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!”.

The seminer today is much worse than yesterday. Yesterday was at least informative, today they only talk about hot air. The theme of today is about engineering ethics. In the morning, some mono-tone engineer talked about discipline regulations and they just read from the slides directly. Outside the conference room, in the hotel pub, they were showing Germany vs Argentina. One by one, people were sneaking off to watch the game. I joined the group and able to watch most of the over time and the shot out. It’s one of the best game played in the series, much more enjoyable than listening to regulations.

In the afternoon, they talked about ethics. It’s nothing compare to the ethics we talked about in philosophy class. The whole thing can be summarized in one sentence: follow the 10 rules, when in double ask for professional advice. Those 10 rules are pretty straight forward, kinda like the rules in scout handbook. No one will attempt to dispute against the rule per se. However that the meaning and the scope of application of the terms used in the rules are subjected to dispute. The presentated followed by a case study. I don’t have much interested in it either. All I care about is how should I write the exam and how to keep myself away from discipline action in the future. In front of moral theory, engineering ethic seems so superficial. It is as vague as the “Don’t do evil” motto of Google.

Today is the first day of the P.Eng seminer. This seminer is really expensive, costed me several hundred dollars. I guess no one will take it if it is not compulsory for the P.Eng exam. At least the seminer is hosted by Hyatt, with pretty good breakfast and lunch. Today’s section talks about laws. First start with intellectual properties, then work safty laws and employment laws. In the afternoon, they talk about contract laws, tort laws and tender laws. I have learnt contract laws and tort laws in university, but tender law is quite new to me. I found the session not as useless as I originally thought. Having the chance to ask weird questions to the lawyer giving presentation helps to clarity some of the ideas. Although this is probably satisfy personaly curosity than prepare for the exam. I met a ex-colleague from PMC in the seminer. He is now a professor at UBC. I wonder why he comes, it turn out that the UBC engineering faculty forces all the professors get the P.Eng title. It is a requirment for the faculty to get accredit by the engineering society.