Cerulean Cordillera

Final exams have finally ended. I guess I’ll first talk about preliminary results. I had four courses the past term:

• Computer Hardware
• Engineering Economics
• Dynamic Systems & Control
• Operating Systems

Out of the four courses, Hardware and OS were the courses most relevant to my studies, and thus I wanted high marks in those. Engineering Economics was something semi-relevant, while Control Systems is simply a course I had to take to fulfill my kernel requirement. Prior to exams, I had above-average marks in everything except for Engineering Economics. There were four quizzes in econ prior to the final exam, and I had underestimated every single one of them. The core concepts are easy enough and the math is a joke, but I guess having to deal with so many pieces of information in so limited amount of time always gets me at the end. I haven’t failed this much in a course since Signals and Systems in second year.

So I tried my best and gave most of my exam prep time to the econ course hoping for an awesome final mark to balance it out. Despite that, I still made a huge mistake on the final exam. There were five problems where each one would take me about 30 minutes straight of calculations and number crunching. Yet, on the fourth question, I used the wrong approach at the beginning, and only realized how stupid the approach was after I finished the problem. I then had about 30 minutes left, and I had to rush the fourth question again in 15 minutes with the correct approach, and then finish the last question in 15 minutes. Countless errors probably would’ve been made in that mad rushing, lol. I’m hoping the best for that course. Hopefully I didn’t fail.

The other courses are roughly okay. I feel pretty good about my Hardware exam. I didn’t do so well in Control Systems, but I had a pretty good average going into it, and it’s not like I need a good mark in that course. The best news (yet also the most risky news) is probably Operating Systems. Apparently, my adjusted exam mark was a 90%, which combined with near perfect labs mean I’ll get above 90% in the end. However, the professor posted a mark sheet on the course website, and the calculations in there counted my midterm mark of zero. The midterm really shouldn’t be counted since I submitted a petition (I was honestly quite sick on that day). I’m going to hope that an administrative error wouldn’t turn my well-deserved 90+ into a 68.

Now, in terms of the stuff I’ve learned… I’m quite content. Hardware was basically a finish-off of Digital Systems in second year, and it’s nice to learn about computer algorithms for circuit simplification, plus all those different techniques for building all sorts of different types of finite state machines. I’m pretty confident in all those methods now, so that’s good. Despite my horrible mark prospects in economics, I’ve also learned quite a bit from there as it gave a pretty good overview on how engineering firms do all their cost calculations and taxes. I know that if I ever had to do these things, I’m definitely seeking computer-aided help, or if none exist, I’ll program my own (I hate mindless number crunching by hand!). Control systems gave me some good practice in Laplace transforms and matrix operations although I have no idea where I’ll actually use it. And lastly, Operating Systems was the most valuable course this term. I can actually look into various parts of my computer and understand what used to be jibberish to me. The textbook is also a treasure, it’s so well written and so informative that I’ll probably read it just for fun in the future if I ever have the chance.

So, upcoming events now for me include my second attempt at the G2 test on May 11th, and beginning of work at AMD on May 18th. Some day in the near future I’ll also be moving into my new room on the second floor. At residence, Cici and I have already switched into cooking mode. No more eating at Fung, and after two days of successful cooking, it’s good to know I haven’t lost my stirfry skills . Eating awesome homemade food is both exciting and wonderful, especially after a year of badly-made cafe food and expensive restaurants.

As the summer begin, I will be adding more sections to this blog. My MMORPG and Philosophy pages will grow whenever I feel the inspiration to write. Meanwhile, there’s this project I want to attempt. I want to write a beginner’s primer on digital photography (the really basics), and also take lots of pictures – especially around campus during beautiful scenes – and make a library of them. I think too often we students are too busy thinking about our courses, trying to get high GPAs, tests, exams, and stressful things, that the campus – which is supposed to be this romantic and stimulating environment – becomes merely this excruciating distance between our homes and our classes that we have to walk through every day. I saw people taking photographs of the cherry trees behind Robarts yesterday, when the sun was just above the line of houses to the west. It was beautiful, and it would be nice if that moment was captured.

I haven’t updated anything for a while, and I expect this to continue until Monday the 27th, when my last exam finishes. The same applies to the general mimiuchi.net blog.

