Stanford Commencement

The nice part about commencement is that I got to see a lot of my friends again. I was surprised to see so many people coming back for this event. A lot of people have started working already and made it back. I guess if I flew halfway around the world for this, it's not hard to imagine other people driving a few hours. Some of last year's grads also came back to celebrate with us. But the thing about a large crowd is that I never seem to be able to hang out or talk to anyone for long.

We got up at 6am to drive over to Stanford. We got breakfast on the way and I picked up my gown from Mahalia. It took a lot of phone calls to successfully meet up with people. I left my parents in company of a friend's parents. I ended up hanging out in line with the structural engineers from my year and we all congregated in the front of one of the lines for the school of engineering.

The morning ceremony took place at the stadium. I'm not sure if the undergrads were separated by school. It didn't seem necessary. The grads were seperated by school. We all had different hoods with the school's color. School of Engineering is orange. It's too bad that none of my pictures showed the back of my gown. You can see the hood better. I actually liked the thing despite the fact that it felt like it was choking me. My friend from Hawaii got me a lei made with shells and a type of nut. My mom bought me a flower lei from someone strategically selling them as we were walking to the stadium.

We were herded into the stadium and sat on the field. I wonder if they needed to replace the grass after we all stomped on it. The undergrads have this tradition of the Wacky Walk. We didn't see it because we came in after them. But I think it just involves dressing up and doing something "wacky". I think they take off the customes for the diploma cermony. I guess this setup is good in that they get to have some fun and still have normal looking pictures for the diploma receiving.

We managed to sit in the shade but the sun creeped around during the ceremony and it got burning hot. A few people from the Chorus sang America the Beautiful and the Stanford Hymn. I thought their singing was very nice. But I was distracted by some of them wearing cardboard (paper??) signs that said "Do" "Re" and "Me" written with markers. They looked like they were attending a kindergarten graduation. I mean, I guess it's funny but I really thought they looked dumb standing on the stage in front of 10,000 people.

The commencement speaker is the President of Mexico. His speech was pretty typical. I had a hard time concentrating when it got too hot. After his speech, we stood up by school and had our degrees conferred upon us. I met up with my parents outside of the stadium and we walked back to the car to drop stuff off. It was unnecessary to carry jackets around at this point. We made it over to Memorial Auditorium for the diploma ceremony.

I think we had a larger class than usual and it seemed to take forever to get to me. The venue for the reception is way too small for the amount of people (and amount of food they laid out). It was very crowded and and people started calling me before the ceremony had ended. I managed to meet up with everyone who called and got pictures with a lot of people. We went to get Jamba Juice after this, returned my gown, and got the car. I really wanted to keep the hood. I don't think they would have missed it since we just all dumped our gowns in a big bin anyway. But it would be a hassle if they actually asked for it back and it's not like I have anywhere to put it. My place in HK has no space for junk.

That was the end of a very long and exhausting day. I got slightly sunbrunt on my face again. The rest of me was covered by the long gown so that was fine. I really should enjoy the non-humid, non-cloudy sunshine here while I can though. Can't go outside in HK without breaking a sweat. Flying back tomorrow afternoon. So soon! I was just getting used to this idea of "vacation".

Moved out of Stanford, Back in Oakland

Almost ready for the real world. Very dramatic last few days at Stanford. I will write about them here before moving on to reflecting on these 19 years of schooling, the preparations on moving to Hong Kong, and adjusting to life in the working world. Stay tuned.

On Friday, I had every intention of starting to pack. But I didn't managed to do this because I was copying some important points from a book that I had read. I was also scanning another test prep book for the PE exam. I think I made very good use of all the PE exam books at Stanford. I scanned 10 books and made pdfs of them. Hopefully the quality is good. I didn't check every page as I went along so some of them might not be so great. I might even load them onto my Kobo. I need to take advantage of Stanford's subscriptions before I lose privileges. NYTimes is going to start charging people for reading their news online.

I left my apartment at around 2:30pm and went to Vaden to get some bug spray for Lauren. Apparently, they're sold at the front desk and not at the pharmacy. Strange. Anyway, I got them with no problems and continued on my trek into campus. It was raining a lot. I chatted with Mahalia's ASCE mentee about rammed earth. I think she's more interested in it as a building material in the US more than developing countries. She's at a point where she's trying to figure out what she's really interested in and what she wants to do. It's an exciting stage. You're testing out the waters and wondering if you can actually make a living out of something that you're interested in. Anyway, I have to find some references and send them off to her.

Then I went to a SEG happy hour that was to celebrate both the 2nd years leaving and give the prospective students a chance to get to know the current students. I think it was very well done. A good amount of current and prospective students showed up so there was plenty of mingling. They didn't have this when I was visiting Stanford. I wasn't really in the mood to talk to excited students about my experiences at Stanford. I went around and said goodbyes to people instead.

I went to the bookstore and got a red fleece jacket with Stanford on it. I think it looks nice. It was also on sale so I could afford it. They happened it have it in my size. Not sure I want to be wearing red all the time but I guess it's okay once in a while. I chatted on the phone with Ben about his grad school (PhD) decisions while I shopped for Stanford gear.

Later that night I went to Antonio's Nut House (a dive bar) with Matt, a geologist PhD who I met during my first quarter at Stanford. We worked (cried) through a class that his advisor taught together. Another friend of ours and his two friends joined us there a little bit after we got there. I think I can only process about one drink every 1.5 hours. Not that I usually get a second drink after the first one. Anyway, this bar gets its name from the fact that you can get all the peanuts you want from a caged gorilla and throw the shells on the floor. It's very liberating to be able to just drop the shells without thinking about it. We were there until 1:30am.

