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!

In-N-Out-N-About

A couple weekends ago, I went to check out the UC Berkeley campus. I've been meaning to visit the school for quite a while, but just never quite made it until now. It's one of the top Engineering schools in the US and I plan to apply here for my graduate studies. Visiting the campus took me back to my grade 12 days, when I went around to various universities to see what the campus atmosphere is like in choosing my undergrad school. The exact same feeling surfaced, except now I'm looking into graduate aspects.

Overall, UC Berkeley is awesome. It's secluded enough from the outside world that it's quite within, yet close enough to downtown to enjoy the benefits of city pleasures. The campus is clean, vibrant, and full of green space; very nature-themed. I'd love to attend this fine institution.

Last Saturday, a few of us went to see The Killers in concert at Bill Graham Civic in San Francisco. I like them, but I'm not a huge fan like some of the people in attendance, so I didn't have high anticipation going in. However, The Killers totally blew me away. They performed songs from both their albums and sound really good live. The concert was entertaining, interactive, and full of energy. They got the get-on-your-feet-sing-along-rock-n-roll-songs going for them. My respect for The Killers have gone up significantly since seeing them live.


Now yesterday, a bunch of us went to the Intel Museum. It's merely 10 minutes away from my house and admission is FREE, so you can't go wrong. We followed through the guided tour that explained how Intel started, their products, fab, and operation. A good way to waste a couple hours.

Los Angeles, the second coming

For the President's Day long weekend, we headed down to LA, the city of Angels. This is our second time there. I first went to LA during the summer shutdown last year. The first time, it was exciting cause it was new, cool, and flashy. It felt like there were so many stuff to do and see. The second time around, I guess the euphoria kind of died off. Since I've already seen what it's like, being there didn't quite have the "wow" factor to it. Still, it was cool.

The weather was absolutely amazing. Hot, sunny, a solid 80 degrees. Before going to LA, we hung out at San Luis Obispo first. This town is home to the Cal Poly university, the Gumball Alley, and also UFC champion Chuck Liddell. The Gumball Alley is a shady alley in downtown, packed full of chewed gum stuck on the wall. People started tacking them on since the 60's. There's an equal amount of coloured recent gums to rock-hard black ones. Certainly worth a look I suppose.

While in LA, I tried to go to as many new places as possible. We visited Venice beach, Little Tokyo, Kodak Theatre (where they were setting up for the Oscars right through the night), Huntington Beach, the Crystal Cathedral, Universal City, California ScienCentre (I know, I know...I'll explain below), USC, and UCLA.

One of the biggest problem this time was the lack of planning. We ran out of ideas by the third day, and were struggling to come up with something to do. We thought about film studio tours and talk show tapings on the spot, but they were all booked out. Lack of planning bitting in the ass. As a result, we ended up at the science centre. It was free though, that's always appealing.

I would definitely want to go to LA again, there's still a lot more I want to check out. Some picture from this trip can be found here.

Wine tasting tour

A few of us went wine tasting this weekend up in Napa Valley. California is quite famous for its wide variety of wines produced, and Napa Valley is the biggest region of wineries in Northern California.

There are tons of wineries located in this county. Unfortunately we only had time to visit a very few of them. Almost all the wineries have wine tasting sessions, a tour through their vineyard and processing plant, and some sort of shop to get you to fork out a little more cash. We were mainly interested in the wine tastings. There are some (a selected few) that offer FREE tastings of all their wines, but most charge ~$5 - $15 for their selection.

The wineries we visited were V. Sattui, Beringer, and Robert Mondavi. Sattui offered free tasting which was awesome. Their wine wasn't bad at all, as a matter of fact, I bought a bottle of the Rosé, which tastes ... strawberry-ish. I paid $5 for Beringer's offering, but their service made the difference. I learned quite a few things about wine today, that I couldn't have just by watching Sideways or visiting the local store. White wine tastes great just by itself, but most of the red wine were too thick or heavy solo, they definitely need food to go with. So next time you need help with a sauvignon blanc, I just might be able to help ya out.

Afterwards, we drove back to the city (San Fran) to have dinner on the pier and went to see some Indie bands, that I don't remember, at Café du Nord. I posted some of my pictures online.

Skiing at Lake Tahoe

"The air is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious, the same as angels breathe." - Mark Twain, on Lake Tahoe.

We went Skiing/snowboarding at Lake Tahoe this weekend. It's our second time there, last time in the summer, but this time to ski. We went to the famous Heavenly mountain resort. This is a great place to ski, because it's right next to the actual Lake, so the view is awesome! Also, it's on a real mountain, unlike the ski resorts near Toronto, so there's some true double-black-diamonds (I dare not touch them, but still). Heavenly is on the California-Nevada border, so you can ski in both states at the same time.

We took a couch bus service; left early in the morning from San Jose at 4:30am, arrived in Tahoe at 10-ish, got our rental gear and hit the slopes by 11. This is actually my first time skiing, so I was learning everything for the first time. I stuck to good ol' green slopes throughout. Being a newb, I totally exhausted myself in the first hour and felt a little sick. After eating a hearty lunch, I was refueled and ready to go. I picked up skiing pretty quickly, i think. By the end of the day, I was able to snowplow, turn at will, ride down a slope in its entirety falling down only once, and almost control to a stop.

It was a gnarly ski trip. Awesome weather, cool slopes, amazing view, and fun times!

Monterey - Carmel

The first weekend back in CA, we went to the Monterey Bay area. It was a close 1.5 hour drive from home. Both cities are on the Pacific coast. Keeping in mind the fact that it's January, the weather was still fantastic. It was actually pretty hot at one point.

First we went to visit Carmel. This little town has the world famous Pebble Beach Golf Course, an amazing super-white sand beach, and chalk-full of rich people. In its main road area, there are probably as many art shops and galleries as Paris. Carmel in terms of its urban design is a lot like Santa Barbara, and reminiscent of the classic small-European-town-on-the-hills in its atmosphere. Most of the buildings in the area are actually built from stones. The restaurant we had lunch at was very cozy, with an outdoor stone fireplace in the centre.

Monterey is a much bigger city, just ten minutes north. The main attraction was the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Their theme is conservation of marine life. That message is more important here than the display of animals. The coolest parts of the aquarium were the touch-stations. Here, you can actually touch and feel the various aquatic life. Some of the animals I got to play around with were: devil ray, starfish, crustaceans, sea cucumber and others I don't remember the names of. I learned that the world seafood supply is close to extinction if we keep at the pace we're currently on. As a matter of fact, the entire city is all about the conservation. All the seafood restaurants here will only offer dishes of fish that are currently sustainable.

It was fun to reacquaint myself with the Pacific coast again immediately after coming back from Toronto. More photos can be found here.