Meine Transition zu einem Leben ohne Englisch

This is my old welcome message... archiving it...

2009-03-07T23:42:00.000+01:00

West Lafayette is the city that is home to Purdue University, where I have obtained my bachelors degree and soon, also my Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering. After being away from this place for one year, many things have changed. The people, the number of places to hang out at, the academic systems, the quality of study abroad programs etc. Although the change is not as striking as what you would expect in places like Singapore or Shanghai, it did feel different at the start.

The entries in these few months would be focused on life in West Lafayette as I finish my transition to a life ohne English, and transit back into one without Deutsch...

The idea of false generosity

2008-11-28T15:01:00.000+01:00

There are many philantropists who think they are generous, but are these people really generous or are they just providing 'false' generosity? In the framework of this discussion, let us define true generosity as kindness in return for nothing, and false generosity as kindness in return for something. I will provide some examples of false generosity below, each more subtle than the previous, to illustrate this concept.

Consider the owner of a rubber tree plantation. He believes that he is being generous by giving work to his laborers. He believes that without him, all these people would have nothing to eat and no work to do. Therefore, he talks down to these laborers, and they are also expected to behave meekly in front of him. He will tolerate no criticism or disobedience; he will make any person who speaks up against him suffer. If the plantation owner has true generosity, he would provide work for the workers, and allow them to have the freedom of speech, action and thought, and use dialogue instead of dictatorial action to educate and resolve conflicts. As a person with the resources to help others with none, wanting anything more than genuinely helping is really an act of false generosity.

Let us move to a second example. A teacher believes he is being kind to his students by offering to teach his students material. Disobedience, disability to perform on the exams, or disinterest in the material results in stringent punishment for the student. In order to deserve the teacher's help, a student has to absolutely obey and almost worship the teacher. Any deviation results in the teacher labeling the student as a bad student. If the teacher were truly generous in sharing his knowledge, he would not conclude that any student does not deserve his instruction. Instead, he would use many different means and methods to reach out to each and every student. In this case, he is really wanting something (obedience, interest) in return for what he gives. It must be emphasized that it is totally acceptable to want something in return for what one can offer; but in that case, the action should be perceived as trade, not generosity.

Finally, the third example considers a man who wants to be generous, and he believes that he can only do so when he is rich. He then commits his effort into acquiring wealth, and eventually he is a wealthy man who donates great amount of money to charitable organizations. However, in his pursue of wealth, he has caused the loss of several thousand jobs, directly or indirectly, with or without his knowledge. He then gives a great portion of his wealth to the organizations that help people without jobs, and believes himself to be generous. One day, while visiting the people that he is helping, several members of the crowd made poor by him recognizes him and says,"So you are the one helping us now? Weren't you the one who took away all our jobs to begin with?" In a way, this is the irony of generosity at its peak, for it is the 'generous' man that caused poverty to begin with. This is also a form of false generosity, because the man wants to be wealthy before he is generous. His generosity is obtained in return for wealth, and is not something that stems from kindness in return for nothing.

I believe that it is very difficult to be a generous man in a big way. In small ways, you can always help a kid, help an old man, or help a pregnant woman without asking for anything in return, because these people are unlikely to hurt you after being helped. It takes an immense love for mankind and a great resolve to want and to be able to help people who has the capacity to harm you after receiving your help, without asking for anything in return.

Therefore, one situation where a person can be truly generous is when he is a member of the oppressed; one who is so oppressed such that anyone he helps has the capacity to hurt him. Another situation on the other spectrum would be a person born into a rich family, who has done nothing or wanted nothing in return for his kindness. This person, however, would eventually be made poor, because of the existence of many greedy and covetous people in this world. (In the framework of Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, these are the people who want, knowingly or unknowingly, to become oppressors.) So far, the closet example of the second case I can think of is Siddharta Gautama, or Buddha, who was born as a Prince. In his case, he saw that as a member of the royal family, there was no way he could understand 'Truth' in its truest form, and gave up his status as a member of the oppressor group as well as everything else in his life. When he did that, every kind action bestowed upon anyone else became an act of true generosity.

Therefore, until one can really be kind to people who can harm you after receiving your kindness, it is wiser to reflect upon oneself and review if the generosity that you think you are providing is really kindness that stems out of true generosity.

Blasphemy or Truth? - inspired by Final Fantasy X

2008-11-27T17:23:00.000+01:00

I had a conversation about Final Fantasy X with a friend of mine today. It was a game that I played about 6 years ago, but nonetheless the intellectually religious argument put forth by the game stuck deep inside me, because I have not figured out how this argument can be countered. Here's how the story goes:

In this game, you find out, eventually, that you are the Dream of a Faeth (Faith), whose duty is to upkeep the order of Yevon (Heaven), the supreme being in this fictional world. This world, like the world we live in, is terrorized by a monster, whose name is Sin. Sin is a terror that destroys everything that it passes through. Although it can be subdued eventually, it returns every ten years, each version more powerful than the previous. The puzzle behind this game is how to defeat Sin once and for all. This objective is finally achieved when you go deep into Sin and destroy its creator, Yevon (Heaven).

Let's rephrase it in the terms that we are more used to in our world: Sin is also something that comes back to wreak havoc for us all the time; in fact, it is even born into us. However, without God, there is no concept of Sin. If you want to get rid of Sin, you have to destroy its creator, God. You can only destroy God, if you have a Dream, motivated by your Faith in God, where Faith itself is an instrument of God used to support His teachings.

The true Christian, upon reading this, does not cry Blasphemy and denounce the above paragraph as teachings of the Devil. Instead, he enlightens me, and the rest of us how this hypothesis can be proven false. So please kindly tell me how this argument can be countered. Before anything else, I would now like to thank my good fortune for being able to live in a civil society where I don't have to be burned on the stake for asking such a question.

Human Beings, not Human Havings

2008-11-25T19:05:00.000+01:00

In life you will encounter people who are jealous of you, which i think is stupid, because it turns out most of the time they are just jealous of things you don't have. For instance, a lot of people may think that you are smart or gifted, but they don't know that you're really only good at a few things, because you don't talk about stuff you're not good at.

I believe it is human nature for people to look at a few things about you and then believe that you have everything they don't have. In fact, they don't see what you don't have. They only see what they don't have that you have. But you know what? Life is not about having; it's about being. That's why we're called human beings, not human havings.

Dealing with Hatred and Anger

2008-11-25T18:58:00.000+01:00

I am writing this entry because I have experienced extreme hatred and anger recently, for a man I continue to totally condemn. In my entire life I have not felt so disgusted and disgusting, and I really hated the state of having had these evil, snarling, murderous thoughts in my head that comes with such overwhelming emotions. After a torturous many hours, and after using all the discipline, education and restrain I've ever learned theoretically and practically in my life, I think I have overcome most of these negative feelings and I no longer feel any of these anymore. However, it does not mean that I do not condemn this person, or that I have any respect for this person as a human being. For, if you do not behave like one, you will not be respected like one. Of course, and I promise this: If you change yourself, you will win back the respect you deserve.

So here is what I learned this time:

The moment someone gets hurt, whether by unkind action or unkind words, many, many negative emotions like hatred and anger start pouring out from the injury, just like how blood can spew when an artery is ruptured. Some people suppress these emotions, and continue to live on in a debt of hatred and anger. Some people abuse these emotions, and use it against the person or thing who hurt them. In the first case, negative emotions like anger and hatred incur debt like loans from a bank. When you decide to pay back, you will end up feeling angrier and more hateful than before. In the second case, by fighting fire with fire, you will stir up more anger and hatred in the party who hurt you originally. More than likely, it will result in a vicious cycle of hurt.

So what is the right way to deal with these emotions?

I believe that we must learn to treat this 'hurt' like how we would treat a wound. First, recognize that you are hurt. If you don't recognize that you are hurt, you would not pause in your tracks and only be concerned about continuing to take action. This would aggravate the injury.

Once you've taken a step back, focus on stopping the blood flow; i.e. start preventing more anger and hatred from coming out of you. One does so by remaining indignant in the face of the aggressor. Indignance is one's silent resilience in preserving his own dignity. By not doing what the aggressor is doing to you, you have already prevented more bloodshed. Following that, go far, far away from the source of the harm. To the best extent possible, get out of range of this person; refuse to listen to anything about him, refuse to discuss about him, refuse to indulge in hateful thoughts about him. Focus on stopping the blood flow.

Next, treat the wound. Go to people who love you. Tell them you are hurt. Let them give you words of comfort. And as they comfort you, ask yourself what you did to initiate the wrath of the aggressor. Ask yourself what you can do in the future in order not to incur such wrath again - and walk the talk; keep your promise to be a better person. You cannot control if the other person would do harm to you again, but you can continue to improve yourself to be a better person.

Finally, learn to forgive but not forget. Forgive the aggressor because he has not been enlightened or educated; but do not forget his capacity to do hurt onto you. Never give him the chance to hurt you like that again. Pray, regardless whether you have a religion or not, that one day he will become a better man, worthy of everyone's respect.

Satisfaction...

2008-11-02T16:29:00.000+01:00

Hmm I have my own 'code' to measure my own level of satisfaction. I assume you can read pseudocode, so here it is...

for things I want = 1: no. of things I want
If particular thing I want is there
It's good. I'm satisfied.
end
else if particular thing I want is not there,
Ask myself if I can still do anything about it...
If I can do something about it...
do it.
If I cannot...
Then there's also no point to feel dissatisfied.
end
end
end
If I could have had done something about it, but I didn't...
It's my own fault. My punishment is dissatisfaction.
Learn lesson: Remember to do it next time.
end
end

Some insights here:
1. The outcome of this program is how many things you are satisfied with and how many things you are dissatisfied with. It turns out that you can only be dissatisfied with things that are of the past, that you could have had done something about but you didn't. So remember not to include these historical stuff of the past into the 'things that you want'.

2. The more things you want, the longer this program runs (look at the for loop). If life is simple, this 'program' runs fast, and you get your answer about satisfaction very quickly too. It is important to get this satisfaction quickly so that you can keep on living your life and help other people and walk out of the 'I-gen' syndrome. i.e. asking things about 'what I want, what I need, who am I' etc.

3. I purposely put down all the 'ends' there because one important thing to do is to say to yourself 'end of story' and not dwell on stuff that you cannot solve or stuff that is already resolved. Otherwise you just spend time dwelling on things whereas you could have used the time to do something to make yourself satisfied.

4. As a caution, we should take note that there's only a limited time to get whatever you want. If you want too many things, you would often get into the situation where the 'particular thing I want is not there', which has two 'if loops'... i.e. longer time to run the program. Therefore, you will realize how satisfied you are more quickly if you focus on the things that you already have.

5. Limitations: This program does not predict satisfaction in the future because the future is something that we don't know about.

6. Summary and conclusion: A program was written to determine one's satisfaction. Including things that have passed, which you cannot change, will tend to lead to dissatisfaction; the more things you want, the longer the program runs; the program also does not predict satisfaction in the future.

We have to walk, but should we navigate or not?

2008-10-29T11:36:00.000+01:00

In life you have to walk. One can always have a dream path to walk in - e.g. the forest, the plains, the hills, the desert or the beach. However, many people are not born in the place they want to walk in. So what can you do?

1. Be a navigator
e.g. You may be born in the forest, but you really want to be at the beach. Therefore, you need to navigate your next moves. The first step is to try to get out of the forest. After that, you want to be well equipped for life at the beach. Then you want to make friends at the beach. And so on. And so eventually you reach the beach and settle down there. And this is really how we reach our goals. The only thing is, sometimes what you think is your goal turns out to be not really what you want after all...; either way, this is the route of people who plan pretty hard for life to get to where they want.

2. Do no navigate
A friend of mine had another perspective to this. Basically, you don't have to plan so hard. If you keep on walking in the forest, you may get out of it one day. Maybe you get out to the hills, maybe you reach the desert, but not the beach; But who knows? You just keep on walking and whatever you see or do or feel will be different and unique to you. Or maybe you'll just stay in the forest for the whole life. What you see and do and feel will still be different and unique to you. The forest is big enough to captivate you for your whole life. So why try so hard to move to a different environment instead of enjoying what you have right now since it'd be unique anyway?

So I guess it's good to learn to enjoy what you have, whether it's good or bad. If you're a poor man, be happy being poor - you don't have the worries of rich people i.e. you don't have to spend a lot of time protecting your wealth. If one day you strike it rich - great - now you don't have the poor man's problems but be prepared to lose sleep over your new problems. If you have no girlfriend, don't be jealous of your friends who have one, or several. They don't have the luxury of your freedom of choice and accountability to solely yourself. If you find a girlfriend, leave your single life behind and be happy dealing with the issues of two people being together.

Oder???

Questions in my head...

2008-10-28T19:38:00.000+01:00

Here are some stuff that have been going on in my head:

Singapore:
1. What are some businesses with high intrinsic values that can be created in Singapore?
2. How can one leverage on the property market in Singapore based on speculated trends in the next few years?
3. What are some opportunities in the food / entertainment industries in Singapore?

World:
1. When I invest globally in the future, what are the countries that I will have a vested interest in and why?
2. What kind of cultural connections do I now have and how can I continue to improve the cultural connections I have with people?

Work:
1. What kinds of partnerships will I be able to forge when I first start working? And in 3 years?
2. What kinds of valuable skills do I have, do I lack, and what are those that I should build?
3. What are the first ten things that I have to get on my fingertips when I join EDB?
4. How can I put into practice what I have learned from Purdue into my first job - i.e. what are my transferable skills?

Income:
1. At 100% level of comfort, what is the amount of money that I need a month?
2. How will my spending pattern change if I get married, and how will it further change when I have kids?
3. Based on the above: how much passive income do I have to generate so that I do not have to work anymore, for the cases of: 1. self-support; 2. family support; 3. family support w/ children?

Purdue:
1. In my last 2 months here, what can I do to contribute?
2. What have I really learned in Purdue?
3. What am I learning this semester?
4. Who would benefit from my experience and how can I help these people?

Ping's Icelandic Chronicles Part I - The Arrival and the Blue Lagoon

2008-08-18T09:30:00.000+02:00

The flight to Iceland was uneventful, although the journey to the airport was. Deutsche Bahn decided that day not to obey German punctuality, and this resulted in missing the bus. The penalty was costly for me - 100 Euros to get to the airport with a taxi. Fortunately I managed to find two other stranded students on their way to Norway who were complaining about how everything and everyone in Germany are punctual - except for the Deutsche Bahn. To some extent we shared the costs (I told them they could pay less since they were still able to make it on time if they took the next bus), and there was some damage control to the size of the hole burned in my pocket...

So anyway, upon arrival in Iceland, Lilja fetched us at the BSI (bus terminal). After she said hi to me, Weiting decided to introduce himself... and the conversation went something like this:

Weiting: "Hi, I'm Weiting."
Lilja: "Oh."
*Awkward pause*
Lilja: "So Ping, let's go? And... your friend is staying here?"
Ping: "What???"
Lilja: "Your friend said he's waiting."
Ping: "Oh... no, no, his name is Weiting... -_-'''''' "

And from then on, Weiting's introduction line became "My name is Weiting" instead of "I'm Weiting"... And so off we went to meet the others (Kristin and Viktoria), and thereafter the five of us went to the Blue Lagoon for a soothing bath...

So that was the entrance of the blue Lagoon... it is basically a pool of geothermal water rich in minerals with revitalizing effects. Btw, you could smell sulphur (rotten eggs) way before you arrived there (the smell is like Hakone, Japan, near Tokyo or any sulphuric pool)... and this was also Kristin's favourite smell btw.

So what could we do in the blue lagoon besides bathing? Well for one, we could apply a silica mud facial, for instance, like in the picture above. One thing to note is that the floor doesn't necessarily feel stony or sandy - at some places it is muddy (with silica mud). The water is not clear - you cannot see even 1 cm into it. So urban legends have it that people find some more secluded spots in the blue lagoon and engage in procreational activities. So sometimes if you think you have just touched some silica mud, think again. It may be something much more organic...
Ok that aside, let's take a look at the few of us basking out... it's actually rather cold in the open air... I would say less it was about 10 degrees Celsius. The feeling of having the lower body being in warm water and the upper body exposed to cold air is actually pretty good. I am so certain I would like to go to open air thermal baths in Japan at the next opportunity... btw let me introduce - leftmost = Kristin, next to her = Viktoria.

Now here is a really good picture of Weiting and I in the blue lagoon, with the background actually looking like how it really looks like. Notice how brown I am? And as if it weren't obvious enough, let's take a look at our hands... match the hand to the owner! (Ping, Weiting, Kristin, Viktoria)... Ok, Kristin is REALLY fair. I tell you, if she were in China, she would be fawned all over by envious girls who are aiming to achieve that kind of skin color... :)
Too bad Lilja was a little unwell and so she did not join us in the blue Lagoon... instead she managed to take a picture of Weiting and I... OMG, what were we doing??? Well, we were actually just merely preparing for Gay Pride parade the day after... More to come about the parade... :) And that's all for now...

My Absence...

2008-08-18T06:36:00.000+02:00

OMG, I just realized that I have not written for one and a half months!!! Actually, during this time I have been in a kind of consistent stress that I don't know how to characterize. The stress was there not because of exams or work, but because I have not been able to have a full day to myself to write, reflect and just take a break and think about what I've learned recently. I think most people will find it weird too - I was actually travelling for most of the time since July 1st - I was back in USA, I went to Turkey (again), and I went to Iceland, and it was supposed to be the time of my life (youth). True, I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but without the pen, without being able to have a little discussion with myself, and without being able to share what has been going through my mind with people whom I both know and do not know, it has been thoroughly constipating.

So since I've not written for so long, for a start, let me write down some random thoughts that have occured to me recently:

1. A day feels better if I have been able to give up a seat for an older person, been able to make someone laugh, or been able to witness an act of kindness / thoughtfulness.

2. I want to be a non-profiteer - in my job, I do not want my measure of success in my job to be making profits, but rather in terms of doing good in a non-monetary manner.

3. I am afraid to be a professional engineer because I feel that I am still not responsible enough to be in charge of designing machines and structures that can lead to the danger of many human lives if they fail.

4. I love renewable energy and I hope that I will live to see it being utilized in my country to make lives better for hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions.

5. Being able to feel safe while walking on the streets is not something to be taken for granted; the safety of countries like Germany and Iceland (and of course my country Singapore) are something that we should be grateful for.

6. Being able to offer value and partnership instead of just cheaper prices, is the key to a long term strategic partnership. This applies to friendships and relationships too.

Ok, stop at this for now - on to writing entries about Turkey and Iceland! :)

A very important question: 'Why?'

2008-06-30T16:17:00.000+02:00

As I mentioned before, 'Why' is a very important question because it motivates your search for an answer to something you don't know. The problem is, the world is not fair, and different people asking 'Why?' to the same question can generate different answers...

Think of you asking a prominent Economics professor... 'Why is it that when supply and demand intersects, the equilibrium point of production i.e. price and quantity, will be reached?' You will be like - crazy, how can I ask a Professor that? He must think I'm stupid...

Think of a prominent Economics professor asking you the same question... 'Why is it that when supply and demand intersects, the equilibrium point of production i.e. price and quantity, will be reached?' You will be like - Hmm wow, he might have a new insight into this...

Now... think of you asking your boss this question... 'Why are we interested in improving the work flow of this process?' You'd be like - damn, I look stupid, why should I ask this?

Now... think of your boss asking you this question... 'Why are we interested in improving the work flow of this process?' You'd be like - damn, if I don't answer it correctly, will he think I'm stupid?

So based on a person's different social status, does it mean that you should stop asking 'Why'? No, hell no. Start asking and continue asking 'Why' - for no matter how dumb the question - and even if some answers turn out to be simple and trivial. The key is not to just ask your boss, or the people around you. Ask the internet too, now that we're so well connected. Get a whole lot of information and process it, and ask again.

In Chinese, the noun that means 'a deeply researched field of study' is called a 'xue2 wen4'. And literally, xue2 means learn, wen4 means ask. And together a deeply researched field of study is described by the Chinese as an exercise of 'learning to ask'. And it can't be more true. To solve a problem - learn to ask the right questions... and very often, the right question is 'Why?'

Europaweltmeisterschaft - the aftermath

2008-06-29T21:49:00.000+02:00

Many of the last few entries were in words - so let's use some pictures to illustrate my experience...

So we were watching the match in the K1 bar of Hadiko, my student hostel... (unfortunately this is a picture of the scene during Germany vs Turkey - I was too engaged in watching Germany vs Spain to take any pictures during the match today...)

And when the Spanish won, they of course go out to celebrate... but how? In any case, "Campeones... campeones..." is what my friend Sergio was ranting since the match ended...

I tagged along with Sergio, and my two friends Ana and Fatima to see what the Spanish guys were planning to do... here we are, but unfortunately I took a bad shot in this pic - only half of my face was visible...

We arrived at Europaplatz and joined with other Spaniards... Sergio was definitely not the only one shouting "Campeones..."

Wait - did you notice the half naked guy in the picture? Hmm... check this out too...

No don't look at the girl - look in the corner - WITHOUT SHORTS in public????
Well anyway, here is what they were really doing... they found a fountain and decided to kinda celebrate with water...

They started to form themselves into a human train...
Here's a closer look...
Those who did not go into the fountain yet cheered the rest on...
I was already feeling tired, but Sergio was still going 'Campeones...'
Well - to end this off, I would like to mention that things were not as rosy as they seemed. At Marktplatz, there were many Germans sitting in the middle of the street, preventing the Strassebahn (street train) from crossing and making a hoo-ha. Our small group of Spaniards also received a little attention from the Germans on the streets that made us slightly uncomfortable as we rode our bikes to Europaplatz. It actually felt a little scary... so soccer is really something that can irrationally stir the emotions of people ...

I also have a little somber thought after all the Spanish people's fun: If Singapore had a soccer team, not a whole lot of people would cheer for it. There was no question whom any Spanish, Turkish or Germans supported during the Eurocup. But my gut feeling is many of us Singaporeans tend to support whoever could give us the most benefits, and not the country we are supposed to call our own. It may be a over-repeated cliche, but this line still makes sense:"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

I hope that our supposedly more educated generation of Singaporeans will learn to love our small little country more and altruistically put in effort to create new things in Singapore that we can one day be proud of...

With this I say good night and good bye for now - new posts will come in a week or two since there will be many issues to take care of in these last 3 weeks in Germany...

Europa Meisterschaft - Spanien hat gewonnen!

2008-06-29T19:19:00.000+02:00

Football (soccer) didn't mean too much to me - I never really played it, never really watched it and was never really crazy about it. However, when the finals of the Eurocup is between Spain and Germany, and I'm in Germany, and a lot of my good spanish and german friends are here - I have to get into the crowd man. And even though I was just watching in my student hostel, it is really an atmosphere that one cannot enjoy in say, Singapore or the US. There were Spanish flags, German flags, everyone was in red and yellow; there were Spanish cheers, German cheers, and Spanish people cheering in German "Goodbye Deutschland" and laughing because they found it funny that they were speaking German... and of course, all my spanish friends refusing to talk to me cos I was wearing a German jersey...

But actually, I was not really supporting any team in particular - instead, I told myself, if Spain wins, I'll eat Spanish tapas tomorrow. If Germany wins, I'll eat deutsche Wurst. And so it turns out that Spanish tapas defeat deutsche Wurst by 1:0!!!! So I'll eat Spanish food at Spanish time tomorrow! It was a really good win though - the smaller Spanish guys totally outclassed the Germans, who were on average one head taller than them. The Spanish made perfect through passes, amazing one touch passes, displayed excellent hunger for the ball, fantastic running, great spirit - and Torres... fwahhhhhhhh. Total respect. Spain deserved it. And that makes a game good actually - when the better team wins.

The advantage, if Germany had won today though, is actually that the party will stop by 3 a.m. and I can wake up on time to work on finishing my thesis (and hence graduate) tomorrow. Now that the Spanish people have won, they will party till perhaps six am. I shall now try to fall into a deep sleep before the fiesta starts...