Being Casted Into A Strange City

I remember the first evening when we arrived at Düsseldorf International Airport. My mom and I, we journeyed across the night sky halfway across the globe and landed in a foreign world. Everything was new to us, including the people, the language on the billboards, the streets filled with cars coming and going, and the trains offering an environment so perfect as if only existing in a dream. Cool breezes blew that night, and my mind was as conscious and clear as it could ever be, and yet it was difficult to make sense of anything. My feelings that night included the sense of wonder, the sense of amazement, and yet a sense of loneliness as if like getting thrown into a different dimension with a new world, where home is further than the stars, further than the galaxies.

That was amazing, and that was what 国外 (outside of country [China]) started to mean to me, a land filled with strange things to learn, filled with possibilities, like fantasy, like adventure. I learned to attribute the sense of lonely adventure to Europe, to its trains, to its cities, to the castles along the Rhine river, to the night in Paris. If I ever plan a trip to Europe in the future, it will be for such feelings.

But now I’m not too sure anymore.

Out of curiosity, I searched up the terms “Europe Train” on youtube, and the videos were authentic, but the sense of wonder and adventure were no longer there. Years of living at the top of the world got me used to any sense of wonder that might come from technology and modern civilization. I realized that it was no longer possible for me to experience what a countryperson would feel if he enters a metropolis for the first time and is bedazzled and overwhelmed by the orderly streets, magnificent lights, and automated machines running perfect systems. Instead, I would now often notice the inefficient things, like an occasional subway breakdown, or a patch of dead grass beside the streetwalk. It’s kind of sad.

A huge, epic hit in Asia, almost unheard of in the West, Red Cliff is a pair of films, loosely based on the famous battle from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, whose amazing epicness makes it worthy to be considered as the Lord of the Rings of China. It’s a film directed by John Woo, and it comes in two parts, each part being a good-lengthed movie by itself. In total, Red Cliff delivers over four hours of epicness filled with epic-sized armies clashing, impossibly epic human feats, mesmerizingly epic scenery of Southern China, plus a pair of genius strategists dueling each other in guqin-playing skills which should be considered epic in itself.

Yes, hopefully I’ve made the point. The film is epic.

When I say that the film is only loosely based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I mean it. There are significant changes to what you might expect if you’ve read the novel and know the story. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is filled with schemes, distrust, rivalries, and political tension. Red Cliff totally abandons that aspect, and turns the moral of the story into one where two forces join together in the name of friendship in order to protect their beloved land and people from a ruthless and power hungry enemy. Despite Zhou Yu constantly trying to kill Zhuge Liang in the original novel, in the film the two constantly expresses camaraderie and constant respect towards each other, as if they’re true friends who understands and empathizes with each other’s thoughts and woes. Aside from a huge change of atmosphere, minor details were also changed. Instead of Zhang Fei scaring the opponent into retreating merely through the savageness in his voice at the Battle of Changban, this time he seems to have learned a lesson from Archimedes as he topples the entire frontal ranks of the enemy merely through a light trick. There’s a totally fictitious battle involving some unnamed Wei generals falling into Zhuge Liang’s eight-trigrams formation. Sun Shangxiang was made into a naive female warrior of sorts. Huang Gai’s self-torture ruse wasn’t approved. The ending of the battle was totally changed. And the Shu generals (Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun) seems to have a habit of fighting the opponent using the opponent’s own weapons. Guan Yu’s crescent-moon blade in the film became merely a stick that marks the destination of Guan Yu’s onslaught – that he first throws it, then he fights his way towards it killing anyone along the way using their own weapons. Zhao Yun rode into battle once without any weapons, apparently having already anticipated to capture one of the enemy’s thrown spear in mid-air. And Zhang Fei… well, let’s just say that when he fights, he is literally a demon made of iron.

So, there are so many things changed from the novel. But hey, the novel is only loosely based on history, so if the story is already inaccurate, what’s wrong with inventing a few new things? In this respect, John Woo did really well. The reinvented story is well conceived and well delivered. The pacing of the events are very natural, the ordering of the events are quite consistent, and the aftermath and ending does provide a heartful conclusion. At points, there are modern elements in this film. Sun Quan’s voice is the voice of a “cool” teenager as you’d expect from a movie like Kung Fu Dunk. Sun Shangxiang has a fanservice moment where she wears a crop top after unraveling a map of the enemy camp from her body. And there’s the repeated expression of “guo shi le” (translates into something like “no longer in style”). These modern elements weren’t a problem, however, since the film wasn’t intending to be a historical film.

