Tonight I went to the semi-annual dinner of APEGBC Vancouver branch to receive the framed certification for my Professional Engineer designation.  All new certified professional engineers from different fields show up in the meeting.  Actually there were over 50 people receiving their P.Eng title in Vancouver in the past 6 months.  The event started off with a standard cocktail session, the so called networking opportunities.  I talked to quite a few engineers from other fields, learned something interesting such as forensic engineering and environmental regulations, but didn’t really make any useful connection.  There was a presentation from the APEGBC chairman following the dinner.   The chairman belongs to the Al Gore’s climate change work force.  He is one of the selected thousand individuals who received training in presenting Al Gore’s slides.  Yeap, you name it, the presentation tonight is a live version of “The Inconvenient Truth”.  I have already watched the movie, so I have seen all those slides.  I must admit Al Gore has done a much better job in giving that presentation.  As a result I dozed off almost half of the presentation.  After the boring talk, at last all the new P.Eng are lined up to receive their certificate.  Just like your university convocation, you get about 5 seconds of stage time, just enough to shake hands with the chairman and take a picture.  And that concludes tonight’s event.  What a waste of time.  To make me feel like even more stupid, I actually got the certificate in mail.  I have to bring the certificate to the dinner, have the chairman present it to me and then bring it home.  I could have save all those trouble by forgoing that stupid picture.