Since I have started writting my thesis, or merely the M.Eng project, I have to think about my defense. The faculty has just imposed a 2+2 weeks rule, that is the paper has to ciruculate two weeks before the defense and the defense has to be at least two weeks before the submission. That implies even I can finish writting my paper before the end of this term, my defense will be schedule in january. One of my colleague, Ivy, has started the program about same time as me and she is having her defense tomorrow. At first I would like to tag along and check out how the format of the defense. But she refused let people see her defense to avoid having unncessary pressure. Althought I can still find out the room and time and just sit in, but I don’t want to be rude. Since I objective is to check out a defence, which can be any defense. I tagged along with Ivy to check out someone else’s defense today. The defense is pretty straight forward, 30 minutes of presentation followed by Q&A session. The professors and your own supervisor will usually go easy on you, not asking tough questions. The audience can also ask questions, but most of them are like us, sitting in just to prepare for their own defense, they usually are polite enough not to give the defender a hard time. However in today’s session, a guy from Mainland China is being rude, he tried to drill the defender with hard questions. This act really shows his lack of proper manner. I hope I won’t encounter one of those guys in my own defense.

In my department, we used to have a quarter status update hosted by the VP. We found that session is very useful, keep us posted with the lastest project related news in department. When the VP was transfered to another department, the acting VP stopped the quaterly meeting. We kinda miss it. Now, we just have a new VP for the department. Instead of quaterly meeting, he hosts monthly meeting, and this month I just had one. Sometimes it is not always more the better. This materials in this meeting is 80% recycled from last month, there is not enough new stuff to keep us interested. In another word, our time is basically wasted for the meeting. My colleague in the next cube calculated how much this meeting has cost the company. There is over 100 engineers idling in the meeting for an hour, the is more than 100 man-hours lost in productivity. Take the man-hours times our averaged hourly wage, the company lost tens of thousands over this meeting. The cost saved by having a quaterly meeting instead of monthly culmulated over a year could buy every engineer a second LCD monitor.

Vancouver doesn’t snow much, usually it just rain all winter long. This year, the first snow fall comes quite early. I don’t mind snow at all, since I am already used to it back east. The problem here in Vancouver other people who don’t used to live in the white world. Before the snow melts away, the traffic is jammed thanks to all the clueless drivers. I think this skiing season will be excellent, provided that the snow will keep dumpping down.

In the Catholic church, when a person baptise and join the church, he has to find a god-parent to sponsor him. The idea of god-parent is to give spiritual guidance to the god-child. Pat has recently become a god-mother. The odd thing is her god-daughter is actually a year older than her, she is a friend of hers. In today’s mass, there was a ritual to admit the new believers into the Church. In the following months, they will have go to catechism classes every week to prepare for their baptisium in the coming Easter. Pat feel quite pround and honoured to sponser her friend. I feel a bit jealous on her. I want to be a god-father too. I know I am probably not a very good example for the new believer. I am probably not good enough to be the god-father of an adult, it takes quite some responsibility. However, I think I am good enough to be the god-father of a baby or child. Especially those parents who are not-so-faithful catholic but somehow want their kids baptised for whatever secular reasons, such as applying for catholic schools. So, if there are any child want to be baptised in Catholic, yet the parents are worried the child getting too faith and end up being a priest, please let me know. I am happy to take in god-children who will still have the freedom to choose his beliefs when he grow up. Oh… to give some more incentive, I had already prepared a gift for my future first god-child. It’s a brand-new very cute precious moment bible I had ordered extra.

I rarely go to shopping, I actually feel a bit uncomfortable going to the mall. I always prefer to know exactly what to buy, the price I want to pay before I go into a shop. Buy things base soley on the limited information available in the store and presumably unreliable sales is just plain dumb. Anyways, tonight after dinner, I went to Metrotown with Pat. I have bought some new clothings. I think the last time I had bought any clothes is almost a year ago. The good thing about going to shopping with Pat is I can offload the decision making to her. Obviously she had much better taste on clothes and know alot more on the market price range than me. The only thing I need to decide is the total amount of money I am willing to spend in one shopping trip. Although I am happy with the fact that I have new stuffs to wear, but I don’t really enjoy the process. I wonder how can woman enjoy shopping?