The epicness of the film mostly comes from its dream-like sweeping landscape during peace scenes and the amazing use of computer-generated graphics in the battle scenes. You can clearly tell that John Woo had influence from western epics like Lord of the Rings, Kingdom of Heaven, and 300. The numerous bird’s eye views unvealing more and more of the vast Cao navy really gave justice to the mighty atmosphere of the Yangtze River and the overwhelmingness of the upcoming battle. Then we see thousands of cavalry riders, sweeping the landscape, charging towards the enemy flanks, all with thunderous noise in the background. Like Western epics, a few shots were also given specifically to the siege machines that launch flaming rocks that would cause explosive devastation upon landing. There’s the rain of arrows that would cover the sky and pierce through any small opening the defending soldiers might leave in-between their shields. There’s also all sorts of warfare techniques that were showcased regardless of whether or not they were realistic, like flashing mirrors, explosive primitive fire grenades, ropes thrown to capture opponents, mini tank-like squadrons formed by having shields on all four sides and above, etc… etc… etc…

One profound difference between Red Cliff and Lord of the Rings, however, is that in Lord of the Rings, the enemies were all gross-looking demons and monsters that no one would feel any remorse for killing. Yet in Red Cliff, the director made it clear that the armies of both sides are made up of ordinary folk who are human beings at heart, who serve only as fodder for the great generals and strategists to duel against each other. This way, even if it’s the big bad Cao Cao’s army soldiers who are getting stabbed, burned, and brutally mutilated, it still makes you feel sorry for those people. As a result, as Zhou Yu puts it in the battle’s aftermath, both sides lost, and in a war there is no real victor.

The acting was mostly quite good. Although Shidou Nakamura was in it and speaks Chinese with a heavy Japanese accent, it was still good for a degree of comical effect if you make the connection to how old-school (pre-2000) Chinese people tend to stereotype powerful Japanese men. Zhuge Liang’s voice reminds me of an arrogant kid, but in the end, the overall good effects still outweighed the bad. In terms of directing, during some of the action scenes, the multiple cuts weren’t transitioned very well, and as a result it can become confusing and choppy at times. This never happen during crucial moment-of-crowning-awesome scenes, however, so it’s excusable.

The actors and actresses talk in Chinese, and there are subtitles in both Chinese and English. If you haven’t watched the film yet, I suggest giving it a try. You’ll like it if you love epic historical films.

To truly find a Chinese equivalent to Lord of the Rings, however, you’ll also need a film that has the journey aspect of The Fellowship of the Ring. You won’t find such an aspect in Red Cliff, but if you really want to see something similar, Jackie Chan and Jet Li’s The Forbidden Kingdom fits.

The following are pictures:

Battle of Changban

Cao Cao's large fleet of ships

Tiger Hunt

Cao Cao's Cavalry in pursuit of Sun Shangxiang's riders who are leading them into a trap

Charging Cavalry

Shidou Nakamura as Gan Xing, a character based on Gan Ning

Liu Bei tells Zhuge Liang that he is leaving

Zhou Yu practicing with his sword

Zhuge Liang and Lu Su

In the midst of battle

Ships burning in a sea of flames

Archers ready to rain arrows

Flaming Catapults!

Sun Quan aiming with the bow

Aftermath of Battle

Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang parting ways at the end of the film

Found this in the New York Times today.

Apparently some artist is becoming the defiant voice regarding unreleased data on deaths and casualties for the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. I read through the article, and I noticed this particular quote:

“I’m really tired of this bull,” Mr. Ai said Thursday in a telephone interview from Beijing, where he has a large studio. “I went there, and I saw the school building collapsed, and next to it is a building that is fine.”

This makes me remember the argument often used by global warming skeptics, that goes something like this:

“I’m really tired of this bull,” A global warming skeptic said Thursday in a whatever interview from wherever. “This year has been colder than last year and they’re telling us the globe is supposed to be warming.”