One thing though. I learned to really like soccer after this Eurocup. Eurocup 2008: 3 teams that make me wanna support them - Spain, Germany and Turkey - each for its own class of players and own kind of spirit.

Plan to fail...?

2008-06-29T13:34:00.000+02:00

"If you fail to plan, you'd better plan to fail."

Many people realize this and start planning. Most of them get too engrossed in planning and proceed to make the mistake of overplanning... and forget that they're not God and so they cannot foresee everything. I'll give you some examples:

1. Parents who overplan for their children: they plan that their children will go to the best grade school, followed by the best middle school, followed by the best high school, the best college, and have the best paying job as a fresh graduate. While they are in grade school, they will learn piano, they will learn swimming, they will go to art classes, they will take a foreign language, and they will get As for every single subject. In the holidays they plan that their children will have time to travel with them, in the weekends, everyone will visit the grandparents, the children will meet a good guy / girl who will become their life partner. And then... Fuck... They suddenly realize their kid is gay and has been secretly dating a member of the same sex for the last 4 years. Fuck...

2. Teachers who overplan for their students: As a teacher I want my students all to achieve the best academic results in my class. I want them to know what they want in life, and the way they can succeed in life is to do well for my subject. I plan for them to come to class all fresh and energetic, ready to listen to what I have to teach. I plan for them to hand up their assignments on time, submit quality assignments and all show up to class. If they don't do any of that - easy, do not let them promote, threaten to make them drop a subject, and make them drop out if all else fails!!! Fuck... as it nears the exam, I have only 3 more students left. The rest of the class has been suspended from school because they were all caught cheating in the preliminary exam in order not to disappoint me. Fuck...

3. Fresh graduates that plan too hard: I will get a job in Hewlett Packard, my girlfriend will move to the US to join me, once a year I will visit my parents in Asia, once a year she will visit her parents in Europe, in two years we will get married, in three years we will have a kid, four years later we will move back to Asia, I will have money to buy a big house and a big car, and so every day I work very very very hard. And then... fuck... my girlfriend tells me one day, just a few weeks before we're supposed to get married, "Hey, you know what? I think you're not the right guy for me. I don't think marriage would work out between us. I've lost the feeling. Sorry." Fuck...

When you plan too hard - you start to plan for the world to revolve around something that is not the center of the world. According to the plan, the future will always look 'good from far', but can actually be 'far from good' because there will just be one critical thing you failed to plan for. And so, in my opinion, the right thing to do is always plan to fail even though you think you've planned it all out.

Instead of 'we will...' it should be 'will we...?', for you really don't know what can happen over time. Just love very hard and be prepared to deal with surprises.

Tutoring...

2008-06-29T12:40:00.000+02:00

Asian kids (yes, those from Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong) listen up - what do you guys do after school? Go for tutoring classes? This is great... but as far as I know, most of you go there as a student. Should that really be the case?

My proposition is, why not be the tutor instead of the student? If you're JC2, you can teach JC1, if you're Sec 3, you can teach Sec 2, if you're Sec 2, you can teach Sec 1 and so on. After all - you were the ones who JUST took the exams, and instead of paying $$ to get tutored, why not get $$ for tutoring? Just like how they have Sec 4s to orientate Sec 1s at the start of the year, you can also have seniors to tutor juniors.

Think you're not qualified? You only had 73 out of 100 for the last exam? Well, you don't have to know everything to teach. The fact that you have to teach will make you prepared - you will prepare the problems beforehand, and from there, because you do not want to teach wrongly, you will be motivated to learn what you do not know. That is how people really get motivated to learn - not because of having to pass the exams, but because when you're responsible to help people and when you screw up you can screw up their lives too, you will be very motivated to get your part right.

Afraid that there are not enough resources? From a central resource of problems, say old 'A'-level or old 'O'-level papers with solutions, you can customize problems to lead a discussion. This would also be a good chance for you to train your presentational and instructional skills, which is essential in college. Sure, everyone can have the old problems with solutions, but who really understands them enough to appreciate the method of solution? That is your role, to develop a presentation such that the other students can understand them. I'm sure many of you think that your teachers are not teaching well enough - this is your chance to 'teach' the right way.

So the thing you really need is a platform to become a tutor. I don't know who has the time to set up this platform i.e. provide a place for you to teach (e.g. tutoring cafe?), take care of the legal stuff so that $$ transactions can occur etc - basically provide some kind of network / framework for this idea to be put into practice.

In any case, our society desperately needs teachers for the schools - but so many people who can teach in our society are overtrained with engineering skills, medical skills etc, which they would put to better use in other industries. These people become great mentors in their respective industries, but the problem of the lack of teachers still remains. Raising the salary of teachers would of course attract more talent for teaching, but many of these teachers who are thereby attracted may end up being again, overqualified and seek to move on to places where they can contribute more after a very short time.

Well I don't know... if you read this and think this is a good idea, let me know. We can work something out and apply it in the Singapore context.

I have no concept of a wedding...

2008-06-29T09:48:00.000+02:00

How should a wedding be conducted? I have been to several weddings before... one military wedding, a couple of Chinese style weddings, one Indian wedding, but the problem is, many of these weddings don't make much sense to me. This is because I'm not brought up to embrace Asian / Chinese traditions, and neither am I a fan of getting married in a church, so if I model my weddings close to any of these traditional ones it's not going to be happy for me but more like a chore.

Actually I've discussed this before - the best kind of wedding for me is a small one, with only 20 guests from my side (all family) and maybe 40 - 50 guests in total. Thereafter there can be a party for friends, with no relatives (except the single ones), and at this party, there will be food from all over the world, and single guys and girls will get to meet each other at our party. Actually even better - since we're such global citizens nowadays, shouldn't we just celebrate our anniversary in a different country whenever we can afford the time and money? Then we can hang out with our friends who didn't come to our wedding, and every year we'll renew our commitment to each other. Well, in any case, honestly I know I'm going to love my future wife so much I would want to get married with her every year, perhaps at a different place. Otherwise why would I even want to marry her in the first place... Of course with kids it's a different story. How to go overseas and not bring kids with you will be a whole new level of debate... we'll stop at the 'concept' of a wedding in a different place every year for now. Perhaps one way to do it is to get posted to different countries for our jobs... :)

So just a short one about typical Chinese weddings: basically the guy has to pick up the bride early in the morning and give a dowry to her 'best friends' who are guarding the door to release her. Thereafter, we have to perform various tea ceremonies over the day to our parents and elders. In the afternoon, the bride and the groom takes a long time to dress up and prepare for evening dinner, with say 30 to 40 tables of guests (i.e. 300 to 400 people), many of whom are relatives that you don't even know the names of. The newly weds spend the whole evening hungry because they rush around to every table to take pictures. Finally the groom is made to drink a lot, which in my opinion is bad, because after the whole event he will not be able to 'perform' anymore.

Basic needs of the Man and the Woman

2008-06-29T09:02:00.000+02:00

I was blog browsing and came across this insightful piece of work (Dr. Mel Gill):

The Man's Most Basic Needs:
1. Sexual fufillment
2. Recreational companionship
3. An attractive spouse
4. Domestic support
5. Admiration

The Woman's Most Basic Needs:
1. Affection
2. Conversation
3. Honesty and openess
4. Financial support
5. Family commitment

Most of the stuff are selbstverstaendlich / 顾名思义 / (das englische Wort fehlt mir) but it doesn't hurt to point out a couple of things:

For girls:
1. An attractive spouse doesn't mean just physically attractive for every guy. True, physical attraction is important, but it is really like your GPA / CAP: once you clear the minimum of 2.5 / 4.0 or 3.0 / 5.0, you are all set for the guy to consider your personality and virtues. Just like girls generally want us to look neat and clean, we want the girls to smell nice and at least look presentable. And presentable doesn't mean slim. If you're a bit chubby, it's ok - many of us still love to hug you.

2. Domestic support doesn't mean having the spouse to be a domestic engineer i.e. housewife / Hausfrau. Modern guys don't really need the girl to cook, clean and take care of the kids. We know the girl has a job nowadays, we love to cook sometimes, and the kids wanna play with papa. We just want to share the workload. Disclaimer: I don't know about less modern guys.

3. Admiration: This does not mean being 'weaker' than the guy and hence admire him for being smarter, stronger, or more capable than you. Instead, he wants you to admire him for being who he is, not how he is better than you. Things to admire: his honesty and openness, his ability to give you affection - basically, admire him for how he can fulfill your five basic needs - that will not go wrong.

For guys:
1. Affection: This does not just mean hugs and kisses, although this is something you should be giving all the time. For the truth is... girls need sex too, but they need to receive your affection as you receive your sexual fulfillment... See the point guys? Then you can have sex everyday... but you must of course first be sincere with your affection!!!!!

2. Honesty and openness: This does not mean that you tell her everything whenever she asks you a question. We are human and there are times we cannot even explain some things to ourselves and we need time to sort it out within us. What you can tell her, tell her. What you cannot - be honest and open about it, "Baby, right now I'm not ready to share this yet. It's not because I don't want to share with you, but things are not clear in my mind now. Will you let me sort it out within myself? When I'm more clear, I'll tell you what was on my mind / what I feel about this etc." A great girlfriend will be patient and understanding enough to give you the time you need, as long as you are honest and open to her.

3. Financial support: This is a perplexing conundrum for several ambiguous situations can arise. For example, in our lifetimes, our spouse can easily earn more than us, or even double or triple of what we earn. However, in this case, since we assumed financial support to be a basic need, she would probably still desire financial support from you. So how can you do it? Easy. You pay for her and she pays for the kids. As long as she gets pampered by you, doesn't matter how much, it's ok. Girls, no matter how successful they are, just want to know that if one day they are not able to have what they have anymore, you'll still be there for them.

Done elaborating... now my question is - after you can fulfill all these basic needs, what next?

How we can always keep in contact

2008-06-28T19:06:00.000+02:00

Friends are made by sharing thoughts. And I want to continue sharing thoughts with my friends, even though at some point of our lives we become geographically separated.

Our generation is not only enabled with mobility, at the same time we are tending to make use of it more than our parents' generation. Our parents could afford to travel, but many in our generation have acquired the capacity and interest to live in another country for long periods of time (1-3 years or even longer). And so I will not be surprised that even if I do not move, you will move too...

So in order to continuously share thoughts, we already have many mediums: telephone, email, msn, blogging and so on. However, the phone is generally expensive; if I write an email and address it to many people at the same time it will feel impersonal; msn is mainly for chatting and less for thought sharing. And so blogging seems to be the best option - although the entries are usually displayed in a chronological order (like a diary) and there is little option to browse through the blog based on categories (like a catalog).

With much contemplation, after some time I felt that "multiply.com" is the most suitable medium for sharing: with tags, you can see what I have been up to by category instead of time; if you become a user, emails will be automatically 'pushed' to you each time I do an update, and of cos I will be informed each time you do one and so we will always be reminded of each other's presence even if we don't read the entries; in multiply we can also choose who can see what post, so there's a lot of control over privacy if the need ever arises (although I'm usually equally open to all my friends in the things I post).

And so, I firmly believe that as long as I continue to write, and if you occasionally read what I have to write, we can always keep in contact even though we may really be far away from each other in person. For some of us, we will never know when we might ever have the chance to see each other in person again. Perhaps the next time we will be married and have kids, perhaps we will be old men and old women? So I really just hope that through each other's thoughts we will remind each other from a distance that we are never really that alone.

What do you think, my friends of the world? My blog at blogspot.com will remain as a mirror / backup but if you want to browse my entries by category instead of chronologically you can always join multiply.com and add me there too.

Who are you?

2008-06-28T10:45:00.001+02:00

I don't have much to say except "I am too energetic". Work backwards and guess my path... at the very least you will know what question I answered "yes" to... Hueueheheheeuhuehuhe...

Here's a little paradox: A friend of mine happens to be a "faithful, honest and lovely person" but he'll definitely answer yes to the 'love Sex' question. So is he really "too energetic" too?

Marathon in the future, "Iron Man" for now...

2008-06-28T10:41:00.000+02:00

“马拉松千千万万个选手中不缺乏一个你，但如果你不参加，你的人生就会缺乏一个马拉松。。。“

This was what a friend of mine, Light, told me. It means "The marathon is in no lack of you as a runner, but if you don't do it, your life lacks a marathon."

And indeed in my life, I am lacking a marathon - I have only taken part in the Singapore Army Half Marathon before and although it was just half of the real thing, I was dead tired at the end of it all and on the verge of collapse, although I was at the peak of my fitness. Now that I have sustained a full ligament tear on my left knee, I wonder if I will one day be able to go back to a physical state where I can even run 14km, not to mention 3 times of that...

So what does a marathon mean to me? A marathon is a test of consistent self discipline - you have to know your body very well, know when you are feeling dehydrated and drink some water, know to resist going too fast when the person next to you speeds up, know how to resist slowing down when the other person next to you reduces his pace, and long before the actual event itself - you have to keep a consistent training schedule and follow it.

Completing a marathon hence demonstrates the kind of discipline you can achieve in life, even for people who are born with enhanced human physical capabilities. A lot of my friends have undertaken the challenge, and succeeded in doing it - I would like to too, but I don't think I can do it now (2008 - 2009) because of some physical limitations.

I hope I will recover soon and have the opportunity to embark on this new physical challenge. Meanwhile I'll just take part in the iron man competition below:

The Wurst day of my life...

2008-06-28T06:54:00.000+02:00

So in 3 weeks I'm going to leave Germany... one of the things I'd really like to do is to start eating a different Wurst every day from today. And take a pic of the Wurst I'm eating and POST IT ON MY BLOG! Cos in Germany there are Wursts of every size and shape and color too... Bratwurst, Feuerwurst, Weisswurst, Thuringer, Frankfurter, Bauernwurst, Bockwurst, Nuernburger, Wiener, Teewurst, curry Wurst, Bierwurst, Leberwurst... It is probably the 'Wurst' place in the world! Unfortunately, I only have about 18 days left in Germany, and even if I really eat a different type of Wurst every day, I can only show you 18 types of Wurst... which will only be a small sample of what you can really get. In fact there are so many types of Wursts even most Germans only end up knowing the names of a few. I don't know for sure - maybe I will take pictures of 20 different kinds of Wurst, go on the streets, and ask Germans to match the Wurst to its name. And the winner takes it all home... Oh well, for now, let's just take a look at a sample of Wursts taken by other people:

It's so hard to shop for Wursts in Germany - there are too many of them in the shop...

Germany is where you can have the 'Wurst' Buffet in the world...
If the 'Wurst' Buffet wasn't enough... sure, pack it up and take some home...
So Germans love to eat Wursts... they also love to eat bread. The have like hundreds of kinds of breads - some with super obscure names like 'Laugenstange' and 'Schlemmerzoepf'. Why the hell you do not just called it 'Brot 1', 'Brot 2', 'Brot 3'... or if you really have to, why not just say 'Laugenstange Brot'? Because really, which part of the word 'Laugenstange' indicates that it's a kind of bread? So... here's how a Laugenstange looks like...
And here's probably more bread than you've ever seen in your life (I assume you're American or Asian)...

By the way, this is probably one thing fun to do if you're a tourist in Germany - go to a German bakery and try to order bread in German. Don't say "Ich moechte ein von dem dort haben" (I'd like to have one of that over there..) - instead say something like "Morgen, einmal 'Zwetschgenstreuselküchle' und dazu ein 'Quarkschnecke'." I think it's also the ultimate test of if someone is German. Show them a bread and if they can name it - they must be German. :)

Final comment before closure: In Germany there are approximately 1,000 kinds of breads, and 1,000 kinds of Wursts - i.e. 1 million combinations of bread and wurst. Say if I eat only a different combination of bread and Wurst every meal, and I eat 3 meals a day, I don't have to repeat my combination after 1,000 years. In other words, to finish sampling every kind of bread with every kind of Wurst in Germany in one year - erm... you gotta eat approximately 1 kind of bread with 1,000 kinds of Wursts a meal. Hmm, no wonder the Germans don't really care about eating more than just bread and Wurst sometimes - it's enough things to eat for a lifetime already!

Who's hungry now by the way? XD I feel full thinking of the bread and wurst...

"Tagging" and "Resume 5 years from now"

2008-06-22T14:47:00.000+02:00

Today I would like to elaborate about two great ideas - "Tagging" and "My resume 5 years from now". These are not my ideas, but rather, something that I've learnt from someone who complements me very much and I don't know if it would work for you, but through this person's elaboration of these two concepts, I have learned a lot about myself and I would like to share it with you.

"Tagging" was something that I have not applied in my life until recently. The concept is simple - instead of using folders to classify stuff like what we do in hard copies, you make use of the computer's ability to sort and re-order digital material so that the pictures come up according to keywords instead of having to know exactly which folder to go to so that you can find the stuff you want. The cool thing about tagging is that each picture can have more than a tag to it, and so it becomes a 'one-to-many' function, instead of a 'one-to-one' relation in the case of using folders. Upon this sudden realization of what tagging can do, I started to tag all my entries in my blog, and lo and behold - I found out something about myself. You see, as you tag your entries, you also unknowingly generate a 'bar chart' about the topics you tend to talk about the most. If you use the proper adjectives to tag, you might actually find out what kind of a person you really are. And it turns out that 'reflections' and 'light hearted' turns out to have the most tags on my blog... so now if I go for an interview I know even more of what to say about some of my personal qualities.

A "resume five years from now" was also something interesting for me. Through this exercise, I imagined some projects I would have taken part in my work career, as well as the key results; I also imagined my further degrees and qualifications after what I will complete, the new skills and proficiencies I will acquire, and the new interests and hobbies I will develop. And I can imagine myself that if I follow just part of what I would like to achieve in the next 5 years, I would have become a person with unique qualities. But at the very least, through this exercise, I created an open plan of what the next five years may look like for me given some assumptions. If you are lost, maybe you can try this exercise too...

Introduction to Denglish

2008-06-22T13:12:00.000+02:00

Singlish is not the only mix between English and another language. Let me introduce Denglish to you today... Deutsch-English. The cool thing about this is that it's not only spoken by the Germans - we, the Auslanders, have our eigene Version davon you know? XD

Let's first try to split Denglish into three different types.

Type 1: Basilect - Words from both languages are totally mixed. You cannot expect when words from which language will come into play. Only a guy who has learned both languages very thoroughly can use Denglish at this level.

e.g. "What machst du today Abend?", "Was machs'ch this evening?", "Gibs something to tun heute Abend?"

Type 2: Nieder Denglish - English grammar is adopted, but German nouns are used to replace some English ones. Most short term students / workers tend to speak like this after a few months in Germany.

e.g. "We are going to visit the Schloss today, before we go to Arbeit.", "You need to finish making this 'Datenauswertung' first, before you can decide on the 'naechste Schritte' for the project.", "I need to extend my 'Visum', so I have to go to the 'Amt' this morning."

Type 3: Hoch Denglish - German grammar is adopted, but English nouns replace German nouns. This is spoken more by Germans than foreigners, since the foreigners' command of the German language is usually not as good as their command of English.

e.g. "Die 'Security' in dieser Internetseite ist aber nicht besonders mir gefallen.", "Also diese Teile von der Arbeit kann man 'outsourcen'."

Conclusions / Insights:
1. I hope one day the Turkish people can write about Teusch. Turkish-Deutsch. XD I've been hearing it on the streets and it's ridiculous. The Turkish people cannot understand the Turkish part of Teusch, and the German people cannot understand the German part of Teusch.

2. Mixing two languages into a new one is kind of like two phase flow in mechanical engineering. Seriously hard to understand although there are just two things in play.

Flies in Germany...

2008-06-21T17:10:00.003+02:00

Is it true that the insects in different parts of the world have similar habits as the humans in the world?

I ask this because I notice that flies in Germany fly much slower (can easily be swatted with bare hands) than the flies in US, and the flies in the US (can easily be swatted with fly swatter) fly much slower than the flies in Singapore (can hardly be swatted at all). And the fastest flies in the world come from Hong Kong (don't even bother trying... just let them die a natural death). And their speed kinda corresponds to the pace of life in the respective countries...

So perhaps it's really the environment that shapes behavior, not behavior that shape the environment, and it is not just limited to human behavior eh? Or maybe I'm just thinking too much after swatting 5-6 flies with my bare hands today in Deutschland... -_-''

Japonlar yapmish

2008-06-21T15:11:00.005+02:00

So in Barcelona there's a sex museum - and there you can find things like models of giant penises etc. As I saw photos of the pictures friends of mine took with the various model sex organs in this museum, I was reminded of a trip I made to Japan a long time ago... and you know what? Dude, in Barcelona they might have kept these in Museums, perhaps afraid that one day people (hmm... of all people, Spanish people?????) would forget how to reproduce ... but in Japan they friggin' put these stuff in a SHRINE. Yeah man, there are SHRINES and TEMPLES for male and female sex organs... And if that were not enough, they have a fertility festival where they parade giant idols of the male and female sex organs around. Here's an example of how one looks like...

'Japonlar yapmish', as my Turkish friends would put it... -_-''' because really, only the Japanese can do something like this and be all nonchalant about it.

So, have I given you one reason to go to Japan? :P

**If anyone finds this picture obscene, let me know and I'll take the pic down and replace it with a link or something, but come on - almost every guy has one (some choose not to have it anymore and so went for surgery etc) and every pregnant girl has had one of these inside them (ok, some get fertilized in other ways)... so let's not be too conservative about these gifts of nature...

The story of my Thesis...

2008-06-10T22:15:00.006+02:00

Co-authored with D. R. Guildenbecher

When I started with my masters program and I had to find a thesis, I went to my favorite Professor (I got to know him during my junior year in my undergraduate studies), Professor Paul E. Sojka and said something along these lines: 'Hey, I enjoyed working with you during my undergraduate days as a SURF student. Do you think you would have a project for me? What I would like to do is to something that will allow me to go to Germany for a year, graduate in about 1.5 years, and of course something related to sprays and the like. I've already seen that they have projects in Karlsruhe University about PDAs (phase doppler anemometers) which I used for a while during my undergraduate days when I worked with you and Vineet (my Ph. D supervisor) too.'

He said,'Hmm, sure. So we've been using the PDA to measure droplet sizes and velocities, but if it can measure refractive indices as well, it would be helpful to the sprays community. Someone's already figured out how the equations work. Maybe you can do the experiments and verify that it works. The experiments will be easy. We have a PDA, we have many sprays and nozzles, we just have to find a way to fix them up. This would be kind of a rather compact project that would work on your schedule. The relevant papers can be found here and here... blah blah blah..."

And I was like... Sure I'll read the papers, but I don't know much about the PDA. And what about in terms of coursework, how would that work out...?

He said, "Oh, you can take a PDA course - we can start with that next semester. The other students took it before; you can take it too. And then you will take sprays, optics, two math courses say MA527 and numerical methods ME581 and then two more courses say Advanced Fluid Mechanics and something else..."

It seemed like he already had in mind a suitable program for my Masters... And most of the things sounded quite interesting to me... optics? Always hated that because it was taught from a Physics' perspective but wow, it should be nice to learn it from an ME perspective. Numerical methods? Perfect for helping me solve plenty of engineering problems! PDA? Lasers? Hmm... wonder how the whole thing works? ADVANCED fluid mechanics? Sure... if I do something for a masters it'd better be something complex / challenging like that...

I agreed to his plan immediately, and from then on Prof Sojka broke many rules to help me get to where I wanted to. And in this plan, I got to do three "one to one" classes with him, I got to TA for him, I got to work on my thesis both in Purdue and in Germany - and through that, get lots of hands on experience that I'd never have gotten if I were in Singapore. I got to build up and align optical systems, build up piping lines, play with different nozzles, generate mono-disperse droplets, work with MATLAB and Labview, estimate operating conditions for my orifices, set up high speed cameras, analyze images... actually above all, do all these in German too - basically all the engineering knowledge and language ability that I learned in my studies, I put it to great use in my thesis work. I'm glad that although I will be working for the Economic Development Board after I graduate - i.e. non-engineering job, I have a chance to put all the skills I learned into practice for at least this short period in my life.

