I did my Controls exam yesterday. I thought I did allright. After the exam, I went on a tour around other laboratories in the fluid mechanics department. I learned something really interesting that day, that small insects like dragon flies and bees make tiny little vortexes in the air with their wings and then push off on them some how to make them fly! Very fascinating stuff.
I came home by about 6:00 pm, exhausted. Milled about and then crashed till 9:00 pm then I started working on my presentation which I had for today. I wrote out an outline, reviewed old data and pictures of my project and then proceeded to write notes on how I wanted my presentation to go. I spent time translating text in to Japanese and then finally started putting the presentation together in powerpoint. I was finally done making the presentation by 3:00 am. Spent 1 hour till 4:00 am practicing giving the presentation in Japanese (ad lib) and then collapsed into bed where I would wake by 7:00 to grab a bite to eat, suit up and make it to the university by 8:30. They showed the presentation list and I had my presentation to go at 9:40 to 10:10 (30 mins). Just a note, the Japanese are infatuated with the suit! For a university interview almost all students came in a full suit or close to it. I forwent the vest and went in dress pants and a dress shirt.
The presentation went smoother than I expected. Sure I stumbled on a few words, but those were language barriers (I also made a vocab list of technical words and kept it by my desk for reference should I need any of those back up words :). All in all, it went pretty well.
The strangest thing was that there were atleast 7 professors in the room for my interview. I was incredibly shocked and embarrased, not becaused there were so many professors, but because I made only 4 copies of my resume to give to them! How would I have known that there would be so many professors! Ugh. I thought that 4 was a nice round number and that it wouldn't exceed that. Live and learn... then move on.
Unfortunately, though I know the professors have marked my exam, they didn't mention anything about my exam marks. One of my friends got a little flack for not doing so well on the exam because his professor asked "why were [his] exam marks were so low compared to [his] university grades." I will have to find time to enquire about my marks as I am curious to see how I did.
I got home by 10:40. Zombified because of lack of sleep but at the same time, my body didn't want to goto sleep. I tried waiting it out but that didn't work. By 2:00 I departed from my dorm to anywhere... just anywhere that looked like a nice place to eat. I wound up at a restaurant specializing in food made with soy. I was amazed the food was excellent! Presentation was beautiful and for $15 I was stuffed (and had a small bite for dessert). Too bad I went alone though, would have been much more fun if I went with friends, but I was content none the less. Also a note about Japanese restraunts, the Japanese quite often give you the bill right after you recieve the meal. I felt weird the first few times when that happened because I was so used to asking for the bill when I was done.
4:30 now... I have an appointment at 6:00, I decided to join something totally ridiculus for me in Japan, but what the hey. I'll talk about it some other time. *yawn* Let's see if I can take a 1 hour nap....
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Monday, August 29, 2005
4 down, 1 to go. Interview Wedensday
Breakfast of champions: Steak Ramen with boiled egg. I was off to a good start... then I slipped on a banana peel (metaphorically speaking).
Math A ("math fundamentals"):
I'd describe this exam as "sheep being led to slaughter." Seriously, the exams from the previous years were way easier than what I faced today. Heck, I could even get a perfect score on the older exams, but today? Uh-uh, no. Not a good way to start the morning. I went into a meditative slumber during the break before my next exam (in 30 minutes) to cool off, I was quite disappointed to say the least. I made a horrible mistake-- I let my curiosity get the better of me. What does that mean? I saw a problem that I've never seen before and decided that I'd play with the problem to see if I could solve it. I wasted too much time rechecking my equations against the problem to see if it fit and fiddled with it too much as I got closer and close to the answer. End result? I got burned for time! Atleast the problems were tricky, some of them required some clever thinking to get through... Consolation has it that the rest of the Japanese students that took the exam got slaughtered too. My goal is to (hopefully) ride the bell curve (if they do use it here).
English:
As my labmate put described it, "you being in an Englsih exam is *criminal*." heh I couldn't agree more. We had 1 hour to do the exam. The exam had some article from MSN on IP phones, asked us a bunch of questions and asked us to write a 100 word essay on how internet phones would effect society. I write over 700 words in a sitting for my blogs and I push well over 1,000 on occasion. I was done in 30 minutes and I left in 45. I left early because I wanted an early lunch-- I will still miffed about the first exam.
Math B:
Foruier transforms, differential equations and Lapalce transforms. I know for sure that I didn't perfect the exam. We had 3 problems on the exam, of the 3 we choose 2 to solve. I had enough time in the 1.5 hours to try all three and pick the best 2 solutions I wrote for grading. I threw the Japanese adjudicators for a loop. They were wondering why the hell I attempted all 3 questions that they didn't know what to do for a little bit even after I told them one of the solution papers should not be graded (all solution papers had to be submitted). I couldn't get a perfect solution for both problems but I brought them as close as I could to getting the final result. I might have made an algerbraic mistake in one problem and then the other one, I didn't know the inverse laplace transform of a "hyperbolic tangent" function. But it's okay, I wrote down what the solution should look like algerbraicly.
