is actaully still too young for most Macau people. We decided to marry and live together. So far the marriage life works for me. I was finanically okay before marriage and always could afford to buy some thing that I like. The marriage has made me in a little trouble finanically, but I have ever been in better life since I came here. I also realized that I was happier when I was kid, even though my family was much poorer than it is now. Since I could see most of my family members everyday, basically I enjoyed my childhood. Better yet, I didn't need to work to survive. But money definitely is not equal to happiness for me. If not because Pumpkin, I am not sure if I could continue my study. Marriage is also a way to help me through all the struggles. I am glad that I didn't make a wrong decision. Having a family definitely works for me and when I try to do something, I become always to think of the family as an entity first. Maybe living in Oklahoma has made me realize that I am a family person, I wouldn't have thought that if I were still in Macau.

From OSU Girls to Sudoku

2006-04-14T12:10:00.000-05:00

Baylor girls are pretty, Aggie girls are smart, but it takes an OSU girl to win a fella's heart.
Miami girls are tan, SMU girls got dough, but when you want the hottest gals, O-State's the place to go!
Texas Tech girls are wild, UT girls are fun, but when a girl's from OSU, you know she's number one!
Search each and every college, north, east, south and west. You'll find that those OSU girls will always be the best!
So for any guy that reads this and truly wants to know...Get yourself a Cowgirl and never let her go!

I found it from OrangePower.com. It is a very interesting thing to share, at least for the people who know the Big XII conference area. I remember I had heard similar stuff about the high school girls when I was in Macau. I guess this thing is kind of universal. When a student is sitting in a class and finds the teacher boring, he or her may come up with things like that.

Recently, the Japanese puzzle game Sudoku has become an alternative for those creative students. The game is very popular in the U.S. now, even our school paper (O'Colly) has a Sudoku puzzle on everyday's print. I have also found that Sudoku has invaded the classroom. This semester I am taking an undergraduate math class. As you can guess, the enrollment is deminated by undergraduate students. Since the professor of this class is kind of boring and almost no one can understand what he says, I have noticed that many undergraduate students Sudoku-ing during the class. There are also several graduate students in the class, but I don't see them doing that. I guess the graduate students understand better how important it is to take notes especially when the professor is difficult to understand. But when I think of my high school and undergraduate years, I realize that I was just one of those Sudoku-ing students, doing other things in the class. I guess it is a universal behavior that almost every student would do.

Now, speaking of O'Colly, I have been meaning to tell them that Sudoku is not equal to "Soduku" or "Sodoku". Although the O'Colly constantly make mistakes on their articles, I found it irritating because it is printed everyday! It is like somebody keeps calling your nickname that you don't like.

Class Act

2006-03-10T14:15:00.000-06:00

The basketball season at OSU is finally over. Both the Cowboys and Cowgirls are not qualified for the post season NCAA tournament. Surely it is disapponiting season but things always have ups and downs. I am glad that I was able to go to the last Cowgirls home game where I witnessed a class act in basketball games that I had never seen. The game was not televised on TV so if I didn't have the ticket I would have missed it.

It was a senior night game, so all the senior Cowgirls were supposed to start. However, there was one Cowgirl, Lori Allen who didn't play all season long because of injury, and she didn't start the game either. The first time I learned her name was from the message board OrangePower.com where people were discussing about she won the Miss OSU pageant that year. I believe it was 2005. I also saw her picture on the school newspaper (O'Colly). It didn't draw me too much attention at that time because she doesn't look pretty in the picture anyway.

I started to pay attention to her when there was a cowgirl basketball game the weekend before final exam. She went to the game but didn't have the uniform on. What she wore was a short skirt and a sleeveless top. Considering it was freezing temperature outside, this kind of clothing was absolutely outstanding. But still, I didn't know who she wsa at that time. I thought she was just one of the assistants in the basketball team.

Back to the senior night, the Cowgirls were trailing by double digits to Texas A&M. The game was basically over with only couple minutes left. The OSU coach had decided to let Lori play. Her injury was still not completely healed yet. She still had the brace on her knee. Everybody in the arena gave her standing ovation when she stepped in the court. Then a second later, a whistle blown, Lori was just fouled by a Texas A&M player. Because Texas A&M had commited more than 6 fouls, Lori was eligible to shoot a one and one free throw. She walked into the free throw area and made both of them. After that the OSU coach pulled her off the court and she received another standing ovation. Moment later I figured that the foul was actually directed by the A&M coach. He knew Lori's situation and let her score for the last time in Gallagher-Iba Arena (GIA). After Lori shot the free throws, he went to the OSU bench to give her a hug. GIA becomes emotional suddenly. I am sure there was tear dropped everywhere. I almost did too. It was a wonderful moment that I have ever witnesses and I won't forget it for the rest of my life.

