I am checking out volunteering oppertunities in Burnaby and Vancouver today. Pat complains I am not “good” enough because I am not doing any volunteering work. From my previous forced volunteering in highschool, I have really bad experience. Under my impression, most of the volunteering work are mostly boring or out right dumb. In the highschool, the only reason to volunteer is to get the credit. Ok, maybe including learning whatever skills, work experience to write on the resume or simply want to know girls. Now when I am old enough, I give a thought on the question on why volunteer again. I found all the external rewards are not the primary reason, nor out of charity, which doesn’t justify the effort comparing to donation. The sole reason is that I want to make a difference. Browsed through all the volunteering position in govolunteer.ca, I filter out all positions related to first, old folks, who are boring, second, fund raising or back office works, which is dumb. I like jobs in tutoring small kids maths or sciences. I especially like the mentor program for gifted children on special topics. Kinda like big brother, just that the kids seems to have better potential. Other than that, servicing in the board of non-profit organization looks fun, but I am afraid I am too green for that. I will look more closely into volunteering after things settle down a bit, my goal is spend 3 hours per week to change the world one small step at a time.

I am the type of person who cannot study at home, except I have to work with my computer. It usually end up surfing the web or watching TV. Thus, I went to Bread Garden to study my philosophy reading today. Finished first two of Descarte’s meditation before my brain got stuffed by the materials. I decided to move to SFU library to continue my reading and at the same time look for some introductory books on philosophy of ethics and aesthetic. First, I came across a book “Free market never fails” in the new books section. It takes a super strong neo-classical view point on the economy of capitalism. I found it quite interesting and decided to borrow it. Then I moved to the journal sections to look for philosophical journals. I end up browsed the whole bookshelf on all journals. There are quite a few philosophical jounrals, but none of them are particularly interesting. I found a journal on”Receational Mathametics” is kinda cool. It publishes many fun maths problems, like the solution to tetris or how to make equations to calculate number 1 to 100 from 4 fours. Then I end up reading 3 issues of Popular Science, in which the articles are mostly BS or on the vague of being sci-fi. I went down to the B section and found there are simply too many philosophy books on those two topics. I don’t know which one are good to begin with. I should allocate more time and narrow down my search next time. Liberary is as distracting as home, especial to someone as curious as me.

Tomorrow is the federal election of Canada. Out of the three parties, NDP is the one I like least. It’s policy is too far into the left, held hostage by the unions and tends to harm the middle classes. The name NDP almost equal to more tax more welfare, which only the poors can benefit. I am indifference to the economy policy of the Liberal and Conservative, both looks pretty much the same to me, maybe there are minor difference here and there. Liberal has been in rule for too long and suffer from the common problems of all long-time ruling parties. Conservative seems a good choice except I hate they play the gay-marriage card. I oppose to gay-marriage myself, but I oppose letting single-issue pressure group hijack the election even more. Out of no choices, I will probably vote Liberal again, at least it is the devil I am familiar with. However from the pre-election survey, it seems the Conservative will have a minor government this time. In another word, which means we will have yet another election in a year or two.

I have made a bet with my colleagues on the number of releases of the subsystem we are working on when the project is done. I am quite pessimistic and guessed the highest number. It turn out my guess is right on, it really take 20 releases to fix all the bugs in the subsystem. So they lost the bet and have to buy me a beer. Our team when to the student pub at SFU to have beer and nachos, since of my colleagues have to get a textbook from the SFU bookstore. All of us were students of SFU, the oldest one had graduated over ten years, and he said it is the first time he go to the pub since graduated. We chatted about the school days and talked about all sorts of stuff. We all agreed that thou shalt not date an engineering girl. I had a bottle Belgium white beer, which was really good. I like making bets on various things, but don’t like having money involved, win a drink or a meal is more fun. I will keep the bet on tape-out release number as a tradition on all my future projects. Back in the old days, betting was one of my tricks to ask a girl out. Just bet a dinner with the targetted girl, then you lost a bet but win a date!

I am reading my philosophy textbook preparing for my philosophy course started last week. I found that my reading speed is much slower than I expected on this differcult materials. I can only read about 20 pages an hour, instead of 50 pages per hour on english novels, or even 100 pages per hour on chinese novels. So I need about 5 hours to finish the 100 pages weekly readings. This course is about introduction to philosophy, but mostly cover modern philosophy regarding the question on what do we know, which is epistemology. Other topics such as ancient and medival philosophy, values theory and metaphysics plays a minor role in thie course. I don’t have much reflection right now since I just start taking the course. Hopefully, this course will lead me to think more about some real yet useless questions.