I can’t believe in the past 5 days, I didn’t driving at all. Last week, I attend the P.Eng seminar in downtown and it is more convinient took Skytrain. Over the weekend, I stay home studying most of the time. When went out with Pat, somehow she did all the driving because we have to bring Charlie along. On Monday and Tuesday, I went to the IWCMC conference in downtown again, so no need to drive. Today I tried to take taking Skytrain to go to class in SFU. It would take an hour from my home to school. If I havn’t missed the bus at the skytrain station, I will be there 10 minutes sooner. From this experiment, I figured that I could probably survive without a car in Vancouver. The only problem is that Skytrain is much slower than driving. It takes me almost doubt or tripple of time to go to work. It is unfeasible to waste an extra hour on the road everyday. I guess taking Skytrain once a while on special occation is accepable though. The city always try to convince people take more public transsit instead of driving. However, the public transport system in Vancouver is really inefficient. You can bear with it, but not a pleasent choice.

Today I slept in and missed the moring session. It the same old boring stuff anyways. When I arrived Shareton, the hotel pub is showing Worldcup, German vs Italy. There was a big crowd of conference attendee watching the game. So I joined the group and watched German lost to Italy 2 minutes before the end of the the game in extra time. I end up only listen to 4-5 papers in the afternoon session. There was a banquet tonight in the conference. The quality of the food is about the same as yesterday. I don’t know it is the problem of Shareton, or the organizers are too cheap to order better food for us. I found that in the reception and banquet, the professors mostly talk to other professors, while the students hang out with each other. It suppose to be a networking event, but I don’t see any value in it. I would probably forget those people the moment I walk out the door. In the banquet, I was sitting next to a Swiss guy teaching in a Taiwan university. His Manadrin is really good. It is fun to hear something about the Taiwan culture from the eyes of a Gwai Lo.

I have attended my first, and probably last, academic conference today. It is quite an interesting experience. The conference is hosted by Sheraton hotel downtown, so I have to wake up early again. The registration is straight forward, except they somehow mixed up my last name and first name. There was breakfast, but not as good as those at the Hyatt. The keynote speaker is from Bell Canada, he talked about trends in wireless communication for the next 5-6 years. Kinda the same thing PMC talked about in staff update. Then the rest of the day is presentation of papers in 5 different rooms. I went to my session, multimedia over wireless, for the whole day. The conference is not as crowd as I expected, my session only has about 20 people. To my disappointment, the conference doesn’t come with lunch. So I walked to Yale Town to have lunch. I wished I had bought a lighter laptop. It is the first time I carry my laptop walking. I have some shoulder pain afterward.I presented my paper in the afternoon. It went pretty smoothly. Toastmaster really helps. In the evening, the conference hosted a outdoor reception by the fountain. The food is so and so, but at least I can fill myself up. I am really disappointed drinks are not included. I have talked to a few people from Europe or the States in the reception. The default topics of conversation between any Italian, German and French is the world cup. I will attend the conference tomorrow, try to sit in other sessions. I think going to an academic conference once is enough, just have a taste of it. It is actually really boring. Try to imagine you are locked up in a room and have to listen to 10 or so technical papers full of equations the whole day. To make it worse, you have to stay awake all the time, since there ain’t many people in the room to cover you up.

What is time? Today my metaphysics class talk about the duality between time and space. Some philosophers think time and space are inter changable. Both of the measure the relative distance between two points, either in space or in time. The class talked about the problem of time travel as well. The hardest problem is the causation loop, where one event is the cause of itself. I don’t agree that nature of time and time travel is metaphysics, it should be in the realm of science. When preparing for this week’s class, I digged out and read my copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Most philosophers without a science backround assume space and time are two different but similiar things. According to Hawking, there exists only one thing call space-time. Space cannot exist indepedent of time, so it is pointless to talk about space alone. I ask this question to the profressor after class, and it seems he dismiss Hawking’s point of view has any philosophical value. What a old fashion philosophy guy! I can see how science will change the field of metaphysics. Many metaphysics assumings philosphers take it for granted for centuaries are being challenaged by quatum physics. Quatum physics shine lights on those old questions and maybe it will lead to a more convincing solution oneday.

Today Charlie went to mass for the first time. St. Mass is having a summer picnic this afternoon. There is an outdoor mass before lunch in the picnic area. Pat and me bring Charlie along to let him enjoy some sunshine and fresh air. Charlie is under the spot light most of time because I sticked a name tag on his forehead, so everyone knows his name. During the mass, Charlie is behaves well, he just sit quietly next to us. I bring him along to have the Eucharist, too bad the father didn’t give him a blessing. I don’t see any reason why dogs can not be baptized and recieve holy communion. Adapting the same arguments from the animal rights activitist, I think I can start a new new branch of animal theology. Jesus loves dogs, he even sacrifice his body and blood to be the saviour of dogs. Dog treats can be transformed into Jesus. Nowadays there are resturants, chauffeur, body shops for pets, why can’t we have churchs for pets? I can start a church that welcome pets, have blessed dogs treats for dog Eucharist. I think that will be a big business. I even come up with some slogans such as, “All dogs goes to heaven!”, “Believe in Jesus and your pets will be saved!”.