Inspire us, John Lennon

*possibly one of the worst videos ever, with creepy Yoko... but hey, can't beat the love*

A little breathing room

Phew... it's been a while since I had some time to just rest. Since school started, it's been a non-stop whirlwind ride. I've been so swamped with school work that I haven't had any room to breathe. It's so nice to finally have a long weekend, to just ... relax.

Stuff I had to do/on my mind/to do list: design project, school work, job applications, and grad school applications. I'm no where near clearing my plate. I might as well change my permanent address to the ugsparc computer lab from now on.

At least this Thanksgiving long weekend provided a little relief. In the hustle and bustle, I should stop and think about everything I am thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

My blog 2.0

I am back after a 3-month hiatus from this blog (finally). To my faithful readers, I'm sorry for the extreme lack of posts in the last 3 months; I've been busy and lazy. So who stills read this blog?

I updated the missing posts within the last while. But more importantly, I upgraded this entire website. The old design was, well... old. I had that template for almost 2 years and it definitely needed a face lift. So I nip/tucked it to look fresh, clean, easy, and web2.0-ish.

Some of the changes include: a search function within my blog that actually works; widgets on the side to spice up the boring text-only sidebar; offloading hosting duties from my personal site to blogspot, which leads to faster page loads. Don't worry, my old URL will automatically redirect to this current site.

So tell me what you think of the new web design. Comment. I wanna hear you. Take part in the poll on the side. I will try to update more frequently. As this year will be my fourth and final year of undergrad, the topics will be very different than those discussed last year.

Canadian East Coast

My family had wanted to visit the East Coast for a long time now. We just never actually got around to doing it. Well this summer, all three of us were available at the same time, so finally got this trip off the ground. We went to visit New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. There was a hella lot of driving, sleeping in motels and bed & breakfasts, fast food on the side of the road, and more sleeping in the car. Occasionally, here and there, there was a worthy sightseeing point.

New Brunswick
We spent the most amount of time in NB. We hit up all three major cities: Fredericton, Moncton, and Saint John. Each city had its own distinct flavour and unique attractions. Fredericton had the Historic Garrison District, which captures the heritage of the old British culture of Canada. Moncton had this crazy Magnetic Hill. Similar to the Mystery Spot at Santa Cruz, it's a normal looking hill, but gravity is reversed. You drive to the bottom of the hill, put your car in neutral, and it will go all the way up the hill by itself. Saint John had a very happenin' small downtown core next to the harbour. In all three cases, I couldn't help but notice how small these "major" cities were compared to Toronto.

Other sites that we visited include Grand Fall, which is a truly misleading name. Personally, after seeing the likes of Niagara Fall, this was more like a barely-midsize-fall. We also visited Cape Enrage, where a historic lighthouse sits on top of a steep cliff, to control traffic inside the Bay of Fundy. The view was quite nice. Perhaps the most interesting stop was at the Hopewell Rocks. This is the famous point where the tides of Bay of Fundy are high during the day and low in the morning and night, such that people can actually walk the ocean floor during these times. The free standing rocks exemplify the erosion caused by the daily flux of the tide.


P.E.I.
We went to the island to visit the capital city of Charlottetown. This place was so small; I don't know how it qualifies as a "city". It seemed like a town to me. After, we drove up to the northern point of the Island, Cavendish, where the Anne of Green Gable's house is. It was a popular tourist attraction, but I didn't read any of the books, so there wasn't too much in it for me. But the preserved house is a perfect example of the simple life that was, in the 19th century here on PEI. The coolest part of this province, in my opinion, is the bridge that leads to it. The 13km long Confederation Bridge, opened in 1997, is a notable engineering feat, covering the Atlantic Ocean.


Nova Scotia
The main point of visit in NS was the capital Halifax. Here, we visited the Citadel fortress, the huge Halifax harbour, and went on a whale-watching tour. Amazingly, we actually caught glimpse of a couple whales. They weren't the giant blue or sperm or humpback whales I was hoping for, but it was small, and we could see its fins and upper body pop up every once in a while. The tour guides also demonstrated catching crabs and lobsters by catching 'em in real-time. Speaking of which, we had some really fresh lobsters while at Halifax.

On the way back, we visited friends in Montreal. For the first time in a week, some home-made food! We registered a total of over 4300 km on the rental car. Unfortunately, we weren't able to make it to New Foundland, because that required so much more driving and it wouldn't have been very pleasant. It was mainly my dad and I driving the whole way, my mom did minimal amount. By the end, we were all very happy to finally have conquered the elusive Atlantic coast after many years of just talking.

