You scared me, man

室友Adrain讀ECE博班三年級

每天早上七點半起床

做了三份早餐後就去學校了

我和室友Matt起不來，所以就負責洗碗

晚上他會回來吃晚飯

吃完

再開車回office繼續工作

過十二點才回來

過著令人敬佩的規律生活

這天晚上

我要到圖書館趕作業

所以就順便坐他的便車

回來時巳經是凌晨十二點半了

沒想到

他說他只是回來拿個東西

待會還要回辦公室

因為老闆晚上十點寄了E-mail給他

他必需回去加班

博士生的生活這麼可怕嗎

巳經是超人的工作時數了

竟然還要敖夜加班……

你嚇到我了，男人

Scientist versus Engineer

    I used to mention myself a scientist rather than an engineer. Perhaps, I thought scientists to be higher-classed than engineers. Scientists is related to dreams, creativity and genius. Conversely, when it comes to engineers, one may think of work and rigidness. There is Einstein as a typical scientist with white messy hair. However, engineers? You would only recall some company like GOOGLE. It seems that an engineer can not exist as a self-proved unit. Engineers live as part of something. Simply speaking, engineers couldn't exist without users enjoy their product.

    It happened yesterday that I started considering a new idea of the value of engineers. It was my roommate found difficulties launching the webpage of Taiwan U. He said that he could launch any other websites but Taiwan U. Besides, he tried it on UIUC campus and there is no problem getting connected to National Taiwan U. So he concluded that there is something wrong with our network provider, Comcast. He is anxious about this because he is urgent to check e-mails in NTU mail server but he don't want to go to UIUC campus to do that at night. 

    I thought it interesting. The truth is that the server of NTU is working well. How come one can only connect from UIUC campus but not from Comcast? It's probably that NTU server denied the request from Comcast or the server of Comcast can't find where the server of NTU is. Anyway, I recalled that some hacker would trying to launch different server so that they could escape the tracing from police. It reminded me to use VPN to connect to UIUC server first. After that, I tried to connect to NTU and, surprisingly, it worked. So, my roommate is happy and I looked good.

    What's the relation between this event and the issue about scientist-engineers? The point is, engineers exist to solve problems for others, which is very different from scientist. In some ways, scientists do solve problems. But the motivation is for themselves. It's the desire to seek the truths. For engineers, they do this because there is a need.  

The world needs engineers, but not necessary scientists.

It is getting cold

    Tomorrow, It rained. After that, it's getting cold. I guess it's only in between 10 to 20 Celsius degree. What worries  me is that I don't have any clothes for winter. All the clothes I have other than short pants and T-shirts are a  a pair of jeans and a light jacket. I am afraid of being cold to death when it snows so I have to buy some heavy jackets and snow shoes  as soon as possible.

Trip in Chicago

    I had a trip in Chicago. However, not today, not yesterday, it's on Labor's Day, which is about one month ago. I had been too busy to write about that since I got back. Now, I have sometime because one of my course is over. On the other hand, I would feel sorry for Chicago if I don't write something about it. No matter how, I did write one trip article about Indianapolis, why not Chicago?

    Getting straight, I love Chicago.

     

    Those days, I visited two museum, Art institute of Chicago and Field museum. Those two museums are both excellent ones. Collections there hold a great quantity and quality. I like Art institute of Chicago even more. Although fascinated, after one hour looking around I felt sleepy  and extremely needed a cup of coffee even though the museum itself, as I said, was undoubtedly awesome. I guess next time I visiting these museums I would have to change my strategy. Firstly, have a cup of coffee before entering the museum. Secondly, take note when appreciating collections so that I can keep concentrated. 

    Along the Michigan Lake shore, there are a lot of huge parks. Among them, Millennium Park is the most famous  one. The design of the park is indeed eye-attracting. Northern to Chicago downtown, there is a zoo in Lincoln Park. Actually, it's my favorite of this trip. It's free. It's nice and it's open everyday. The one that impressed me most is two north-pole bears. It is designed so good that visitors can watch bears swim directly to them. One thing interesting is that when I was thinking about the reason pole-bears swim to visitors back-and-forth again and again is out of having fun with visitors, a little boy asked his mother whether bears were trying to scare people away.

    Night in Chicago is also fun. We watched fireworks in Navy Pier on Sat. night. On Sunday night, I attended Jazz festival. Just lying down on grass casually with jazz around you. I really enjoyed it. I hope I can come again next year.

The corrosion course is over

    Finally, one of my course, corrosion, is over today. We had final test this afternoon. It's an open book test but I still didn't do very well. But I guess I would at least get a B. 

    Honestly, I am a little bit disappointed about myself. I was used to be smart and confident, at least in my imaginary. Now I can't even pretend it to be.  People around seems to be able to handle things easily. This just made me recall what professor Ming Lee ever told one of his student who was about to study in MIT. "Are you ready to become stupid?" Now, I felt so stupid of myself. 

    Sometimes, I would think about what if I were still studying in NTHU in Taiwan. Would life be easier? The life I used to. The language I used to. The way making myself feel confident I used to. Anyway, it doesn't help by imagine things that are not going to happen.

    Whenever I feel struggled, I know that's good for me. It means that I am learning. Pain, but effective. So, don't worry, I will get over it. Just be happy.

This week

It's another busy week. 

It's only the third week of the semester but I got to do homework all the time. If I were in Taiwan, it should still be a leisure time. As a matter of fact, the most difficulty remains arising from my English deficiency. For instance, one of the lecturer teaching my corrosion course is from Italy. It's really not easy to understand his accent. On the other hand, I am very weak on chemistry and electro-chemistry is so related to corrosion so it's indeed tough to me.

Another lecturer teaching the course, "Interaction of radiation with matter", is a gentleman on his age of  80. The way he talk is really a murmuring to me. So all that I can do is to take notes. Even though he is so old, I am sure that he is still clear-headed. When he started teaching, he just wrote down what he murmured immediately without taking a glance at his note. In conclusion, he is good. By the way, I heard that he is the first Nuclear Engineering PhD in the world. If true, that's pretty cool.

Conversely the situation is quite different in Taiwan. A professor is forced to retire around age of 65. Sometimes they would like to retire as soon as possible. I think the professor who insist on teaching and research whole life is really respectable. 

My fashion preference

Check out this website

http://omg.yahoo.com/photos/best-and-worst-dressed-at-the-vmas/2266?nc#id=1

It's a set of photos in VMAs(actually I don't know what it is). There is a comment about the star's dress under each photo. It could be a best or a worst. Of course, it's writer's personal preference. Interested, I made my own comment on each photo before reading writer's comments. And it turned out to be that whenever I think one to be a best, it's a worst and vice versa. I am always opposite to writer's opinion. Ha~