Other fun things I did with Professor Sojka include: helping to set a final exam for Thermodynamics, taking an oral exam for Sprays class with him, going bike riding, going beer drinking, BBQs at his place, hanging out with his wife and kids, asking me about my 'relationship' with Dan, calling me the 'Ariel' in Germany (Ariel and Dan are two brilliant but funny Ph. D students of his) etc. Most fun, but yet to come: Perhaps we will both go to the Bierakademie and try to obtain our Bier Diplom in Germany before we head back to West Lafayette...

So anyway... really - what is my 'thesis' about? Really, all we want to do is to answer a few simple questions - can the (Dual Mode) PDA also be used to measure refractive indices (and hence, particle concentrations)? If so, under what circumstances, and to what accuracy? It boiled down to doing three sets of experiments, and writing a paper about my findings. The equipment is all there, both in Karlsruhe and Purdue. Why does the thesis take a year and a half to complete then?

Well... first, you will realize that the problem you are about to deal with either sounds very trivial, because the question to be answered can sound very simple, or maybe it is hard to find relevance to the solution of your problem. Either way, you will have to spend half a year or so convincing yourself that this problem is worth your time - and if this problem is not solved, you cannot bring the state of technology / knowledge to a new level.

Next, if it is an experimental thesis, you will have to spend a lot of time understanding the theory behind it, so that you have some theory to go back to when predicting experimental results. Then you spend a lot of time making very fine adjustments so that your experimental setup works. Especially so if it is something to do with mechanical engineering - things have to stop vibrating and moving around not just in one or two dimensions, but rather three. If it is a theoretical thesis, then you have to spend time understanding experimental results, so that your code can be tested against observations. Then you spend a lot of time perfecting your code so that it can predict what has not previously been predicted before. Either way, both are more challenging than you imagine.

Finally, as the experiments or the code start to work, many many hours are spent analyzing the results (that will not be finally used in the thesis). Even more hours are spent on writing the paper to make it all sound coherent. Finally you spend the last few hours taking care of the formatting. Your thesis culminates in a book of your findings, but in your heart you know that you have learned much more than you have written. And you will discover that language is very inefficient in expressing your thoughts. For to answer such a simple question, you would have written over a hundred pages with the help of many many diagrams that are easy for you to understand but not for people who have not spent the hours like you thinking about the problem.

Well enough said about my thesis - July 17th. That is when everything has to be ready, for on July 18th I leave Karlsruhe for the USA again. The introduction, motivation and literature review is done. What follows next will be the writeup on the experimental setup and the results and discussion. And then there will be an oral presentation in Karlsruhe first (possibly in German, but unsure as of now), and then in Purdue. Today is June 11th. I am going to go full steam into making the thesis happen. In any case, many people have done it before. I will do it too... Good night for now...

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT HAVE ANY KIND OF 'RELATIONSHIP' WITH DAN

Karlsruhe is a wonderful place...

2008-06-08T09:31:00.013+02:00

Karlsruhe - few people out of Germany know about this place... but it is such a wonderful place. It is not too big, and not too small. It is cozy with many students, yet it is not a college town. There are only a few main streets in the city, but there is more than enough to shop and eat. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but in the 10 - 11 months that I have been here, I have learned to love this place and know it better than West Lafayette (college town where Purdue is in), where I have stayed for 4 years.

300,000 people live in Karlsruhe, and it is where two supreme courts of Germany sit. It used to be the capital of Baden, before the Bundesland became joined with Wuerttemberg and Stuttgart became the new regional capital. The dialect of German spoken in Karlsruhe is Badisch, whereas that in Stuttgart is Schwaebisch. To the untrained ear they just sound like some distorted German, but Baders and Schwabers don't really like each other's language, or each other for the matter.

I got to know Karlsruhe mainly because of an 'accident'. In November 2007 I tore a ligament in my knee while playing basketball. As such, I had an operation in January 31st 2008, and for 3 months thereafter, I had limited mobility and strength in my legs. For many exchange students, this was bad news - no traveling around Europe and I have to stay fixed in one town! Every weekend people asked me if I wanted to join them on trips to places like Stockholm, Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, Prague etc. Each time I said "No, sorry, I can't walk too well yet", although the desire to go was there.

In the end I stayed in Karlsruhe almost every weekend for that three months, occasionally taking the train to Rastatt to visit my aunt and her family. And in these 10-12 weekends that I was here, I discovered a lot of places in and nearby the city, including but not limited to:

1) Where to drink Cafe Au Lait out of a bowl...

2) Where else to drink coffee in town, in a place that doesn't feel like Germany at all (Cafe Zero)

3) Where to have the best smoothies (at Cafe Moccasin)

4) Where to get REAL Chinese, Indian and Thai food (only picture of Thai food is shown here... was too busy eating to remember to take pictures at the other places...)

5) A cozy, rooftop cafe decorated with a beach theme (P10)

6) the best Turkish food in town (cooked by my Turkish friends...)

7) Beer and Wine...
8) Places for a nice quiet breakfast consisting of e.g. croissant and coffee...

9) Ice Creams... (Spaghetti Eis, verschiedene Eisbecher...)

10) Of course, the real German food too... (Badische Pfanne, Flammkuchen...)

11) The best German breakfast... (available only at my aunt's)

12) The best German girls... (fine, they are my cousins...)

13) Just to be fair to other German girls I'll put in a pic or two of girls at Oktoberfest / Volksfest... although these girls are Bavarian, and not from the Karlsruher region...
In conclusion, I love Karlsruhe and if you come and stay here for long enough, maybe you will love it too. Hmm... actually... do I really need a conclusion for this? I guess I'll leave you guys to make your own conclusions for once.

Weekend In Baden Wuerttemberg...

2008-06-02T00:15:00.003+02:00

Wine Tasting at Baden-Badener Winzergenossenschaft...

Highlight of the journey... missing the trains:
1. We missed the first train, because I was too slow at eating McDonalds and sauntered to the train platform instead of running there... of all things... McDonalds... sigh... :(

2. We missed the train again, because no one knew what train we were really taking...

3. Actually once we missed the first train, I was panicking - because I made an appointment with the German Winery at 11, but I knew that our next train would be at 11.10. -_-''

I guess everyone knows that Germans are very well known for their "Punktlichkeit" i.e. punctuality, and they kinda like to have an appointment for everything... and so it turns out that I was really afraid that they will be mean to us when we arrive late based on my experiences so far about German punctuality. So I tried desperately to call the winery to inform them that we would be late but no one picked up... when we finally arrived however, instead of being reprimanded / getting a German reminder for being late, it turned out that we had a super nice lady who overstretched her working hours to take us around the cellar and give us 6 different wines to sample. And guess what - for the tour as well as a sampling of 2 Rieslings, 1 Rose, 2 Reds and 1 Dessert Wine, we only paid 6 Euros each. A pleasant surprise indeed...

One thing interesting... I think my German has improved to an extent such that I will never really consider it a foreign language anymore. Although the whole wine tour was done in German, and the concept of wine tasting and how to drink wine properly was also described in German, it would really not have made much of a difference if it were done in Mandarin or Cantonese... the funny thing is - I've kinda stopped using German ever since I cleared my DSH exam. I wonder how long it will take to get another foreign language to German proficiency. So far only English, Mandarin, Cantonese and German can be used in a wide variety of contexts. Will I be able to use Turkish, Spanish and Korean one day too?

Bathing at Caracalla Bad (Thermal Baths)

Highlight of the journey: Hitching a ride...

Since we were all kinda high after the wine tasting, we got off the bus at the wrong stop and missed the other bus to get to the train station. The next bus was going to come in an hour... and so Dory said, Hey let's hitch a ride... and because she really looked lost and blur, a nice old gentlement in a mercedes actually stopped for us. He took us to the Bühl train station and we had a really nice conversation on the way - the best part of the conversation: the reason he stopped for us was that waiting for the bus was indeed quite a torture in the heat, and when he said that, I was just really grateful to him for stopping. People says that the Germans are 'cold' people, but I would say that they just like to have a lot of private space. Overall I have met many kind hearted Germans... and this gentlemen who gave us a ride is definitely one of them.

So, thank you sir, for the ride to the station. That was how we managed to get to Baden Baden on time for a 2 hour bath, and make it to my aunt's eventually for Spargel...

Now about the Bad... According to my spanish friends, they think the idea of guys and girls bathing naked together is ridiculous. This is because when you put a Spanish guy and girl together naked in ANY place, all you get are two Latin lovers and there is only one thing they wanna do... they believe that only Germans can enjoy such baths without dwelving into the mundane pleasures of humans...

So anyway this was our first time to go to a naked bath in a group of 2 guys and 2 girls. I don't have much to comment, except that we the Asian guys are much less better endowed than non-Asians, although seriously, it will not affect your gan-pao ability, because think about it - when women are pregnant, the baby's head eventually has to come out of there - who in this world (except Mutumbo) has one that's even anywhere comparable to a baby's head? :P Hmm... come to think of it... no wonder mums love their children more than their husbands. Puehehheehhehehe...

Alex had a lot of comments though. Basically he told me that if his Singaporean friends knew about this, they would make a big deal out of it of most people are still rather conservative there. I don't know, I think it's a great experience to go with friends and bathe together.

After the bath, we went to my aunt's place for dinner. SPARGEL!!! I had 10 sticks. I'm so freaking lucky to have family here. Btw, Ruby ate like a million potatoes. I don't know how she did it. She claimed her stomach is small but she definitely beat me flat when it came to THOSE potatoes... Dory went to play with Giulia and Olivia like they went to school together. Alex was just like - wah, this is a really different lifestyle. I think we all had a great time.

So I will let the pictures do some talking for now...

Dory and Ping are like brother and sister... Actually, look at them, they walk in step - I think Dory is really Ping's sister... And on the other hand, Ping must also be Dory's sister...

Btw Dory was ridiculous. When she heard that she could go to a mixed naked bath, she was totally sugar high. More pictures to come... when I have them sorted out...

Conclusions

1. We found out today that there are many many nice and kind Germans in the world. A nice lady who extended her working hours so that we could enjoy some wine, a gentlemen who gave us a ride so that we didn't have to wait for the bus, and not to mention, my aunt and uncle for the Spargel although it was last minute. I wonder if I could really do the same in Singapore when they come? Won't be too easy to even offer a place to stay in the first couple of years when I still stay with my parents... oh well, but when I am 40, 50 and have finally decided on a place to settle down and raise kids... sure :) And if I can't pay back, I can always pay it forward...

2. Wine tasting, hitch-hiking, thermal baths, German homemade dinner. Das ist sozusagen, eine besondere Erfahrung in Deutschland, auch für die Deutsche glaube ich... :)

Turkey Trip Part II - The rest...

2008-05-25T23:25:00.009+02:00

For the avid readers (do I have any?) of my blog, you should know that I seldom write about my travels, but rather my thoughts on issues. Today it will be an exception, because my trip to Turkey is really the best holiday that I have had in my whole life so far, and more than anything, it has been a most enlightening trip. In a few words, these are my realizations: “I had a great time in Turkey, and I really can be at home in many places in the world. I am single now, and being single is fun, because there are so many people from so many places for you to fall in love with. However, it is a right time for me to get together with the right girl and give up being single for the rest of my life. I just need the right girl to be ready as well. I also know for sure that there is more than one right girl; whoever that is ready that comes along first, I will commit to being with her.” Now for the full story:

So I was supposed to go to Turkey with a very special person, but it turned out that the whole thing didn’t work out in the end. At first, I was kind of disinclined to go alone after finding out that she wasn’t going, and so I tried to message my friend Begum on MSN to ask her if it’s ok that I didn’t go. The problem was, after I said ‘Hi’ on MSN, Begum didn’t ask me something like ‘So when are you coming to Turkey again?’ Instead, she exclaimed, “Ping!! When are you arriving on Thursday?” And then she went on to give me her Turkish cell number. And that confirmed my decision to go to Turkey no matter what. Of course, I must thank Sonay for offering me Turkish liras so that I will always have some money on me, Gamze, Handan, Emre and Pelin for trying to find a chance to tell me all about Istanbul before I went, and Merve, Eda and Can for trying to make time to see me in Istanbul. And someone else: Cem Fresko, a buddy from Purdue, with whom I’ve only hung out with for two weeks before I dropped the German class. His pictures on facebook about Istanbul nights were also something that inspired me since some time ago to see how Turkey was really like. Thank you my hacIms and bebegims from Turkey...

And so on Thursday, 22^nd May I left for Istanbul alone early in the morning after an eventful night at the K3 Hadiko Hausfest (that’s another story…). Here’re some interesting points:

Lessons learned from doing touristy things

During my trip to Turkey, I only did one touristy thing – to spend a morning on my second day there at the Sultanahmet region, where mosques, churches and palaces stand next to one another – and here’re some touristy pictures of myself there.

Actually there are too many tourists in the Sultanahmet region in Istanbul. For instance, I wanted to take a picture of the panoramic view of the Anatolian side of Istanbul from the TopkapIl palace... but really, what you can see most of the time is just people blocking the view. And so most of the time one will only manage to take the picture of several asses instead of the scenery... see below ba...

Anyway two lessons I learned from doing touristy things alone are:

1. I found out that even though I went alone, there were so many opportunities for me to join a group. I felt alone after a while looking at the palace, so what I did in the end was to approach Hong Kong, Taiwanese and German tour groups. To each group I approached the tour guide and said the following in the appropriate language: “Hi, I’m a student traveling alone here, and it’s hard to understand and appreciate everything about this place because I don’t know much about the history and Turkey. May I join your group for a short while?” And so I managed to become the center of attention in the groups and everyone asked me where I came from and why I spoke that language. Wah hahahahha… the attention freak in me was totally satisfied!

2. The next thing I found out was that the best pick up line was “Hi, could you take a picture for me?” in the language that the person you ask speaks. Of course, the prerequisite is that you must be able to speak to a good extent the language that the other person speaks, so that further conversation can continue. Otherwise, just use English. The key is: when you ask a pretty girl this question, and if you speak her language, there is a chance that it will inspire curiosity in her. If she asks you where you are from, and if you manage to go for more than 2 more lines after that, you can then interrupt your conversation anytime by saying, “Wow, it was really nice to meet you. Do you think we could take a photograph together for some memory?” If it doesn’t get that far, it’s still ok: when you look at the picture of yourself, you will remember which cute girl took it for you. J If you don’t remember, probably she’s not cute enough so don’t worry about it.

And so I continued approaching people on the streets until eventually I got tired of it, and went to take a look at the “blue mosque”. There, I met…

Cafir, a man on his pilgrimage.

Instead of me stopping someone to ask him or her where she comes from, he came to me and asked me if I was Japanese. The problem is, this man did not speak any English, and so the only way we communicated was through Turkish. I didn’t know much Turkish and in order to communicate I had to use all the Turkish I knew, plus take out my guidebook so that he could point to some of the Turkish words that were inside there. For about 45 minutes he convinced me that he wanted to befriend me, tried to teach me Turkish, and tried to tell me how happy he was to have met me and that we could spend time together, and that although he was Muslim and I was not, he thinks that we are good friends and he hopes I will remember him. He said to me 4, 5 times, that his name was Cafir and he was from the south eastern part of Turkey, and he is here so far away from his home today to pray to Allah. I wish I spoke more Turkish – because I really want to tell him that “Cafir, I am really happy to meet you too. I know that maybe this is probably the only time in our lives that we will walk like that together, and I really appreciated that you decided to spend your time with me despite knowing that.” Every few minutes he asked me if I had time. For if I did, we could hang out a little bit more, and he will tell me about the area I was in, albeit only in Turkish. I don’t know why, but after a while I said I had no time, even though I did, and although this man was trustworthy by intuition. What I really wanted to do was to ask him if he was hungry, and maybe both of us could have had a tea or a kebab together, although in some kind of silence, because we had no common language. The silence wouldn’t be awkward though, because when a man has a good heart, you can feel it, and you won’t be uncomfortable around him. I guess I didn’t do it because I am just not patient enough to spend that much time to communicate with someone without a common language. I am really touched by his efforts to talk to me though, and I hope I will be able to have the perseverance to do something like this some day.

Well, just above is a picture of me and him. Like I promised him, I won’t forget him – he’s a good man who just wanted to tell me he is happy that I am visiting his country. I hope he gets to have whatever he came to search for on his pilgrimage to the mosque.

Ortakoey, a non-touristy place in Istanbul

So there was a place called Ortakoey. Basically it used to be a fishing village in Istanbul, and it’s pretty out of the way for tourists but really popular with locals. So unlike in Sultanamet, where all the touristy places are, the vendors in Ortakoey would not bother to hustle you to go into their shops and cafes. Along the streets were many locals – some played Backgammon, some were smoking water pipes, and some were eating a local delicacy – Kumpir, which is basically a baked potato with choice of several toppings.

These were the following interesting things that happened in Ortakoey:

The first night here, Begum and I were in a bar (Dodrum). We were almost the only guests there since it was a weekday evening, although the bar was quite nice. It was on the rooftop, and was lit purple, and it overlooked the sea. We had a very good conversation and the bar manager was really nice – he asked me where I came from, and upon finishing my first RakI and Begum her beer, he came to us with another drink and said, “My compliments.” It was my warm welcome to Turkey.

The third morning in Istanbul, we had a Turkish breakfast there at a Café called… (don’t know how to say it… look at picture ba)

Pictures of the food were put up in Part I, but like many instances in Istanbul, the breakfast was on a rooftop setting. What was most memorable was that one of the waiters lived for 12 years in Frankfurt and so he spoke German with me, which made me feel very comfortable. The same night, I went back to the same Café / Restaurant / Bar with Lilja and Kristin, two Icelandic girls I met in the hostel. The waiter recognized me, and gave us a very warm welcome and made us really, really comfortable. I think it is in Ortakoey that I felt really at home in Istanbul.

Other interesting things included encounters at the Kumpir stalls. Again, I met German speaking Turkish people, and one of them told me that his cousin was selling Doener Kebap in Karlsruhe, where I was studying. He didn’t remember which street though, so too bad I can’t visit the shop to bring news from home.

Finally, the last two things at Ortakoey were the boat ride and playing backgammon with Begum, which were already covered in the previous post.

Being Robbed in Istanbul and My first Encounter with Icelanders

So I was robbed in Istanbul on my last day there, albeit in broad daylight. Not really robbed, but two men (pimps) who were overfriendly in trying to introduce me to prostitutes demanded money from me when I refused to want a prostitute. I can’t remember for sure, but I think it all happened when I did not pay attention to where I was going and entered a side alley in Taksim...I must have been talking on the phone with… Can Arer. Maybe I was telling him how much I really wanted to eat one more Tavuk Shish. I don't remember properly... In any case, I was somehow approached by a man who told me that he was a businessman and he was pleased I came from afar to visit Istanbul, and that he loved to be multilingual, could speak Russian and he wanted to introduce some friends to me. He put his arm around me and tried to coerce me into going into his café which was supposedly nearby and then suddenly another man appeared and said, hey, come with us and at least have a drink. Something was freaking fishy in any case, and since I just recovered from a ligament tear in my knee, and I did not know if they carried weapons and there was no one really friendly looking around, I decided to just play friendly and say hey, I really want to go, instead of my natural reaction (punch one and smash the other with the nearest weapon). This made the men demand 40 lira from me, because they said they already prepared things for me and I was being impolite. I begged them, please – I am a student, give me some money to go home, to which they said – ok, give me 20 lira. So in the end I got robbed of 20 lira (about 10 euros – 10% of my budget in Istanbul), found out where I could get prostitutes in Istanbul, but was unscathed.

I was really depressed and afraid actually, but somehow, I didn’t want to let these little hooligans spoil my wonderful trip in Istanbul and so I tried my best to feel better by first heading back immediately to a comfort zone – the hostel. And at the hostel, who should I meet but the first two Icelanders in my life!

Everyone knows that I’ve been planning to go to Iceland for some time already, and in a country with less than 1 million people (I found out it was 300,000 only yesterday)… I actually met two of them randomly in Istanbul in the same hostel as me! This must be a sign that I had to go to Iceland! I forgot about being robbed and so I spent the whole evening convincing them to eat dinner, and eventually hang out with me. In the end, it turned out to be a really, really great last evening in Istanbul for me (for them as well, I hope…) - These two young ladies really made a great difference to my day. Thank you, Lilja and Kristin.

My Souvenir

Just a short mention about the souvenir I bought for myself – a book to help a Turk learn the German language. It was interesting because this book is written in Turkish, but this is all the more meaningful to me. I believe a place is about its language and culture – taking away a language book is really like taking a bit of the place back with me, and that’s why I bought the book instead of something more typical, say the Turkish good luck charm.

Istanbul – Past, present and future

In this trip to Istanbul – I lived totally in the present because most of my activities were focused on enjoying the moments. The past is something we have to know in order to understand why people today behave this way. The future is something that will be created as we live our present lives. I’m glad I did not dwell too long in the past or the future, otherwise I would not have had all these inspiration, experience and emotions I’ve had about this trip. I was really deep in thought some times here you know… look…
Actually I was thinking about Can and how he cannot come this time. Talk about Can... Can Arer - you make me drink detergent, you convince me that my really good friend is gay and he likes me, talking to you made me get robbed in Istanbul. You'd better come and buy me Tavuk Shish the next time I go to Istanbul wherever the F**K you are in the world HacIm...

Yup... so this is Can (read as "Jarn" in English) . Too bad I don't have a photo with him in Istanbul... I would really go to Turkey one more time just to take one photo with him although he can be such a jerk... :)

Conclusion

So… if you got bored by my story, it’s probably because you have understood and gone through something more in life than me, so it would be nice if you shared with me. If you read this story, and you’re inspired to travel alone, I would say – if possible, avoid doing something like a backpacking Euro trip in a month in 10, 15 cities where you do not know anyone. This is because although you would end up seeing many places in your own perspective and at your own time, it is usually without a deep enough understanding of how the present, past and future are connected in these places. Instead, try to go to a country where you have a few, or just one worthy friend, and spend a couple of days there. Learn a little bit of the language, force yourself to use a little bit of it, and see how your friend’s daily life is really different than yours, but at the same time similar. Ok, ok... say you don't have friends in the city you want to visit - I would suggest you travel there with someone else who has friends there :) Then you would get to do touristy stuff when the local friends are busy, but at the same time never get lost wondering which restaurant is good or which shop will not cheat your money when it's time to do non-touristy things like eat and hang out... :)

Hmm... Istanbul… that was my first time… I wonder when I can be there again. That's it for now... I'm now back home at Karlsruhe... welcomed by a beautiful day, and by home's own beautiful scenery...

Turkey Trip Part I - The Activities

2008-05-25T20:14:00.018+02:00

So... I think I can divide my Turkey trip into two parts - part I is of course the things I saw, did and ate. Part I would of course be the thoughts and feelings and conclusions about this experience... I think most people would be interested in part I first, so here it is...

Oh, but before I write anything further about my Turkey trip, I have to thank one person for everything - Begum. Despite her hectic exam schedule, she spent the whole Thursday night, a big part of Friday night, and more than half of her Saturday making sure that I saw everything that I should see in Istanbul. My two most memorable activities with Begum would be...

Playing Backgammon and Boat Trip around Bosporus...
Backgammon is a new game I learned during my Istanbul trip from Begum. She used to play it with a lot of pros and so she was really good at it. And because she was so good, she taught me how to win her and indeed, my first try at the game resulted in me beating her. She was a bit 'sauer' about it, of course, but really, she should know that if she didn't tell me how to beat her, I would have never did... :) So really, she was the winner, not me.
The next memorable thing was our boat trip around the Bosporus. The boat was really comfortable - there were cushions on the deck and that made me fall asleep. During the ride, Begum told me she thinks that the best kind of guy for her is a German guy - because he will be everything that she is not... organized, punctual, methodical, will take action and not just think so much etc etc. And another interesting conversation we had was when she also told me her stories about funny Spanish and Italian women who grabbed her arms, made her walk with them and started talking in Spanish / Italian for a long time during her Spain / Italian trips... anyway, all I want to say is that - without her, I would have been really lost for half of my Istanbul trip... ok, let's now look at some pictures from the boat ride...