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The end of an era

Well… my PEY internship at Actel in Mountain View, California ended this June. It’s a little sad, but I’m now back home in Toronto. It was a crazy year, that’s for sure. I was there for over 13 months, and quite frankly, it was the best year of my life!


Living with my peers in the Bay Area was awesome. We maintained a tight friendship within the group throughout the year and having to visit all around California was truly the highlight of my experience. The roadtrips to all the Californian cities, unique places, national parks, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Mexico… were insanely fun and unforgettable.

I even enjoyed the work itself. I was constantly pushed with new and challenging materials to work on, which made my job not boring like other interns. I guess I was fortunate in that regards. I learned a lot of practical engineering skills that would have never been picked up in school. Also, I made a lot of great friends at work, whom I’ll keep in contact with. Even better, I was offered to come back as a full time employee, upon graduation.

To cap the year off, four of us made a final trip to Las Vegas (for the third time), right before leaving. This time around, I’m actually legal to do everything; gamble, drink, etc. No longer do I have to hide out in the corner to play penny slots. I spent most of the time playing poker, and at one point, won $160! In the end, I came out positive in gambling spending.

Overall, what an awesome year it was! I couldn’t have asked for much better from this wonderful experience. It won’t be forgotten.

Dude, where's my car?

Living here requires a car. The public transportation system is just not "cool". In the first month, I used a rental car, a poor Chevy Aveo that failed to merge with the highway traffic every time I went on. In that month, I was shopping for used-cars. Craigslist was my most frequently visited site at the time. I never had or bought a car before, so all I wanted was a reliable car that won't fail on me in the next year. I was luck enough to avoid too much hassle in looking at used-cars, because the first car I took a look at to test drive was in good condition, so I bought it.


This is my first car. I used my own money to buy it, without any help from my parents. It's a 1998 Toyota Corolla, in a mechanically great condition. Look at that baby purrr.

And now, after a year of great service, I have to sell it before I leave. I'm so glad it didn't cause me any headaches, like other interns' cars. I originally bought it for $3500, put in $800 of maintenance work throughout the year, and now exactly one year and 7000 miles later, I sold it for $4100. So basically, I spent $200 net (excluding gas of course) on a car for a whole year. What a deal! It was sad to let my baby go. Now I'm stuck at home and need to ask someone a favour every time I want to go out. Not having a car sucks.

Half Dome

Before our internship finishes, we definitely needed to tackle Half Dome. Located in Yosemite National Park, Half Dome is a giant round granite rock, sharply cut in half, at 8800 ft altitude. The hike to get to the top is 7.5 miles (12 km) long, ascending 4800 ft (1.4 km) of elevation. As can be seen from the picture below, the hike starts at the bottom of the valley, swirls all the way around 360˚, intersecting 2 waterfalls, and finally a cable-climb at the end to the very top point.

So I decided to go with 4 co-workers, full time ex-UofT-interns, last weekend. We left on Friday night to drive to a near-by town to nap, woke up at 4am Sat. morning, got to the trailhead by 7-8, and started hiking immediately. The average time for the hike is 12 hours, so we were prepared with plenty of food and water. Sandwiches, tons of snacks, and 4L of water each. It was actually too much, because our bags were really heavy and slowed us down.

This hike was the most intense physical workout I ever had. About an hour or two in, I was feeling completely exhausted. The sharp climb and the pace surprised me. So after that, I had to refuel and really tried to pace myself better for the remaining 80%. The climb got better after the initial hump, but I felt really tired for most of the way up. The end of the climb is the steepest point, which took quite some struggle to reach.

The last part, the bare rope climb along the side of the Dome, is extremely dangerous. One slip and you’re dead, no joke. Naturally, it moves very slowly, because the ropes can only accompany 2 rows of people (1up, 1 down) and people are all being very careful. When I reached the ropes, there were 200+ people in line waiting; the wait time was 2 hours! This only happens on Saturdays, any other day of the week is not this busy. We didn’t want to stand there for 2 hours, just waiting, so we took a break there on top of the half-hump to relax, catch intense UV rays to help out cancer, and enjoy the already fantastic view. Take a look at this video I filmed. To get to the top took 7 hours, but it was worth it!

For some reason the hike down seemed longer than the way up. It was especially damaging to my knees, but it was a hella lot easier on the heart. By the time we got back down to the trailhead, it was dark and the total hiking time came out to 13 hours. I was dead tired, that I didn’t even take notice of the uncomfortable bitch seat of a VW Golf. I probably lost 5lb that one day alone, and covered my workout duties for the next 3 weeks. Definitely glad to have done it though.