Saturday was an entire day of packing. I got boxes out of the closet after eating breakfast. The first couple hours of packing is always easy. There is always an enormous mess made because I am trying to fill three or four boxes at once. But once they start getting filled, I moved them to the living room. Ben and his friend John, drove in from Dublin and wanted to brunch with me. I had some library books to return, papers for the ESW room, and wanted to meet up with my brother who was here as support for his friend competing in MathCounts. So I took this opportunity to do all of that. Maybe I should have warned Ben ahead of time.

Anyway, he was kind enough to drive me on campus so that I can do all of that. We went by the engineering library for me to return books but both the library and the book drop were closed. This is serious failure in the system. The book drop was also very far away from the library itself. There were a couple of people coming out the library (I think they were fixing something) so I made them let me return books inside the library. Then we found my brother eating pizza with his friends, teacher, and school principle. I took his large bag from him. I had Ben carry the bag back to the car while I went to return stuff to the Blume Center. We then drove out to Palo Alto to have brunch at this fancy Italian place. I felt under-dressed in my t-shirt and jeans. haha.

We came back in time to see the last two questions and the awards ceremony for the competition. We looked through the list of participants and Chinese last names dominated the pages. There were a few Indians. The gender balance wasn't too skewed. There were girls among the top 10 and one of the four who qualified to go to the national competition is a girl.

After that, we got back to my apartment and I resumed packing. Ben and John helped me packed most of my kitchen stuff. I would pull them out and they would stuff them into boxes. It was great to have help. I don't know how late I would have had to stay up if I didn't have their help. Mahalia and Oat invited us for dinner. We ended up having 7 people for dinner. I don't think they were expecting to invite so many people, actually. Oopse... I'm going to miss her dinners.

I was so tired that night that I barely noticed having to share a bed with my brother. This kid has gotten big! Got up at around 7am on Sunday and waited for my parents to arrive. Luckily, the rain subsided just as we started to move things out to the cars. It was pouring rain the day before. My parents had two friends visiting and they helped me move my boxes as well. So the moving was actually really fast with everyone working. I vacuumed and did some last minute cleaning. I think I could have done a more thorough job of cleaning but the place really wasn't that dirty to begin with. I'm glad I did a deep cleaning of the kitchen a couple of weeks prior though. I dropped off the keys at the housing office. I don't know why they always tell people that they have to move out by 8am when there is no one at the housing office at 8am. I just put the keys through the key drop off. I doubt there will be anyone checking until Monday morning. So I really don't get why they can't just tell people 5pm on Sunday as a deadline. It would be so much better for everyone involved.

Anyway, the timing wasn't too bad for us. We got back in time to go for dim sum before driving my parents' friends to the airport. I napped a bit in the afternoon and we went out for dinner at night. I think my brother likes my Kobo. He has started to go through The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on it. I read an article some time ago about kids really liking to read on these eReaders. I'm still finding them restricting in terms of going back and forth. It takes this thing a full second to load the next page after you press the "next page." I feel like the screen is so small that I have to keep my finger on the next button. But I'll probably get used to all the nuisances after a while. It is much lighter than holding a book and you don't have to worry about losing bookmarks. The Kobo comes pre-loaded with 100 classic novels. One of my friends said that this made him want to read the books. I think this is definitely true. I can see myself working my way through all of them. 

Random happenings on a Thursday

I went to a SFGI dinner meeting last night. There were over 100 people at this one. The room was packed! I don't think I've ever been to one that had so many people. Surprisingly, there were a lot of people I knew at this one. It was very nice to see these people. I'm so used to telling people that I'm a "Masters student at Stanford" that I didn't even think about it until we sat down at the dinner table and two of my former coworkers from the Arup SF office sat next to me. At that point, I realized I could be saying that I work at Arup. So weird!! 

I went to SF before the meeting. I wanted to go to Levi's and that pair of jeans that I had been thinking about since the last time I went. I ran out of time though because I was looking through Ann Taylor Loft's sale rack. Another goal of mine was to get a Kobo (the eReader from Borders). Last time I was in SF, the Borders in the Westfield Shopping Center had a $20 off for all their eReaders. The Kobo came out to be $80. This is already a good deal since these things typically go for about $130. The Kindle is a bit more expensive than that, especially if you want a bigger screen, wi-fi, etc. As I approached the info desk, one of the sales ladies was putting up a sign that said $40 off for the Kobo! So the purchase was a no-brainer and my total came out to be around $65, including tax. Very cool. The device is charging right now. I'm excited.

I was a bit late meeting a friend of mine who agreed to drive me from his office to the SFGI meeting location. He's on the board so he was supposed to get there early to help set up. Oopse. We still got there early though. On the way back, I got a ride back to Stanford from someone I met at Arup, who lives in San Jose. I think it was out of his way. Guess I'll have to return the favor if he ever comes to Asia for work. heh.

I think I really want to find a one bedroom for my apartment in HK. It will make hosting people a lot easier. It's a big transit hub so I hope I get a lot of visitors. It'll be fun. It would give me an excuse to leave the office at a decent hour, I hope. 

I really need to get going on packing up my room. I get to bring 3 suitcases with me to HK. It's not like I've never done this before but it's still difficult. My parents got my visa via DHL yesterday. Now I gotta go after them about my flight. Doesn't feel real. It never feels real when I'm leaving some place. I've been at Stanford for so long that I can't imagine leaving and now coming back again. Going somewhere else is an adventure. It's always the leaving that gets me. 

DONE!

I think I'm done. It's kind of surreal. I've turned in my last assignment, fulfilled my TA obligations, picked up previous assignments, just need to return those library books now.

