The personal blog of a regular guy

Today I finally received my Bachelors of Applied Science from the University of British Columbia. It took me five years to reach this point. It was a lot of work and a good chunk of time, but I think it was worth it (hopefully ). I have to thank my family… and friends I suppose… for their support through the years, and I have to thank some of my professors as well.

Even though five years of university is more than enough for many, I’m not done with school yet. I’ll be heading elsewhere for graduate studies, but until then it’s vacation time. There is a lot of stuff I need to get done, but I should have plenty of free time as well. This will probably mean, among other things, that I’ll pay more attention to my websites and produce more artwork. I do have some sizable plans for my sites, and hopefully I’ll actually follow through with my plans.

I’ll probably write a post or two about my last year as a undergrad student, but I’m too tired to start writing today. I’ll end this post with a photo of my graduation.

This is a research report that I wrote for one of my fourth year engineering courses. We are supposed to choose topics that are related to renewable or distributed energy, and I chose to write my report about Stirling engines and micro-cogeneration, two topics that have a connection with one another. It’s not the longest report I’ve written, and probably not the best either, but I got a decent mark in the course so the report can’t be that bad. Keep reading if you feel like wasting a couple minutes of time.

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I’m finally back from my three-week vacation to China. I come from China, but I haven’t gone back to my homeland for a long time, so you could say the trip was long overdue. During the trip, my family and I visited a good number of places, and this post is primarily a photo dump of sights and scenery that I saw over my three weeks in China.

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As part of my effort to visit all the notable attractions at the University of British Columbia before I graduate (or my bus pass expires), I visited to the Nitobe Memorial Garden and UBC Botanical Garden. As a current student, I can get into both of these gardens for free, but for some reason I never thought about visiting them until a few weeks ago. Here is my post on the visit accompanied by lots of photos.

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Having been a student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver for the better part of five years, it’s rather sad that I haven’t visited some of the notable attractions within my university. This is especially sad given that, as a current student, I can go into any of those places for free. So before my undergraduate career at UBC comes to an end, I am going to make an effort to visit all of the notable attractions at UBC, and I’ll start with UBC’s well-known Museum of Anthropology (MOA). The museum just recently completed a renewal project, so it’s the perfect time for me to visit.

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There is still a bit over a month left until I’m finished with this school term and my undergraduate career, and I have to wait until June to get my degree, but today I (along with many other graduating engineering students) took a step towards my graduation and got my Iron Ring. For those who don’t know, the Iron Ring is a tradition for Canadian engineers and it comes with accepting an “obligation” to do good work as engineers. It’s not required for graduation or professional practice, but most of us get it because it is a tradition and it’s something to show for (other than our degrees).

The ceremony for taking the obligation and getting the ring was a formal occasion. Since it’s supposed to be “private”, I’m not going to reveal any details about what went on. Instead, below is a picture of me wearing my new ring. For a big guy, my hands are kind of girly, but my hand seems wider and less feminine in this photo .

I finally saw Avatar. Actually, I saw Avatar about four weeks ago, but didn’t get around to writing about it until today. I actually wanted to see it in January, but I wanted to see it in IMAX 3D and the theaters were packed back then. As almost all of you probably know, Avatar is James Cameron’s latest mega-budget blockbuster that is now the highest grossing film of all time. This post is just a collection of my thoughts on the film, so it’s not really a movie review per se, but I’ll put it in my review category for organization’s sake.

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The 2010 Vancouver Winter Games is finally coming to a close after two weeks of world-class competition. Despite the shaky start with the protests and the unfortunate death of the Georgian luger, plus the persistent weather problems (it was more like the Spring Olympics), it’s been a good Olympics games. Canada has done a good job as a host and also in the games. We didn’t exactly “own the podium” as the Americans and Germans have more medals in total, but Canada did win more gold medals than any other country this time. Canada’s 14 gold medals set the record for most gold medals won during a single Winter Olympics by any country. The total haul of 26 medals is also Canada’s best showing at any Olympics, summer or winter. Canada really came on strong during the last few days, capping it all off with a dramatic 3-2 overtime win over the USA in men’s hockey. Congratulations Canada!

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I turned this website into a blog a month and a half ago in order to encourage myself to write more, but that hasn’t worked out so well. Anyways, for next two weeks, I’ll be spending nearly all my time at home. This is because of the Winter Olympics, which prompted my university to extend our usual one week break to two weeks. The break is by no means vacation though, since I have three projects and a couple of assignments to work on. Still, not having to commute to school and go to class should free up some time for me to watch the Winter Olympics… on TV. Having lived in Canada for so long, of course I’m rooting for the Canadian team, and also the Chinese team as well since I’m Chinese. I certainly hope Canada’s “Own the Podium” program will produce great results, but if that doesn’t work out, many of us Canadians will probably be happy if Canada wins the men’s hockey gold. GO CANADA!

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I finally received the marks to all of my courses in the past term, so it’s time for me to write another term review post. I used to write these posts back on my *old* personal blog which eventually transformed into an anime/manga blog. Since this site is now my personal blog, I’ll be writing these kind of posts here instead. As always, below is a list of courses I took, my mark for each course, and what I thought of each of them.

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