This is a picture taken from the boat with a really good backdrop...

although I was not really the person who first thought of this position...Look at all the cushions on board... looks so comfy doesn't it?

I tell you... we could just fall asleep lying on the cushions...

Ok... To be honest, most of the time I was just asleep on the boat...
Hmm so even though I kinda passed out, I still saw the nice things and took some pictures... For instance, that's the architecture on the Anatolian side of Istanbul... these houses must be really expensive...

...and I took some pictures of a fort built to occupy Istanbul...

...and a photo of the bridge as we sailed below it...

and here's a little scenery on the Asian side of Istanbul...

The dedication section to Begum is complete for now... let me next take you through my activities in Turkey! And we'll of course start with food... so let's start with the Kumpir - which is baked potato with butter and cheese, and a choice of fillings from the whole variety of toppings as you can see in the picture below... they include sausage, corn, salad, yoghurt, red cabbage, pickles, olives (green and black) and so on...

Now we come to the story behind this picture: The two Kumpir selling brothers saw me from afar trying to take a picture of the stall and they said, "Wait, wait, we pose..." and so I got this really nice shot :) After that they asked me their typical question: "Japondan geliyorsun?" (You come from Japan?) and I gave my standard reply: "HayIr, Singapordan geliyorum." (No I come from Singapore...) Somehow if you're Asian looking, they think you're Japanese here - it is a great sign: finally I have found a country where the presence of Chinese is very minimal :) From people who want to escape from the Chinese (actually, from the Indian) presence in the world for a short while... go to Istanbul. Before I landed, I wondered how many Chinese and Indians I would see there... and it turned out that there were only a handful, if any at all. Ok... now that I have given my great introduction, I shall now show you what I've eaten over the last 2.5 days...

BREAKFAST

Turkish breakfast looks unbelievably delicious. Just look at the pictures! :) What looks good, tastes good too, so I will leave it to you to imagine how much I enjoyed myself that morning. Look at my happy face and you probably know what I mean... :) At the end of my great breakfast, I made a smiley face with the leftover egg yolk and the olive seeds...

LUNCHES / DINNERS

This is my eating experience at the stall that sells famous Turkish meatballs at Sultanahmet - actually there are many meatball shops but this is the original one. On the menu there are only meatballs and mutton shish as the main dishes, so it's really a specialty. Lots of Turkish people come here to eat the meatballs too (ok I know they don't look round but they are called meatballs)... and you know what? In 2.5 days in Turkey, I came here twice actually - the first time I forgot to bring my camera, so I came back the second time with some people I met in the youth hostel - Peter from Poland and Lilja and Kristin from Iceland. And the second time we made sure we took down the important pictures!

I don't have much to say except that the best variation of the above oven-baked dish is made of eggplant, meat and cheese. Oh, you know what, I really hated eggplants, to the extent that it is one of the first words I learned in German when I first starting taking it as a foreign language, because I wanted to know what I wasn't ever going to eat. I overcame my fear of the eggplant (fear because it doesn't look like an egg, doesn't look like a plant) in Germany, after I tried an eggplant dish from my Turkish friends. But indeed, after going to Turkey, I believe no one will ever eat eggplant again once they go out of Turkey, because no eggplant can taste better than the Turkish eggplant. By the way, we were on something like the sixth storey of this building and as I looked out of the window, I saw the little plant with the two dolls - that's why I put the picture in here too.

SNACKING...

Mangal Keyfi is my good friend Can's favorite place to have a Tavuk Shish Dueruem. I couldn't meet him this time unfortunately but that didn't mean that I couldn't try his favorite food at his favorite place in Istanbul. And it was REALLY good - so good such that I couldn't wait to take a picture of it before chewing the whole Dueruem up and make it a part of me. If I go back to Istanbul again, and if I am only able to have one meal there, I would eat here. With an Ayran (Turkish yoghurt drink), the Tavuk Dueruem only costs 5 Lira.

DESSERT / COFFEE

Dondurma (Turkish ice-cream) is fun. This is because there is some kind of gum inside the ice cream that makes it really sticky and viscous, and so it has really different properties from normal ice cream (i.e. it is a non-Newtonian fluid). One can spin a whole chunk of Turkish ice cream on the spatula and it will not break away because of the centrifugal force - and this is what the ice cream man sometimes does to attract attention. For people who do not know, the ice cream man will play many many tricks on you before you get your ice-cream... be prepared for an ice cream show when you order one! **There is a Turkish ice cream stall in Singapore too. If I'm not wrong, there's only one stall at Clarke Quay And can you believe it - one of the ice cream men asked me where I come from, and when I said Singapore, he said he knows a friend who is selling Dondurma in Singapore. Could the Clarke Quay ice cream boy be the friend???? The world is small I guess.

This is grilled ice cream that I ordered from a Cafe in Ortakoey. Basically the same that I went to breakfast (remember the breakfast pictures above?) with my friends. This ice cream dish is called volcano and yeah, once you cut it open, it erupts, as you can see. Pretty good name for it...

Turkish Coffee is much denser in flavor than most other coffees, because excess grounded beans are put inside the cup to prepare it and make it into a kind of 'saturated' coffee. As such, you cannot finish drinking the coffee, but instead, there is an undrinkable part (the grounded beans that did not dissolve) that will form a unique pattern for each person upon cooling. And the coolest thing about this coffee is that you can use these stain patterns to tell your fortune. And the coolest thing I did in Turkey was not to just have my fortune told, but instead, I had also the chance to tell the fortune for a friend of mine. And according to them, I did really well in interpreting the signs :) Here's what I saw in words and my interpretation:

1. First, I saw a small bird and a small fish. I thought that it meant that a person could have two fates, but both are good - either fly high or swim far.
2. Behind them, a big bird is looking back at its tail, which covers a cloud of smoke (it was really hard to figure out what that was...) The bird is looking at its past, which blocks a smokier past. Perhaps the bird should turn around and see that it can become a bird (fly high), or choose the way of the fish (swim far), and not brood on the past.
3. Behind the cloud of smoke was a volcano that erupted. It signifies that the climax of the difficult times are already over. Upon settling of the ash, new life would grow.
4. Half of a person was trying to struggle out of the ash from the volcano eruption. The other half could not be seen. This meant that half the struggle is already over - continue trying and eventually the other half would get out too.
5. From one direction, one could see the whole cup being engulfed in flames, from the other: it looked like light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps one can expect a blessing in disguise.

Not bad for a first try? :)

SMOKY SMOKY...

I would say smoking water pipes was also part of the eating experience... I did it twice while I was there - first time with my Turkish friends, and the second time with friends I met at the youth hostel. Here is the first time:

So that's Begum, Merve and I... Merve (right) looks like a Chinese girl in this picture, with her small, slitty eyes... :P Notice the shawls wrapped around us - because it is cold, the waiter will wrap them around you to make you really comfortable as you smoke... Btw, Merve is really cool - she studies computer engineering and she wants to write a program for matching clothes. The idea is simple - if the waist gets too big, the buttons on the pants will pop. That will be one of the features in her software...

And here is Eda and I... she is also wrapped up in a shawl, but I found her outfit that night really nice... she had a new haircut since I first and last saw her in Heidelberg (she has orangey hair now), and she happened to wear a really matching orangey top that evening... Plus the fact that she loves to smile / laugh (she has a really warm, bright smile), and that she was so happy to see me, and so on and so forth... whatever. She made my evening when she appeared and said 'Hi Ping!!!!... :) It was sad that I came during the exam period, so most of us couldn't really hang out too long. Eda wanted to go to a salsa club, too bad we couldn't make it this time... I hope to go back to Istanbul again soon and perhaps this time she will be free... :)

This is my second experience in Istanbul with the water pipe:

It all started with Kristin and Lilja from the youth hostel deciding to accompany me to Ortakoey on my last night in Istanbul...

After a round of drinks and a great conversation, we decided to enjoy some water piping... But since I had it already yesterday, really, what else can you do with a water pipe?

Of course, just be mean and blow smoke into people's faces...

And if you try to do that, somehow the favor will be returned...

Well, if you try to behave like little kids, someone will start taking pictures of you to post on the Internet...

And so we decided to make friends again and stop being childish...

Although the pictures are now up on the internet anyway...

All in all it was a really enjoyable evening with the two young ladies. I am so glad that Lilja and Kristin decided to hang out with me during my last night in Istanbul. Thank you for sacrificing watching Eurovision, and also for coming with me instead of with the larger, more promising group who were going to Taksim square. Although I was going to leave right after the evening, although we might not be able to meet up again, it was really touching that the girls still decided to hang out with me. I don't know what else to say, but I really hope to get a chance to go to Iceland and hang out with them again! :)

Conclusion
Ok, so I didn't take pictures of a lot of things actually - the grilled lamb, the REAL turkish Doener kebap, the actual Kumpir, my RakIs and so on... and I didn't get to try a lot of things because I was only there for a short time. In any case though, it was the best holiday in my life so far in Istanbul... the few words and pictures that I used here can't describe everything. Actually, sidetrack - if a picture is a thousand words, and since I took 168 pictures, each with a story, I would probably need 168000 words to really describe what I feel for this trip. -_-'' blah... whatever...

I conclude that I'm definitely coming back (to be precise, the next time will be somewhere in early / mid-August this year if everything turns out as planned)... let's all hope that things work out!!! :) Till then, Istanbul...

"Flight", by Doris Lessing

2008-05-19T00:08:00.005+02:00

There are two ways to learn - read 50 books, or read the same book 50 times. Being less able to absorb a great variety of content than others, I have only managed to learn successfully so far using the latter way. And hence, I have really read and reread one of my literature textbooks in secondary school (middle school) , a compendium of contemporary short stories, about 50 times. Many stories in this collection have touched me: "The Lemon Orchard", "A Man Called Horse", "A Sense of Shame", "Woman on a Roof", "The Sniper", "My Oedipus Complex" and so on. Things like irony, foreshadowing, alliteration, imagery, literary and figurative expressions etc. I never grasped so well back then, but now I understand fully the plot, character and theme of each story. And so today I will discuss a little about one of my favorite stories in the collection: "Flight", by Doris Lessing.

Doris Lessing won the Nobel prize for English literature in 2007. This particular story written by her, "Flight", was one of the hardest to understand in literature class at the age of 16, but has turned out to be one of my favorites over time. In this story, a grandfather suffers a great sense of jealousy as he realizes his youngest granddaughter is about to get married. She used to spend a lot of time with him, but now she spends this time frolicking around with the handsome young man she was going to get married to. The grandpa wants to tell her, no, marriage is not that happy, don't be cheated by your apparent bliss - look at your sisters turn into "serious, young matrons", look at me, look at your mum. His own daughter in the kitchen notices his grumpiness and reminds him that hey, this happens / happened to everyone, including you and I, you know? It didn't help him that much, of course.

So it happened that this grandpa keeps many pigeons (or doves? I don't really remember), and they were all in cages. Somehow, at the end of the day, the grandpa got pissed that he was about to face the reality of life, and has to let go of his last granddaughter soon, and did something on the spur of the moment. In his moment of being upset, he took his birds out to the open air, and set them all free from their cages, letting go of every single one of them. They flew away, far far away, and the grandpa could only look at them go speechlessly. But somehow, a while later, every single one turned back, and flew down to roost on a tree nearby the grandpa's house. Both grandpa and granddaughter experienced overwhelming emotions upon seeing this sight: the grandpa is comforted that the granddaughter may come back to him after she is let go, whereas the granddaughter realizes that it's about time for her to go on to a new life, and things will never be the same again.

Beautiful story, no? A great truth of life presented here: the truth of having to let go, and moving on to something new at every different stage of life. All there for us to appreciate in Sec 4, but how many of us did, or continued to try to look to our old books for lessons in life?

Great Weekend at my Aunt's (An entry dedicated to Dory)

2008-05-18T18:46:00.008+02:00

So Weiting, Dory and I were at my aunt's this weekend... we had a great satay dinner, and we made Kimbap (actually Olivia did) too. Although the food was really great, and being with the family again is really great, the more important takeaways this weekend were two lessons learned... from Dory. And that's why this entry is dedicated to her. I'll elaborate here:

Lesson 1: Dory's flat tyre on her bike

So Dory had a flat tyre on her rear bike tyre some time ago. There were a couple of solutions: to find the leak and repair it, or to replace the whole inner tyre. Not wanting to spend money, she borrowed some tools, and with the help of several people, the leak was found and covered. It was a cumbersome process really - first she had to borrow tools from people. After that she had to wheel her bike to the place of the friend who promised to help her, only to find out that he didn't really know how to do it either and that his own bike was broken too. Eventually it was still somehow fixed, but the next day, when we brought our bikes to Rastatt while we visited my aunt, her tyre burst again. She wanted to repair it again, but instead, my aunt and my uncle came with a trailer for us to put the bikes in, and my uncle suggested that Dory should get a new inner tyre. So we went into the Bauhaus (German Home Depot), he also suggested that Dory should also get a new wheel for the bike, since her bike looked so old. So Dory bought both, and guess what, it amounted to less than 10 Euros. Not a lot of money to spend after all, compared to the effort required in repairing the bike. In the comfort of my aunt's place, we fixed up her new tyre in less than half an hour, and in the process, found out that her old tyre burst again because her wheel had no more treads, so all the friction was really going directly on her inner tyre. And so, it turned out that she initially tried to fix the wrong problem, and although it ended up being fixed, it showed up again, because the root of the problem was not removed.

What is the lesson here then? Hmm, I guess when something goes wrong, repair is not necessarily the right answer. Replacement and change can be a better solution, and although it may feel costly, it can turn out being less costly than expected. Next, when something goes wrong, even if the previous solution worked, it may not be the right solution to turn to. Finally, sometimes you don't find the right solution by searching for it yourself. Sometimes, the right solution is pointed out to you by others, and one must sometimes accept that the answer doesn't necessarily come from himself / herself even after a lot of self-searching.

Lesson 2: When Dory plays the piano without distraction, she provides an outlet for me to express my feelings...

I am not able to play the piano. I have never learned it technically, for I grew up in a world without much music and art. I don't even know what Beethoven composed, and that "Chopin" is not read as "Chop-In", but instead "Sher-porrr"So, really, if I have some feelings that I want to let loose through music, in particular a musical instrument, I have to do it through the musical ability of others, until I manage to learn an instrument properly myself.

So this weekend, in fact, today in particular, I really wanted someone to play the song 花火 for me on the piano, because it was a beautiful song whose lyrics gave me a lot of comfort. And I really wanted to hear it on the piano because live music, without lyrics, is more touching. This is because you get to fill in the lyrics yourself, and when the lyrics describe your own story, it makes the song even more wonderful. And so Dory, because YOU managed to CONCENTRATE for 3 minutes and play it without being distracted, you have given me three minutes to fully experience the intense emotions that were going on inside me.

Conclusion
Dory has been asking me for the whole weekend about some of her good points, because we have criticized her so badly. I hope after reading this, she knows how important she has been in teaching me some good lessons in life. You don't need to have too many "good points" like being "hot", being "talented" at languages etc. to be a "good" person. Just be Dory, and you'll be doing more good than you imagine.

Back to normal

2008-05-15T23:54:00.003+02:00

I tried really, really, really hard, and to my own surprise, life is back to normal again. It feels like the last 3 months never happened, although I have really been enlightened by it, because my patience, my commitment to love, my principles and my resilience have all been tested.

But here I am today again, behaving like how I used to behave 3 months ago, doing what I was trying to do 3 months ago - focusing on thesis work, being surrounded by friends new and old, setting aside time to spend with cousins, getting to know new girls etc... On my part, for myself, time is also reversed. I thought I just helped to reverse time for her, but I realize that I am also now given a chance to go on with my life without distractions - I am also back to a state of familiarity. I think someone would feel really far away from me today; perhaps even for the next couple of days too... after all, I was never someone that she had to even just say bye to.

But you know what? Many people are always asked questions like,"If you could choose everything all over again, what / who would you choose?" Most people don't get the chance to choose all over again, but the two of us are exactly being given the opportunity to do just that. This part of the reversal is almost complete. I await the rest of the surprises in store for me. Let's see what I finally choose...

That's all for tonight,
PB

Random realizations

2008-05-15T09:25:00.005+02:00

1. I read a book recently called 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. For those who don't know, it's about an old Professor who knows he's got a terminal disease that will slowly take him away. His attitude towards it was amazing - he treasures the fact that he at least knows how many days left he has left, and continues to live strongly. He feels sad in the mornings, because he knows he's dying, but he doesn't hold on to the moment of grief for too long, because then, whatever time left in his life will be wasted. You know, most of us are not dying, so why do we spend more time than him feeling sad?

2. I reread a book called 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven', also from the same author. A guy, Eddie, who didn't think he did much in the world or lived life meaningfully died and met five people in Heaven who told him how his life was meaningful and had a purpose. My insight after reading it is, some people, in contrary to Eddie, may think that their lives are very meaningful and have many purposes, but it turns out that the meanings and purposes are beyond their control and may not really be what they thought to be. e.g. One can try so hard to be here or there for this purpose or this person, but Fate really wanted him or her to be here or there doing something else, and even perhaps for another person. My personal experience: Germany. I thought I was going to Germany so that I can escape for one more year from working life, but I was there to really enjoy working on my thesis. I thought I was going to be away from my family for one more year, but it turns out to be a reunion with my cousins Olivia and Giulia and I was meant to be there with them for a year of their teenage lives. I thought I was there to perfect German, but instead I caught up with Cantonese, a language I stopped trying to learn more than 10 years ago. I thought I was there to see how it would feel like to go out with girls from every nationality, but instead I found out that all I really really want is to move on to an honest and morally meaningful life with efforts in making contributions to society, while my other half, whoever she may be, walks side by side with me.

3. In two months I will be leaving Germany. The distance between someone very special to me and I will be doubled. In six months I will be leaving the USA. The distance between this very special person and I will be more than quadrupled. But this is the same for a lot of people dear to me - I will never see my Giulia and Olivia anymore that easily once I leave Germany. I think with my family members, the belief that we are family will keep us together. They will always be welcome to where I am, and so will I be to where they are, so the parting will be happy, even if we never see each other again, for a long, long time. Somehow it's just harder to have the same attitude for everyone. Perhaps because there's the fear that she will stop to believe in a right time for us. I am so afraid to lose her, but I will continue to believe in us.

Oh shit... 10 o'clock already... the people in the workshop are done having breakfast... time to go back down and continue working. Gan... got distracted again... -_-''

A very helpful song

2008-05-15T00:51:00.005+02:00

NOBODY KNOWS
By: The Tony Rich Project

I pretended I'm glad you went away
These four walls closin' more every day
And I'm dying inside
And nobody knows it but me
Like a clown I put on a show
The pain is real even if nobody knows
And I'm crying inside
And nobody knows it but me

Why didn't I say
The things I needed to say
How could I let my angel get away
Now my world is just a tumblin' down
I can say it so clearly
But you're nowhere around

The nights are lonely, the days are so sad
And I just keep thinkin' about
The love that we had
And I'm missin' you
And nobody knows it but me

I carry a smile when I'm broken in two
And I'm nobody without someone like you
I'm tremblin' inside and nobody knows it but me
I lie awake it's a quarter past three
I'm screamin' at night as if I thought
You'd hear me
Yeah my heart is callin' you
And nobody knows it but me

How blue can I get
You could ask my heart
But like a jigsaw puzzle it's been torn all apart
A million words couldn't say just how I feel
A million years from now you know
I'll be lovin' you still

The nights are lonely, the days are so sad
And I just keep thinkin' about
The love that we had
And I'm missin' you
And nobody knows it but me

Tomorrow mornin' I'm hitting the dusty road
Gonna find you wherever, ever you might go
I'm gonna unload my heart and hope you come back to me
Said when the nights are lonely...

The nights are lonely, the days are so sad
And I just keep thinkin' about
The love that we had
And I'm missin' you
And nobody knows it but me

_______________________________

I first heard this song at the Spring Formal 2005 in Purdue. My date was a very pretty Korean girl, but unfortunately the formal wasn't very fun for me. There was a guy who was absolutely crazy about her, and would stop at nothing to try to take her away from me for the evening, even though I was just a friend of hers. As this song played, he held her really close to him on the dance floor, and refused to let her be any further from him for the rest of the night except body-tight; she still smiled at me helplessly from afar as she danced- on one hand, she couldn't really do anything, but on the other, she really didn't want to do anything else either. Oh well, she's yours, I thought. I told jokes to my other friends for the rest of the evening... whatever, for your lifetime of happiness, I can let myself be a little lonelier for one night. And indeed, up to today, they are still together. Feel kind of happy for them. :)

Yesterday I happened to listen to this song before I slept. Half of the lyrics were real, the other half didn't apply. The version of the chorus I had in my head, that made me cry, was this:

"The nights aren't lonely, the days aren't so sad; But I just keep thinkin' about The love that we had; The way I'm missin' you, oh nobody knows it but me"

On Attachment and Detachment again... letting go of the need to love

2008-05-14T09:11:00.003+02:00

To move from one stage of love to the next, one has to learn to let go. Love is such a great feeling, and when you think the feeling is perfect, you keep on wanting more of it, or to give more of it. Unfortunately that is sometimes a trap, because your want of love or to love can become a need to have it or do it. And when that happens you become attached to love.

Again, detachment is the right way to go. (What is the idea of detachment? Read my previous essay on attachment and detachment...) You see, the truth is, love is across space and time, but no one in love knows this; even if they know, they don't really remember - they only know and remember that they want to love and love and love, and also receive love from the person they are with. They become attached to love, and cannot bear to go further in life without who they have next to them, close to them, and for as much time as possible in a day.

However, when one lets go, and then become free, one becomes free of the need to / for love, and instead, one just loves. And then they will discover something even greater than the need to / for love. They will find out that love transcends over space and time... i.e. if I am not with her now, I can still feel her presence and her love for me (love over space). And even if I am not together with her / she is not together with me, and is even with someone else by choice for today, tomorrow, or for a long long time, it doesn't mean that she or I am not being loved by each other all this time (love over time).

Being able to believe in Fate to bring them back together is perhaps the best thing to do after letting go. Even if the next reunion is 50 years later, when both are old men and old women, or 70 years later, when both are in their last days of life, it will still be the most beautiful story in the world, as long as the belief was always there.

Actually this is nothing too special or unique - Love happens to so many people in the world everyday, but how many of us have really learned to appreciate the true beauty behind it and thereafter can adopt the right attitude to treating it? I'm just glad I really do.

You know, life feels good. Yesterday felt like the 15th February 2008, when I experienced the awakening moment of love in my life. Today feels like it too. Even if the next time I feel this way is so much time later, say in 2080, or even if it is never again in this lifetime, life will still be great. I sincerely leave myself in Fate's hands, and believe in my reunion with my other half one day.

More food... (蛋包饭。。。）

2008-04-16T22:47:00.003+02:00

Guess it's time to share dinner creations again... There's been a lot to share with Weiting recently and we do a lot of the sharing during dinner time. Actually today we weren't thinking of any huge dinner or something, but somehow we ended up making something tasty and rather good looking...

For starters, we had baguette with olive oil and oven-baked tomatoes wrapped in bacon.

Here is our dinner spread for today...

I had this plate of omelette rice for dinner... with only a simple decoration

This was Weiting's plate... he was much more creative with his ketchup design...

I have an exam on Friday and I'm pretty stressed about it. Probably going to have an early night now... that's it for today :) Some concluding remarks: one of these days we'll organize a 'cocktail party'!!! Starting to love tapas...

Thai Food...

2008-04-16T01:41:00.003+02:00

Tonight we cooked Pad Gra Pow to welcome our 'Dory' back from her Barcelona trip ... inspired by Hsin Chien who cooked it twice for us... for appetizers we had sauteed mushrooms with baguette, and some white wine to go with it... not much to say tonight: just look at the 'spread' and then the 'Pad Gra Pow' - it's a Thai dish that consists of basically minced meat with fish sauce, fresh basil leaves, soy sauce, fresh chilli and peppers over rice, topped with a sunny side up.

Our dinner Spread...

One plate of 'Pad Gra Pow'...