I think what we ought to be on the lookout for is these kinds of “common sense” analysis. Being in Engineering has taught me enough for me to know that when you get into the details of scientific principles, many things are nowhere near intuitive. This is an artist who comes up with clever ideas of visual presentation. I will not take his analysis on construction seriously. Now… if instead of him, it’s some renowned civil or structure engineer talking, then it might be worth more attention. But if he’s an artist, he could be right, or he could be wrong, but it’s nothing better than a guess.

For the record, I went to his blog and read quite a number of his posts. Being able to understand Mandarin helped me quite a bit. The real discussion-worthy posts were highly opinionated and most of them left no supporting evidence. On top of that, there seems to be at least eight straight pages of blogging posts where every single post is a carbon copy of an initial “5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake Student Deaths Research” project introduction. What was the point? To boost the apparent number of Wenchuan-related articles?

See, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be skeptical about many of the Chinese Government’s position on things. However, if NY Times is going to bring in someone like this, it’s going to sway a lot of people’s views emotionally, without reason. And that’s an example of the dangers of media.

I’m currently in the process of moving my blog onto a WordPress platform. It used to be built almost completely out of php includes that was expanded on some template I found on the Internet. To update a blog, I had to first write a post in word, copy the text into a text editor, add in the <h3> and the <p> tags, save as a text file. Move text file into text directory, then make copies of previous blogpage and change the number to include it, and finally add three new lines into blog.php. With wordpress, now all I have to do is type and press a button.

It makes things so much easier…

I’ve just uploaded all my previous blog entries. In this new system they’ll have an official date that is today, but in front of the content I’ve added in the “Originally posted on…” dates manually. Tomorrow, I’ll move my articles and other stuff over.

I’m off to sleep now. See ya!

FDEL

Originally posted on Tuesday, March 17, 2009

It’s been a while. I have updated the articles page with photographs from the remaining two days of the cruise trip. Those two days were merely days spent at sea, so there’s not much new things to take photographs of. In any case, this closes the chapter on my week cruise.

<Edit: Since moving to WordPress, the “articles” page is no longer the location for the photographs. Photographs for days 1~5 can be found in previous blog posts. Photographs for days 6 and 7 are here.>

I’ve also updated the cool links page with a few more articles mostly about China and Tibet. One article, the one by Michael Parenti, has an overwhelming amount of citations and sources, whereas the other one, by Peter Hessler, is written with quite a neutral outlook. They’re quite a refreshing change from the media’s constant bashing of China’s Tibet policies. With the Tibet issue, I recognize that there are lots of things that we don’t want to see, like government creating an unofficial state of martial law by sending in lots of soldiers. However, I’m of the opinion that before you demonize the Chinese government, at least try to understand the situation as situations are often much more complex and harder to deal with than people think. The more articles I read on this, the less certain of the whole picture I become, and thus the less I want to make conclusions about it.

This past Saturday I visited a friend whom I haven’t conversed with for a very long time despite the fact that she lives just down the street. From the visit, several things were made apparent. Our lives certainly grew apart since university began. She still houses the same spirit of self-improvement that I no longer share. Actually, that’s not true. I think it’s our psychology that’s different, and thus our methods for tackling our own growth differs as well. I am not as strong or disciplined as she is, so if I try to handle things like she does, I will get burned out easily. This is why a better strategy for me is to maintain constant harmony with myself and allow my irrational desires to push me to grow at a natural pace. And with my rate of growth, I’m quite content.

It seems that we no longer have many things in common to talk about now. It’s kinda interesting actually. She kept on insisting me to relax, and don’t always be so serious, or something like that, yet I kinda wanted to point out that Innis in general is extremely clean, organized, simple, and square-like just like any office building. When I entered her room, I saw two computer screens in a neat room. One screen was displaying news from BBC, the other screen was on several communication streams including Skype. When I sat on the bed, she would be talking to people over IM not unlike a scene where an office worker is communicating with her client over the Internet. When the phone rings, it is immediately picked up in a professional-like manner. When we talk, her voice was quiet and efficient. In that kind of environment, it feels like waiting at a receptionist desk. Naturally, I got into my “serious” mode without even realizing, and later on when I tried to get out of it, it just didn’t feel natural.

I think most of my other friends would agree that I’m usually quite balanced between being serious and being goofy. That’s how I am naturally, but for some reason this becomes restricted in Innis, I guess tis one of the reasons why I dislike that building.