Research Visit

2006-02-27T15:45:00.000-06:00

My professor at the University of Macau is also an OSU alumus. He graduated in Fall 1995 with a Ph.D. degree. He is one of the reasons that I came to OSU to study. When I was still an undergraduate student there, he was one of the best professors in the University of Macau. I got the motivation from him to go to graduate school here.

Last week, my professor came back to Stillwater with a graduate student from Macau for a research visit. From I understood his motivation is that he wants to do some of the research projects here back in Macau. His student gathered all the research information to start up his research project in Macau. The University of Macau has started the doctoral program for Engineering not long ago. He may be the first Ph.D. graduate from the University of Macau after few years.

There are a lot of limitations in Macau to do Engineering type of research, from equipment purchase, place allocation, to the universal problem funding. I feel like I am very fortunate to be able to do research here in the U.S. If I were a graduate student in Macau, I would not be able to do the same research projects that I am doing. But on the other hand, I lost the freedom to work outside while I am working on my thesis. It is mainly due to the visa problem. International students are not allow to work full time outside of the campus. It is so common that the local students start to work outside after they finish their class requirement, and come back to defend their theses after they are done. There are two main reasons for that:

By the time you finish your class requirement, the research funding is almost gone. But you still need to find a way to pay your bills and tuition.
Working outside is alot more financially rewarding then working on campus.

To sum them up, it is just one word "money". Right now my thesis is in the finishing phase, and I know that my research funding in question. I just hope that my academic advisor can spare up some more time to read my thesis draft. When I am in a situation like that, I am in no love with the academic side of the school anymore. I still like the atheletic side though. It gives me some kind of support to be staying here.

Game's Not Over

2006-02-14T14:25:00.000-06:00

The Universities in the United States usually have their own sport teams. There are usually cheaper tickets for students to attend the sporting event. My school, Oklahoma State University (OSU) also has the student tickets, called the All Sports Tickets (AST) for the students to attend all the sporting events but the men's basketball. In order to watch the men's basketball games, students have to buy the men's basketball ticket on top of the AST. I don't think all the Universities do that in the United States, but because of OSU basketball's winning tradition, people are still willing to pay for the extra ticket price.

I am an AST holder. I even bought the AST for my wife this year. However, as a poor student as I am, I am not able to afford the men's basketball tickets for both of us. I wouldn't go to the game by myself and leave my wife alone at home, so most of the time I watch the men's basketball on TV or listen to the radio. Yesterday, I was very fortunate that my wife got two free tickets from her teacher for the game against the University of Kansas (KU) . I was able to witness the OSU Cowboys played with the Kansas Jayhawks with other 10,000+ people in the historic Gallagher-Iba Arena. When we found our seats, I found that there are also a number of Kansas fans in the Arena. It was entertaining to see how the OSU and KU fans interact when their team scores or gets hammered. There was a KU fan sitting two rows in front of us. He was yelling and talking trash all the time. One OSU fans asked him to sit down when he yelled. Because KU was winning, he replied "There is no reason to sit down." without looking at that OSU fan's face. Actually he was talking on the phone to say that. It was funny. My wife and I, and the girl next to us all laughed. That KU fan wasn't welcomed by many OSU fans actually. There was a quarrel between him and some OSU fans at the end of the game. Here is what I heard from that KU fan "I just paid the ticket as everyone else here to cheer for my team....". Yes, he had his point. And I heard from another OSU fan said "Paying the ticket to support your team is one thing, but acting like a jerk is another." She had her point too. He showed no respect to other OSU people around. It is literally a period after she said that. He was quiet down and everyone kept moving to the exit.

When there was about 3 minutes left in the game, KU was leading by about 10 points. I saw many OSU fans started leaving. Why!? Isn't it too early? Aren't they supporting their team? The students at the students section started to yell at them "It's not over!". I couldn't hear what they said at that time but I could feel the emotion. I picked up what they said when I was reading the news today. They were right! The game was not over yet, why those OSU fans gave up on their team so early when the team needed them most? I would never do that to my team beacuse it is very impolite, and it gives a chance to other team's supporters to laugh at. I am afraid if some day I hear from someone says "OSU fans are not loyal to their teams.". It not only hurts the OSU players, but also the entire OSU family. I really don't understand that. Is it another OSU tradition?

