I recently went on a conference trip to sunny San Diego, California, and it was probably the best conference trip I’ve been on. San Diego in the summer is just a great place to be, and it’s even more awesome when my travel costs are paid for. Of course, this was a conference trip and I did spend most of the trip attending conference events, but fortunately I also had a bit of time to do touristy things as covered in this post.
It’s been more than two months since the end of my latest academic semester. The winter term was my fourth term as a graduate student, and it was a pretty tough term with two out of three courses being quite challenging. I managed to survive though, and here are some thoughts on the courses.
A couple of weekends ago, some friends and I went to Niagara Falls and Buffalo. I have been to the great falls before, but that was a long time ago and also I have never been to the US side of the falls. It’s also summer where I have a little more time on my hands, so it was a good time to visit. As always, this post is a short account of the my trip along with some photos. Photo credits go to my roommate HL.
Another school year of graduate studies have gone by, and once again I managed to get a little time off before starting my summer research. Just like last year, my parents came to visit me and so we went on a few short trips. We stayed in New York City for a few days, and this year we also went up into Quebec to visit Montreal and Quebec City. Here is a short account of the trips with some photos.
After four semesters of graduate studies, I finally get to walk across the stage for my master’s degree. I actually earned my degree at the end of last year, but my school only has one graduation ceremony a year. Getting the degree feels good of course, and I have to thank my family, friends and my advisor. However, there is still much to do. I probably have at least two more years until I can get my PhD. It ain’t going to be easy, but I’ll work hard to get through it.
Now that I’m a grad student, I travel more than before thanks to various conferences and meetings. Recently, I went on a conference trip to Knoxville, Tennessee. It was my first time in the city (and the state for that matter), and I managed to squeeze in a little bit of sight-seeing in between business duties. Here are some photos and a few thoughts I had about the city of Knoxville.
This is my third post on the blog within a week. I guess I feel like writing more here these days despite the fact that I should probably be spending the time to do research, do homework, do something with my social life or even sleep. Anyways, here is another mundane post of me doing some simple task, and this time it’s replacing my car’s air filters.
A little while ago I went on a conference trip to Orlando, Florida. Back then, the Northeast was still pretty cold, while Orlando was sunny and warm, so it was certainly a great destination to go to. Unfortunately, the conference took place right at the hotel inside the airport, and so I ended up staying in the airport through almost the entire trip. It was a short trip and we didn’t have much free time, but just going outside for a couple of hours to the actual city would have been nice. At least the hotel and airport were quite nice though. The Orlando Airport is one of the nicest airports I’ve been to in the United States. The Hyatt hotel is right on top of the main airport lobby which is shown in the picture below. This trip was the first time I’ve been to Orlando or Florida. I didn’t really get to go anywhere, but hopefully I’ll make it back there some day as a tourist and actually visit the city.
Spring has arrived, and I realized that I’ve been a car owner for a year already as I bought my first car late March last year. The car is still the largest single purchase that I have made in my life up to this point. Insurance is not cheap given I’m in the “high-risk young male driver” category, and the car isn’t exactly good on gas, but I didn’t need to spend too much money on it because I don’t drive it very much. In the last twelve months, I’ve put 3000-3500 miles on the car, and I’m sure a good chunk of that was from the time my parents and I drove down to Washington D. C.. The trip to D. C. is the longest trip I’ve taken this car on. For myself, I only drive the car on weekends to buy groceries and perhaps go to the odd social gathering. Having a car is of course very nice, as the car is big and comfy and has pretty much all of the amenities I need. Having a car is also almost a necessity given the limited public transportation available in the area. It’s so much more convenient to be able to go where I want instead of see if others can give me a ride or waiting for the bus (in the cold hard winter). Speaking of winter, one thing I was concerned about was having to dig my car out from a lot of snow since I don’t have covered parking, but luckily the winters has been pretty mild this year, and so I didn’t really experience the treacherous winter driving conditions and having to excavate my car from two feet of snow.
Over the last year, the car has been pretty good as it didn’t develop any problems on its own. I did spend some money to repair the car when a rodent got into the hood and chewed up some plastic and wires, but otherwise the car has behaved nicely in its first year under my ownership. I’m not a car maintenance expert, but I’ll be sure to get all the necessary maintenance done so the car will continue to operate without issues. Hopefully the car will be alright as long as I own it, and I’ll likely keep this car until I get my doctoral degree and maybe even beyond that.
This week was my spring break. I had a lot of work to do and spent most of the break working, but it would have been pretty sad if I had to work the whole week and not do anything fun. So one day, I went with some of my friends to ski on a local ski hill. This was the first time I have ever skied, which is actually kind of weird given that I’ve lived in Vancouver for well over a decade. Vancouver has a couple of ski hills nearby, and the world famous Whistler is not that far away either.
The day we went, the weather was very nice and it was sunny the whole day. However, it is March and spring time has come, and so it was quite warm and thus the snow was a little slushy at the base of the mountain. Given this was my first time skiing, I went and took the beginner lessons to learn the basics. On the bunny hill I actually wasn’t doing too bad. I could turn and had some control over where I was going, and I didn’t fall while skiing. It did take me a few tries to figure out how to get off the chairlift without falling though. After a few times down the bunny hill, I then moved on to try the novice hill. I found out the hard way that the novice hill was way steeper than the bunny hill, and on my first trip down I ended up falling 4 or 5 times. I can’t seem to control my speed on the steeper hill and end up going too fast and then losing control. After a couple of tries I did make it down the hill once without crashing, but I still haven’t really figured out how to control my speed. I tried the “pizza slice” stance and that doesn’t seem to work.
Despite the falls and the slushy conditions, my first ski experience was pretty fun. I expected to fall a couple of times as a first-timer, and I think I did better than expected. The weather is getting too warm now and my spring break is over, so looks like my next skiing experience will have to wait until next winter.