Hmm… Woodsworth rez is probably worse.

Ah, right. I got an AMD job, and it was quite an ego boost. PEY results for first round was released last week, and I was ranked #1 for two positions. When I went to the PEY office, the people there told me that you don’t see people with multiple offers very often during round one, and if you do see them, they’re usually for people with top marks in the program. My GPA right now, although on a rising trend since I rebounded from the fall during first year second term, still only reaches a 3.3. Yet, of the six applications I got a response from, I got four Interviews. Of the four interviews, each one of them went very well, and I got ranked #1 for two of them. It seems that my efforts got me results.

Since the beginning of PEY, I made sure to treat each and every job application as if it’s the job that I absolutely just have to get. To do this, I did my research and made sure to cater every cover letter to the position. It was important to show them that I understand what the job is about, and I tried to do that to the best of my ability. This included attending info sessions, talking to past PEY people, and doing online research on the company and positions. Every time I submitted an application, I would know that my application will be the one that looks a great deal more solid than the average application.

Apparently, doing this got me quite a few interviews. According to the career center, if a company wants to reject a student, then the company must indicate this on the PlacePro system, so I would know if I was rejected. I applied to about 20 places in total, got responses for six, and no responses for the remaining. Some of those companies probably backed out of the PEY system due to the economic scene, others probably haven’t reached a decision yet. Out of the six, I was rejected by two, but got interviewed by four. This can probably be roughly considered as a 66% interview rate, so clearly all those research was worth it.

Then I adopted a perspective of confidence. For each and every Interview, I was never nervous or fearful of rejection. I made sure I dress well. Upon meeting the person I made sure to shake hand firmly and project an image of confidence and professionalism. The thing with Interviews is that, if you can deal with the nervousness of anticipation before and when meeting the person, then everything after becomes perfectly normal. I knew that I was perfectly capable of tackling any problems or questions they might throw at me because I had confidence in my abilities and my personal growth in the past. Throughout the Interview, I didn’t treat it as them interviewing me to see if I’m good enough. Instead, I treated it like we’re both interviewing each other to decide whether we can work well and create something together. Apparently, once you’re in that mindset, talking was easy, efficient, and fun. At the end of each of these Interviews, I’d feel this awesome sense of self. It made me start thinking that if I ever need a mood booster, an interview would do the job.

And apparently this worked. Out of the four interviews, I was really only weeded out by one, and that was the interview where I was interviewed by four employers at once, and it was a management position. I believe I only lost that position because I lacked the experience or training. For the other three interviews (one hardware, two software), I got ranked by them all, as each of them sent me an email afterwards telling me I’ve entered their final selection pool. And out of these three, I got first place for two of them.

So, on Monday, May 18th, I’ll be beginning work at AMD’s Toronto office. The position is a testing position, but quite an extensive one. The idea is to make sure various AMD graphics chips are compatible with all sorts of operating systems, programs, and platforms. Not only will this offer quite some experience with computer graphics in general, there’s also a chance to work with Windows 7 before anyone else. There’ll be lots of challenges ahead, but I’ll definitely be able to overcome them. Meanwhile, this also means I need to obtain my G2 license before May 18th. I’ll also need to look for housing for the summer and next year.

I also attended an info session on graduate school yesterday. The session was hosted by Willy Wong, my old prof for E&M. Graduate school seems to be really tough both to get in and to stay in, but the idea of it is very awesome. Apparently the minimum requirements is a mid-B average. If I maintain my current level of grades, and improve a little in first term fourth year, I’ll have a chance, and if I have a chance, then my pro-activeness will make it an almost certainty. I’m still not going to make a decision about it until after PEY, when I have better knowledge of the industry’s conditions. However, I think it is likely for me to try for a M. Eng after getting my degree. And then if I’m still ambitious (I’m fantasizing now, lol), I might go for an MBA. Ultimately, I want to make a difference with my knowledge and skills, and I want to do it in my own natural way.

I’m getting hungry now. Recently I’ve been criticized by several people for not eating healthily and not exercising. These are things I will get to eventually, but for now, other things have higher priorities.