Ok, nothing else for tonight - been a tiring day. Bis naechstes mal! :)

Getting your initial capital to begin your quest for financial freedom

2008-04-13T14:15:00.004+02:00

Today I would like to write an extended article on how someone can move from Stage I to Stage II in their quest for financial freedom. (For background, read my previous post on financial freedom.) The reason I'm writing this is because most people start in Stage I (under $10,000 capital) and do want want to move into stage II without taking too high of a risk. Caution though: this is written in a Singaporean context - so how income is distributed is based on a feasibly Singaporean perspective.

Another point to note: I think most people are uncomfortable in having $500 in their pockets and say, hey, this is my capital for starting my quest for financial freedom, because there are very little things you can buy with SGD$500. And slow growth funds are not solutions: for instance, even $5000 in a low growth fund (say 5% to 8%) is painful - after one year you only have $5400 and you cannot take most of it out because many of these are locked in for 3 to 5 years. So really, using your salary to get the first 10,000k (that you can afford to lose) after a year would be my take on trying to reach Stage II.

So let's start with some background... For many people with a degree, once they get their first job, they start thinking that finally they will have money to do a lot of things. The sad fact remains that they have many liabilities: they have to start contributing income to support their parents ($400 to $1,000 a month), there will be pressures to start saving for marriage (wedding dinner + honeymoon is very costly - typically on the order of SGD$30,000 for a simple one to $120,000 for a rather elaborate one), they are trying to buy a car (ownership and maintenance eat up more of income; about SGD$1,700 a month), they want to put aside money for annual holidays (say, $3,000 to $5,000 a year), and they want to buy an apartment after they get married (mortgage: on the order of $2,000 to $3,000 a month for the first home, depending). Let's see how all these costs factor into the lifestyle of two different kinds of professionals, and how they might still be able to balance their wants and goals to get into a 'SGD$10k' position to invest after 1 year; Let's do a quick back of the envelope calculation of how that can work out using two examples.

Example 1 - Fresh Grad Engineer
Let's assume that you are an engineer with approximately SGD$2,500 income. After taxes, you get to take home $2,000. What can you do with $2,000 a month?

Since you want to live near your workplace, you decide to rent a room in Jurong West so that you can reach the factory area (Tuas) more easily, and so you will pay about $425 for a small room per month, including electricity and internet. Assume cell phone subscription will cost you another $75 per month. Fortunately your parents are still working and you don't need to support them and so you now have $1,500 left.

Of the $1,500 left, you want to very thrifty and put about $750 aside to fill up your precautionary needs and basic minimum in your daily use account. You stop once you hit $3,000 for precautionary needs and $3,000 for basic balance to feel secure in the daily expenses account. The remaining $1,500 will go to investments. Of the $750 left per month, $250 will go to transport, $500 will go to food or entertainment. You are a real spendthrift and put all your bonus (about 3 months' pay - SGD$6,000 net into investments.) In one year then, you will lead a bearable life and put aside about SGD$7,500 for investments.

Example 2 - Junior Banker
Say even if you're in the upper hand and you start off with a SGD$4,000 income per month - e.g. you're in the banking sector as a fresh grad. After deducting taxes (about 20%), you are left with $3,200 to take home. Let's see examples of how you can make use of this money:

Let's say you decide to finance your own car - you will pay about $1,700 a month for ownership and maintenance, and you will be paying this for 10 years. Source: Shell in Singapore

To make things more optimistic, here we'll assume that you decide to live with your parents, so housing is free. However, now that you're in the workforce, your parents have decided to stop working, so you have also decided to contribute about $800 to their monthly living expenses (internet included), leaving you with $700 left.

If you spend about $150 a week for food and entertainment (including cell phone plans), you will end up have $100 of savings. If you decide to be a bit tighter, you spend $100 instead, you will still end up having only $300 a month in savings. Basically this is not much - in one year of your precious time, you will only end up putting aside $1,200 to $3,600 aside because you want a car.

Assume now you perform really well in your work and you receive a bonus of 6 months' pay (something very possible in the banking industry): around SGD$19,200. You might decide to put about $3,000 for a holiday, $3,000 to support a yearly life insurance plan, $3,000 to buy a new toy (TV, computer, speakers), $3,000 for some personal stuff (Lasik surgery, facial / spa program, Gym membership), and then the rest ($7,200) into savings for investment purposes. You will then get about $8,400 to $10,800 to invest or play with, while retaining a reasonably comfortable lifestyle.

I think from the two examples some things are clear:

1. For a relatively capable person (with degree, good paying job of about $2,500), you can kind of just depend on salary to reach stage to and it is really pretty feasible if you are willing to make some compromises on the personal lifestyle, car, house and marriage and have some luck (e.g. parents don't need to be supported, you get big bonus). But to move from stage II to stage III, using the same strategy is not going to work. That would take 10 years, even if you take into account income increases. This is because although salary increases every year, expenditures of life can increase even more. So even relatively capable professionals have to look for an alternative source of income if they want to make progress in 2-3 years, instead of 10.

2. For people who are not so blessed to find a good paying job, things are just harder. Do not blame yourself or the circumstances, but rather recognize that if you change some of your habits and control some of your wants, you will be able to make it too. In this case, then, if you want to move from stage 1 to stage 2, do not hurry. 2 years would be fine, but just always recognize that this amount of money is to be used to make more money, and should not be regarded as 'savings'.

3. Contributions from the salary into your investment account shouldn't really stop once you hit 10k though. Once you have 10k to play with - it's time to find a way to double this amount that "you can afford to lose", while maintaining contributions into investments from your salary.

I guess that's it for today. If nothing else is learned today, perhaps one should note that to move from stage II to stage III would definitely require much more than just salary contributions, and hence, perhaps it's time to look at the idea of investments and the range of products that the market has to offer to help you reach your financial goal.

Another Cooking Experience... Korean Night 2

2008-04-13T02:07:00.008+02:00

Tonight we (Weiting, Carmen and I) decided to have a Korean night and we made kalbi, kimbap and kimchi jigae for dinner... and we took some photos too! After the Korean Dinner we watched a Korean movie My Little Bride. You know what, in 2004 May I actually watched that in a korean cinema without subtitles... heh, probably one of the most interesting experiences in my life so far... instead of going to all the tourist attractions, I went to see Seoul like a local. Anyway, take a look at some of the photos:

This is the Kalbi cooking process (not the traditional one since we don't have a Korean grill but it works too)... start with one slice; then many slices;put the cooked Kalbi on a plate...

Final Product with Garnish:

These are our raw ingredients for the Kimbaps... all in strips...

This was our Kimbap making process: rice on sushi seaweed; top with ingredients; start rolling; complete rolling...

From one kimbap, to three kimbaps to ten kimbaps...

Weiting (left) making some of the Kimbaps; I'm cooking the Kalbi (right)

No pictures of Carmen because she was taking pictures of us... here's the plate of strawberries she arranged for dessert though...

Achieving Financial Freedom

2008-04-11T15:55:00.009+02:00

After hearing about some success stories of my friends, I have become kind of interested in achieving financial freedom too. After some contemplation and research, this is what I think of it:

Definition of Financial Freedom:
a. All of modern life's 7 basic major liabilities in life out of the way:
1. No more property mortgage (no need to pay anything to have a place to stay).
2. No more car loans (no need to pay anything to have access to transport).
3. Savings for wedding and honeymoon complete (can be up to a 200k project).
4. Savings for retirement available (enough money for use from 50 to 80, 90 years old, about 500k).
5. Life and medical insurance covered (300k sum of money).
6. No more worries about children's college education (about USD500k a piece).
7. Sum for emergencies always available (USD100k available anytime).

b. Working becomes an option, not a necessity. i.e. If you lose your job today, or decide that it is not something that you are interested in and want to move on, you can leave your job without worrying that you have no money to do many things.

c. In addition, you can have capital to pursue your own dream (if you have one). Basically, to make significant contributions to society you really need capital. And if it's not your own, you might end up having the liability to spend too much time on fulfilling other people's interest. Anyway, I have two personal goals, and I would really like to have my own capital to pursue them:
1. I want to contribute to education. For instance, I want to have my own private language school with my own concept of teaching languages, and then slowly promote this system such that it is also endorsed by more people. It may not work out, but I can at least try this without worrying about money.
2. I want to set up a charity old folks' home when I am an old man. And then I want to be the oldest man there, as well as the director, and this will be encouraging to the old folks who come to my home, since no one is probably older than me. And then I will expand my old folks' home into an old folks' community, such that school children will not have to do community service by visiting old folks' homes anymore; instead, we the old folks have all the time and freedom in the world to visit young people who are in need instead, or the other old folks who are not happy.

Why is financial freedom important?
a. Family and friends are the most important things to me, and probably for many people as well. Most working people have no time for friends, or even family, because if they don't work hard enough, or perform well enough, they can risk losing their job / not being promoted / not getting enough bonuses to do what they want to do. If financial freedom is achieved, then family and friends can really come before work.

b. The way our Asian society works nowadays is kind of stressful. The dad and mum has to take care of the elderly as well as the minors, and that means that they really have to spend most of their time trying to earn money to ensure that everything is going well. If we can be financially free when we retire i.e. still get income to support ourselves although we're not working, then our children won't have to rush their studies and find a job so that they can start contributing to the family income and to take care of us. Effectively it relieves a load for the younger generation, although it does not mean that we now have the luxury not to teach them the ropes of life.

c. Finally, as I described above, some of my personal goals can only really be achieved if I have the capital to pursue them.

Steps to financial freedom:
Depending on what stage you're in, you will start to invest your money in different products or use a different strategy. I guess different people start in different stages depending on their family background. This financial freedom game is pretty much like 'Age of Empires' or 'Civilization' where you progress from Stone Age to Bronze Age to Iron Age and the Steel Age and then the modern world, and you can move into any stage once all the prerequisites are met. Only difference is, in life you don't get to choose which stage to start from - it depends on where you're born into. The idea is, don't debate too much as to why you're starting at stage 1 instead of stage 3 like some of your friends. As long as you are seeking progress and achievement, you will reach stage 3 one day, so just focus on reaching the next stage. Anyway, here's an overview of the stages:

Stage 1: Low capital (less than USD$10k)
Stage 2: Mid capital (USD$10k to USD$100k)
Stage 3: Large capital (USD$100k to USD$1 million)
Stage 4: Small Investor (above USD$1 million)
Stage 5: Medium Investor (above USD$10 million)
Stage 6: Large Investor (above USD 100 million)

Some Details of each stage
At stage 1, you don't have much of a choice. Your goal is to progress to stage 2 as soon as possible (aim: 1 year) and you can either:

1. Do E-trading and with a combination of knowledge, hard work and luck, double capital every few months. If your risk profile is suitable, go for high growth stuff too (400% and above per year)
2. Start a small business, and try to double your capital every few months. Use the doubled capital as the amount of money that you can afford to lose and invest it in something high growth.
3. Use your salary (if it is high enough) to make yourself reach 10k within a year. Mainly be very disciplined and put aside all bonus for investments (details covered in another post).

At stage 2, you can either diverse more in e-trading or start to venture into lower risk investments - e.g. 20% to 40% growth funds if you are lucky to find one that accepts your capital. Start also to purchase something like life insurances if you have not received it as a gift from your parents. Basically life insurance, if not used, will double or triple by the time they mature. It's very slow growth, but this will help buy some peace of mind for the family if anything unfortunate happens and it is also money that you will definitely get back in some way anyhow. This covers liability 5 (insurance) and also puts aside a bit of money for liability 4 ($$ for retirement). Stay here for a maximum of 3 years.

Stage 3 brings forth the opportunities to have a diverse portfolio of investments, once you hit over 400k. Basically if you have 100k in several 20 - 40% growth stuff, you are not banking on just one to grow. Stay here for another 3 years, if not faster.

In Stage 4 you have 1 million dollars. To grow it into 10 million dollars, you need to have not only a good eye, but also a good stroke of luck. This is probably a time where your risk appetite has grown lower, because now you have something to lose, but it is also the time to redevelop it. Search for something like emerging markets, research them well, and put the money with someone who's Otherwise you won't reach the 3-4 million mark where you can take less risks and look for more stable growth. This is, in my opinion, this is the hardest stage to break through, and this can cause a mid-life crisis or bring you back to stage two or three if you make a wrong investment decision.

When you reach 10 million dollars, it's time to put aside money for many various uses... e.g. retirement growth, children's education, money for personal goals etc. and lock the rest of it in things like property (which will never depreciate in the long run). Some people will buy into companies etc: unless you have specific knowledge and are current: it's probably not the best choice. Property will be like the lazy man's investment option. At this stage you're kind of in a financial freedom stage, but may not be able to freely explore your personal interests yet, depending on what kind of personal interest you have.

And finally, at 100 million dollars - you're probably sound enough or you wouldn't have come such a long way, so you wouldn't lose your money so easily... you will have surpassed financial freedom. Some people donate their excess money to charitable purposes or to pursue a spread of education or something like that. Hopefully people who are so rich dedicate themselves to good causes, and when they recognize that they have too much money and can't do anything with it - they will give out the excess for other people to have. So really, Bill Gates was pretty admirable when he did that.

Dishes I've been Cooking

2008-04-11T00:35:00.002+02:00

I've come to realize that over the last couple of weeks I did cook a number of delicious stuff... and for once I remembered to take pictures of them! Take a look at all these (only Kimbap was cooked quite some time ago...)

This is a typical American Breakfast that I'd make for myself: 2 eggs (sunny side up), bacon, toast and butter, hot coffee.

I cook pasta pretty often too: The sauce here is made of tomato puree, basil, paprika powder, milk, garlic salt, pepper and olive oil.

This is my attempt at making Satay and Nasi Lemak

I also tried to do Kimbap...

And here are my sauteed mushrooms...

Honestly I was just feeling a bit hungry that's why I started to look at my food pics... I'm kinda full again now. :)

Writing about Famous People who Inspired Me

2008-04-10T23:22:00.005+02:00

Ten years ago, my English teacher said, "Guys, when you are required to write an essay about a person who is your idol, never write about someone like Confucius of Lee Kuan Yew. Do you know why? Simply because at your age of writing, I don't believe anyone of you would have the emotional maturity to understand who you are writing about. If you manage to write it in a way that doesn't make you sound fake, then that is probably not your essay."

Today I finally understand why, because ten years ago I could not have written something like this about Confucius or Lee Kuan Yew:

"Confucius' greatness came from his dedication to teaching. Judging from how much more many of us probably know about this world than him now (look at all the places we get to travel to!!!), I think there are actually many people in this world who surpass him in knowledge. But few surpass him in his timeless dedication to conveying knowledge such that his teachings from thousand of years ago are still used as basic moral guidelines in several modern societies. He is a character of biblical achievement, even though he wasn't so to say the Son of God."

"Lee Kuan Yew was great because of his contribution to developing Singapore into a unique country. He recognized that when Singapore turned independent, most of its population was not very literate and spoke many different languages. He was able to make English a common language for the Singaporeans, and use strict laws to govern its mostly uneducated population until most of the us received an education. This is just based on the Confucianist upbringing policy that parents should be strict with their kids before the kids prove that they deserve to be given more freedom and responsibilities. I guess a number of people would disagree with this method, especially if they believe that everyone is born free and should live free. But I think Lee Kuan Yew believed that when someone is born free but not in an environment where there is widespread access to knowledge, then one probably has to learn things under a stricter tutelage before he will know the difference between black and white and choose the right path himself. In any case, I suppose people can debate about the best way that could have been utilized to create a country, but then again, very few can reproduce such excellent results."

So what is the moral of the story? As in, why did my teacher say what she had to say? Well, I guess at the end of the day, kids should continue being kids, and adults should remain as adults. Don't try to be an adult when you are a kid, and don't try to be a kid when you are an adult. Otherwise you're just missing out the perspective of life that you deserve to have. And I'm really glad that when I was required to write about an inspiring person when I was in my secondary school, I wrote about a fictitious Indian man who made the best roti-prata (a kind of Indian bread) in Hong Kong. Curious about this story? One day I will tell you all about him... hahaha...

Xiaotong the Dory (Finding Nemo) in Karlsruhe

2008-03-30T19:27:00.004+02:00

Today I feel like introducing my friend Xiaotong. I think self introductions are the hardest to write, because it is very hard to summarize yourself in a few words. Therefore, I shall begin on my 'quest' to write about my friends, so that in the event that they do not know their strong and weak points, they can always come to me.

Xiaotong is from Taiwan, and her greatest talent is her ability with languages. Currently she speaks Mandarin, English, and German to a high fluency. French, Japanese, and Cantonese are things she's had some basics and or is currently working on. It really doesn't take long for her to learn to pronounce any word, and within days she will be able to perfectly pronounce many basic sentences of any given language. She claims that this is because of her attuned hearing, since she learned music from young, but it will be hard to convince many other people using this reason, because more often than not, when you talk to her, she's distracted by something else. Therefore I would rather attribute it to her interest in people - I think she wants to learn a language so that she can talk better to people, and she is just so interested in talking to these people that she just naturally overlooks the difficulty in learning to speak any languages.

Other talents that she has are: ability to paint, ability with music (singing, piano), ability to dance (oh, it's really nice to spin her around during salsa), ability to cook (her favorite dish to cook is spanish meatballs with a tomato and paprika sauce amongst many others).

She also has this exceptional ability to laugh. For instance, all I need to do is say, "Hi Xiaotong!" and she would laugh. Seriously, most of the people I say "Hi" to just says "Hi" back to me, or smile back. She literally just laughs, and I think this is the best thing about her - her positive disposition. It's a reminder to all the overly serious guys in the world to take a short pause from whatever they are doing and just spend a few minutes to laugh.

Recently, she's been growing up a bit because she's been thinking a lot. So what I hope for is that she will continue to see the world through the eyes of a child , as she learns from the wisdom of the elders (Xiaotong soll die Welt mit den Augen eines Kinds sehen, waehrend sie von der Weisheit des Aelters lernt).

Hmm, I know this might sound mean, but Dory in Finding Nemo really reminds me of Xiaotong. Let's first check out the resemblance... look at their 'surprised eyes', and the 'happy smiles'...

Guess what else they are alike in? Their short term memory, or as Philip would put it, Xiaotong 的头有很多洞洞... and to elaborate, I have no choice but to cite this incident:

XT (Xiaotong): Hey Ping, I have to come back to KA because I forgot to bring my passport to go to Switzerland.
PB (Pingbu): WHAT??? How can you forget your passport?
XT: Actually I didn't really forget my passport. I decided not to bring it with me.
PB: WHAT??? You decided not to bring your passport with you overseas?
XT: Yeah, I was afraid that I would lose it and it was such a hassle, so I decided not to take it with me.
PB: -_-'''''''''' *speechless*

Well, it's ok to have a lot of 洞洞 in her head. This is because she only forgets the small things. Big things like friends she will never forget... :) And with that, I think I'll stop for today...

Ziming Tong

2008-03-26T02:58:00.005+01:00

Ziming is finally going to leave soon. Friday 28th March, 2330 flight. Although we've already said our farewells, let's still dedicate a post to him... for the occasional reader, Ziming is the handsome young man on the right...and that was us using Biore pore packs a couple of days ago (wegen Nasepflege).

Ziming's strong points:
Ok, there are quite a lot, so I will just name the most important: Being a great listener, great partner, great helper, and doing all these with a great heart just makes him an undingable friend. 希望你永远都会那么讲义气，肯听人家的心事，更希望你会不停地为朋友赴汤蹈火（and喝汤生火during potlucks and bbqs）。像你那么会欣赏自己朋友的人，这世界的确稀有。希望你会欣赏你自己在这方面的个特点。

Thank you for giving all of us the chance to spend so much time with you. For me, I appreciate especially your last few days here in Karlsruhe - and believe me, in Singapore we can never chill like how we did in the Hadiko kitchens.

Ziming's only 2 weak points:
1. Procrastination - we need to remind him why that's bad by using his very own quote: "Procrastination is like masturbation. At first you enjoy yourself but all you're really doing in the end is fucking yourself."

2. Victim of the Sleep monster - someone needs to buy that "Docky" clock for him. I don't understand why someone needs 5 alarms to wake up. Or can call to say "hey, I'm sorry, I fell asleep - let me come right over now" and right after saying this, he falls asleep for another 2 hours... 干。。。

Some of Ziming's skills:
1. Magic Lvl 5 (card magic, levitation, ring magic etc etc.)
2. Massaging Lvl 3 (spanish guys like Sergio can't wait to get one from him, always)
3. Hairdresser Lvl 3 (thanks for the hair cut...)
4. Cook Lvl 4 (thanks for ALL the food...)
5. Super Hero Lvl XXX (Spider man <-- this one u got to ask him why...)

More interesting things about him:
1. Favorite hero: Guo Weiting (go to Ziming's blog and read the entry on 'Inspirational People') Btw, he claims that one of the reasons that Weiting is a superman is because Weiting knows so many languages. I think he forgot that he himself speaks English, Mandarin, Cantonese and German. That's also 4 languages already.

2. Addiction to beer: Through his stay in Germany he has realized that when he is thirsty, the first thing he thinks of is ice cold beer. So, Ziming, I hope you remain addicted to beer. Then in Singapore you will call me out for one...

Btw, this is Ziming's haircut for me. Do I look anywhere near 25 1/2 years old here? :)

The Hidden Pillow in my Office

2008-03-22T11:04:00.005+01:00

Ok, since I started the telescopic for post, I might as well post this up too... I feel like Stephen Chow but who cares... so this is about the hidden pillow in my office...

Everyone knows that I'm a "fleissiger Arbeiter" (hardworking employee)...

But now and then I will stretch out for my pillow that's hidden in one of my files...

And take a break from work...

And continue taking a break...

Well... sometimes I just take a really long break...

When I'm tired of just putting my head down I change positions...

And here's my other favorite position...

Makes me feel sleepy thinking about sleeping... I'm going for my nap now... :) Ciao!

Telescopic fork

2008-03-22T10:45:00.010+01:00

My friend Xiaotong gave me a super wonderful present... a TELESCOPIC FORK!!!!!! OMG, I give in, she's really my 好姐妹 and understands what I really need! Hmm I know it's not clear to you guys how this present is super suitable for me, so... let's take a look at how I can use it...

At first glance, it looks like a normal fork...

So what I did is to pick up a piece of sushi with it...

and right after that, use the fork's telescopic properties to dip the sushi in soya sauce...

and feed it to my friend Philip across the table! :)

You know, there are many ways to pick up a piece of sushi - billiard style works too!

In addition, since I love to teach, I can kinda use this fork as a pointer too...

And when my back is itchy, this fork can also reach hard to scratch places...

And finally, when I'm cooking something oily and the oil splatters everywhere, this fork will save my skin...

Thank you Xiaotong for giving me this super wonderful present! :)

I'm sure there are many more uses for this, for instance, stealing food from other people's plates... but I think for now, we all appreciate this present :) Ok... that's it for now!

Rediscovery of Friendship

2008-03-21T01:11:00.003+01:00

This week has been a week dedicated to many things but not myself. I will therefore take this moment to quickly reflect on the week and have a quick sanity check for myself. I guess that the first thought that comes across to my mind now is, amongst many other things that I have learned in the week of March 15th 2008 to March 21st 2008, I have learned to really appreciate my group of friends in Karlsruhe.

Let me first describe this group of really good friends. The special thing amongst us is that we each have an independent friendship with one another, as well as a relationship as a group. To elaborate, if four of us go out for coffee, each person has actually 3 other people that they want to talk to, as well as general dialogue with the group. Amazingly, our group does not consist of 4 people; instead, there're more. It's like the serial 'Friends' if you want to think of it in the American way, but really more like the family relationships in '真情' or '卡拉屋企' (Hong Kong TVB drama serials). Oh - the gender is balanced too, for the group consists of almost an equal number of both guys and girls. It is not therefore never a sausage fest, or a ladies' night when we go out. There is also no crap like "we don't like this person" or "this person is boring" implied on anyone in the group.

