Today I went to the Premium Outlet Mall in Seattle for the first time. Actually it is my first time shopping in an outlet mall. I have experienced some time very unusal when I crossed the border this morning. Normally, the US custom just waive you pass the border. I got pulled over today and ran against a radiation detector. It was because Pat’s dad had a heart scan yesterday and the detector picked up isotope residual in his body. I guess the custom must had suspected us smuggling nuclear bomb into the States. Anyways, after tons of questions, search of the car, we are free to go after an hour delay. So we have to scrafice the Costco visit to keep the schedule.

Pat had bought quite some stuffs from the outlet mall, but I am the one who walked away handfull. I bought a pair of hiking boot from Nike and the long dued new suites. It is really a headache to pick clothings as there is no specification or preformance review for guidance. Most often the first item I pick is doomed to be rejected by Pat due to my poor taste. Then when I lower the requirement to absolute minimium of just being comfortable and let Pat pick the colour and style, she would complain about my lack of opinion. Even worse, she can somehow make a linkage to doubt my reason of picking her as girlfriend. Luckily, Pat’s brother is with us this time and he has good fashion sense, especially in the Central look. This solve my problem of picking the right clothes. I simply let them dress me, pay the bill before working away with the new clothes. From an engineer’s perspective, I still don’t understand what make one piece clothing better than another in term of fashion. One day, I will study philosophy of aesthetic to find out the answer. On the other hand, buying sports wears is much simplier. I only have to consider whether the clothing serves its design purpose well, is the price reasonable, and not in gay colour. Damn those evil fashion magazines, they had corrupted the mind of woman to make man’s life miserable just to pick the right dress.

Today I went up to SFU to pay my tutition fee. I arrive at about 4:30p.m., the line up is insanity long and only two counters is opened. I standed in the line for about 2-3 minutes, I decided to apply queuing theory I had learn in my communication couse to decide whether I should wait and how long I have to wait. Based on the service time (time each student at the counter), the queue length (number of students in the line), the arrival rate (new students coming to the line) and drop rate (students don’t bother to wait), I concluded I better leave now and come back in half an hour. I then went to the bookstore get the textbook, went to the library read today’s newspaper and come back to the register office at 5:00p.m. I find that the girl in front of me before I left is the 2nd one in the line. There is only 3 more people behind her. I only have to wait a few minutes to get my tutition paid. I really feel sorry for that girl who standed in line for half an hour, where she could use her time more wisely somewhere else. Engineering knowledge is really applicable in daily life.

I was talking to a friend at work today, who happens to be a non-male engineer, about the engineer culture. She complained about the lack of respect to woman in engineering in general. I kinda disagree with her. In my world, all enginners belongs to the same bleed, althought some may have a different appearence. Normally when a group of engineers treat each other some certain way, none in the group would consider that as a harassement. I don’t understand why a female would think different and consider she is being mistreated. To make puzzle more complicate, I also can’t understand why any one with a right mind would treat a non-male engineer as a flirting target. We all know the mind of non-male engineer works more or less the same as a male engineer, they are not the same type of woman you meet at bar, clubbing or any other social activities. It will never have the right chemistry to click between two engineers, unless romance is taken out of the equation and they click on something else.

I came across a book in the SFU library today talks about the philosophy of engineering. Engineers are indeed a very unique creature. To everyone’s misunderstand, engineer is not a hybrid of scientist and technician. It is interesting to know that the word engineer is origined from French. It is first refered to the military unit in Frech army that accoumulate knowledge, skills to make weapon or building projects run more efficiently. Later, this unit is brenched out into the civilian world to take care of implementing all complicate projects. Thanks to the education and training, engineers tends to think in an unique way different from normal people. Engineers strive for efficient and like to optimize things with measurable standards. In the design process, we like to minimize the manual work and incorporate as much intelligent into the system as possible. We are trained to elimiate the routine and trivial tasks, or turn most tasks into boring routine tasks for the lowly non-engineers. We are highly focus on praticality, most the time the ultimate goal is get the thing works. No wonder we engineer are so bad and handling woman or being romance, those are the things exactly opposite to what we are trained for.

At the foostable at work, someone always spoil the laughters and fun. Playing games are suppose to be relaxing and joyful, somehow one person in the group take it too seriously. He would trash talk when he score, swear when he is scored and really grumppy when he lost the game. He is one of the best player around, it is absolutely no fun to play against him, even with him. It is not that we are out of luck and lost big time, but rather he create a bad mood around the table. Sometimes I become quite serious during the game, especially when it’s passing back and forth for a long time without any goal. However once the someone scored or the game is finish, we make fun of each other and joke about the game, we won’t wear the tense face for long. That room is setup for creational purpose, we don’t need to give ourself more stress by creating unnecessary competition. I am just thinking, isn’t this lesson can apply to other aspect of life as well? Why stress out yourself with merely a game? Play a game seriously is a respect to your opponents, but it doesn’t mean you have to take the winning or losing of the game seriously. The question is how to distinguish what is for fun and what is not.

Today is the last day of the week long christmas holidays. I feel I am having the holiday syndrome, feeling sad about having to go back to work. My christmas holidays is absolutely unproductive, havn’t touch my school work once, and I am still preparing my toastmaster speech for tomorrow. However, one of my gains in the holidays is I came out from the shell and initiate contacts with my old friends. Other than my best buddies in Waterloo visiting me, I had sent out e-cards to all of my friends and heard many response. It is surprise to receive many warm greetings and updates from old friends didn’t keep in contact. I will try to keep in touch with them by writing them an email at least once a month. Although I feel a bit let down by some of responses, just one simple line with an unsincere thankyou. Some are not smart enough to gave me their email address even I hinted I had lost it. Anyways, a short reply is better than no reply. I can see which person can be written off from my friends list. It is very true that when one grows old, it is harder and harder to make new friends, so we have to treasure our old friends.