Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

library

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The library at work was closed down and the librarian got fired last week while I was in Saskatoon. Not many people will miss the library, as they all think it is just a waste of resource to hire someone to order books and keep track of magazines. I’m among one of the few customers of library, who feel sad that it’s closed. I do agree the librarian is kinda redundant and useless, but the library is where I get my weekly magazines from. Now when the library closed, it fetters me from getting my Economist and Harvard Business Review. I hope the company will hire a junior librarian or even a co-op student soon, so that the library can go back to business.

I am the table topic master in today’s toast master meeting. The topic is “Beautiful BC”, which the chairman assumes BC always stands for Birthish Columbia. I put a twist on the topic and use BC as an acronyms. The speakers and club member had fun and lots of laugh, and I think I did not a bad job. My hand gesture and flow of words still need more improvement. Gota remind myself avoid clapping my hands in my speech. The word of the day is Effulgent, it an adjactive with the same meaning as bright. I tried to use Effulgent in my speech, but I don’t make it bend in with my speech very well. However, this excerise give me an idea. I just subscribed to the dictioary.com word of the day mailing list. I’ll see how can I use the daily word in my blog starting today.

Daily Scribble

speech preparation

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Today is quite unproductive at work, not only I had 3 hours of meeting straight from 11:00a.m. to 2:30p.m., I did a brain dump to another colleague of what I had learnt in Saskatoon in the afternoon. The meeting in lunch time is not project related, it’s a mini seminar organized by the Toastmaster club on how to prepare a speech. The speaker is Marget Hope, a specialist on speech from SFU. I believe had I attended similiar seminar taught her before, but obviously I had forgot everything I learnt last time. Giving a speech is very different from writing an article. When writing an article, people usually use fancy words and complex sentence structures, but in a speech, simple sentence is usually the way to go. First she introduced the bubble diagram to brain storm ideas, then briefly on the technic of walk thru, talk thru, real rehersal and mental rehersal. After the seminar, I felt I am more prepared for the ice-breaker speech I have to do in Toastmaster, so I signed myself up do it the week after.

I think my chess skill really had improved, I slaughtered Gordon with a major advantage. Moreover, I tried the Sicilian defence dragon variable and really appreciate its beauty. I decided to focus on this as my main defense strategy in king pwan openings.

Daily Scribble

fun run

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Thirty six minute for running 5 km. I’m sure that’s definitely one of my personal record. Since a little kid, I’m never good at running. In highschool P.E. lessons, I’m always one of the slowest few in the class. Running for 10 laps and around the school run was like torture to me. After so many years, out of totally unknown reason, I signed up for the Science World Fun Run sponsered by the company. The registeration for the run is free, include a free T-shirt and high-tech shoe tag for individual time keeping. I guess it’s partly due to peer-pressure. Not only Pat started running to keep fit and wanted to come, several other friends at work also signed up. I was so worried that I would be the slowest one again. Fortunately, not including the girls, I am still faster than Louis and Jackson. Pat’s time is pretty good, only about 100 meters slower than Jackson. In the first half of the run, I stay besides Pat, so it was not very tried.

On the second half, Pat let me “runs free” and I keep up without walking all the way until the finishing line. The final 1km is the toughest, even though I was able to see the dome at the end point, there still a long way to go. It takes some self control for my exhausting yourself too soon by dashing prematurely. I think in long run, psychology plays as an important role as the body. There are times that I wanted to slow down and take a break, it is the mind force myself keep running. Actually I feel happy finishing the run, partly is due to the sense of accomplishment, and partly is due to chemical released in my brain from the vigorous exercise. I am planning to take part in the 10km run next year. Maybe in a few year when I’m not that busy, I’ll really start training to run a Marathon. Complete a Marathon race is now official added to my life time to-do list.

Today is really a busy day, it has been non-stop after the fun run in the morning. Right after the run, went home took a quick shower, then go to Richmond to have the farewell lunch with George. The guy go back to HK for good and got a job offer in the HK science park. Then it’s the weekly dancing class. This week is learning cha-cha for the 2nd time. I can feel my moves are better than last time, still I have problem counting beats. After that, we have to help out Krispy Kream distribution in the church. The fund raising for World Youth Day is a hugh success, I can’t imagine we had sold over 300 hundred dozens of donut. We were so careless that we forgot to order a box for ourself. Luckily, someone didn’t pick up their donuts and we could take that box home. Now as I’m writing about donut, I can feel my hunger and I know it’s time for me to stop writing and have a donut.

Daily Scribble

haircut

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I finally had my long due haircut this afternoon. I can feel my head is much more comfortable now, the hair is lighter and cooler, won’t get into my eyes all the time. I went to a man only salon that I had visited before. For the last few haircuts, I got dragged by Pat to company her to salon for both gender. I actualy like going to the man only salon. Not only it has computer and male oriented magazines in the waiting area, TV on each hair cutting station. The most important factor is that the hairstylist really understand the decision making process of man. All I have to say is the length and thickness I want, no need to answer weird questions about which style I prefer, or even worse had to pick a style from the magazine. Most man can only see the difference between having hair or not having enough hair. We don’t really care much about hair style, and would feel uneasy on questions about hair style because the lack of knowledge. Especially for male engineers, we really have a problem in making subjective judgments. I can never understand what makes one style better than another, unless someone show me statistics on the popularity of the difference styles. I had read some philosophy on aesthetics, I can understand beauty defined in classical sense, which is based on objective or utility values. Just the beauty defined by popular culture, such as hair style and fashions, doesn’t make any sense to me. Why one way or the other, they are all arbitrary decisions.

Daily Scribble

home sweet home

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After a week long business trip, finally I can sleep comfortably at my own bed tonight. Saskatoon is really the most boring city I had ever visited, although I haven’t visited many cities really. I think I had left foot prints on all shopping area in Saskatoon, where isn’t that many. It took only half hour to drive the circular highway surrounding the city once. The flight back is pretty smooth. Although lack of meal provided, I like Westjet better than Air Canada. The flight is more comfortable. The plane has leather seats with individual LCD screen of live TV broadcast. Anyways, my brain couldn’t really function normal after a whole day of travel, it’s time to go to bed. The only thing I learn from this trip other than technical details related to the project is that I hate work travel. The evening is so boring and unproductive in the hotel, I guess it would help if I have a decent laptop. Moreover, I start to see the beauty in building a routine work and life schedule.