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Redwood National Park and Crater Lake

This past weekend, we took a trip up north towards Oregon. First on our stop was the Redwood National Park. This is where the famous giant redwoods on the west coast are located. Driving through this northern California coast line, we came across some ginormous trees, Paul Bunyan land, Trees of Mystery, where some really funky trees are grown, and got to go through a Drive-Thru tree, one of only 4 remaining in the world.

The next day, we went to the beautiful Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. This is basically a perfectly pristine lake on an ex-volcanically-active mountain top. The name is actually misleading because the giant "crater" is not caused by a comet, but is actually a caldera, meaning a volcanic mountain burst completely and broke down itself in the processing, thus creating a giant pit. The lake is mostly rain fall contained within the pit and because of its high altitude, the UV rays are so intense here that there is absolutely no life form living in the water. Hence, the perfectly deep blue colour is preserved all the time.


It was an amazing sight, because you can see a complete reflection of the mountain in the water, with no distortion or loss of details. The lake is so calm that there is not a single wave. Because of the high altitude and cold weather, the snow is sustained year-round. On the roads driving up to the lake, the snow build up was higher than our minivan and the Visitor Center was almost snowed-in, and this was in mid-May!

We being 20-something year old kids that we are, just couldn't resist the huge pile up of snow and had a 2-hour long snow fight along the edge of the Lake the whole way through the hike. I think everyone's cloths were pretty soaked by the end. Never had that much fun with snow in May before.

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Conan O'Brien and Russell Peters

Conan came to San Francisco for one-week only during Mon. April 30th - Fri. May 4 to do his Late Night show. I was extremely lucky enough to score a pair of tickets to the taping of the show on Thur. May 3rd. I emailed the producers to get the tickets as soon as I found out they were planning to come to San Francisco. The tickets were given on a random draw basis. I'm sure a hella lot of people applied for them, but my name was drawn!


So Joe and I skipped work that day to be in San Fran at the Orpheum Theatre all day. The taping began at 4pm, but we arrived at the theatre at around 11am, only to find about 200 people outside in line already! The first in line arrived at 6am in the morning. Talk about dedication. Waiting in line for 4 hours on a windy day was not fun, but we got through it. Finally, when we were allowed into the theatre, we scored awesome seats, just about 10 rows back from the stage. When Conan came out to do his monologue, we were insanely close, like 20 ft from him. The guests on the show were Randy Jackson, frisbee throwing champion, and some band made up of really old dudes (I don't know who). We got to see Max Weinberg and the band, and all the supporting casts, except the Masturbating Bear :( Overall, the taping was good, Conan was funny, the atmosphere was great and I had a great time.




A week after, I went to see a live Russell Peters show at the Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco. This was part of his 2007 tour, which promised to deliver on new materials. Initially the tickets were all sold out, but somehow 2 more become available online, and I snatched it. Again, I was really lucky to stumble upon it.

Robert and I arrived at the club about an hour ahead and was the second group in line. So we were seated in the front row, right beneath where Russell performed! I saw his previous gig at the Warfield (Outsourced on DVD), which was hilarious so had my hopes high for this. And he did not disappoint. Not only was it fresh new materials, he did great improv bits with the audience right on the spot. The best jokes were Canadian mocks, that only Canucks in the crowd got. It was a great performance, totally worth the $60, because I got to laugh my ass off.

Angel Island adventures

This weekend, a few of us went to hang out at Angel Island. This little island is situated between the coast of San Francisco and Marin County. We had to take two separate ferries to get there. First, we got a ride to Tiburon, a beautiful coastal city, and from there took another ride to Angel Island.

We decided to hike all the way to the top of Mt. Livermore. It’s only 800 ft elevation, so it was a pretty easy challenge. However, we made it a whole lot difficult by turning this hike into a “climb” for half the way up. Some genius, who shall remain nameless, thought it was a good idea to cut through the forest, ignoring the trail. So we ended up climbing our way through the mountain directly upwards at like 60˚ angle. At halfway point to the top, we finally intersected the proper trail. Staying on it from then on, we hiked our way to the top-most point.

It was quite exhilarating when we reached the top. The cool breeze refreshed our sweaty bodies. You could see a panoramic view of all of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, Tiburon, Sausalito, and the rest of Marin. Even though we didn’t have time left to check out other stuff afterwards, we had an awesome time on the island. Happy Cinco de Mayo!