I went to Trader Joes yesterday and got some ground beef to make meatballs with Chinese chives. I will miss this store. The meatballs are turning out okay. I put too much salt and soy sauce though. I didn't managed to put in an egg the first time so it was kind of dry.

I managed to leave the store just as it was pouring rain. It had been sprinkling all day and dried up by the time I got back to my apartment. Of course, I missed the shuttle as I was crossing El Camnio and had to wait in the little bus shelter thing for the next shuttle.

I was looking forward to a night of watching anime and relaxing when I got bombarded with calls and emails about the foundations final the next day. I don't know how I feel about this whole TA thing. I think I need some more time to reflect on it. Maybe I should have written more about it during the process. Thinking in retrospect always makes things better. I think it was a good experience in general. I guess the part that was a bit of a shock to me (probably shouldn't have been) was that people expected me to have answers to their questions. Like I would somehow have some extra insight that they didn't. When in fact, most of the time, I was just as clueless and had to think about the problem on the spot. It was rewarding to be able to answer questions and help students out.

Got up this morning and ran around Campus Drive. Made breakfast of cinnamon toast, meatballs, and masala chai tea that I got from Peets. And was just about to enjoy it with my reading of the morning news when I realized I need to go to Y2E2 for a few things before noon. I poke my head in at the foundations finals as they were getting the test. I went to the bento lunch/crane making event that was held by some Japanese students and had a pretty good lunch. I made some cranes as well. I didn't know whether or not to make the cranes super fast. I think I can, if I wanted to, produce a whole lot of cranes. But I thought I should leave some paper for other people to come by and make them. They were aiming to make 1,000 cranes though so maybe I should have helped out more. You're supposed to donate $1 for every crane. I donated more than I made but a lot more people were donating than making. I suppose it can seem intimating?

After this, I chatted with the instructor for the foundations engineering class. We talked a bit about how the class went and his experiences as a PhD student at Stanford. I feel like I didn't have a very good grasp of what doing a PhD is when I came to grad school. I thought of it as an option but I really had no idea what it entailed. I think I have a much better idea now. And I think if I want to pursue a PhD in the future, I would have a much better idea of what to look for in a program, what I want out of it, etc. It's a complicated process. Not as straight forward as doing undergrad or a Masters.

Had dinner with mshaw at a ramen place. We talked about the nuclear reactors, tsunami, visiting Asia, airports and airlines. I find that I always end up talking about airlines and airports with people who travel a lot. I guess it's a shared interest. The ramen was pretty good. Very oily though. I think most of it is sesame oil. The menu came and there were descriptions of ramen that we didn't understand. Turns out, it was different types of soup and everything else was the same. It was pretty good and at a pretty good price as well. They also had pretty good chili and garlic sauces.

I've written a lot this month! Don't worry, more to come.

Almost there!

Just got done with my presentation. So now all I have left is to make a cash flow spreadsheet for my financial literacy class. Shouldn't be very hard and I'm actually looking forward to doing it since it will be useful to have. Our presentation went pretty well. I was not feeling it during our practice run but I don't think I did badly during the actual presentation. The committee really liked our management plan so that was good. There were lots of questions about our finances but I think we answered those pretty well. I wonder what an actual RFP presentation is like. Must be grueling.

I'm sitting at Blume right now holding my office hours. No real questions so far. There's not a lot of topics on the final and the topics are not very difficult conceptually. I'll stop by the text tomorrow to fulfill my TA obligations. Hand back some homeworks. I feel like I'm basically checked out already!

Yesterday was a really long day. I woke up really tired and went to turn in my earthquake homework. I sat in the Business school library for a while just reading the news on my computer and browsing through some books. Then I had lunch with Shuo at Nexus. I think I should have went back to my room to nap because I felt kind of tired the entire time. I managed to nap before my group meeting at 3:30pm. I thought we would be finished meeting as a group by 5pm but we barely finished in time for my 7pm dinner. I had dinner with Matt T at a Mexican place. He's such a happy guy that it's always a pleasure to see him. I think I'm going to miss Mexican food when I move. That's always the one thing that I miss whenever I go overseas. I should really go visit Mexico and try some authentic stuff. The place we went to had the saucy kind of burritos. There was so much sauce that you can't pick it up and had to use a fork and knife.

I came back and was feeling the food coma. It took two cups of tea and a shower to wake me up. This always happens with Mexican food. Dangerous. I practiced my part of the presentation but didn't feel 100% ready by the time I went to bed. Which is why I was messing up during our practice run. Anyway, 30 minutes is a long presentation. All of our previous ones were 5 minutes so everyone had only 1 minute to speak. After the presentation, we went to the Treehouse for lunch as a group. It was funny since we all had suits on. Getting my share of Mexican food these days.

No dinner plans tonight. Looking forward to a relaxing time in my apartment. I have to assess my food situation, do some cooking, and watch some anime. Maybe I'll start on the packing process.

Last Week at Stanford!

Just finished up a final project for my earthquake class. Now all I have left is:

• presentation for infrastructure class on Tuesday
• making a cash flow spreadsheet for financial literacy class, and
• answering questions about the foundations final

These last few things are really no big deals. I will be all done by Wednesday. This past week has really dragged on. The days just all seemed to mash together. Looking at my last posts, it seems like the last time I wrote about my life was Wednesday/early Thursday.

Last Thursday, I went to my last lecture at Stanford. It really didn't feel very special. I barely recognized it as my last class (for a long while). I had office hours that no one attended so I managed to squeeze in some work. Then I had lunch with Kathy and Mahalia. We talked about Cambridge and other random stuff. They're both staying for PhDs so I guess they'll be here for a while. I was kind of tired the entire time. I went back to my apartment and napped a bit. I was aiming for a 30 min nap but it nearly turned into a 2 hour one. One of my friends called when I was trying to decide whether or not to keep sleeping after an hour.