Originally posted on Wednesday, February 25, 2009

First, a little note: I will upload photos of the last two days of my cruise trip soon. I won’t have a blog post about them because both days were merely spent on the ship as the ship made its way back to Miami. Both days, I studied OS throughout the day, went to dinner, and watched the evening shows, and that was it. The towel animals for the last two days was a snake and a valentine heart thingy, and you’ll see them when I upload the pictures. Meanwhile, there’s something I feel like writing about today.

The New York Times has an article today that talked about the decline of humanities in postsecondary education in recent years. The problem is well-known, that liberal arts education, which focuses on topics like languages, literature, the arts, history, cultural studies, philosophy, and religion, are not exactly considered useful in that they don’t directly prepare students for vocations that are becoming increasingly specialized these days. As a result, there is a general push from parents, educators, and the students themselves, to stay away from these and instead spend most of education learning technical knowledge in math and science-related topics.

Not surprisingly, hardcore humanities enthusiasts are panicking, and now some of them are considering abandoning the “old Ivory Tower view of liberal education” and instead, they would market the humanities subjects based on its practical worth. For instance, they might focus on the importance of writing in just about all careers, or the importance of having a well-developed sense of morality when handling stem cells in some lab. These are clearly some practical benefits of the humanities, but it is also rather absurd because humanity courses don’t teach you how to write or teach you morality – in humanity courses, you gain writing skills and critical thinking skills indirectly while analyzing Shakespeare, or discussing the importance of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, or pondering whether Kant’s method for rationally supporting absolute morality really has any merit. Meanwhile, if you want to learn about writing, take a few training sessions specifically for writing. If you want to learn about critical thinking, take a few logic courses. If you want to practice them, there are endless occasions in everyday life for their application. A blog like this, for example.

See, we don’t take humanity course because they are useful; we take them because they are interesting and they are fun. Meanwhile, humanity courses are never necessary, since most of the useful side effects of liberal arts education can still be obtained just as well by merely living a conscious life. The lure of humanity courses are merely that they talk about cool and fun subjects, you get to learn to satisfy your curiosity about human history and human condition, and, in some cases, it gives you an outlet for expressing your own thoughts and see how they weigh compared with the thoughts of others.

Now, I’m beginning to suspect that part of this has its source in my own values and thus isn’t representative of the entire population. If such is the case, then I will shift the tone of this article to first person, and you guys will see how much you agree.

Personally, I like the idea of humanity courses because it’s interesting and it’s awesome. History is vast and complex and filled with passionate and impressive moments. Philosophy is intriguing for it deals with so many unanswerable questions that are still important to us at a fundamental level. I place less value in literature, because it seems to me that formal literature either means writing for writing’s sake (which seems absurd) or just philosophy with a mask. To me, the more relevant side of literature is the ability to write captivating stories as that would be a piece of art on par with a captivating musical piece or a captivating landscape painting. Geography and cultural studies seem very interesting to me because the world is a collection of places and cultures, and thus as a result I get the feeling that I “gotta collect’em all!” The same can be said with religion, although in this context, it’s another aspect of culture.

So, my general outlook on humanities isn’t bad at all. I find most of it very interesting, so then what prevents me from taking humanities courses? Well, the first and foremost problem is my program. UofT’s ECE program allows me to take 36 slots of Engineering courses and only 4 slots of non-technical complementary courses throughout the four years. This notion of “four years” is the major problem.

Why is it, that as time goes on and more and more knowledge is accumulated by human beings, as an undergrad degree requires more and more skills and knowledge to be gained in classes, the duration during which we must gain them still remains to be the same? In the early 1900s, an Electrical Engineering degree from MIT had 5 core courses and roughly around 8 fourth-year electives, with a total knowledge that can probably be taught by modern-day UofT in a year and a half if it really wanted to. Today, 90% of the courses you will ever take in this ECE program will be technical, and even if you have done so, the technical courses you took will only be a small fraction of all courses offered by the department. It’s not surprising that we don’t find the time to take humanity courses even when they are way more interesting than number crunching and solving integrals.