I Bleed Orange

2006-01-30T18:08:00.000-06:00

In the United States, each University has its mascot and school color. The mascot of my school (Oklahoma State University or OSU) is the Pistol Pete Cowboy, and the school color is orange and black. Many people wear orange clothes on campus. I also have a few orange T-shirts. I usually wear them when the football or basketball team has match on that day. It is a way to show my support to the University. In fact, I didn’t care about the sport that much few years when I was still working on my Masters Degree. I even didn’t have any orange clothing. Most of my time was spent on study and research. I had been in hectic schedule and at that time OSU was just a place for me to earn a graduate degree. I didn’t feel like I attached anything to OSU other than my diploma once I graduate.

Five years ago on January 27 when I was still a Masters student, there was a plane crash that kill 10 members of the basketball team. The news was so shocked that even my professor in Macau was aware of. The campus suddenly came to standstill. I remember the school cancelled all afternoon classes for the people to attend the memorial service. My class on that day was cancelled too but I still had to meet with my advisor for the weekly meeting. Each school employee had an orange ribbon from the school to put on for that tragedy. My advisor also had it but he didn’t put it on. He came to OSU not long ago and he is not a sport fan. The half day off for him was just a hassle because he had to find time and location to schedule a makeup class. For me it is a bonus, not because I wanted to go to the memorial service but I could have more time to do my research. I wasn’t a sport fan back then after all, but I started to play more attention to school sport since then.

I think I have started to be a Cowboy fan after I saw the OSU football team beat the University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman, where OU is located. OU was one of the top rank team in the nation, but OSU was a huge underdog that I don’t think it was even ranked back then. When I saw the game came to an end on TV, the OSU fans went crazy and tore down the goal pole. I was excited too because the OSU football team was not very respected in that year. I always root for underdog especially it is my school. In fact, I didn’t understand the football rules at that time, but since then I have started watching college football and learned the rules.

The most exciting year for me is when the OSU basketball team went to the Final 4 two years ago. I still remember how John Lucas hit that last minute 3-point shot to beat the number one seed St. Josephs. I actually went to gym to replicate that shot. I felt good... The team finally lost to Georgia Tech after that game and couldn’t advance to the championship game. I was so sad because of that but I started to feel I am a cowboy, and I bleed orange. OSU is not only a school, but a family!

I visit the website OrangePower.com regularly where many OSU fans share their opinions and information about the OSU sports. I have learned many things from that forum, including OSU history, news, forum etiquette and even English. Although I may not spend the rest of my life at OSU, I hope this forum will keep running so I can meet my family members no matter where I am.

Last Friday was the 5^th anniversary of the plane crash tragedy. There were many articles on the school newspaper to talk about it. I read every single word in all the articles. When I was reading them, my tear dropped. I felt like I really lost my family members. My orange blood bled again…

Aussie Open

2006-01-26T16:56:00.000-06:00

After I came here, I dont' know why I have become a night person, always stay up late to work, watch TV, or mess around with the computer. It also means that I always get up by noon. I feel like since I get up by noon, I lose the whole morning, I have to find some time in the night to compensate it. I believe the length of my working hours is similar to normal people here but just have a time shift. Anyway, since I am a night person, I got to see the live Aussie Open matches on TV. This year features the comeback of Martina Hingis from Switzland. She used to be the top female player few years ago, but for some reason she hasn't play tennis for couple years. I saw a couple of her matches on TV in the Aussie Open, it seems to me that she still has the skills but just lasks of stamina. I believe she will be back in full speed soon if she keeps playing.

There was a match features the American hope, Serena Williams. I got the attention of this match because of her opponent Daniela Hantuchova from Slovakia. She is a good looking girl, and her skinny body got my attention. Especially when Serena seemed a bit over weight to me, that magnifies the constrast. It is odd to see a skinny girl can play such a high level tennis like her. Even the commentator said she is almost of out-of-shape (too skinny) to be a tennis player. To me, Serena is also out-of-shape (too fat) as a tennis player. She's got the power, but not the speed. At the beginning of the match, I thought Serena would win, but it turned out that Daniela pulled the upset. Serena made too many mistakes, and Daniela was just faster and more careful with the ball. Because of their appearances, Daniela's win made her look prettier, while Serena's lose made her look more over weight. It is quite a contrast!

The most entertaining player of this year is Marcos Baghdatis from Cyprus. His playing style, passion, and even his fans are entertaining. A veteran player never plays like him. He defeated another American hope, Andy Roddick who I thought would win too. Andy used to have the same passion in tennis but maybe because there are too many other distractions in his life, his tennis match is not as interesting as before. I have become to root for Marcos after the match with Andy. He managed to advance to the finals successfully, but was defeated by the No. 1 player Roger Federer from Switzland. I think Marcos got most of the attention from this Aussie Open. Hopefully he can keep the same passion as he moves on.