I attended the last women's perspectives seminar. That seminar has been really interesting. They have had some really good speakers. The general topic this quarter was named after the recent book, "Letters to my younger self." I've been meaning to read that book. Most of the speakers talked about their experiences and how they have made the decisions that they have, what has helped them, etc. This got me thinking, if I could write a letter to my younger self and send it back to the past, what would I write? I thought about this one morning and a usual set of advice came up such as, "treasure your friends, find good mentors, etc." But then I thought, I don't think my younger self would have been very receptive to a list of advice! How was I (or anyone else) supposed to take some generic advice and use them? And I then I thought, actually, the one thing that I would really appreciate hearing from my future self is a confirmation that I am doing the right thing, making the right choices, and that everything will be okay. I'm about to embark on another journey, starting a new chapter in life. Some confirmation that this is the right choice and things will work out, would be invaluable.

After the seminar, I went to dinner with  people who were on my team for the d.school summer session. We had a really nice time eating and chatting at a Thai place that had a really chill atmosphere. Actually, it's a pretty empty place and left us wondering how long they will be in business. It was great to see everyone again. That summer session seemed like a dream to me since I had just gotten back from Indonesia. We never met up to do anything afterwards.

And then I started grading. I found more errors in the textbook. Because I had to double check everything, I only managed to finish grading 5 out of the 8 problems before going to sleep at 2am. I got up the next morning and finished grading. Went to lunch with a friend. And then picked up the take-home final for my finite element class. I sent out some emails related to foundations before starting on my take-home exam.

I think I was over-thinking the problems on that take-home exam. It took me way longer than it should. I had some panic moments when I thought I didn't know how to do half the problems. We had 24 hours to do it and I finished it early Saturday morning. With half of a problem left, I went to brunch with my Rains neighborhood. I came back, finished the exam, and then went to Brunch with the ESW crowd. I came back, double checked my work, and then turned it in. Had a group meeting with my infrastructure group, and came back to start on the earthquake assignment.

I spent all of today (Sunday) working on the assignment and looking for the latest news on the Japan earthquake. More thoughts on the earthquake and tsunami in a later post. There was a sushi study break by AAGSA which featured a ton of sushi. It was great since I have not had the time or energy to cook lately. Rains had its quarterly start-of-finals Krispy Kreme study break at night. I think I should start making a list of foods that I won't be able to find in HK.

Looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight. My sleep hasn't been that great lately. Too much stress. I keep waking up before dawn.

24th Birthday! busy, busy, busy

This is the one day in a year when my facebook (and consequently, my inbox) gets flooded with posts. Actually, it started the day before because of friends from other time zones. I wanted to post this on my actual birthday but it's going to be too late by the time I finish writing. This is partly because: My Hong Kong work visa got approved!!

I've been waiting for news on this for a while now and trying to imagine what would happen if I don't get the visa. I have to say that I didn't get very far into the imagination part. Sometimes I would take a thought pretty far and think out an entire scenario. The scenarios that I take the time to imagine are definitely things that I want to happen and so far, a lot of them have come true.

For example, back in high school, I thought about what I would do if I got accepted to MIT. This was after I had applied and was waiting to hear back from the early decision process. I even thought about which teacher I would go tell first and what would be the most efficient way to tell everyone. Everything happened pretty much the way I thought it would. The only thing that I didn't account for was my friends spreading the news. By the time I made it to some of the classrooms, my teachers and counselors already knew.

This was all to say that I didn't get very far into the scenario where I didn't get the visa and that that was probably a good thing. A lot of people have been asking me about HK and I didn't want to say anything for sure.

Anyway, I guess I should recap these past few days. Such unbelievably long days. Monday started out pretty normal. I had classes and ate lunch with some friends. When I got to my office for office hours though, there was a flood of people wanting to figure out why they were not getting the same answer as the back of the book. I was really hoping to work on a homework but ended up not having any time until after my 7pm class. That homework involves using a finite element program. I can access the program by ssh-ing into one of the shared computers but my computer has been very slow. So I had to go to a computer cluster and use one of those computers. So painful to have to go out again after coming back from a long day.

Tuesday a even longer day. Had a group meeting in the morning for the infrastructure class. And then foundations class. Finished grading the homework for foundations. Went to office hours for my finite element model. Went to foundations class again. Went to the ESW presentations briefly. Got back, showered, and worked on the finite element model until 2am when I finally submitted my presentation.

This morning (Wednesday), I got up and played around with the numbers for the finite element thing some more. Made the presentation. Met up with a friend for lunch. Went to another class. And then went to a talk by Bill Nye (the Science Guy)!! It was supposed to be for Aero/Astro students only but the room was filled with people from all over. The room was so unbelievably packed. I couldn't even save a seat for my friend. Then I attempted to start grading the newest homework for foundations and found another error in the book. You would think that by the time you publish a 7th edition of a book, there would be no errors! And then the 4 hour group meeting for infrastructure class started. Our RFP is due on Thursday so we sat down as a group and read the entire proposal, word for word. We fixed everything and printed it out. I almost caused a fiasco by suggesting that we go to Mitchell to print. I forgot the code to the door (or maybe they changed it). We ran back to Huang and printed it there. Anyway, it's now done. Just need to make the presentation for this class.

So what's left for this quarter? Grading the latest foundations homework by Friday. Then I have a take home exam that will be handed out Friday afternoon and needs to be turned in Saturday afternoon. A long homework/project that is due on Monday. I haven't started on this so I'm worried. A presentation for the infrastructure class. Then I'm pretty much free. I will be holding some office hours for the foundations students. Their final is on Wednesday so I'll stop by there as well. I should also help wrap up the Indonesia project before I leave. And then making sure that I do lunch or dinner with friends!