However, there is another, more important reason why I am not maximizing the amount of humanity courses that I can take. What do I hope to gain from a humanity course? In a humanity course, I want to be able to write papers of my own views and compare it with the views of others. I want open communication, a shared space that I can contribute to and get feedback from, and thus learn along the way. I want to be an original source. If it’s a philosophy course, I want to write down my views and call it my own regardless of whether it coincides with the views of some ancient philosopher, and I want to argue it and discuss it with others who hold different views and has different answers to the same question. I want to produce writings, I want to compose music, or invent my own method for analyzing music, and I want everyone else to create their own too so we can learn from the progress of each other. When I finish the course, I want a sense of accomplishment from the fact that I’ve participated in the field as an actual generator of ideas, and not merely as someone who analyzes the works of others.

Note that this only applies to topics that are more value-based, like literature and philosophy. For these topics, I believe they can easily sacrifice some readings and promote more original writing and idea sharing, although I do admit that it would make assignments more difficult to mark, and I’ll get to this later.

For something fact-based like history, merely a good lecturer who doesn’t rely on the textbook would be enough. For instance, the third lecturer from my Intro to East Asian Studies course, who talked about ancient Japanese history, was such a good lecturer that he was able to turn the complex religious, economic, and family dynamics of pre-Meiji Era Japan (several hundred years of history) into something that sounds like a rich and intriguing story, without sacrificing the technicality of the facts. If all history courses are like that, then I’d be taking history courses left and right (although the first two lecturers on China and Korea makes me think that this Japan guy is the exception). Yet still, why is it that I don’t ever hear of a history course where the only evaluation during the course is an assignment that asks you to compile a detailed history document with your recording of what happened, your analysis of why they happened, and your own take on their importance? This sounds like such a fun assignment, such a fair assessment of my ability to understand history, and after I finish, the amount of things that gets deeply engraved in my memory would be so much, and I’ll get the document as a souvenir afterwards!

The answer, once again, is that it’s difficult to mark, it’s difficult to prevent plagiarism, etc… It kinda makes me wonder whether it’s possible for them to just give up on the marking system, and come up with something else. But again, this is the bigger reason, at least for me, that’s making humanities look bad. On one hand, if I take humanities, I have to worry about its GPA, and on the other hand, the fact that I’m getting a grade for the course is forcing the course into a “gradable” structure that I don’t particularly find rewarding. I feel that if I take some humanities course, I will get a lot less out of it than I would like to, and that in the end, I waste my time only to lower my GPA.

There’s the argument that I only feel this way because I am too lazy to spend months reading in every word of the recommended readings and fully comprehend the details a humanity course could offer. But that is a misleading argument. Remember that humanity courses are not necessary, and that the reason why I would take one would be for fun and fulfillment. If I spend too much effort on a course, the net result is that the course would not feel fun or fulfilling, thus rendering the whole thing a failed attempt. Maybe the smart thing to do for those in the humanities field who are lamenting the popularity of humanities, is to try to make their courses more fun and less pressuring. I recall the Kansas State University professor Michael Wesch (the guy who made the “A Vision of Students Today” video) giving a presentation about some of the experimental education he was attempting. You may find the video here. It was amazing, and it makes you want to be in his classroom because that would be such an awesome environment for learning and participation. Now… if only more professors would start to try it in a widespread manner… maybe then humanities would be more popular. Remember that students don’t learn humanities because it’s useful, they learn humanities because it’s interesting, and that because it’s interesting, therefore the learning can actually be enjoyable.

Originally posted on Friday, February 20, 2009

Previous night there were two shows. The first one was a magic show which was quite entertaining. The second, a late-night adult-only burlesque show, I couldn’t attend because my photo ID are all locked in the room safe with my dad’s credit card and he was nowhere to be found. It turned out he was already inside the room, so instead, I just went back home and stayed on the internet for a while.

We woke up extra early in the morning to leave the ship and start exploring St Maarten. It looks like St Maarten is a bigger island than St Thomas of the previous day. However, it was also quite obvious that St Maarten is relatively poorer. Pretty soon we got to the beach, although nobody really planned to do anything on the beach aside from taking photographs. Then there were shops, where 90% of them were jewelry shops. After a bus ride to the French side, it started raining, so as a result we couldn’t do much, and returned. On the way back, the rain stopped, and we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping around for souvenirs and stuff.

In the evening they had another comedian, who wasn’t bad. St. Maarten is supposed to be the highlight of this trip, and it’s surprising that it’s such a let down.