Actually, a group of friends are not just what we are: I think we're fun, friends, and family. By involving everyone in all the activities, and then teaching, complementing and covering up for what other members in the group cannot achieve, our identity as a group was developed. For the fun things, we did cookouts, hangout at cafes, ktv sessions in Germany, dancing parties... for the 'really good friend' things, we planned each other's birthday celebrations, read each other's blogs and put aside a lot of time to be together with one another... For the 'family' thing, we involved one another in our emotional lives and values, helped each other with little but important things (e.g. Papier checking out a route for 杰仔 as he went on his "tourdegermany"), and recognized that our lives consisted of more than just this group of friends (there are also studies, other friends, internship concerns etc. and each person was given the encouragement and space to achieve these other things).

Sounds like perfection right? Well, the only sad thing about this group is that, all of us are exchange students, and we will all be going our separate ways soon. What we have gone through together this week is probably the only time we can go through this life as this group, just like many other things in life. I can only hope that the connection remains after months and years, if not for a much longer time. As we move on with our lives, we can lose touch with people who were very important to us. I hope sincerely that we never ever get lost trying to go after things that actually don't deserve that much of our time (for instance, trying to look the prettiest, trying to earn too much money, or trying to be the best Dota player in 'Lordaeron'). Personally, I have made the mistake before and I don't want to repeat it.

Hmm... I suddenly think of my father's situation. When I was a kid, we used to hang out at some of his friends' places perhaps once a month. Sometimes they came over to ours, but the more vivid experience was going to e.g. Uncle Loo's place or Uncle Tan's place. The dads would hang out with the dads, and my mum told me that my dad, for all the seriousness that he showed when he talked to us, behaves like a kid in front of all these other daddies. The mums hung out with the mums. Most of the time they talked about the children, or so as I was told. We, the kids got a whole room to ourselves and as the adults did their merry-making, we were free to do anything we wanted i.e. run around, jump around, roll around... as long as we stayed in the room. We have not done that for many years already and I kind of miss it. I hope my dad will attend one of these sessions with his friends soon, and bring me along with him. Maybe it's a bit awkward to see that all the little children have become young men and young women, and the daddies and mummies have almost become grandpas and grandmas, but really, this will be the ultimate demonstration of the beauty of friendship.

Yup, I have rediscovered the meaning of friendship this week and with this post, I want to remind myself to always treasure my friends.

First Oral Exam

2008-03-14T20:13:00.007+01:00

Today I had my first oral exam in a mechanical engineering topic (using German as the examination language): two-phase flow with heat transfer. How an oral exam works in Germany is that you go to a Professor after making an appointment with him (yes, you are free to choose the date of the exam...). An observer will take notes of the exam, while the Prof asks questions about the theme. You will get some paper to draw a couple of graphs and diagrams to explain your answers better.

So... my examiner was Prof. Dr. Schulenberg, and he is probably one of the nicest examiners you can find. When I could not answer a question, he offered help and hints. When I admitted that I did not know about a certain topic, and expressed that I wished to know the answer, so that at least I can still learn something during the exam, he patiently told me the answer without criticizing me. When I wanted to discuss more about a topic, he let me attempt to explain what I knew without intimidating me, like many other accomplished people could do and would do. And finally, after the oral exam, he asked me what kind of grade I deserved, I could tell him honestly what I thought without being afraid that I was looking stupid. And he was very fair and reasonable in listening to why I thought I deserved the grade too. The whole experience was so pleasant, it didn't even feel like an exam at all.

Well, that's a lot said, perhaps we should all just look at the kindness in his happy face below (source: some newspaper article on the internet):

His kind-looking face was the main reason why I sat through his whole series of lectures, even though it was at 8 am in the morning. He is a really nice and understanding professor, who even offered to let me take his oral exam in English if I could not express myself adequately in German. Anyway, let me post up another of his pictures (source: home page of his institute):
I don't know why, but I just really have something super good to say about this professor: look at his eyes, you can see these little balls of energy in them - it is not hard to tell that he is very sharp, and very accomplished, but just look at the kindness and pleasantness in him. He radiates a sort of happiness, even in the classroom. He has a kind of character combination that's not often observed, and I really appreciate to have had someone like him as a lecturer.

The Idea of Detachment

2008-03-11T20:06:00.004+01:00

Yap Xong Sing, my buddy in OCS (Officer Cadet School, military in Singapore), practises meditation and the way of Zen. Every morning when I woke up in the bunk, he is already up and meditating. He told me in 2000 (8 years ago) that detachment was the right way to reach enlightenment whenever I was too concerned about achieving something. I thought it was crap, because it was weird to meditate when you’re a hot-blooded 18 year-old in the army and also perhaps because I didn’t even understand the word detachment then. Doesn’t it just mean a state of not being associated with anything? Therefore, wouldn’t a detached person not enjoy being with his family, his friends, and everything physical, emotional, and spiritual that he has?

I never understood or bothered to think about this idea, because 1. It sounded absurd and 2. The Zen masters seem to be acting all quirky by never explaining anything they say. However, recent events have led me to think more about life, and somehow I have managed to understand this concept of detachment and make it relevant to me.

So being the teacher wannabe, I shall explain it to you what detachment means. But before that, let’s understand what attachment means…

Attachment
When you are attached to something, you become afraid. This ‘something’ is usually a need for e.g. success / money / love / good grades in exams / something to do tomorrow / stress, which is actually not really necessary, but just something you want.

An example of attachment is a need to do well in exams. The pressure to get good grades is so high in our society, that we forget that exams are just meant to be a time-limit challenge of our analytical abilities and passing / failing it does not determine a lot of things, such as whether the family can sit and eat dinner together tonight. One becomes so attached to getting good grades that they forget that family time is also very important.

Another instance: you tend to hold a loved one very, very close to you, and you really need him, because you believe that your life will be turned upside down one day when you lose him or her. Sometimes you spend so much time thinking about losing him or her that you start to live a life of insecurity, and forget that no matter what happens, one day you will really lose him or her, because after all, no one lives forever.

Or perhaps you start to fall in love with someone, and you need the person to love you back in the same way. And you spend the whole day wondering if he or she loves you as much as you deserve. But, truth is, you don’t really need the other person to love you back in a certain way. For when it turns out that when the other person does not love you back in the same way, does it mean that your feelings for him or her were not real?

Detachment
Now that we understand attachment, let’s see what detachment can do to make you feel better. By detachment, I do not mean being indifferent to every situation. Rather, one should let the whole spectrum of feelings that arise from a situation (positive or negative) come into him, then suck in a deep breath of air, and enjoy this feeling because it is unique. After some time, one starts to recognize this feeling each time it comes, and he can then allow himself to come into contact with it, and thereafter say ‘Stop, that’s it for this feeling,’ and appreciate that he can recognize and go through it totally. By saying ‘stop’, he detaches himself from this feeling and as such, one become in total control of what he feels.
Therefore, when facing stress during an exam, the right way is to detach oneself from the situation for a bit and say, wow, it’s stressful. Close your eyes for a moment, tell yourself ‘I feel stressed, and this is how stress feels like,’ and maybe try to think about how you can enjoy studying for the exam without feeling stressed since this is such a negative emotion.

In the case of a loved one, instead of feeling afraid that you would lose him / her, recognize that one day you would really lose him / her, and start to treasure the time you spend with him / her. I really try to do this very hard – having been abroad for 5 years, each time I see my parents, I will notice the physical changes that they went through. My dad’s face looks more and more tired; my mum has shrivelled a little. It saddens me, but if I notice this and only feel sad about it, I won’t spend effort to create happy moments with them for each short holiday that I am back.

Finally, in the case of yearning for love from someone, perhaps it is better not to be too forceful. Just recognize that you really want him or her to love you back, but remind yourself that if you love the person, he or she will never stray too far away from you emotionally, no matter where he or she is. Loving someone is not about being together forever with him or her; remember that in terms of human definitions, forever is less than a century. So in that one period in a lifetime, if you can create something unforgettable with him or her, and be brave enough to do it, then you have probably become detached from your need for her to love you back. Just love her, although you should never give up about wanting to be as long together with this person as possible. But just love her, and just do it. Exactly what Yap Xong Sing said 8 years ago: ‘Just do it.’

Lessons Learnt
And so recently I have felt surges of love, depression, achievement, pain, constraint, uselessness, and so on. I’ve learned to be detached from some of these emotions, i.e. learned to recognize them, feel them and then part with them (forgive myself in some instances) and continue to experience more emotions. Only in this way can I become a better person, and not ignore other people, and in so doing live life in an honestly enjoyable manner. I need to differentiate my needs from wants: it is human to desire, but when you become attached to your desires, you will no longer enjoy them compared to the state when you just want them. In short, that’s the meaning of ‘ren2 dao4 wu2 qiu2 pin3 zhi4 gao1’ [A man who reaches a state of no desires has the most superior personality.] (I'll replace it with the chinese characters when I get home)

Finally, thank you Xong Sing for telling me your two favourite lines: 'Be detached' and 'just do it'.

Introducing some friends in Karlsruhe...

2008-03-10T16:28:00.004+01:00

**Note: I'm here to beat Herrtong by releasing a story with Sergio in it earlier than him... so here goes...

Sergio is one of my best amigos in Karlsruhe. The most amazing thing about him is that he sincerely believes that we're the same person from different continents. Why though, I don't really know, but we do have some things in common:

1. We can't stop talking (to each other too).
2. We can't stop trying to entertain other people
3. We love to eat, and in big quantities.
4. We can't stop getting distracted by everything
5. We like to be pretty good at what we do
6. We love to live on Spanish time (2pm lunch, 9.30pm dinner, siesta after lunch etc.)

And important to note, it's really because of 'Spanish time', that we have managed to have a lot of meals together. And that's how we got to know each other better too...

Just look at him in the picture. He is just such a warm and friendly guy, you can never imagine him not looking happy. Yeah, I do wonder how he looks like when he's depressed... you know, actually I think he's probably one of the cures for depression... look at what he said to me today when I bumped into him (not that I was depressed but he's just cheers up whoever he sees):

Sergio: Hey Ping, you know, I want to buy a canary.
Ping: WTF, a bird? Where are you going to put it?
Sergio: In my room of course. Then it will chirp and it will be fun.
Ping: -_-''''
Sergio: And you know what? I'm going to call it Ping.
Ping: Go buy a parrot too.
Sergio: You know what, I'll do that too. I'll call the other bird Luis.

For your information, the amigo between Sergio and I is Luis (bottom right). He's from Chile and he is very dedicated to make me speak only in Spanish with him one day. We went out for lunch once before and the allowed languages were only German (which he was learning) and Spanish (which I was learning)... he's back in Chile already and I hope we can continue to stay in touch using Skype / MSN.

Anyway, back to our conversation:
Ping: Yeah, cos the canary's chirp sounds like Chinese and the parrot can learn to speak Spanish...
Sergio: Jajajajaja <-- spanish laugh (Spanish 'j' has an English 'h' sound so that reads hahaha). Hmm I'll go buy the bird soon...

I can't believe it man. It's exam period, and of all possible distractions from studying, he can think of buying a bird. -_-''''''''''' Total respect for him!!! :) And talk about a bird, there's another funny conversation we had.

Ping: Sigh, look at me, I have no hair on my body.
Sergio: Jajaja, look at me, the hair is everywhere. Hands, legs, chest. Hey Ping, do you know that the Spanish language is a very rich language? There's a noun for every different kind of hair on the body! The one on the head is called 'pelo', the one on the hand is called ....
Ping: -_-''''' Whatever, I don't have much cos I'm Asian.
Sergio: Jajaja, anyway Ping you know Nelly Furtado's song? Look at all my hair... *starts singing* "I'm like a bird, I'll only fly away..."

***I need to stress now that there is absolutely no way to spell his 'laughs' with 'hahaha', because 'h' is silent in Spanish. So 'hahaha' really reads 'a a a', kinda like a cry for help...

I can't believe that we actually would spend 5 minutes of our time discussing the hair on our bodies, but we did, and he even sang about it. There are more stories, e.g. how he made me sing Spanish KTV with the rest of the Spanish kids (the song was 'Tractor Amarillo' and the lyrics are really funny...), but I think we all get the point. He's the cure for depression, even if you don't have any.

So, anyway, if you want to meet him in person, this Saturday, 15th March, there will be a party for another of my friends, Hsiao-Tung, and he should be there too. I'll introduce Hsiao-Tung the next time, but this is something surprising about the two of us: I have agreed on so many things with her, that one day we had a conversation just to discover what kinds of differences we really have. It turns out that we have different opinions on marriage. She doesn't think it's necessary to get married, whereas I think this is something really important to experience and work hard for in the future. Ok closure for now; gotta prepare for the review session...

A Teaching Experience (a learning one too...)

2008-03-09T21:43:00.005+01:00

A summary of this week:

This is probably the week where I have engaged in the most amount of academic activity during my stay in Karlsruhe. Teaching, experiments, and studying for exams occupied most of the time that I was awake, with some considerably encouraging results:

- Experimental results with monodisperse water droplets finally obtained for my thesis
- Studied 1/3 for Two-phase flow; Studied 80% for sprays
- Completed teaching sessions for thermodynamics
- Obtained very satisfactory results for my German exam

I really wanted to procrastinate and ask the Prof to shift my sprays exam to another time instead of tomorrow, but I realized that if I did, I would just be losing the momentum to do stuff. I'm glad I did not let myself relax and sat through all the material, so really, on Friday, 14th March, 10.30 am, I would have completed all my academic commitments for WS07/08 in Karlsruhe and would probably deserve to relax for a few days, and give attention to the people and things that I have neglected for a while (very impt: Oli, Giugiu, ich bin gleich wieder da!!!).

Anyway, the most interesting experience this week was really the chance to teach Thermo in Germany, so I will write about it so that I can randomly come across this many years later and remember a little more about my exchange in Germany...

Situation:
While the Prof was away for the week (holiday with family), I got the chance to teach Thermodynamics in Karlsruhe University, Germany at the International Department. Basically it was about reviewing the entire Thermo I and Thermo II (greatest horror in basic engineering modules) for the students; I had 7.5 hours to go through all the material that they had covered in the last 2 semesters (about 90 hours of class time).

The challenge: I had to teach Thermo in the German style (emphasis in Germany and emphasis in US is different), although the language of instruction was in English. And 7.5 hours to cover 2 semesters' worth of work, at short notice, without the script and without solutions to examples, is itself very challenging. It really meant that Thermo had to be in my head... but it wasn't really so.

The Students:
About 10 students from all over the world: Korea, Japan, South Africa, Iran, Hungary, France, Malaysia etc. Different levels of aptitude, different levels of interest in the subject, but everyone wanted the same thing: a little bit of comfort that the exam was doable.

Why I wanted to do it: I have been a TA for thermo in Purdue before and I would like to see how it is done differently here; this also enriches my exchange experience - so I'm no longer just a student-exchange, but rather, I get to do TA-exchange too; oh, oh... a little bonus: Karlsruhe university pays out a short term contract for this 'block' course.

Difficulties: I had to conduct experiments for the thesis and study for my own 2 exams at the same time. This pretty much ensured that my day was from 8am to 8pm, and I was so tired I couldn't even manage to hang out one last time with a group of my friends who were leaving Karlsruhe for home. :( Fortunately I already spent a lot a lot of good times with them before this stressful period.

The greatest reward: Satisfaction on Saturday afternoon, as I finished my last 'review' session, the students told me thanks, and that they believed that they learned more in the last week than in the last 2 semesters. I hope they will pass Thermo with a good grade and have also found a method to study for their future exams.

Future work / Inspiration: I think the coolest thing would be to able to teach German at some point of my life in the future; I will not give up learning the language. I also realize that you can learn more by teaching, because you have to totally 'erfassen' / 掌握 / thoroughly know the material. And so, I would recommend starting classes for something that you really want to become good at. I also realized that it's been a long way since I was the confused student... so the scary truth looms in front of me: College is ending as I mark my transition from learning to teaching.

The song 起床 by 無印良品品冠

2008-03-09T17:38:00.004+01:00

Many people say that English songs are the most expressive, but I insist that Chinese songs describe feelings even better. This is because of the Chinese language itself, because there are many instances where you can use about 20% of the words you need in Chinese compared to using English to describe a whole situation. And so according to the above argument, in the same number of words over the same time span of a song (3-4 minutes), more feelings are really being expressed with the Chinese songs.

Actually, I just wanted to write about a particular song I've been listening to again: 起床 by 無印良品品冠. It's a very heartbreaking song, because it's about a person who is in the moment all alone in a foreign place, and he describes some of his feelings about not being with the person he loves. These feelings arise as the person wakes up, and realizes that his other half is not there / no longer there in his life. The saddest part is the chorus, where he recollects how it used to be like when he woke up: 'I used to be so lucky, I had you and got to hug you and say I love you to you everyday. I would be able to hear you breathe, for you were really really near to me. I wish that when I wake up tomorrow, you would be next to me, you would stay in my arms, and you have never even left. But all these are but just a dream.'

You know, chinese songs are like chinese idioms; they constitute the largest library of thoughts, feelings and experiences in the world. I can't say for sure that this is more so than any other language because I only know Chinese and English really well. I would say however, that Chinese is definitely richer than English in terms of these descriptions. Whatever you go through today, or perhaps better: whatever kind of insecurity you feel today, you can easily find either a chinese song or idiom to describe it. It makes me feel that we're really not that alone in this world, for what we think of as our unique (sad) experience has actually been experienced by another person before and we can really see and feel it through the lyrics of their songs. So, I am very grateful to the people who describe their feelings using music, through which I have been able to draw comfort whenever I feel sad or discouraged.

Hmm... here're the lyrics:
在異鄉陌生的夜裏
一個人拎著孤獨的細雨
沒有你的城市
這特別冷的冬季
抱著思念沉沉地睡去
隔天醒來第一件事情
就是好好想你
在心裏寫信給你
我曾經多麼幸運
天天有你抱著你
輕輕說我愛你
靜靜聽你輕柔呼吸
你我好近好近
多希望明天睡醒
身邊有你
你就留在我的懷抱裏
不曾離去是我作了夢而已

Surprises in Germany

2008-03-05T00:29:00.002+01:00

I happened to talk about what has surprised me in Germany yesterday, so let's have an intermediate reflection at some of the surprising (and also surprisingly funny, surprisingly interesting) things that happened in Germany, in no particular order:

1. Learned German pretty successfully: did my mid-term thesis presentation in German, completed the DSH, going for an oral exam in German, and more...

2. Learned Spanish with relative success: able to type spanish on MSN now, able to eat at spanish time etc.

3. Turkish experiences with my 'hacIms' and my 'bebegims'... and being played a GAY joke on... yes, Can managed to convince me that another friend Emre is GAY and likes me.

4. Got to know Sinisa (my supervisor at the Institute), who is the nicest guy in the world, cos he came to visit me while I was in hospital with candy and a book for me to read

5. Cooking: did a whole load of it here, including throwing a full Korean feast for friends

6. Learned magic tricks from Ziming

7. Good, good times with Professor S.

8. Hospital experience in Germany: managed to watch the whole operation

9. Became very close to my super duper long-lost cousins Olivia and Giulia

10. Won a prize for an essay about my experience in study-abroad

11. Learned how to dance a bit to latin music

12. Got to teach thermodynamics at the international department

13. Fucking drank detergent: knnbccb to Ziming and Can.

14. Re-learned Cantonese.

15. Talked more to my mum. Maintained relationships and friendships with people I was close to.

16. Hmm, most importantly is this here: I finally understood how I was really the same with everyone else, susceptible to the same insecurities, fears, and so on...

Ok, don't know where I got the energy to write all these... time to sleep, and wake up to a brand new day!!!

One Sleepless Night and My Reality

2008-03-03T22:18:00.003+01:00

I've always been able to sleep well, but yesterday for the first time in n years I couldn't. So that's how it feels to have a sense of insecurity... to not know what is going to happen and be not sure whether you will continue to have what you have today. Even after a full day of achievements and accomplishments, the loneliness at night can grip you so tightly that you feel like you are being choked. So that is how it feels like... finally I understand...

My 'bond' in Singapore draws nearer. 2009 January I will be back in Singapore, to start a new life. That brings me to several questions:

1. How much of what I want to bring along with me can I bring with me?
2. How much of what I am supposed to remember will I actually remember?
3. How much of what means a lot to me will continue to mean a lot to me?

Hmm I'm not going to answer these questions here (I don't have the answer anyway), and I'm not anywhere close to depression, but I just wanted to say that man, finally, Ping is undergoing a humbling experience. All the arrogance and the pride is gone... the reality draws near - I'm just another 平凡的人.

Ok, no more rambling. Please pray that I do well in my teaching assignment, that I complete my experiments, and that I ace my two upcoming exams. And that my leg is once again functional in two weeks...

An Old Post I found...

2008-02-24T18:34:00.002+01:00

This was what I wrote sometime in 2004 that is still relevant to me today in 2008. The difference is that I am now comfortable with the German language and culture, and am starting to understand Spanish and Turkish too... I guess people do achieve stuff over the years (just like Singapore and Hong Kong have changed over the last 20 years), although I'm still thinking about my 7 sources of income.

"I remember my ambition - to become fluent in 7 languages and integrated in 7 cultures. Up to now, I can only speak English, Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. But I do not know academic terms in Mandarin or Cantonese, because I do not use them to study. This makes me understand academic material that is only taught in English. The next 2 languages where I have beginner's proficiency in is German and Korean. German is because of formal courses in Purdue, and Korean is because of friends and food. I have minimal knowledge of Japanese - up to tourist level I guess (and a bit more to make Mari and Shoko laugh). And finally I know about 20 lines of Vietnamese - something that I learnt from Binh but never followed through on my own -_-

7 Cultures - I'm comfortable with Singaporean, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Hongkong, and American culture. *I still need one more to make it 7*
I think I'm totally comfortable in Shanghai, but I don't think I can say that I'm comfortable in a China-Chinese culture. To put it nicely, it's too diverse for me to understand totally actually. Ah... it would be so nice to feel comfortable wherever you are in the world - not because you have money so that people would help you for your money, but rather because you feel comfortable in the culture so that you can have friends, or make them, wherever you are.

But life is cruel. An aspiration like the one that I have is not enough to make me survive well. Still need a more practical one that can help to generate some income. Sometimes I wonder whether it is time to start thinking about settling down, and that means I have to add in '7 sources of income' to my ambition list and pursue it just like i want to learn 7 foreign languages and integrate well in 7 cultures. Yup, that's right. I think I should start thinking about my 7 sources of income now."

Some Old Essays...

2008-02-24T17:52:00.003+01:00

I've posted some old, rather stupid essays that I wrote... e.g. Relating Girlfriends to Thermodynamic Concepts; Why the best boyfriend is an engineer etc.; Best girlfriends being management majors or doctors... I can't find my favorite one though: Men are like Cosine Waves and Women are like Sine Waves. Oh well...

WTF anyway. Who the hell can write these crap out? Relating girls to thermodynamics, to differential equations with their complementary functions and particular solutions and the trivial solution etc. No wonder I graduated with freaking good grades almost every damn semester. That's why I didn't have to study that much - everything I learned in class I just applied to my everyday life.

Hmm, whatever... read them at my other blog: herrloke.blogspot.com I bet you'd enjoy some of them.

Colonel Png's speeches: On being a motivational speaker and his love story

2008-02-24T15:26:00.005+01:00

Today I went to the baptism of my friend Hansong in the morning. After that I found out that someone's secret ambition is to be a motivational speaker. Christianity and speeches lead me to think of a particular person that I respect very much, so I will tell you the story of Colonel B. H. Png, Commander of Officer Cadet School when I was in the army. I will talk a little about his simple algorithm to giving a motivational speech, the 'GPS' tactic, that has seriously made me a relatively confident public speaker. And also about Colonel Png's love story that he shared with all the commissioned officers in 44/01 Bravo Echo Golf.

Colonel Png is a staunch Christian, i.e. someone that I normally won't really get along too well with because I was averse to people who were religious and consistently attempted to convert me. He is so pious that even during Commander's parade, he can quote stories from the bible and relate it to being a good soldier. From another meeting with him in his office, he told me the story of David in full detail, to illustrate to me that he believes that people can become stronger in face of adversity. I respect him so much not just because he could capture my attention with Bible stories, but never in my life have I met someone so passionate about life itself. And because of him I have cast away my Vorurteile (prejudice) against people who were staunchly religious and began to respect people some of them.

