University

Since I came to university, I haven't updated my blog much. This is mainly because I write in my diary instead of my blog now, since there are much things that I wish to keep private.

But my good friend ShunYang reminded me of the blog, and it came to me that it is important too as it is a way for us high school friends to keep in touch.

Recently, I've been having really exciting days. Last saturday, I went to the Hong Kong Science Museum, then, to the Hong Kong History Museum. SUCH A FUN DAY! I learnt some awesome stuff like how Hong Kong operated under English rule and also reviewed much of my knowledge in physics.

That night was pretty awesome too cause my friends and I wandered to a vegetarian restaurant. I had not eaten vegetarian food in so long! That was great too.

Well, really, in university, there isn't much to update when there's not much movement in my love life. I get to know girls, but for those I get close to, I never see a future with them. For those I see a future with, luck does not bring us together. Oh well, I live life by the day.

In general, I'm happy here in HK with many friends. The stuff I learn academically is so awesome, I think the word to describe it should be -- sexy. I'm basically learning psychology, electronics and computer programming all at once. SEXY!

As for weekends, I get to go and do fun stuff. This weekend, I'm going hiking with elderly people! Haven't had contact with people above retirement age in months!

I'm way too slow for the speed of Hong Kong

Ok,
After learning from my experiences in SSIS, I decided I should get to know a girl properly before asking her out. So I kinda like a girl, try to get to know her.Then plan to ask her out maybe a month later.


Now is the point where HK plays a prank on me. Right after a class we had together, a guy (I think she doesn't know) pulls her aside, then asks her out. I'm like O.O


Well, I guess I should either stop targeting Hong Kong girls, or just move faster. As for the girl, I guess she's taken.

As the Chinese say, 百战百克， 唯速不克. (All strategies can be countered, except for speed)...
张某白读了孙子兵法啊。。。

New netbook and my lucky shirt

I've been in HK for a month now, and today, things went so great, I just had to say it out.

First, a friend of mine who works in my university (not a student) gave me a netbook for free! Well, ok. The netbook isn't some crazy powerful netbook, it only has 500MB RAM, 4GB memory space (2GB taken up by windows) and a really old processor. But after reinstalling the whole thing (which required me waking up every 2 hours through the night yesterday), it works great!!. In fact, I am writing this post using it right now.

The second thing, I think I have found my lucky shirt. OK, there's this girl over here that I kinda like, but the thing is its impossible for me to see her around school (I can never find her!) except for one class that we have together. And so far, I've met her in school 3 times, each time wearing the same shirt, a bright pink Calvin Klein shirt that my dad used to wear, but bright pink isn't really for his age any more.

Since everytime I see this girl I wear the same shirt, I just thought its my lucky shirt. Haha.

Awesome day.

How are you guys doing??? Post more!

The room with 4 walls, and nothing between

That's basically my room for the 3 coming nights. After clearing everything out of my wardrobe and drawers, my room basically had 4 walls and nothing of mine in between save for a bed. As I packed, I went through a lot of things that were completely unnecessary yet I spent quite some effort to achieve.

I saw a little model of the great wall of China, which I spent 30 minutes bargaining to get, and after buying it, I leave it in my room, never to touch it, and after 2 years, throw it away.

I also saw the many stationary I took from school, such as erasers, markers... Those were good times, sneaking them into our bags, feeling so satisfied, yet never using them.

I guess I really should stop worrying about little things that do not contribute to my life's meaning or have a strong emotional impact on me. I do feel especially bad as, I get hooked on to things that do not contribute to my life, and refuse to give or sometimes even to lend them to other people, most notably my sister. I have so often refused to give things like a new eraser or lend my harry potter books to her. And I think for many of those things, I haven't touched till now since the time she asked for it.

I should really learn to give more to those that I do not feel emotionally attracted to. If you get what I mean... heh heh.

Well, the 2 days I spent packing, letting me look through all my useless belongings have been rather fun. When I look back at things I wrote or bought 5 years ago, it really makes me laugh at myself. How interesting it would be if I could visit myself in the past, or better... get a visit from myself in the future!

The best deal I have ever made in my life... so far!

3 days ago, I broke my MP5. When I dropped it, it cracked, and shattered, and I thought, I'm such a Kevin (Joh) ... So, I ordered a new one off taobao

This time, I was thinking, since I'm not rich or very careful with my stuff, I should get a cheap one with a tiny screen, and I did. It turned out to be an MP4 God dropped from heaven.