I realized something… next time I want to watch a movie and can’t find a good one to watch, what I should do is download a collection of recent trailers, and watch them. I used to look at entries in Wikipedia or IMDB, but those descriptions almost always repel me away from these movies. Meanwhile, there’s a channel on this ship that just shows movie trailers and just about every one of them makes me want to watch the movie.

My sickness is now reduced to just coughing (rather violently, as it’s making the bottom of my ribcage hurt) every once in a while. All other problems seems to have gone, so that’s good… I need to start reviewing operating systems now, I’m too behind in that.

Photos of Day Five

Originally posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Hey guys! Sorry about not updating earlier. I fell sick somehow. I think it’s because of changing environments too quickly. I left Toronto, a cold place, to arrive at Miami, a hot place. Then I went onto the ship which takes me to hotter places yet at the same time the rooms on the boat are extremely cold. On top of that, my bed (an extra) was close to the floor and the rocking of the boat made it difficult to sleep on the first night. By the second morning, my nose was getting weird (as in stuffed). By the second night my throat started itching and hurting, and it got worse yesterday. The five hour walking in San Juan yesterday afternoon didn’t help either, so as a result I had to sleep early yesterday, and missed half of St Thomas excursion this morning. I think the worst part is over now…

But anyway, let’s see what happened. It seems that the shows on the ship every evening are quite good. The singers and dancers are good and the sound and lighting are good. They also got a comedian in who was quite funny, who did two shows. Meanwhile, I’m starting to become less and less impressed about food and service on the ship. In terms of food, yes, you always get food, but they aren’t always satisfactory. There’s always food on the 9th deck, but the only thing that’s 24 hours is their pizzeria, and their pizza is pretty bad. When the other places on the 9th deck opens, it almost always serve the same thing. Some of the popular food items are much too greasy, and the deli/asian corners have only a few options available.

Dinner at the dining rooms are quite nice, though. However, the whole point behind dinner is having an excellent dinner, and not a satisfactory one. Note the use of vocabulary. Excellent means the dinner is organized, the waiters are perfect, the dishes are well-made down to every detail, etc… However, the wait-time between the bread, appetizers, main course, and dessert is so long that you’ll feel like you’re wasting time, and at the same time, the food themselves may look amazing, but at times they’re neither tasty nor filling…

However, there are two things that are absolutely awesome in terms of the food on this ship: coffee and ice cream. I have no complaints about those at all, they’re awesome, amazing, easily accessible, and very satisfactory.

In terms of service… my complaint is that I tried to call the room steward twice now on different rooms in different times, and I haven’t yet been able to reach him by phone. I have no idea where he is, but considering that what I needed are related directly to my illness, I got pretty annoyed. Aside from this, all the other service is pretty good actually. Everyone is very, very friendly.

In the end, there aren’t that many things to do for me on the ship. There’s a spa on the top deck, but everything their cost money and are expensive. I wouldn’t mind watching some trivia games (they had one in the first day and it looks pretty fun), but since the first day it seems that the Rome Lounge (place where they play game events) has been made exclusively for bingo. It kinda makes you wonder why such a simple and childish game is being such a major event here. I usually don’t like to sunbath, but I wouldn’t mind swimming. However, the two swimming pools on deck are tiny pools meant for little kids, and are usually extremely crowded. Can’t blame them though, as it’s difficult to build a pool on top of a ship. There’s a casino, which seems to be highly popular, but that’s not for me. The various bars are not for me either, as I’m not one for drinking. There are lots of lounges and places where they play music and people socialize, so it’s awesome if you came with a group of people, and less awesome if you came by yourself.

In the end, I spend a lot of my time trying to get good photographs and explore the ship, and go to random events that look interesting. The evening shows were usually awesome. Of course, there are three shore excursions which means touring three different cities. If you want to see pictures of those, check out the links!

Photos of Day Two

Photos of Day Three

Photos of Day Four

Since I’m sick, I’m also behind on my review for the Operating Systems midterm that’s happening the day after the evening I get back… That’s starting to look a bit scary. However, some initial readings made it pretty clear that all I need is time to read the stuff… it’s not that hard to understand. It would be awesome if I can finish the cruise on a high note, be totally ready for Monday’s midterm, and find that I got an AMD job offer by the time I get back… that would be so awesome, lol…

I will see you guys later!