Two speeches from Colonel Png were extremely motivating. The first was on how to give a speech. You use the algorithm 'GPS'. G stands for 'guess what?'. To invoke interest in people, you need to always ask them, 'Guess what?', because only interesting statements can follow 'guess what' or you'd look like a complete idiot. For instance, compare the effect of 'Guess what? It has been our company's interest to find out if there is high potential in the solar energy area and after some research, every piece of information holds our beliefs and reality in agreement.' and 'Good morning, today I'm going to talk about how market research shows that there is high potential in the solar energy area.'

After you say 'Guess what?' you have to 'Prove it'. Yup, 'P' for prove it. And in proving it, you have to cite your sources, and explain to the people why these sources are trustworthy, to add credibility to what you have to say. Let's put it this way, if you are doing an internship or if you are working, and you had to find information, how comfortable would you be to cut and paste anything from the internet and then say to your boss - oh, I found them on the internet. So after you've found a piece of information, you actually need to spend even more time to uncover its source because that is the key to convincing you about the correctness of the info and bring a tone of conviction to your voice when you finally deliver the speech.

Finally you ask the question 'So how?' (yup, true blue Singaporean phrase) because there's no point in discussing something without telling people what you can use the discovery for.

"Guess what? Prove it. So how?" You'll be able to come up with any speech in no time. Let's do an example: speech at a friend's (fictitious) wedding.

"Guess what? Our friend Ziming is getting married today and very soon he will not be able to hang out with us much anymore.
I'll substantiate. Observe how Ziming spends so much time already with his girlfriend and his work, leaving only Fridays free to hang out with us, his buddies. But as we know, a marriage is of course, not just a bond between 2 people, but also between their families, at least in the Asian context. So after today, when he spends Saturdays at her parents' and when she spends Sundays at his parents', they'd really only have Friday nights alone and together in consideration of all the other busy work days.
So how? It is nonetheless a really happy occasion for us, his friends. It is sad to let him go, but we know that it is also time for us to let him move on further to explore this new part of life. With our very best wishes, we hope that Ziming will not forget us as he builds his happy family."

Easy? I think everyone can do it too!

Now I would like to mention a little about the other speech he gave. His love story, basically. When he was in university, he studied theology in France. For 4 years he had to be away from Singapore, but before he left, he was already together with a very beautiful and lovely girl. Unlike most people, he was able to tell the girl the following instead of a lie that he will come back to marry her: "It is already certain that I love you and you love me. But in these 4 years that I am gone, many things can happen, because you too are starting a new phase of life too. The time is not right for us and I really don't want you to say no to other guys who want to get to know you, because I may not be the perfect one for you and vice versa, and we won't know until we are both set free to find out. I cannot promise you anything else, but 4 years later, when I come back from my studies, I will look for you again. And if we were meant to be together, it wouldn't make a difference 4 years later." And four years later he came back and kept his promise to look for her. Although many things have really changed as he predicted, some have changed for the better. A more mature, self-aware person he became, and a more loving, gentle woman she became. They found out that they loved each other even more and today, this woman is sitting next to him in our commissioning parade as his wife. (remember they couldn't do daily communication because in that period there was no email and telephone was about equivalent to 3 euros per minute)

What a love story. For me, I have just fucked up real bad, caused both sides so much hurt and pain and uncertainty and insecurity about themselves, been selfish, and been stupid, even though in my period of time there is email, webcam, msn, skype and everything else you can think of. If there's anything I want to do better in my life, I don't want to hurt someone I love ever again.

Dancing - one of the most important things to learn in life

2008-02-23T00:57:00.004+01:00

In the US, a guy's ability to dance is judged by how often a guy can get behind a girl and start rubbing his crotch against hers successfully. I made the mistake of believing that this is the way to dance too and had gotten into some stupid uncalled-for misunderstandings with my ex-girlfriend. A major issue when we were together was whether I could stop dancing with other girls. I never managed to give a straight-out "yes", because although I danced from the back, I never did it with any sexual intent after I passed my horny teeny stage; rather, it was fun and amusing to dance together with other girls and have only friendly, non-sexual body contact with them. To stop dancing with other girls felt more like a promise to give up some of my female friends, but it was always taken as a refusal to stop "rubbing" with other girls. It's just another of the many small but important things I never managed to compromise and was interpreted as another way of saying that I did not love her enough.

Anyway in one of my earlier posts I said that dancing, singing, drawing etc. are some things that I couldn't do. I think after a series of events (ok, parties w/ spanish/latin music), I think I can actually dance decently now and I conclude that it is one of the most important things to learn how to do properly. It helps you learn to respect a girl and make her trust you, because only with confidence and maturity can one handle the body contact in the right way while dancing. I find that really important because many guys don't know how to treat girls right, including myself. On one hand there is a tendency for lots of guys to either only take a girl as a girlfriend or have nothing to do with her at all. On the other hand there are many guys who are really nice but because they don't know how to socialize with girls, the girls never ever get to know them (e.g. watch Hitch and look at "Albert Brennaman").

Really, there are not many moves that one needs to know. Rather, the most fun part about dancing is to make the girl you're dancing with as comfortable as possible. Two simple rules apply: 1. Touch all the parts that you're allowed to touch (hold the hands, support the back, rest her hands on your shoulders etc.). 2. Do not touch all the parts that you're not supposed to touch (breast, ass, thighs etc). The bodies are then connected and can move according to the music and like what we already know in physics, two bodies moving at the same optimal frequency (i.e. moving in synchrony to the music beat) can induce resonance.

Ok, maybe you don't know how to start because you are shy. For a guy, the best thing to do is to go to a Latin girl and be honest and say, I'm sorry, I don't know how to dance, can you teach me? No nice girl in the world would say 'haha, you can't dance' and laugh at you. If the girl says that she's probably not worth getting to know anyway. Btw, ask a Latin girl because they usually know how to dance and they will teach you because they want you to have a good time too. Just a comment: it's stupid to ask the hottest chick who's already shaking it in the room to dance with you on pretext of wanting to learn. She's probably already having a blast on the dance floor already so don't go there to break her tempo.

And if you're a girl and you've never really danced before - ehh, just look for a decent looking guy who doesn't 'touch' other girls with his 'salty pig hand' while dancing and stand near him. You don't have to ask him. You can just try to look a bit uncomfortable (you will naturally be because you will have left the safety zone of 2 meter radius from your best friend in the party) while waiting for the song to end. He will notice you and ask if you want to dance, and will reassure you if you say you cannot dance. Same thing: don't bother standing next to the hot guy that you have a crush on. Even when he asks you to dance you'd feel awful because you can't do it yet so just go and learn how to from a nice, decent guy.

To end this post, I need to talk a little about my discomfort in a group that consists entirely of guys. I went to watch a hockey game yesterday and for the very first time in several months, I was surrounded by sweaty, muscular guys as I went to congratulate my friend for winning the game after the match. Guys screaming at the top of their voices, each one flexing his muscles hard. Hmm... I don't know, but I just can't appreciate the company of an all guys group. I already have enough of it in my classes (it's so bad that my professors say 'good morning gentlemen' because there are virtually no ladies in mechanical engineering).

Meine Meinung nach ist "Deutsch Lernen" ...

2008-01-09T00:34:00.003+01:00

让我试谈谈我学德语的经验。德语嘛，其实跟英语很接近，语法上固然有一点点区别，可是除此之外，尤其是名词，形容词，与动词方面，其实是颇顾名思义的。很侥幸的，英语几乎是我的母语，不论在课堂上或是街上，都经常用到。因此，学习德语对我本身来说并不难，唯有困难的，只是在口语方面。譬如德语的ch声（Nach., Schach），说起来有点像是说话的人想要吐痰似的。要我弄出那种声音，我倒有点顾虑，害怕会不小心把一口痰吐出来。

很多人对德语的看法是，因为所有德语的名词都有分性别，因此想要背熟，的确是令人非常困扰。相对来说，中文的名词完全不分性别，可是，我觉得中文的量词，可以比喻成德语的‘性别’。对外国人来说，中文的量词倒比德语名词的性别还难分辨。试想想，依照德语来说，也只有der,die或者das。当我们从中文的量词里随随便便抽出几个例子，譬如说‘一只猫，一个人，一张桌子，一把椅子，一幢楼，一台电视，一头牛，一排山，一扇门等等’，我们就可以看得出，为何量词会比性别更难学习。而且，每当一个人把德语名词的性别混淆时，德国人还是能了解一个人的语义。相反的，‘一个山,一台牛,一只人等等’对中国人来说，不只是没有意义，反而听起来还蛮滑稽的。

总而言之，我觉得德语并没有如那么多人叙述的可怕难学。德语难，倒是难，可是并非想象中的难，只要是给予一定的努力，便会能好好掌握。要学习任何语言也是如此。所谓‘一份耕耘，一份收获’，没有先天的努力，就没有后天的收获。我觉得，如果一个人要好好学习德语，就应该尽心尽力的学习，而不应该过于思考他的难度

Stuff about Atomization and Sprays

2007-12-20T14:55:00.001+01:00

Hi :) This is a rather boring post for most people, but in case you are interested in why I'm studying sprays, read on...

Introduction to Sprays
So... Everyone knows that Ping studies mechanical engineering, with a concentration in the applications of sprays and atomization. But what is there really to study about sprays and atomization? A spray is such a common phenomenon (e.g. spray paint, perfume, and insecticide), that it is hard to imagine if there is anything new involved in the study of sprays. What is really then so amazing about it?

To me, sprays can be a perplexing wonder of nature. Take a moment to think, if there were no sprays, what would be different in this world? First, there will be no rain. Instead, the whole cloud will just collapse onto the ground and become a stream of water. There would be also no more splashes in swimming pools and diving. Instead, one just slides quietly into the pool of water.

That being said let us understand how sprays occur. Sprays are formed through the breakup of liquid ligaments, in the case of a liquid stream exiting an orifice, or sheets, in the case of a moving thin layer of liquid on a flat surface. When liquid flows through a gas, say air, there are aerodynamic forces that attempt to ‘chop up’ the ligaments, acting on the liquid. Internally, surface tension resists the break up and is responsible to keep the liquid in a stable shape. It follows that when shear stresses are way greater than surface tension forces, droplet breakup and formation is induced. The ligaments, sheets and droplets will continue breaking up into smaller and smaller fragments, until surface tension forces are more dominant than aerodynamic forces. The liquid droplets then keep a stable shape, and are spherical in shape.

Engineers are interested in controlling the size/size distribution of sprays. Overly large droplets, overly small droplets and uneven droplet size distributions are in many cases undesired. For instance, in a medical spray for asthma, droplets that are too small ‘float’, whereas droplets that are too large get stuck in the respiratory channel before reaching the lungs. Therefore, it is desired to obtain homogenously sized droplets of a pre-determined size.

In addition to size considerations, in some cases, it is also desired to control the velocity of the droplets. For instance in gas turbine engines, because of limited space in the burning chamber after the injection of droplets, droplets of a certain size must travel at a certain speed to ensure complete evaporation in the chamber, so that it can combust properly thereafter. To digress, a nozzle that can produce droplets with a strong correlation between its size and velocity is desired in this case.

Atomizers
So what do we call the devices that help to generate sprays? These are atomizers (or nozzles) and through these devices, sufficient relative velocities (and hence aerodynamic forces) between the liquid and the gas is generated to induce droplet breakup. One can make use of several different mechanisms to induce drop breakups, namely pressure, rotary system and twin-fluid atomizers.

In a pressure based atomizer, one makes use of high pressure to achieve a high relative velocity of the liquid with the surrounding gas. The liquid can exit the atomizer in many forms, e.g. as a jet (plain orifice), as a hollow / solid cone (simplex), as a fan (fan spray), depending on the internal geometrical design of the nozzles.

In a rotary atomizer, liquid is fed onto a rotating disc. The droplet sheet on the disc is disintegrated according to the liquid flow rate and the speed of rotation of the disc. Again, droplet breakup occurs because of large relative velocities of the droplets with respect to the surrounding gas that in turn lead to greater aerodynamic forces versus surface tension forces.

To achieve high relative velocities in twin-fluid atomizers, a gas is injected at a much higher speed than the liquid to induce breakup. A low quantity of gas at high velocity can attack the fluid within the atomizer (internal-mixing air-assist) or it can impinge the liquid at or outside the discharge orifice (external-mixing air-assist). The air-blast mechanism is used when a large quantity of gas at relatively lower velocities (about 120 m/s) is used. In this case, the liquid is usually spread out as a film, and thereafter impinged by the air into droplets. Another possibility is to spray the liquid into a large volume of high velocity air. Finally, in an effervescent configuration, air is injected into the liquid somewhere upstream in the nozzle to form a bubbly mix before discharge.

An Interesting Application of Sprays – Spray Drying

Milk powder is one of the most important commercial products invented in the 20th century. Since it was so much lighter than milk itself, but contained the same nutritional and taste properties, it could be easily transported and distributed to people across the world. One consequence is, arduous tasks like logistics in food aid have been made easier, when milk powder instead of milk is distributed. However, have you ever wondered how something conceptually so simple as milk powder is produced?

Milk powder is actually obtained through a process called spray-drying. In this process, milk is pumped through a nozzle into a heated chamber. Upon exiting the nozzle, the milk stream breaks up into many tiny droplets and begins to evaporate in the presence of hot air. Water is removed from the milk through this process, and what remains is a powder that retains the original, desired properties of milk. The powder falls to the bottom of the chamber and is collected through a feed / pump system.

Although the principles of spray drying as described above are easy to understand, the machines to facilitate this process are actually very complex. It takes the work of many engineers with a good background in fluid mechanics to design, build and test a spray drying facility. Therefore, milk powder did not come about easily; rather, it is a by product of technology that has enabled a global access to nutrition for young children.

If 24 were set in 1994...

2007-12-08T13:49:00.001+01:00

Here's a link to this ultra-hilarious video (for fans of 24) that I watched today: 24 Lampoon

Basically, Jack Bauer does not have access to all the cool gadgets that we see in 24. These are the problems he faces: Instead of a cell, he has a pager, and when he receives a page from the command central, he has to stop whatever he's doing and search for a public telephone. Emails can't be sent easily because the connections are not fast enough. There are no laser printers, so printing is also really slow. When attempting to connect to the (dial-up) internet, if someone uses the phone at the same time, internet will be cut off. Also, since internet is being paid by the hour, it's impossible to spend too much time on the internet...

After watching this video, I just realized that science and technology has improved so much since my middle school days, but I wonder, who is really responsible for these? Are we, humans, really that smart to develop these kinds of technology by ourselves? Well, I'm definitely not that good. I'm just a college student, whose life is about parties, essays, labs, and equations. Time to think about how to improve the speed of internet connections? Nope. What exactly is responsible for the rate of data transfer anyway? Even if I had time to think about it, if there were no one I could ask, I would be like... ok let's do something else that's simpler and more fun, like... writing my blog or thinking about new recipes for food. And none of my friends look like the kind of people who develops these stuff. Or maybe they do, I don't really know...

So I really would like to meet someone who is so good and can design and create new things like this...and watch him build and design it. The question is now, where can I do it???? I've already been to Purdue and Karlsruhe, two very good universities. There are numerous research facilities and I'm affiliated with some of them. The problem is, I still can't find a direct application most of the time for the theoretical and experimental results that we generate, and see the impact of our work on the industry, despite being around really smart people who really generates results. Or maybe work like this has been done since 20, 30 years ago and only suddenly show up after a lot of vigorous testing. Hoping to see all these in a few years is perhaps just wishful thinking then?

Hmm, actually I conclude I'm actually around the smart people already, just that I'm definitely not one of them. I think I prefer being the technical marketer i.e. the one who can explain the technology behind the stuff and tell you how useful they can be, and not the one who's interested in developing the technology. So perhaps that's why I can't understand how the technology is being developed although I'm right smack in the middle of things now.

Well, fortunately one still needs some sort of engineering background to do some technical marketing, so probably I won't be out of a job after I graduate... if you happen to be someone who can develop technology, let me know. I really want to know the thought process for doing this stuff... and how you have the interest to do so...

Why I Studied Mechanical Engineering

2007-12-07T16:30:00.000+01:00

Many people choose Mechanical Engineering as a major because they like to play with tools, and machines. Some have interest in the automotive industry, whereas others want to design guns, robots or just stuff in general. I would say that people in general have some interest in drawing (and using CAD programs), designing, working with tools, and enjoy physics to a certain extent if they choose mechanical engineering as their major.

I had none of this; let me elaborate. In Singapore, virtually no one has a garage (defined in American terms, i.e. complete with tool kits, work space etc.). I’ve never even changed a light bulb before I went to live in the US, not to mention play with tools. To me, cars are sources of pollution, and I don’t particularly like them. In fact, I prefer public transport to cars and I can’t even tell that a car is a Porsche or a Mercedes if not for the label. Never have I ever been able to draw, and I have not even heard of CAD before Purdue. True, I like to design, but only maps in computer games like Warcraft / Heroes, and have never thought about designing a machine before. The physics part of Math was also my worst subject in high school - I had 2 / 48 for my mechanics exam.

To substantiate further, I did not even know the meaning of engineering. I was surprised to find out that it was engineers who designed cars, airplanes, oil drills etc. Even quality control of ice cream production was done by engineers. And I found these out after I started my studies in the US, not before I applied to the universities. Yup, that was how clueless I was.

So why the hell did I choose mechanical engineering as my major? At the age of 18, there were three wrong reasons. First, EDB (my sponsors) would support me only if I pursued these so-called engineering degrees. Amongst CE, IE, ME, Ch.E, EE and AAE, ME seems like the best. I hate chemicals, so Ch.E was out. I hate complex numbers, so EE was out. I didn’t like airplanes, so AAE was out. CE was the dumping ground for under-qualified students in Singapore, so it was out. And what the hell was IE anyway? Doesn’t sound cool to me… and so ME is probably the one I’d settle for.

Second, my dad said that engineering is a technical degree and it made sense to get one. If you know how I communicate with my dad, you’d understand why I agreed with him without asking more questions. First, you don’t usually ask questions to my dad because half of the questions can be interpreted as stupid. You just say yes to whatever he says, and find out what to do later. Maybe that’s why I can understand so many professors, although half the students find their lectures rather perplexing. I had excellent training at home. J

Third, the word engineering just sounded better than all the other majors. History, geography, literature, sociology, psychology, math, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, dentistry, management sounded really boring to me. Actually, management sounded good. So did economics. My dad however, said that if I wanted to study management, he could just teach me and I don’t have to go to college. Economics was just something I did well at, but it was really boring too.

Yup I know, after reading what I have to write, you wonder, why do I even go to college right? Unfortunately, college is something that one does for his parents in Asia; it’s like part of our mandatory education program. Then again, fortunately I thought that since I have to do it I might as well try to do well in it, instead of just failing and repeating classes. And with that attitude I studied M.E. at Purdue with some decent success, along with the help of many good professors. I would say that although I started with the wrong reasons, I went on with the right attitude and met the right people, so much so that nowadays, I really enjoy the idea of engineering and would like to dedicate a part of career to it.

Learning Foreign Languages - A Hobby

2007-12-06T01:05:00.001+01:00

Math used to be my hobby. When I started doing engineering, math became my job. When your hobby becomes your job, it is not your hobby anymore. And so I have a new hobby now: Learning foreign languages.

My interest in foreign languages was always there, but the motivation to actively develop the interest came about rather coincidentally. In Purdue I was required to take general electives. Since I had only interest in foreign languages, and since I had no interest in sociology, psychology, history or literature whatsoever, I asked my adviser if I could take Japanese for a start. Unfortunately there weren't any more places for Japanese, and so I asked for French. French 101 clashed with my timetable but I persisted - what else is there?

It turned out that only German fitted my schedule and so I ended up going to German classes. One thing that I liked about the class was that, Enikoe Fodor, my first German teacher, did not speak any English in German 101. She started out speaking German, and on the last day of classes, still spoke German. Last I know she went back to Hungary and got married, and sadly I don't know how I can contact her again. It would be so nice to say hi to her, and say thanks to her. Because of her, I started learning German and look, now I can speak, write and almost think in German!

I must say though, almost all the Americans hated her because she didn't start with something easy. I beg to differ, because to me, it's really more fun trying to figure out the pieces and put them together. And after all, it's not like she was talking about Shakespeare or Two-Phase Flow in her lesson. She was teaching you how to do simple things like describing your dorm room in Purdue i.e. "In my room there is a small bed. There is also a big table. On the table there are many books and a computer. Etc etc...". Another reason why I liked it: cos I felt like a kid again, listening how to describe these really simple things in a foreign language and slowly getting it. It was good to realize that even at the age of 21, I could still learn like a kid.

Now I'm taking spanish as a foreign language, using German as the language of instruction. I think that is the most interesting aspect of my life here in Germany, and I also hope it will be the start of a lifelong hobby. It's really nothing too special actually - think of all the Indonesians or PRCs who learned English in Singapore and then used English to learn maybe German or something, so this phenomenon is actually pretty common. So, to make it more interesting and different for myself, I think it would be so cool thereafter to learn Portuguese using Spanish, and then Italian using Portuguese and French using Italian and so on. Meanwhile I can be ambitious and try to take some Turkish using German i.e. 2 languages at the same time. Eventually I will learn Arabic using Turkish, Japanese using Arabic and so on... until eventually I learn my mother tongue using a foreign language. The circle will then be complete :)

So why do I like to learn languages? After some contemplation, I realize that language is really the key to culture. I do not enjoy traveling unless I can figure out a lot of things during my stay in the country. Looking at buildings, museums and scenery is not enough of a reason to travel, since I can easily see most of these in the internet nowadays. Food is not satisfying, unless I can order it in the local language, because I could very well have access to most types of food in the place I'm staying at anyway. To me, there must be a greater lure to traveling, and I believe knowledge of the local language will complete my experience. With knowledge of the local language, I can actually talk to the locals and have a more complete interaction. I can read the road signs, magazines and newspapers and slowly be amazed at how another language system different from mine can exist and make so much sense. Really, I never fail to be fascinated at how different people speak different languages, although it's a simple fact of life.

But how much of a language should one know exactly before he goes traveling? Well, for me, I guess to an extent where I can interact meaningfully with the locals - if I cannot talk, at least I want to listen and partially understand, or read and understand how things are being written and reported somewhere else. That means about 1-2 years of experience per language, and that means that to go to many different countries for the experience that I would really want, I will have to learn languages lifelong. I guess it's ok; I think when I work in the future, I will be happy to go for language classes since it's probably a break from work. It's like playing sudoku for some people I guess.

All that being said, Korean, Turkish and Spanish are the three languages that I want to learn next. I already know some Korean grammar and I am already used to how the language sounds. 3 months in Korea and I will definitely have some progress. Turkish is something new; the nouns are not like those in languages that I know already, and so it will take a lot of effort to learn it. Nonetheless, let's see what I can achieve before I go to Istanbul next year :) As for Spanish - I have until March before visiting Sergio in Spain. That is probably the one I need to touch up the most by then. So... to all my Spanish speaking friends - it's tandem time :)

Nikolaus Ball in Heidelberg

2007-12-02T13:26:00.001+01:00

The Nikolaus Ball:

1st Dec 2007 is the Nikolaus Ball organized by my uncle's Fraternity. It's some sort of core brothers group for students of Jura (law) and they have several functions a year. This particular one is specifically organized for young people... it's like a D and D, except that there was actually going to be dancing, and the guys only wore white and black, with bow ties...

The Preparation Phase:

So I didn't have anything to wear until 5 o'clock on the day itself (and for that Oli called me a clown). As I just mentioned, I was required to wear a white shirt with black pants and a jacket. And a bow tie. WTF WTF WTF! That's like wearing 'no. 2' ... all the bad memories of having to tuck my shirt into the underwear and inspection for every single crease in the uniform came back to me. Feeling buay song that I had nothing to wear, I went to Espirit and got myself a new shirt and new pants. When I got back to my dorm, my amigo Sergio insisted that I had to take some pictures:

Pre-party pics: (CW from top left) With beers; with Sergio's Axe deodorant and free condom that came with purchase; with Sergio's poster; with painting of angel in my floor in Hadiko

Pictures with my Amigo, Sergio

The party:

So I was fetched to Heidelberg by my aunt. I went with Oli(via), Giulia, Monia / Monja (I don't know how to spell it) and later we met up with their friend Anja. Yeah I know their names all end with ia / ja... but I think it's cute.