Motivation needed

If I ever open up a smoothie place, I'm going to call my drinks:

• Motivate
• Activate
• Energize
• Rejuvenate
• Renew
• etc.

Positive drinks to get your day started! I need all of the above right now. Trying to get started on the last homeworks that I will do for a while. But they are very long....

Haircut, shopping, happy hours - One More Week!!

One more week of classes to go!! I guess it should be crunch time. And therefore, I spent yesterday shopping. haha. I finally had a Friday free so I decided to go up to SF to get a haircut, do some shopping, and go to some happy hours.

I can tell it's time to get a haircut whenever my hair fills clogs the shower. If this happens even if I wash my hair everyday, then it's definitely time for a haircut. I've been trying to find a non-Asian place (i.e. somewhere where they have experience with non-straight hair). But I gave up and went to Chinatown instead. Every other place is super expensive. I really need to find someone Mexican to take me to a Mexican place. They washed my hair and the lady was leisurely cutting my hair until she dried it. And then my hair started getting super poofy and she realized she had to thin out more of it. This is why I usually don't have them wash my hair beforehand.

Then I attempted to go shopping. I walked around a lot of the expensive shops in downtown and didn't really get anything. I ended up going to Ross and picked out a couple of causal blouses. This shopping thing is pretty exhausting. I think I should have either gave myself more time or had a better plan. Anyway, I'll have more time after classes are over.

The primary motivation for going up to SF was to go to the MIT '09 happy hour. It was held at a bar and we got money towards drinks. The place was pretty nice and there were a group of Course 1 people there again. We're a small class but somehow a bunch of us ended up in the Bay Area. Anyway, it was good to see people and meet some new people.

After that, we drove over to Emeryville where a friend of a friend was having a housewarming party. The housewarming party was at one of the condos in the Emeryville marina. At the end of that marina is a Chinese restaurant that my family goes to sometimes. I've always wondered about those condos. It's interesting. The first set of condos is on Captain Dr. The next set is Commodore Dr. And then there's Admiral Dr. So you get higher and higher in rank as you go towards the water. The place we went to was on Commodore Dr (1 bed, 1 bath). It's a pretty nice place. The view of the bay is great.

I went to brunch this morning with a friend from undergrad. We went to a brunch place on California Ave. This makes the second time that I've been to California Ave. I never knew that that street has all these small shops. It's actually very cute. The food was pretty good and we just chatted for a while. It is getting pretty warm out these days.

Then I came back and did laundry and some cleaning before I started grading the latest foundations homework. It's interesting being on the other side. There's really no reason why people couldn't get full credit for this homework. They were even shown how the output should be. But somehow people forget things. I really don't understand. I think this has made me even more aware of details and how much they affect the outcome of something. It's all about how you present your data. If you can't present it in some coherent way, it doesn't matter that your answer was right in the first place.

Busy day tomorrow. I need to go grocery shopping and make some headway on my own homeworks.

An Egalitarian Society

One of the really frustrating things I've found about working with Americans on "development" projects is that they don't realize the prejudices that they bring to a project. One of the things in particular is that they don't understand the difference between an egalitarian society and a hierarchical society. The US tries to be a very egalitarian society where everyone is equal and  you're judged by what you're capable of doing, what you can contribute, instead of where you're from, your background, your parents, etc. It's taboo to talk about "place in society". Just because you're wealthy doesn't (shouldn't) mean anything.

But these are values of our society. They are part of our culture. And I find that a lot of people don't realize this and look down upon hierarchical societies where "class" is very important. And the hierarchies are different. It might be age, profession, parental lineage, wealth, etc. There are places out there where these things matter. And people will not (cannot) do business with you unless they understand your place in society.

This all stems from a discussion during a seminar where we're talking about ways that we can make seismic retrofit of a school into something that the community would want to adopt for themselves. Someone brought up the point of certificates and if we can certify construction workers who are trained to do seismic retrofits and put certificates on buildings that are seismically safe, this would be a great way to spread the idea. But he proceeded this idea with, "I hope that this isn't the case in all of the country." And people laughed when someone (I won't name who), said that these certificates were "silly" but maybe they'll work. This is all coming from people who are very well traveled, lived in different places, worked on different development projects. I just find it shocking that they still don't understand by saying (judging) these things (e.g. certificates) are silly, that they are imposing their own values on another society. It's as if they think that every society is striving to be an egalitarian one.

Office 2010

Finally gave in and bought a copy of Microsoft Office 2010 from the Stanford bookstore. There's some kind of license agreement that Stanford has which lets you buy the Professional Plus version for the price of the normal Home and Student version. Anyway, it's still not cheap. I was using a trial version for a while because this quarter, my team project made it necessary to have at least the 2007 version of Office. I was holding out on buying stuff like this because I doubt I will be using it very much at home. But I think it would still be nice to be able to read documents and work from my own computer. The Office 2000 version that I have is really not compatible. The format gets all messed up. Anyway, hopefully this is a good investment.

It's March!

It's March! I'm sitting in the new engineering library. This place opened when the academic year started. The building is a pretty nice addition to Y2E2. I think most students are still figuring out where everything is. I'm sitting on a single person couch with a foot stool against the end of a big bookshelf. I feel like this spot is where people take pictures of college brochures and send them out. If you took a picture of me right now, you would get a picture of a student typing away on her computer in a library with lots of books.

A lot of the furniture here have footstools. It's really nice to be able to put your feet up. I think I prefer that while typing on a laptop.