First, I won't tell you guys the price, tell yall the features first.
It has 32 GB memory space
It can do the stuff most MP4s can, music, pictures and video
It can play FM radio (but who really uses that nowadays)
It has a god damn 2 Megapix camera with microphone.
And other random stuff like calender, clock and time, games etc.
And, it has the touch screen(not screen) that iPods have,

That machine, with some other stuff that are in the picture.

Which includes earphones, charger, protector, that sort of stuff

Now, guess how much it costs...
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Don't cheat, guess.
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IT COST 145 rmb! Which is less than 23 USD. MUAHAHA. Caleb, you can your beloved motherland can s*ck it, cause I don't think America is capable of such awesomeness.

Well, the arrival of it really made my day.
I LOVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PEOPLE's REPUBLIC OF CHINA. I LOVE MAO ZE DONG AND ALL CHINESE PEOPLE!!

Taylor Series, Newton's Method and Field and vector derivatives

For the past 3 weeks, I have been preparing for my university placement test, studying maths basically. I came across so much new ideas and techniques that aren't included in the IB, just showing me how beautiful maths is.

For example, the derivative of something can mean so much more than the rate of change of something, it can lead to a completely different idea, like the link between electricity and magnetism. Apparently, magnetism is simply the relativistic effects of electricity, I still haven't really grasped that.

And Taylor series, which through an infinite (really infinite) number of values can calculate the value of an irrational number like root(2) or sin(1). And how technically, any number can be written as a sum of a series, just that it would be an infinite series.

3 weeks with maths outside IB has further shown me how maths is not a dry and boring subject, it is a beautiful way of expressing ideas which have practical use.

My trip to dreamland – Malaysia

On the 23^rd of July, I woke up at 5:45 and prepared to leave for Malaysia. Just the usual routine, travel by car to Pudong and airplane to KL. The skies were beautiful on the flight, clear blue skies and clouds that look so pretty it looks fake. Here’s a picture.

The good news started when I was reading the newspaper on the plane. Apparently, the harvests for durians were good this year. Simple economics tell us, increased supply decreases prices, ceteris paribus. So, this just means durians for supper the first night in Malaysia.

After about 5 hours 13km above the crust of the Earth, the plane stopped fighting gravity and landed at precisely 3:35 pm. Then, I took the KL express and then taxi to my grandparent’s house.

Here’s a picture of my grandparent’s house and their neighbour’s.

The little house with the yellow doors are the toilets, I guess you can genuinely call this a loo.

As I hoped, after a simple dinner, my grandpa, my dad and I (3 generations of guys from the Chong family) went to the pasar malam (night market) to buy durians. In the end, we returned with 4 durians and 3 kg of mangosteen. That night, my taste buds were fully exercised and I went to sleep at about 11.

The second day, I woke up at about 7 to go to the market for breakfast. Once again, my taste buds were reminded of a stimulus they haven’t experienced in a year. Then, my dad and I were off to fetch my mom from her mother. After that, my parents decided to go to my sister’s church service (it was Sunday if you don’t follow). I was afraid it was going to be similar to the ones in Suzhou, where it is as crowded as Auchan, so I brought a book along, just in case it is, then I could go to a coffee shop nearby to wait for my parents.

It turned out to be a place that wasn’t crowded at all, in fact there were actually some empty seats, so I thought, I guess I can just sit, relax and wait for them to do their thing and then go on with the day’s plans. Then, at about 10:00, everybody stood up, and they started singing. And I guess they really like to sing, cause they just kept going and going, sometimes they start the next song while the previous song was still fading away. Well, I waited through that, and didn’t really keep up with the lyrics of the songs that were in Malay. But I was quite satisfied to hear that the chord progression of the songs were pretty well made, and the different instruments (a band played for the songs) did their job well in filling in their part of the sound spectrum while synergizing with the other instruments well. I also liked the fact that they had a tenor voice to blend in with the main melody (I would say soprano but it isn’t really that high).

Then, we had lunch with my sister’s friends, chat for some time and my parents were comforted in seeing that my sister is mixing with some good honest people and that she is making great reliable friends.

After that, it was basically relaxing at my grandparent’s house, called up ShunYang since he’s in KL also. And then went out with my grandparents for dinner.

