Today, PMC has the annual summer picnic in Confederation Park, games for the kids, free lunch and icecream. I met the family of many of my colleagues there. Those little kids are so cute and I pinched so many little faces today. I only stayed for an hour or so because I have to study for my exam. I found the picnic is quite enjoyable, relaxing and chat with friends while having over cooked burger. Plus no time is wasted since I spent the afternoon studying in the library right next to the park. Going to the pinic is way better than the alternative, go to Pat’s friend’s wedding. The company just gave me the perfect excuse to skip yet another boring wedding of someone I have no interest. Most of my friends in the Cantonese speaking lunch group are not interested in the pinic, except those children. On the other hand, most of my friends in the CBC group shown up today. Those who don’t come to the pinic think that it is a waste of time. I think not going to the annual company event with this excuse is just anti-social. How can enjoy a few hours under the sun with friends be a waste of time. Moreover, it is one of rare occasions you got to know the families of your colleagues.

Last night when I heard Israeli striked Lebanon in the news, I thought it was just yet another endless conflict in middle east and promptly forget about it. Today when I came to work, I found out one of my team members is having his vacation in Beirut at the moment. This incident suddenly seems more personal and arose my interest. The manager have received a short email from him today. He told us he is safe, but he can’t come back to work since the airport is bombed by Israel. He said he is living in the safer part in the city and trying to get on a boat to Greece. The team wonder whether he can seek refugee in the Canadian Embassy in Lebanon. We have came up with creative ways to escape the war zone and have some really good laughts. I guess it sounds funny because the whole thing is just so surreal to us. I am sure my colleague won’t find it funny since his life is on the line. I am expecting to hear many exciting stories when my colleague make his way back home.

Today the co-op student from another project came ask me questions about verificaiton. I guess I am the only guy in the area knowledgable in verification and yet kind enough to answer her questions. Her task is pretty straight forward, testing a minor change in one of the blocks. She came up to me and asked, “What do I have to do?”. I guess she is kinda expecting I will give her instructions in a number of easy to follow steps. Instead of answering her questions directly, which is probably the fastest way to send her away, I start telling her verification methodology. Like the difference between white box and black box testing, what is a stimulus, a checker, etc. Then with background in verification methodology, I asked her to think about how she want to test the device. A few hours later, she came back and ask me how to write the testbench. Again, I pointed her to the testbench frame work training slides. I think it is more important teach someone how to learn and think than simply giving the him the answer. In engineering, as well as in life, it is more important to ask the right question than get the right answer.

In my metaphysics class, the profressor talks about the nature of God and the source of theology. There are two sources of theology, experience and revealed. Theology from experience is easy to understand, namely the natural theology, ideas inheritated from St. Thomas Aquinas. However theology from revealed is different from what I assumed, it is solely based on authority, either the authority of the Bible or the Pope. Contrary to popular beliefs, revelations does not belong to reveal theology, revelation is actually a from of personal experience, so it belongs to natural theology. The problem is where the revealed theology comes from in the first place, some of them are rooted from natural theology, but more are just arbitary thoughts preserved by the authority for different reasons. I think to save christianity, we have to place natural theology above revealed theology. Reveal theology can only served as a mean to an end rather than the end itself. I was discussing orthodox and heresy of christian in anther forum. I proposed inventing a new school of theology that will rendering fundamentalist (and most of evangelist) heresy. I think using the distinction between natural and reveal theology is the right direction of this new theology.

I found driving to and from work without audio books is really boring. I can listen to my old CDs, which are merely background noise. Or I can listen to new mp3 downloads, which mostly are just mediocratie songs. So I search the bittorrent sites and downloaded all the audio books I found interesting. There are over 10 of them. Now, I have another delimma, how can I listen to the audio books? My iPod shuffle is not very user friendly for mp3s in general, worse for audio books. I have to press too many buttons to start playing when I start the car. I want to get a real iPod but the current generation has been out on the market for almost half a year. The next generation should be just around the corner. I don’t want to spent several hundred dollars then see a price drop in a few weeks after my purchase. I have to wait for the next iPod release cycle. Then I can decide whether to buy the new generation at the same price or the old generation at a cheaper price. For the mean time, I will resort to an ancient method, burning audio CDs. Althought it is a bit wasteful burn the audio books to CDs, since mostly likely I will only listen them once. However, just think about how much I would have to pay for if I buy the audio books. The cost of blank CD is nothing. I can also lent the audio book CDs to my friends.