This is a true story happen to a friend of mine. This guy like this girl for many years, everyone knows about this. He had made several attempts but all failed. Here is his latest attempt. He got some hockey tickets from his friend, he decided to ask the girl out for a date. Mistake number one, unless the girl is hockey fan, normally a hockey game is not attractive enough nor able to show your sincereness. A better choice of event would be a concert, musical, or anything that is romantic. Then instead of asking the girl himself, he let a common, although good friend to the girl, do the job. Mistake number two, never let a 3rd party involving in the dating process, unless it is a stunt that you can’t handle alone. The result is quite obvious, he got rejected once again. This time he even got hilmulated by the girl. I really feel sorry for that guy, but I just can’t stop laughting at his foolishness. Sometimes I wonder, why can’t that girl give him a chance? In my opinion, as a friend of him, I think the guy is pretty decent, other than he is a bit boring, not handsome enough and probably have absolutely no common sense on dating tactics.

I brought my Tomy Bitchar-G mini remote control AE86 back to my office. I put it in my cubilce as my new cubicle toy. I have bought it for a few years, but never have any chance to play it at home. The motor of the car is not powerful enough to run on home carpet. I attempted to run it on my desk, which should be big enough to set up a race track, however it’s coverd with document. Fortunately, the carpet at work has much less resistance, so the car can run in the aisle. My colleagues sitting in my aisle seems very interest to my tiny RC car. I let them drove the car for a while and they are quite impressed that this tiny RC car is nicely built. I am thinking of buying a few more Bitchar-G and bring them to work. So when we are bored writing codes all day long, we can have a car race to relax our mind. I will have to make sure the remote runs on different frequence and all the cars has the same motor. Otherwise, it is no fun if one car over power another too much and end up always winning the race.

Today I spent all my morning unpacking the boxes in my new cubicle and setting it up. The new cubicle is located on the east side of the building and because of that I found the temperature is hotter than my old cubicle due to sun shine in the morning. One of the first thing I do is to look for the temperature control and make my side of the building cooler. Alison, whom I went to Waterloo with, walked by saw me fixing the temperature control and made a comment. She said this action is so remarkably Horace such that I am already changing the AC setting before settling in. In lunch time, we were talking about the new Audi A3 a colleague just bought. The A3 has a new gear box system, which has two gears instead of one, so the time between shifting is reduced. How the system is one set of gear controls odd gears, and the other set controls even gears. When the driver shift from 2nd gear to 3rd gear, the other gear already pre-fetch the 4th gear for the next shift. After hearding the explanation, I naturally pose a question on how the computer know which gear to pre-fetch. When the car is runnin gin 2nd gear, how does the system know whether the next shift will be 1st or 3rd gear. The others heard my questions, just assume I like to stress test anything I come across. Apparently, they never thought of this scenario. Sometimes I wonder, am I born too curious or have I been working in verification for too long?

This weekend I am taking CSIA level 1 again. I took it two years ago and failed. After two more years of practice and a lot more mileage, I think I am more prepared this time. Moreover, my instructor last week told me to give it a try. Althought, the CSIA course in Cypress is $150 more expensive than the one in Seymour, it really worth the money. In Seymour, we had only 1 instructor for 20 students. In Cypress, we have 3 instructors for 24 students and we rotate instructor every day so we get to see different teaching style. I have more attention from the instructor and better skill improvment in Cypress. I did pretty good yesterday, the instructor said my balance and stance is pretty good, he can see I have been taking lessons. Today I did not so good. Normally I only edge my shaped ski to turn so I am not good at privoting. That gets me a bit worry about whether I will able to pass. When I woke up yesterday and today, I have a feeling that maybe I don’t not really want to do it, I shouldn’t register after all. I think this feeling came from my fear about failing the course. Since a little kid, I am always good at exams. The CSIA course is probably the first exam I failed miserably. I guess unless I conquer it this time, I will always have a shadow in my mind.

I have a friend who recently quited PMC, moved back to China joining Huawai as a marketing engineer. The job description seems pretty normal when he applied and interviewed for the job. Before he starts, he was told that he will have a two weeks long orientation training. This still looks pretty ok up to this point. Since he is from Canada, the company provided him accomdation as part of the benefit and he gladly stays there until finding a better place. On the first day of work, he was waken up at 6a.m. in the morning. Instead of normal boring meeting with powerpoint slides introducing the company, he was sent down to an assembly hall with 300 hundred other new comers. The company make them sit straight and take attendance in military style by standing up and yell at the top of your lung. Then after the attendance, they was sent to court yield to pratice marching, running laps and do push ups. At the end of the first day, my friend feels something is really wrong and flee back to HK. He contacted the HR department and found out they put him into the local orientation instead of orientation for foriegners. I wonder what kind of company makes its employees literally go through a boot camp? Maybe it is not that surprising since Huawai is funded by the Chinese Army after all. Now, I am curious on what kind of orientation will the foriegners have.