And..... the champs are Roger Federer (men), Ameilie Mauresmo (women), Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan (men's double), Martina Hingis and Mahesh Bhupathi (mixed double) . The most surprising champs are Yan Zi and Zheng Jie (women's double). It is the first time ever the Chinese people win a grand slam title. Congratulations!

Variety of Doctors

2006-01-18T18:00:00.000-06:00

Before I came to the States, I didn't know there are so many titles for doctors. In factor, the English name for all the doctors in my mind used to be just "Doctor". Since I have run into different kinds of health problems, I get to learn the functionality of different doctors. The most common kind is the Medical Doctor (M.D.). If you have allergy, cold, fever, etc., I get to know that I need to visit an M.D. I used to catch cold whenever the season changes, I had to see an M.D. at year once a year. But since I have realized that the out-of-counter medicine can help me if I take it early, I haven't visited an M.D. for years.

I like playing different kinds of sport. Playing sports can keep me healthy and help me refresh my mind, but it can also cause me a lot of injuries. My wrist, fingers, and lower back have been injured before. My lower back has been injured since my high school years but still hasn't been completely healed yet. If I have any kind of sport injury, I can go to see 鐵打醫生 in Macau. But in the U.S., I need to find a Doctor of Osteopathic (D.O.) or Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.). D.O.'s are generally for any kind of musle or skeleton disorder problems. Their curing techniques are usually by medical, surgical, or therapeutic procedures, some of them also use physical manipulation for the disorder problems. D.C.'s typically focus on the back spine problems, from the neck to the lower back. They mainly use physical manipulation, massage, or physical therapy to cure the problem.

The cost of visiting a D.O. or D.C. are usually high to me because it requires a number of visits. If I don't have health insurance, each visit could cost me more than 100 U.S. dollars. I am a graduate assistant, so I am eligible for the health insurance plan from my school. Although it is not a very good plan, it has saved me lots of money. Last semester, I had to visit a D.C. because of my lower back pain. Every time I went there, the doctor used the traction machine and did some manipulation on my back. I used to visit him twice, sometimes three times a week. But after several weeks, I realized that the treatment was not helping. I had decided to quit going there once I ran out the maximum number of visits on my insurance plan. I feel like I need a different kind of treatment for my back. One day when I was watching news on TV, it was showing the increase popularity of 針炙 in the U.S. From that I have learned the English name for 針炙 is Acupuncture. I have had acupunture treatment in Macau before, and it seemed to help my back problem. I plan to try the acupuncture in the U.S. some day when I have enough extra money to spend. Hopefully it is not too expansive.

Pumpkin is sick

2006-01-13T16:04:00.000-06:00

Pumpkin is my sweetheart. Two days ago I found that she is sick. It looked like it was some kind of flu or cold. Everytime when she is sick, it makes me headache. I don't know why she is so resistant to medicine. She told me that she usually doesn't take medicine when she is sick. Instead, she takes a lot of rest, and eats her favorite food, e.g. ice cream, french fries, etc. I have hard time to understand how it works for her but she said her mom also encourages her to do so.

Being here for more than 6 years, I have visited different kinds of doctor. I understand if I don't have health insurance to see a doctor, it's going to hurt me finanically. Even though I have health insurance, it still costs me. As I am not financially wealthy, I have to avoid any unnecessary expense. Therefore, whenever I feel my body condition is going bad, I take action early by taking the out of counter (OTC) meditations. The OTC meditations are a lot cheaper than seeing a doctor, and I don't need a doctor's prescription to buy them. I can find them easily from any supermarket in the US. The OTC medicine usually can't help me when my sick is really bad, but if I take them early when my body is going bad, they can help me back in shape soon. So far, this strategy works for me and I am keeping different kinds of OTC meditation in my apartment.

Yesterday, I made Pumpkin take the OTC meditation for her sick. I hoped it can help her to get better soon, but it turned out to have some negative effect. She woke me up in the mid night and complained about the medicine is too strong for her. Her heart pumped faster than normal and her hand kept shaking. I didn't know what to do but just calmed her down and let her sleep again. Fortunately, she was OK in the morning but still sick. I thought her sick was no longer in the early stage and the OTC medicine couldn't help her anymore. I asked her if she wants to go to the hospital but she refused. I thought she understands that it would cost me a lot of money, so she'd rather stay home, take a lot of rest, and do what she is used to do. But this time, I wouldn't give her any junk food although she had asked me many times. I just hoped that she will get well soon.

My first post.

2006-01-12T17:27:00.000-06:00

This is my first blog post. I will add more stuff on my blog soon.