Returning to this place has been fun and relaxing for me. It’s a pity I can’t live life just feeding off my parents :P. My grandparents are really pleased to hear that I got a full scholarship for my first year in university. So my grandma decided to reward me and I guess that should make me happy, but lands pressure on my sister I guess. Hope my grandparents don’t compare us too much.

Oh, and my savings in China finally broke the 10,000 rmb barrier! Gonna treat myself well when I get back to Suzhou, I’m gonna have a 3 day home alone :D

 Funny Plants!!

A picture of my grandpa and I, 2 generations is a big difference huh?

Second last day of work

Well, after 3 weeks of working, I'm resigning tomorrow. This will be the first time I will be receiving a pay check (in cash...lol) for working from a stranger.

In these three weeks, I have learnt so much, especially since I've been brought up in an environment that is way too comfortable. The people there are so practical and efficient. One time, our deep frying machine fell from the shelf and our master baker got deep fried, literally. The entire kitchen floor had a layer of hot oil on it, luckily, we're all supposed to wear sport shoes to work, so only the master got injured. We then treated the master and he was sent to the hospital. I could completely imagine what many students from our school would have done after that. Complain, complain, complain and start blaming someone for not putting the deep frying machine properly, and the whole day would have happened without further work done.

No, there, after the master was sent to the hospital, nobody spoke and they all started to grab a scraper and a metal bowl each and started clearing the floor of oil. In merely 20 minutes, the oil was basically all gone, and in 30 minutes, the floor looked cleaner than before the accident. And without rest, we continued doing our job and making stuff to sell. This practicality cannot be found in someone brought up in an environment where somebody else will clean up the mess that he makes, instead, in these 3 weeks, I have learnt to happily and automatically clear up the mess that anybody of the team makes. This allows the whole team to work much faster and so we can leave work earlier.


In these 3 weeks, learning to make food isn't the main thing, more importantly in the field of making food, I learnt to make food, really fast. The crew is so effective, in fact, one time, one person (who left already) made 180 breads in just under 2 hours. That speed is something I really admire and needs to be trained.Here is a picture of the crew.

From left to right, 

-Bor Hung, I'm sure you all know him :P They call me 小张

-小杨, we call him that not because he is an apprentice, because he had an older brother working there, and we call him 大杨. He's the one who made 180 breads in 2 hours. He's basically my master, he taught me how to make most of the stuff I make there.

-徐师傅, he's in charged of all the cakes, he's always trying to find opportunities to make bread (making bread is only by those of highest experience)

-The shop owner -- 老板 He usually works from 6:30 until only about 10, then he relaxes an does other stuff. He makes only quite few number of products, but he does them to great detail. He's always singing christian songs during work.

-申师傅, he's the master baker, the one who got deep fried. He is good at everything. In fact, none of us can match him at any of the products, but there's only one of him, so he does the hardest stuff. He's the bridge between us and the owner's wife, as she's the one who takes care of all the money.

-The two to the right, 小田 and 小陈 are new, they've been here for one week only. Both of them are really slow at doing anything, so they always get shouted at by everyone else. They make our life easy because every time we don't feel like making a product, we just ask them to make it. They must, since they don't really have a set of products they make everyday.

Here are some pictures of the workplace

 You can see the master chef taking a break, smoking outside.

The storage room, before we do anything to the stuff.

The front of the bakery, after we process the stuff from the picture above.

These three weeks, although lowly paid have been a great learning opportunity for me. Generally, I learnt how to be a person of use to the people around me without needing to spend money. The greatest thing I see in the people there is that - when something goes wrong, don't complain or shout, use your energy to fix the problem, and then everybody can take a break. I also see that when you see a problem, don't start taking out your wallet, thinking of buying things to fix the problem. Many people think like that simply because they are capable of spending money like that. But I find it better to look around, find a piece of equipment that can be slightly changed to fix the problem (you might call this ghetto, but I call it a common exercise of practicality).

That was a long piece of writing, and the days of me working at the bakery will be over tomorrow. Oh, and working there really told me how crappy labour work can be, better study hard at university!!

Started Blogging!

Well, I started blogging now not because I want to improve my English, like the way I wrote my diary for like 3 weeks in Chinese and quit... but, for self reflection.

People say that when you look back at yourself 5 years ago, you would laugh, and if you don't, then you haven't grown enough in the past 5 years.

I hope to be able to reflect from my decisions and actions from the past to improve thought pattern in the future. Why? Because reflection of the past is a way to grow my knowledge, and the search for knowledge is one of my 3 goals in life!