Got up early today for class. Today is the last Bagel Tuesday so I got half a bagel after class. There used to be Bagel Tuesday every Tuesday but I think they ran out of budget so now it's every other Tuesday. It's not as convenient since it's hard to remember. For the past few weeks, I've been packing a lot of stuff to bring with me so that I can stay on campus all day Mondays and Tuesdays. But I think I'm going to go back to my apartment today for the 3 hour break that I have from noon-3pm. I think I can work much better in my room. My roommate pointed out this morning that she felt like she wasted 3 hours at in our office. She says that if she gets tired at home, she can always nap and then start working again. But in Blume, you're just tired the entire day. I definitely agree. Nap time is very essential! I think there was a PhD comic showing how grad school is like kindergarten.

Last days at Stanford - random thoughts

Long day today! These last few days seem like they will drag on forever. I got up at 7am this morning and didn't get back to my apartment until after 8pm. At one point after eating dinner, I really wanted to nap. There was no good place to do it though. Somehow senior year at MIT didn't seem like this. I guess I knew that I have more school ahead of me. Maybe I need to re-read my blog posts...

Trying to schedule some lunches and dinners with people before I leave. But my schedule is pretty packed. So it's kind of difficult. I guess I can do stuff after my final on Monday and presentation on Tuesday. I'll just be packing. I should really schedule stuff for those days.

The reason I got up really early this morning was because I had a group meeting at 8:30am. I feel like I've dragged myself through this team project based class. I guess I'm glad I decided to take it because I think I've gained some long sought after knowledge. And the team has been interesting to work with. Definitely wasn't used to this whole team meeting business after taking a bunch of classes where I just did my own work. Team dynamics is very interesting. People tend to do things differently, i.e. play the game in different ways. Maybe even interrupt the rules of the game in different ways. But it gets very dangerous if you find out half way through that not everyone on the team is playing the same game.

I guess this is one of the things I really need to look out for when I start working in Hong Kong. I feel like I know the subtleties at American workplaces. I'm not sure I know what to expect or lookout for in HK. And then there's the fact that the it's a UK based company so there are a lot of people from the UK and Australia around. Never been to Australia. No clue what the culture over there is like. It'll be an interesting experience.

This entry is going to be a bit random but I have a sudden urge to keep a better record of my last days at Stanford. I went to the farmer's market on California Ave for the first time yesterday. There is a farmer's market there every Sunday. I've just never had the motivation to bike over there. Then I realized that the shopping express stops at California and that I can get everything done by the time the shuttle comes back from the San Antonio shopping center. Lots of time saved. I got some apples, tangerines, a leek, and some broccoli. Can't get everything you need there because some things are very expensive. Anyway, it was an enjoyable experience.

I've been bringing a lot of fruit with me on my long days on campus. Keeps me from buying food on campus, usually. Today, I brought along 2 tangerines, 1 apple, a tupperware of fried rice with sausage, and one PB&J. I ate the two tangerines before lunch (they were very small). I was saving the apple and fried rice for dinner so clearly, one pb&j was not enough for lunch. So I ended up getting some sushi on campus. And then when I came back, I had another pb&j with milk. I feel like I'm eating a lot these days. But food is very important. Can't think without fuel!

Also, Boston trip planning is in the works. I think I'm going to buy the ticket soon (later this week). Need to start letting people know! I'm aiming for the weekend of April 9th. I hope this doesn't overlap with the April dates of all the civil engineering society meetings. All the March meetings seem to be next week. I should figure out these things, I guess. Last ASCE, SFGI, SEAONC, etc meetings I'll get to attend in a while. Maybe there are ones in Boston? I should check those out too.

The Countdown Begins!

Only 3 more weeks of school. Moving out of Stanford in about 31 days. And moving out of the country in about 2 months... A lot of people have asked if I feel excited. I honestly don't know if excited is the right word to be using. I have been looking at HK life-related stuff pretty excessively these past few days. I think I've gotten the internet situation figured out for the most part. I think there's only one major internet provider so that makes things easy. But the specific plan that is available depends on where I live. Next up is electricity and water. Updating my budget as I go along.

Speaking of the budget, I've been trying to come up with a monthly cash flow plan. I know that there will be a lot of unforeseen expenses when I actually get there. But one thing that I didn't think about before is the grace periods of my loans. A 9 month grace period is actually pretty significant since I am basically starting my job right after I graduate. So I can potentially pay off the smaller loans completely and my monthly loan payments would be less than what I'm calculating right now. I'm not exactly sure how to make such a cash flow plan though. We're supposed to be making one for my financial literacy class. The instructor said that she will bring in some samples next class. But since the class is on Mondays, and next Monday is a holiday, we won't get to see these samples for a while!

On the topic of holidays. I think I will enjoy them a lot more when I am working. Holidays in grad school is just the same as any other day. No classes but it's not like I spend a lot of time in class anyway. I'm still holding my office hours as usual. It's really no big difference to me.

I went to Kaiser today to get my annual check up and such. On the way back, I walked around Castro Street a bit. It was raining so I didn't go very far. But I did run into an Asian supermarket. I think it is run by Vietnamese people but they have all sorts of Asian foods. I called my roommate to ask if she wanted to make dumplings for dinner tonight because her boyfriend mentioned at one point that he really likes dumplings. I got a pack of dumpling skins and we went grocery shopping for the rest of the ingredients later at night. It was really fun. I should have gotten a whole lot more dumpling skins though. We used pork and ground turkey. Not entirely sure the ground turkey was a good move though because it was a bit dry.

Anyway, looking forward to some hard core studying these next few days. Might be going up to SF on Sunday because a friend is here to visit. I don't know if it will all work out though. I don't have that much motivation to go up there. But it would be nice to hang out. Kind of wish I can couple it with some other errand. Not worth it to go anywhere unless I have at least 2 things to accomplish!

