The morale of the day is never act stupid at work, or within a day the whole company will know about you. Today there is only one topic among my friends at work, both the cantonese group and the CBC group I hang out with. I will not mention the incident here and removed any trace of it in my blog upon the request of those who are involved. For those who already known what I talk about, it is really funny indeed. I have always keep a very simple rule about my secrets. If it is something I truly don’t want anyone to know about, I simply won’t telling anyone about it. As described in the 2nd law of thermal dynamics, energy tends to spread out naturally. The larger the surface area, the faster the heat dissipate. We all know information is a form of energy and energy can be expressed as heat. On a second thought, maybe this incident is not meant to be a secret, maybe it is a story that should goes around and give people some enlightenment. I even post the story as an example of how to ruin a date on the internet forum I go to.

When I wake up this morning, it was snowing heavly outside. Since I have to work on my thesis, I didn’t plan to go outside at all today, the snow doesn’t affect me. However I do feel better that I know many people will also trapped at home due to the snow fall. Pat had planned to come over to have dinner together. But due to it is very dangerous to drive in this road condition, she better stay home. I am not very productive today, just managed to write another 4 pages. I still have one more week to finish my thesis and hand it in to be reviewed by Dr. Hardy. I found writing thesis is quite painful especially on how to condense 20+ papers into 4 pages in a meaningful way. Anyways, let’s pray I can finish the thesis and graduate early to end this painful process of writing thesis.

Last night was my company’s annual christmas party. Even though it said annual, it’s the first time since 5 years. During the downturn, the company simply cut all the unncessary expense, and the party is one of them. The official name is called winter party, to be politically correct and not offending other religion. I think that is totally fart with pants down. I doubt anyone will be offended by using the word christmas. Just turn christmas into a secular festival like halloween, make Santa Claus and Rudolph the red nose raindeer rather than Jesus as the center character of hristmas should be sufficient, no need to replace the word christmas with something else.

I always the like the idea about beating the system, finding clever ways to exploit the loopholes to your favour. Today, I find a very inspiring story on the news. There is a Canadian guy spent $7000 on a North America unlimited pass with Air Canada, then continuously fly for two months and end up earning $70000 worth of airmiles. His daily routine starting at 10a.m., flying back and forth between Vancouver and Victoria 6 times, then before the airport is closed, board an over night flight to Toronto and come back right away. He basically earned ten times of return in two month and they are all tax free! I think Air Canada will soon fix the airmile system. I just wonder, what he does on the plane to pass time?

Since I have started writting my thesis, or merely the M.Eng project, I have to think about my defense. The faculty has just imposed a 2+2 weeks rule, that is the paper has to ciruculate two weeks before the defense and the defense has to be at least two weeks before the submission. That implies even I can finish writting my paper before the end of this term, my defense will be schedule in january. One of my colleague, Ivy, has started the program about same time as me and she is having her defense tomorrow. At first I would like to tag along and check out how the format of the defense. But she refused let people see her defense to avoid having unncessary pressure. Althought I can still find out the room and time and just sit in, but I don’t want to be rude. Since I objective is to check out a defence, which can be any defense. I tagged along with Ivy to check out someone else’s defense today. The defense is pretty straight forward, 30 minutes of presentation followed by Q&A session. The professors and your own supervisor will usually go easy on you, not asking tough questions. The audience can also ask questions, but most of them are like us, sitting in just to prepare for their own defense, they usually are polite enough not to give the defender a hard time. However in today’s session, a guy from Mainland China is being rude, he tried to drill the defender with hard questions. This act really shows his lack of proper manner. I hope I won’t encounter one of those guys in my own defense.