Tag Archives: university

Old friends

It has been many years since I spend time in Toronto.  Last time I came back for my friend’s wedding, I only stayed for a weekend.  I did not even have enough time for my family, so I could not see most of my friends.  I saw many friends in the wedding, but it is hard to talk during the banquet.  It is too noisy and has too much distraction to talk about work, family and life in general.  It takes a relaxing environment to talk about those touchy topics. This time I came back for another friend’s wedding and staying almost a week and I finally have the chance to catch up with them. My schedule is fully booked everyday to have lunch, dinner and drinks after dinner with my old friends.

We went to school together, we are about the same age, we are experience the same stage of life, so we share many common worries. I envy some aspect of their life and they envy some other aspect my life. It seems grass just is always greener on the other side. Some of my friends stuck in a technical job with relatively good pay but not much visibility about the future in ten years just like me. Some of my friends starting start-up to pursuit their dreams. Some of my friends left the industry and working on something totally different. Talking to my friends gives me some thoughts about my life plan and at the same time makes me learn to treasure the gifts I already have.

Out of all my friends, one made a pretty interesting career move. Guess what, he started a condom shop! We are all wondering, does he QA all the products sold in the shop himself? Maybe that’s why he never bring his girlfriend to the reunions. He knew we will ask very embarrassing questions. We are a whole bunch of engineers after all.

Missing chapters in college days

Block university has a applied disablity study program that is related to Pat’s studies in autism, so we drove to St. Catherine to take a look at the university campus.  Comparing to the huge campus of UBC, Block seems very small.  Even SFU or Waterloo seems big comparing to the several connecting buildings that is all of Block’s campus.  The university campus store can tell you a lot about the character of the university.  I checked out the textbook of the philosophy courses;  I think Block’s philosophy department is much tougher than SFU’s.  The readings are mostly original materials, unlike the comprehension textbooks use in SFU.

When I am browsing the titles in the university bookstore, I realized what I missed in my college days.  Like those portrayed in movies or novels, university suppose to be a place for the quest of knowledge.  Students should carry those thick wordy books around, then they sit under the sun and talk about the wildest ideas.  They would have many complaints against the society, the government, the corporate, basically complain about the adult world in general.  They dream about the future and talk about how they would make a change.  Thinking back what I have done in my university days, it seems my time outside of classroom are mostly wasted.  I just spent endless nights playing Warcraft with friends in the computer lab, went to Karaoke and get drunk on the many weekends.  I should have read more books, pretend to be more intellectual and maybe even join some movement for a noble cause.