HK Housing, TA-ing, etc.

Another long week! Just finished a midterm today so I don't really feel like doing very much. I've been hooked on looking at apartments in HK lately. I finally tried searching in Chinese and lo-and-behold, the prices were much cheaper, in more central locations, and less furnished. Okay, the places are smaller too but I honestly don't need a big fancy place. One thing I've found out is that if I search for 1 bedroom, the results will typically consists of one-bedrooms within a multi-bedroom place. So now I'm only searching for studios. Sometimes it's hard to tell. I think I know what I want to find so it shouldn't be too difficult. Part of me wishes I can be there already so that I can call these people and go look at places. Good thing I had that experience of looking for apartments with Yalu and friends in NYC. It'll be a different experience, of course, but it's good to know what to look for. Imagine going into this apartment looking business for the first time in a different country!

I had to cover lecture for the foundations class yesterday. I went over the notes in detail but it was very different having to write things out on the board. It's a very interesting experience. I was nervous at first but I think I got the hang of things about halfway into the lecture. Hopefully, I didn't seem too incompetent! hahaha. Unfortunately, I also had the lecture on bearing capacity, which is a subject that I don't particularly enjoy myself. I've "learned" this topic about 3 times now, Cambridge, MIT (I think?), and Stanford (last year). And these shape functions still annoy me. I was looking over my geotech notes from Cambridge and they are actually pretty good! Their 3rd year course is actually pretty advance. I don't think I was ready for it at the time. And the notes, true to the Cambridge style, doesn't give you everything you need to know.

In contrast, students here expect their professors to give them everything they need to know... But students here do have more stuff going on and really have less time to go sit in the library and figure things out for themselves. I think some kind of middle ground is needed here.

Anyway, the latest foundations homework requires the students to do some analysis of slopes. They are much more realistic problems than the typical textbook problem. So there's much more variability and some thinking is needed. I would be able to figure out these problems now, having been taught the theories in school and applied them in internships. I'm really glad that my coworkers have pushed me to think beyond just inputting data and clicking solve. I think that's what I need to do with the students on this homework. I'm not sure they've realized that the program doesn't do much more than an excel sheet and that they really need to know what they want. Hopefully some of them can think for themselves though. Because if every one of them needs me to walk them through the problems, that would be overwhelming for me. I think this was supposed to be a 10 hr a week job....

Other news, my allergies have gotten better due to the recent rain. It's good that there hasn't been too much rain. No big downpours. Just enough to keep my allergies away.

Conclusion of EERI Conference

I think I should keep track of how many miles I fly this year. It might be a new record. I got back from San Diego a few hours ago. Really tired out from this conference. I'm not sure why. I really didn't do anything other than sit in presentations. I think it's just the fact that I have a lot on my mind these days. There's always something I think I should be doing.

The sessions on Friday were more technical and more interesting. I was definitely more in the conference mode on Friday. I met a lot of interesting people during lunch, the poster session, dinner, and casino night event. The food at the hotel was generally very good. The desserts were very big! I almost felt like I should go running. But I really wasn't feeling that well the entire time. Not that I was sick or anything. Just, low on energy.

Seeing all these great presentations have made me realize that I really need to work on public speaking. I don't think I would have been able to handle speaking in front of such a distinguished audience, even if it's on a subject that I know very well. I think I need to come up with some sort of plan for this... Suggestions are welcomed.

More presentations on Saturday morning. They split up the group into structural and geotech. I went to the geotech one and thought that it was very well done. The topic was on Vs30 and if it is an effective parameter on the characterization of sites. There were four speakers, all very well respected and distinguished in the field. I think they all came to a consensus about the basic use of this parameter and then presented their own research and a bit about the future of seismic site response analysis. It was very interesting. I think some of it was still too advance for me but I was able to follow most of it. Again, I wish that they allotted more time for discussion because I think the audience also had things to add. Actually, I was surprised that some of the audience didn't seem as comfortable with site response analysis as I thought they should be. So maybe I know more than I think.

The flight back had a lot of EERI people on it. It felt like a very short flight. I changed my seat so that I would be next to Veronica. I accompanied her to the luggage pickup and we ran into a guy who was also going to Stanford. So I got a ride with him and his friends. It turned out that he's dating someone I know in my department. And he also worked at Arup HK for a year as a structural engineer before doing a PhD at Caltech. Small world or self selecting community?

Conference. Day 1

Wow, long day of conference-ing. I walked to the hotel where the conference is held this morning and got a bit lost along the way. I think I managed to take the long way even though it was supposed to be pretty easy to get there. So I ended up getting there a little bit late. And as if the day couldn't start any better, I didn't see our poster and abstract in the huge book that they gave us. Turns out, we were supposed to reply to say that we're coming to the conference after the poster got accepted. I think I just missed that part in the email entirely. I read the email in a rush and didn't re-read it until two nights ago. Partly because I wasn't sure we were going to make it to the conference. Anyway, talked to the organizers and they'll try to squeeze us into the poster session venue. But the abstract isn't in the program... Sad... would be nice to see my name in these things. oh wells, guess I'll just have to submit more stuff in the future! Many more opportunities. I'll be keeping a lookout for them.

The theme of the conference is Earthquakes Without Borders. So a lot of the talks are about the San Diego and Tijuana area. Some of the talks got pretty specific to the San Diego region. It was nice to know about things that are going on in this area, I guess. Some of the topics were interesting. Not sure all of them have been very interesting. But I think tomorrow will be more technical so I'm looking forward to those. There are a lot of important people in the earthquake engineering community attending this conference. I guess I shouldn't be surprised but it's pretty amazing to see the names of all the attendees. I haven't been doing so well with the networking at this event. Definitely not in the game.