Well, anyway, the ball is basically really really formal, because only guests on the list are admitted. After that, we were seated according to a PLAN, and I was separated from my cousins and their friends. I just have angst for speaking German to new German people still. They would somehow always end up giving some comments that I may not totally understand and I would feel like a clown... so during the dinner I concentrated hard on the food (it was freaking good...we had duck in orange sauce, carrot soup, some kind of lasagne with carroty flavor, fish in white sauce, pommes au gratin and tiramisu for dessert) and didn't really talk too much to the new people I met. I guess I said the same old things like where I'm from, what I'm doing in Germany, why I'm at the party and so on, but I didn't talk too much cos I wasn't on home turf. Anyway, my table was quite multi-kulti. There was a Mexican guy (Ricardo) and Turkish girl (Aysal), both born and raised in Germany, a Romanian girl who went to a German school (Carmen), two Germans (Isabelle and Matthias), and me at my part of the table. I think somehow in Germany you always get into multi-kulti situations more so than in the US. It's actually pretty interesting, especially so when you don't speak English but German, because everyone speaks English nowadays anyway, so what's new about that...

After dinner we went dancing... I had to learn how to do it first of course... all the super cool turns and twists. I wanna say that it's like playing a computer game but Giulia said never tell any girl that. But it's true!!!! It feels like if you press fwd+up+A button, you get to spin the girl CCW. back+up+A = CW spin. Continuously hitting the A button after the first successful spin will let u do multiple spins. I can also imagine how fwd->back->fwd+B button is a move, where both partners lift the arms over each other's head, put them behind each other's neck and then spin around. Oh well, sorry I'm a dork... but here are some pics with my cute and beautiful cousins...

I love my cousins so much. Sadly, I was never really close to my other cousins... I don't know why. But I've gone shopping, eating, dancing, to movies, and cooked for Oli and Giulia (okok, not yet for Giulia) and I think it's really nice... they're 9 and 10 years younger than me but we still hang out like good friends. Anyway, I was such a retard. Late into the night, I could no longer tell if they were talking to me in German or English and I just felt dumb. I will be so sad when I have to leave Germany.

After the party:

So we took a taxi around 5.30 a.m. to the HBF, got into the train and somehow made our way back to Karlsruhe. We had some McDonald's and I cycled through the cold back to Hadiko. A little sobering, but I was totally exhausted when I reached my room around 7.30 a.m. Finally, I lasted a whole night at a party... I think my spanish and turkish friends will be proud of me cos I'm always the one who wants to go to bed first...

KK that's it for today... :)

My Favourite X'mas song

2007-12-01T11:41:00.000+01:00

Hey people... What's your favourite X'mas song? Mine is 'Last Christmas'... I guess it's because I specifically relate well to one part of the lyrics:

Once bitten and twice shy
I keep my distance, but you still catch my eye
Tell me baby, do you recognize me?
Well its been a year, it doesnt surprise me
Happy christmas, I wrapped it up and sent it
With a note saying I love you, I meant it
Now I know what a fool I've been
But if you kissed me now, I know you'd fool me again

In this part of the lyrics, I think of a guy who really really likes a girl, told her about it, got graciously rejected, but because they are still in the same place (e.g. same school, same city), he will see her every now and then, and each time he coincidentally sees her, she still makes his heart melt, although the encounter can be very brief and they might not even have said more than "Hi, how are you?". He is not sure if she still remembers him as the guy who told her he loved her last X'mas (or last year), because they have not really talked much since he was rejected. Nonetheless, she is still important to him, and he thinks about her all the time. So whatever, he gives her a Christmas present just because he still thought about her, and faintly hopes that she will maybe be happier from it, and perhaps think about him for a moment too. Ah, if somehow he gets back into contact with this girl because of the present, and this girl kissed him again, this little flame of hope inside him will become a fire again... but well, everything is said as nonchalantly as possible, albeit with a little hint of regret. After all, the objective is just really to give a present and not expect anything in return.

Anyway, basically that's what happens to me almost all the time and it's also how I behave towards girls I like. Btw, these are my problems:

1. I take slightly positive reactions from girls too seriously. So I'll think that I have a chance when I really don't have one.
2. I don't like short-term (one night, one month) relationships. So I've made passes on all possible easy targets although every time I go back I'd be like, shit man, why not?
3. I'm a pussy by nature. If a girl doesn't like me, I'd still want to be her friend. If possible, a really good friend. Most other guys just fuck it, because girls are either girlfriends or nothing.
4. I have also tended to like girls with boyfriends and girls who are leaving in a few months or who are not staying long in the same place as me at all. Then again, I've never had much of a chance to stay at a place for long. That'll come after I graduate...

Well, hmm, weird. I don't really know why I wrote about all that, but I really just wanted to say that I wish I could sing a song like "Last Christmas" nicely, and perhaps play the guitar while singing it. It's so sad that I do not have a lot of musical and artistic abilities. Being such a social guy, it sucks to lack so many skills that are required for socializing. These are the 'skills' that I have:

1) Ability to talk fluently in 3 different languages (English, German, Mandarin) and attempting to acquire more ability by the day(+Korean, Spanish, Turkish, maybe eventually Japanese)... oh you can add Singlish and Cantonese as my other languages if you want. I have a much stronger accent in Cantonese than any of the other languages I know but I understand it totally.
2) A good knowledge and appreciation of food from every cuisine (I'm however, really picky with Chinese food), as well as basic understanding of drinks (cocktails & wine)
3) Ability to tell stories / jokes, make people play drinking games, and look enthusiastic about it all
4) Ability to cook certain kinds of food, and therefore, I can host dinner parties
5) General interest in wanting to know more about different people, not just the girls. I mean, seriously, many weird guys just want to know girls. Do you know how sucky it feels when you're with a group of friends chilling somewhere, and a new guy comes along, and starts talking to the girls in your group and ignoring you? I really wanna say, fuckkkk off, you chee buy (amcik, chocho...) face! Talk to the guys first and make your presence accepted! :) You don't have to talk to me, there are so many guys in the group, just talk to one of us! I bet you the girls don't like another new girl abruptly joining the group just to talk to one of the guys too.
6) Computer games - Dota, Tekken, Soul Calibur. Don't get me started playing or you'll be wondering what the hell did Ping do when he was a teenager. Yes. I never stopped playing Tekken. Physically, maybe, but Paul Phoenix and Bryan Fury have always been fighting non-stop in some part of my brain, and the Phantom Assassin is still doing her 4x crits. Computer games are a no. 1 connection tool with Asian guys.

These are my desired skills / areas of knowledge:
1) Sports - I just don't have the interest in soccer, for instance. I can't talk sports for more than a minute because I just don't watch them. That's why I don't have a group of guys-only friends, except Antonio and Josh. Any more than 2 guys I feel intimidated cos I can't avoid the topic of sports, that I do not know jack shit about. The only sport I can play well anyway is basketball. I suck at almost everything else. Now that I've torn my ACL though, I can say sorry, I don't want to play because of an injury. What a nice way of escaping from the reality of my inability to play sports. :)
2) Cars - too many details. I can't tell the differences between cars, except whether it is old or new. Same reason why I can't have a group of guys-only friends. When they start talking about cars I'm lost. So why am I studying Mech. Engr? I guess it's something that's really nice to know, but not my true interest. If it is not my major, I won't put effort into knowing it... after all, why go to school if you already know everything? (That's how I explain myself if I don't get good results)
3) Musical instrument: I blame Singapore for making us play the recorder in Primary School for that. Killed all interest I ever had for musical instruments until I understood how the ability to play one can complete your life to a certain extent. I want to play at least one song like Last X'mas on the guitar!!!
4) Singing: I can't sing. I love to go to karaoke but I can't sing!!! :( I'd be so eager to say yes when someone says go to KTV, but when I reach there I'm just quiet all of a sudden. :( The secret really is to know how to sing 3 songs. But my voice is so bad I can't even sing one, so... :(
5) Dancing: How can one not know how to dance!!!! Salsa, cha-cha etc. these are sooooo impt. What are you then going to do when people start playing Spanish music? Stand in the corner like me? Heh... actually, I think the best thing to do is to ask one of the girls if she can teach you to dance...
6) Drawing cartoons: Why can every Japanese draw cartoons? I only know how to draw a penguin and a turtle. And even so, it doesn't look that cute. It'd be so nice to give a set of self-drawn cartoons to my friends for their birthdays for example.

Oh well, so much for a self-analysis and a wish-list of abilities. I conclude, next time if I'm given wishes, I'd wish for some permanent ability rather than something material. Or just the opportunity to be able to train some permanent ability.

Kk, that's it for today. Ciao!!!! :)

A follow up thought about what we discussed in German class yesterday: "Besser Lernen Mit Multi-Kulti?"

2007-11-29T12:55:00.000+01:00

This topic means 'Is a multicultural environment better for learning?' We discussed this topic during German class and I realized that besides being a good practice for both my oral and written German, it is also a rather interesting topic to write about. You can soon read the whole essay soon (in German) in my other blog.

I mainly wanted to make the following comment: Man, why couldn't they give us such topics during Chinese class in secondary school? No wonder no one did well or showed interest for Chinese. Chinese essay topics are like: "The trend recently in Singapore is that young teenagers are hanging out at shopping malls after school. Discuss your opinions on this issue."

Hello!!!!!!! WTF. First I was a teenager, so of course I would say it's cool to hang out in shopping malls after school. At least you don't stay in school the whole day and get bored!!! Second, if I wrote that, of course I would just conclude that this is a wonderful trend and I would encourage all students as well as all nerds to join in too, instead of suggesting measures that the schools / government can take against this. My teacher would of course just kill my grades for the essay, because the teachers believe that time wasted at the shopping mall could be time spent studying, and that people somehow evolve into gangsters because they go to shopping malls to hang out. In the end, because of grades, I had to write something I didn't believe in, and since I didn't have the conviction anyway, I couldn't write anywhere close to a decent piece of work for many of these essays. I conclude that is why my Chinese sucked.

If you tell me that this is just an exception, then let me give you another example of a topic that is given during Chinese class: "Chatting on the internet is now a common trend in Singapore. Discuss your opinions on this." What opinion do you want me to have? From my teenage point of view: It's fun, I like it, I get to make more friends. But no, the expected answer is: "internet chatting is a waste of time. Instead of doing this, students should focus more time on studying. This is how we can do encourage them to stop chatting on the internet..."

中文，English oder Deutsch?

2007-11-26T21:59:00.001+01:00

I must say that of the three languages I know, each of them serves a different purpose. Chinese is something I speak almost exclusively at home, or with Taiwanese and PRCs. German is the one I like the most, because every time a sentence is constructed, it's like playing Sudoku. There are a million conjugations that you must watch out for. On the other hand, English is my most proficient language, however, it is not my favourite. Let me elaborate on my proficiency with each of the three languages:

This is a sample Chinese text from me:
"我的ａｍｉｇｏ王允德最讨厌看中文简体，我今天偏要用中文简体写信给他．　干，超不爽的，德国什么烂天气嘛，每天都下雨，搞不好接下来两个月还是继续天天下雨，上课骑车还得淋雨，想到就不爽．咳，我的车子到底几时会到手？　科技几时会发展到瞬间移动的地步？显然不是今天，所以我才会呆在家。：（

hmm, 用中文打字好累哦，中文实在太多同音字了，譬如说，“我准备被贝贝背起来。” 这句字当中已经有了五个‘bei’，而且都是第四声的。哈，好偶然哦，写这blog的目的，其实是为了记载一下在德国的经验，干吗谈起中文来了？可能是坏天气的原因吧。干！好烂的天气！

好惭愧，现在我的德语已经比中文好多了，在这样子下去，我还是移民到外国去好了。不知道啦，至少还可以自然地表达自己。有时候想想，未来的我有没有可能到中国公干？应该还需要上多几个月的中文课吧。譬如说，怎么形容图案 (e.g. htf do you say the x-axis in chinese?)，怎么培养心情看中文论文（try reading something with a title like A non-linear analysis of a three dimensional simulation of a multi-faceted turbine component in Chinese； htf do you even say that in Chinese?),怎么培养心情讨论这种题目？至少用英文或德语学习，我还稍微有点兴趣。"

To summarize, I do not know many technical words in Chinese, and I tend to swear a lot when I write in Chinese. And I tend to feel sad and unhappy when I do something in Chinese, or I will complain about something. Nonetheless, it's still what I speak at home and it makes me very comfortable if I can get to speak Chinese now and then. Now to German...

Here is a sample email that I typed in German:

"Hallo,

Die Arbeit habe ich wieder gelesen und einige Schwerpunkte der Auswahl
der Aufregungsfrequenz, die ich bemerkt habe, sind:

a) Ziel unsere Untersuchung ist nur monodisperse Tropfen mit bekannte
Tropfengroße zu erzeugen - um zu machen, fangen wir an mit der
Anregungsfrequenz.
b) Optimale Anregungsfrequenz, fopt = ctr / lamdaopt = ctr / 4,51d
Für unser Spray, ctr ist ungefähr 10 m/s angenommen worden und d = 25, 50
oder 100 microns (kommt auf die Orifice Plate an). Dadurch können fopt
berechnen werden. Es ist an der Großeordnung von 25kHz.
Ich verstehe aber nicht, warum lamdaopt gleich 4,51d. Wenn du mir
erklären kannst, wäre es schön.
c) Tropfendurchmesser D = 1.89d, d = orifice große. (Rayleighs Ergebnis)
d) Wenn f aufsteigt, wird D kleiner werden. Höher f bedeutet große
Aufregung, um die Tropfenketten zu zerfallen. Aber es gibt sowohl einen
maximalen Wert, wobei die Tropfen nicht mehr monodisperse und äquidistant sind,
als auch einen minimalen Wert, wobei keinen Zerfall der Ketten stattfindet.
Wir müssen deswegen immer probieren, auch mit Hilfe der Kamera, bis wir
monodisperse und äquidistante Tropfen erreichen.

Bitte lassen mich wissen, ob ich die Grundlage richtig verstanden habe."

This is an email where I try to summarize what I read from a German thesis. I'm sure one can find grammatical errors inside, but I really like to write in German regarding technical issues. It's just somehow more clear than English. I like German more because I learned it properly, i.e. I was taught by Germans. This experience is really unlike learning English, where I was taught in Singlish, and on that account I somehow believe that the Singaporean accent is the correct way to speak English. Well, for me though, I am still happy with my accent; it's very characteristic of me. Without it I won't be recognizable to a lot of my friends. A note about German though - because of so much conjugation, there is no way to swear in German for me. I will worry about grammar mistakes, and I will be distracted from what I wanted to scold. So perhaps I'll stick to Chinese when I want to scold someone...

Hmm, now to English. I don't have to elaborate much about English - I'm writing everything here in English and you can see that I don't have a problem with the language. Just that Singlish is the real mother tongue and not English, and it takes effort to speak without the 'lah', 'loh' and 'leh's. As in, I do get tired speaking 'high English' sometimes. But definitely, it's useful and natural enough to me. Actually, go read what I have to say about Singlish in the other blog... I think it should be officialized ... the link is right at the top of this blog. I guess that's it for today! :)

The Meaning of my Blog Address

2007-11-25T14:23:00.001+01:00

Yeah I know, most people put flowery sayings like 'pinkphantasies', 'funkyflings', 'persiankitty' or 'lovelycrystals' or some form of their own real names in the blog address. Maybe even some romantic saying in French or Spanish, but mine on the other hand reads komischly: "Zwei weiche Eier in einer Reihe". No, actually it reads, "zweiweicheeierineinerreihe.blogspot.com". Even Germans won't get it actually - wtf? Two soft-boiled eggs in a row (bread in this context)?

Well, there are certain reasons for putting this title. First, this sentence, if said with the right Badisch accent, can prove that I have lived in Karlsruhe for a sufficiently long time. Just like how anyone who lived in Singapore long enough knows what 'Wah lau, knnbccb!' is. After all, this blog is an account of my experience in Germany, so something really local should be used to characterize it.

Second, this is so hard to spell, you will have to remember me and my context to remember it. Sure, you can bookmark my blog too. I know it's easy to bookmark a page, but we really have no idea how little effort people want to put into life nowadays, because a lot of people don't check their bookmarks often, or they just have too many bookmarks that they don't know what the bookmarks lead them to after a while. Therefore, it acts as some natural filter for people who are just passing by. i.e. you have to take some effort to 'know' about this episode of mine.

Finally, this statement is after all, still something related to food. If you know me for just one day, you would have realized that I love to eat more than anything else. There'll be gleams and sparkles in my eyes as the word food is mentioned, and I do not save money because of food. In fact, I have traveled so much less of Europe in comparison to my peers, because I spent so much on food. Oh, actually, I'd travel to eat something good. :) So therefore, this blog address is actually something very characteristic of me...

Ok, just thought I'd write something to clarify this issue. Time to get some lunch... omelettes? :)

A Summary of My Experience in Germany till Today

2007-11-25T12:25:00.000+01:00

I've been in Germany for 2 1/2 months already so a lot has already happened. I can only summarize the overviews for the last three months because otherwise, it would take me three more months to describe the last three months. That's why you cannot procrastinate about things like blogging or you would just be bombarded with too much information. And that's why my previous blogs don't succeed very well. Anyway, for this entry, I guess it makes the most sense to divide my life into 'work, social activities, and travels', although seriously there's much more to life than that, right? Here goes...

September:
Work: Arrival, lots of administration, PDA-set up, Lab Orientation
Social: Hang out with my cousins, aunt and uncle on weekends. Getting to know the people at the institute.
Travels: Munich (Oktoberfest), Frankfurt (Auto Show), Stuttgart (Betriebsausflug)

October:
Work: Erasmus German class, Labview Course, PDA-experiments
Social: O-phase w/ Erasmus parties, Fluressen
Travels: Munich (Oktoberfest), Stuttgart (Volksfest), Heidelberg

November:
Work: Building up a droplet generator, Two-Phase Flow and Numerical Methods, Spanish, begin DSH classes, revision for Fluids and Heat Transfer
Social: Cooking for groups, my birthday, K4 bar, Carambolage party
Travels: Strasbourg, Duesseldorf

By the way, here's the pictures of some of the people plus some photos from Oktoberfest and Volksfest:

We, the GEARE students

My cousins Giulia (left) and Olivia (right), and again without glasses (the glasses are mine)

My Turkish friends (clockwise from left: Sonay, Emre, Can, Gamze, Handan, Nilüfer and Burcu)
Oktoberfest and Volksfest

Background (Vorüberlegung) to my current disposition

2007-11-25T00:57:00.000+01:00

Eh. Just so you know, Vorüberlegung does not translate directly into the word 'background'. It means 'pre-considerations'... yup, so these are some pre-considerations you might want to have before you read my entries. You might want to understand the following:

1. Who am I: Ich bin der seit 3.5 Jahren in den USA gestudierte und danach einen Austauschprogramm in Karlsruhe machende Ping. Basically a 25 year old guy who's not out of college yet.

2. Where I'm at: I am at Karlsruhe University, located in the ex-capital of Baden, famous for Nusselt, whom you must know if you have done heat transfer. Also famous for the dude who made the Cathode Ray tube, enabling us to watch TV. Oh yeah, the Rontgen dude who invented X-rays also came from here. I don't know man, Karlsruhe's reputation is like Purdue's... it's a good school but people just don't know about it. For instance, Singaporeans don't know that Purdue is where Neil Armstrong came from but remember it as the school, die komische Paris Hilton wannabes besucht. By the way, Karlsruhe is the no. 1 university in Germany. No one knows this because Germany only started ranking their unis recently. I wish I found out about this earlier... now damn stress man... gan...

3. Who are the people I see often: There are a couple of groups that I come into contact with regularly in Germany...

a) the Ming. He is the only other real Singaporean here :) Besides all the mushy mushy heart to heart talks we have, we cook, eat and invite people to eat with us.
b) the Oli, the Giulia, and their family. I was never close to any of my cousins before but it's a totally different story now.
c) the Turkish group. Everyone there looks über cool, behaves über happening and are über nice. We see each other all the time cos we live in the same dorm.
d) the Spanish speaking groups, more than one since some of them are from Latin / South America. I just have this thing for Spanish speaking people. Besides being so friendly, the prettiest and most interest-arousing girl (IMO) here also speaks Spanish.
e) the ITS group. Basically my mentors and the people who make me proud to be learning stuff in engineering.
f) The Germans. Well, it's hard to have too many German friends, since all of them have their own cliques here. Trotzdem I come into contact with a few regularly, and we definitely have gute Beziehungen.
g) The Americans. Sigh. They are leaving in a month. New ones are coming, but because of my slow transition to a life ohne English, it may be difficult to realize that we're actually all from Purdue.
h) The Asian group. Unlike in USA, I barely have any asian friends here. Those who are here make me remember my Asian roots.

4. What the hell I am actually doing here. Well, for now: Diplomarbeit (Master's Thesis), 2 x Lectures, trying to pass the DSH, and Spanisch lessons at night. Next sem: maybe 1 x matlab course, 1 x pro-E course, Diplomarbeit, sprays class, more Spanisch (I want B2 lvl!!), Turkish if possible.

5. Why I'm actually here. I want to learn German properly, learn a new language using German, get some practical lab experience, complete my 'triangle' round the world (US, Singapore, Europe), end my studying life happily before I move on, make new friends, eat more things and see more countries. Kind of in that order but not really.

So... I hope it's clear as to what I'm trying to do here, who I am, who I see around etc etc. :)

*Note that I'm unable to write solely in English now. I put articles in people's names (the Ming), I use words like 'gute Beziehung' and 'trotzdem' in my text... I swear I didn't do it on purpose. It's just how the words flow now.

Meine Einleitung; Ziel und Zweck des Blogs

2007-11-25T00:33:00.001+01:00

Achso, endlich besitzt der Ping sein eigenes Blog. Und was macht er damit?

Am Anfang hat er gewuenscht, durch das Schreiben seiner Erfahrung in Deutschland, sein Deutsch verbessern zu koennen. Dann kam es ploetzlich im Kopf, das viele Freunde von ihm kein Deutsch verstehen koennen. Und die, die Deutsche koennen, muessen aber geduldig sein, weil so viele Fehler immer in diesem Blog entstehen werden. Endlich trifft er sich die Entscheidung... in diesem blog wird Postings aus 3 oder mehr Sprachen geben. Auf Deutsch, auf Englisch, auf vielleicht Chinesisch, und wenn er auch etwas in Spanish schafft, vielleicht auch was auf Spanisch.

...

Aiyah, enough lah... Man, I'm not going to write in German lah. If I continue writing in German, no one would read this, so... :) Time to write in good old Singlish. Ok, so... this is what I aim to achieve in this blog:

1. Since it is my last year in college, and since I'm spending most of it in Germany, I'm going to detail some of the more interesting experiences here. Yeah, sometimes I'll do it in German, maybe Chinese, but what the heck. Just like you don't have to understand everything in the textbook to get an A for the class, you don't have to understand everything in my blog to know what the hell I've been thinking / doing. :)

2. Besides experiences, I'm going to write about some insights that I have obtained here. Btw, I'll try to give interesting nicknames to the people I mention. e.g. Someone like Ziming will be called Herr Tong, someone like Attila will be called the Hun, someone like Herr Dr. Koch will be called the Chef, and Sinisa is of course the Betreuer. Prof. Sojka will of course be the Field Marshal (of sprays) and so on.

3. To understand what I'm thinking / my situation, you would have to understand how Germany is like, and so I will have to give you a background of the situation. This you will find in the next entry, titled 'Background' (duh). I'm sorry I've run out of creative juices. Ok fine, I'll call it 'Vorüberlegung' just so that no one understands it. :)

Happy reading　：）