I hope there is some sort of earthquake engineering community in Hong Kong. It's not a very seismic region. They can feel the waves from earthquakes on nearby faults but there are no active faults in HK (that I know of). And it's just not the same... There was a younger member panel and one of the students asked if it was necessary to live in a seismically active area to really get into earthquake engineering. I really think the answer is yes. They do earthquake stuff out on the east coast but in non-active areas, it's more like a hobby. It's not something that you live with. It's just different when you live next to a major fault and have to think about bolting down your furniture, having enough water in case of an event, etc. I've heard that the head of the earthquake engineering for Arup is in HK though. I have seen his name on a few internal publications and have been wanting to meet him for a while. It would be cool to get on some seismic design projects just to keep learning about the subject.

San Diego!

In San Diego attending the EERI (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute) annual meeting. It's nice that I have this kind of flexibility in grad school to just fly out and attend a conference. I don't know how I would have done it in undergrad.

My flight was full. I was really surprised because there were a lot of empty seats when I booked. There were even a standby list. I think it's because it was both a Continental and United flight. It was sold and advertised by both companies. I was hoping for a less full flight so that I can be sure I have room for my poster. We managed to finish the poster yesterday and got it printed at Meyer. I didn't know they do poster printing at Meyer but it turned out to be the cheapest (and possibly the fastest) place to do it at. There were undergrads staffing the desk but they were pretty good at what they do. Undergrads look so young...

One of my friends came to pick me up at the airport and we went for Mexican food (which is very popular here). We talked for a while and did some catching up. Actually, I think I talked a lot. This tends to happen when I do things like going to Indonesia for the summer and then deciding to move half way across the world.

Watching the Food Network right now at my cousin's place. Watching this stuff always makes me want to try out new stuff. I think I should expand my skills as far as what I make. I think there's a lot more stuff out there that I usually don't cook. I'm usually making veggie stir fry with some kind of meat. The other day I got inspired to jazz up my steel cut oatmeal with raisins, cinnamon, and honey. And I added fresh blueberries and bananas to it before heating it up. Really good and because I cooked big pot of it, I just reheat it in the morning.

Looking forward to some good talks and meeting interesting people tomorrow!

Relevant learning

This article talks about the lack of support that kids get about career choices and the large amounts of college drop outs. 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/02/01/national/a210155S84.DTL&feed=rss.business

I think it's very true that many (most) students don't see value in their high school and college classes because they feel like it's knowledge that they will never use in life. I think I've been lucky in that I've done several internships and have been able to apply things that I've learned to work. Every time I do an internship, I'm amazed that many concepts that I've learned actually applies. And I leave the workplace with more motivation to learn things at school. This may not apply to everyone and every industry but I think that internships really help reinforce what you learn in the classroom and give you a sense of direction.

Anyway, nowadays I'm surprised to hear high school students complaining about classes and how their classes are not relevant. Algebra absolutely relevant. I don't know what I would do without algebra (and calculus). And it's not that you have to know every single concept. You can always go back and revisit things to apply them to what you're working on. It's just much easier if you've "learned" it once before. I guess I'm also surprised that there are grad students who complain that their classes are not relevant...

Halfway - the weekend

Went on a site visit this Friday to one of the new buildings that UCSF is building in the Mission Bay district. I didn't realize that they were building an entire campus' worth of buildings down there. Very impressive. The building we visited was mostly up and they were lifting machinery when we were there.

Went home afterwards. It took me a while to walk from the construction site to the BART station. I should have just taken the bus. Walking was made even more difficult because I was wearing my steel toe work boots. They are heavy and slightly too big. I'm not sure they are entirely water-proof either. I will either have to dig up my old military boots or get some longer boots for future site visits. Construction sites might be wet and rainy in HK.

I only stayed home until Saturday morning. Took BART back to San Francisco and I walked around Chinatown for a little bit. I got some food items that made all my stuff really heavy. Again, I should have just taken the bus from Chinatown to the Caltrain station. But thinking since this route is not much longer than the one I usually take, I decided to walk. I made the train that I wanted to take but after I got on the train, I realized that I would have to wait 40 minutes after getting to Palo Alto for the Shopping Express shuttle to come along. Which meant that I could have waited for the next train and still have made the shuttle. This lack of public transportation options during the weekend is so frustrating. I ended up chatting with Yalu for a long time because of this.

After getting back, I was really tired out from all the walking and carrying around stuff. Did laundry and then rested a bit before going grocery shopping. It seems that Shopping Express that comes to the residences is always late and the one picking us up from the shopping center is either early or on time. This means not a lot of time for shopping! I'm pretty efficient these days though.

Later that night, I worked on the team project for my infrastructure class and then finished reading a book. Met up with a former roommate from MIT who was visiting. She is starting a new job so she's doing some traveling and visiting people in between her jobs. Seems to be doing well. Some people never seems to change though.

It's been a really nice and warm weekend. I was wearing shorts outside on Saturday. I think I could have done the same today (Sunday) but I decided to spend the entire day indoors because of allergies... At least I got a lot of work done. I never seem to be able to do as much as I would like to on the weekends though. Not sure where all the time goes. Things just seem to take longer than I expect.

I can't believe this quarter is already half way over. I've barely written anything about how my classes are going or any of the usual stuff. It's been overshadowed by this whole job thing. I think about HK a lot these days and school just seems so unreal. Sometimes I feel like I'm just going through the motions. But I do feel like there's a lot to learn this quarter. I think all my classes (even the one I'm TAing) is potentially very relevant to what I'll be doing. I guess I just can't wait to apply them in real life!