Electomagnetics:
Again of the 3 problems, we choose 2 to solve and hand them in. One problem I didn't understand so well so that pretty much left me with the other 2 problems to solve. I think I did pretty well for this exam. Solved everything, little shaky on one of the question but I think the results for this exam are good.
Tomorrow: Control Systems
I hated this course the first time I took it at UBC. I loved reviewing it on my own. The theory is beautiful-- using differential equations, you can make a system respond to a variety of inputs during a specific state to change the output. The usual math we study are "close form" solutions to most problems. We don't usually talk about how a set of basic equations and variables evolve over a period of time based on certain inputs. This kind of math can be used to progam robotic controllers, acoustic filters and more. The same theory can also be applied to economics which I find fascinating.
Wedensday: Interview
Presentation on my graduating project at University. I need to make slides (which I gave yet to do) and make a list of Japanese key words I will be needing during the presentation (my technical vocabulary is still limited). My professor wants me to do the interview in Japanese. I tried to hide my Japanese skill so I could spend more time practicing before using it in a formal setting. Unfortunatly I got preempted... the reason? My marks for my Japanese courses have probably come out and they probably turned out good (a copy is sent to my professor). He told me that my Japanese was good and that I should do the interview in Japanese. Damn, well here goes nothing. It'll be a trial by fire.
It is now 11:02 pm, test at 9:00 am, arrival time to exam room at 8:30 tomorrow. I've been meaning to review notes but I'm sick of review. I wanted to read my old projcet report but couldn't bring myself to do that either. Probably later tonight.
After exams? I will celebrate and go travelling. Plans? Tokyo, Nagoya (expo), Hokkido, Taiwan and Korea (if I can squeeze Korea in). I'm going to be burning a hole in my wallet, but what the hey, it's now or never!
Math A ("math fundamentals"):
I'd describe this exam as "sheep being led to slaughter." Seriously, the exams from the previous years were way easier than what I faced today. Heck, I could even get a perfect score on the older exams, but today? Uh-uh, no. Not a good way to start the morning. I went into a meditative slumber during the break before my next exam (in 30 minutes) to cool off, I was quite disappointed to say the least. I made a horrible mistake-- I let my curiosity get the better of me. What does that mean? I saw a problem that I've never seen before and decided that I'd play with the problem to see if I could solve it. I wasted too much time rechecking my equations against the problem to see if it fit and fiddled with it too much as I got closer and close to the answer. End result? I got burned for time! Atleast the problems were tricky, some of them required some clever thinking to get through... Consolation has it that the rest of the Japanese students that took the exam got slaughtered too. My goal is to (hopefully) ride the bell curve (if they do use it here).
English:
As my labmate put described it, "you being in an Englsih exam is *criminal*." heh I couldn't agree more. We had 1 hour to do the exam. The exam had some article from MSN on IP phones, asked us a bunch of questions and asked us to write a 100 word essay on how internet phones would effect society. I write over 700 words in a sitting for my blogs and I push well over 1,000 on occasion. I was done in 30 minutes and I left in 45. I left early because I wanted an early lunch-- I will still miffed about the first exam.
Math B:
Foruier transforms, differential equations and Lapalce transforms. I know for sure that I didn't perfect the exam. We had 3 problems on the exam, of the 3 we choose 2 to solve. I had enough time in the 1.5 hours to try all three and pick the best 2 solutions I wrote for grading. I threw the Japanese adjudicators for a loop. They were wondering why the hell I attempted all 3 questions that they didn't know what to do for a little bit even after I told them one of the solution papers should not be graded (all solution papers had to be submitted). I couldn't get a perfect solution for both problems but I brought them as close as I could to getting the final result. I might have made an algerbraic mistake in one problem and then the other one, I didn't know the inverse laplace transform of a "hyperbolic tangent" function. But it's okay, I wrote down what the solution should look like algerbraicly.
Electomagnetics:
Again of the 3 problems, we choose 2 to solve and hand them in. One problem I didn't understand so well so that pretty much left me with the other 2 problems to solve. I think I did pretty well for this exam. Solved everything, little shaky on one of the question but I think the results for this exam are good.
Tomorrow: Control Systems
I hated this course the first time I took it at UBC. I loved reviewing it on my own. The theory is beautiful-- using differential equations, you can make a system respond to a variety of inputs during a specific state to change the output. The usual math we study are "close form" solutions to most problems. We don't usually talk about how a set of basic equations and variables evolve over a period of time based on certain inputs. This kind of math can be used to progam robotic controllers, acoustic filters and more. The same theory can also be applied to economics which I find fascinating.
Wedensday: Interview
Presentation on my graduating project at University. I need to make slides (which I gave yet to do) and make a list of Japanese key words I will be needing during the presentation (my technical vocabulary is still limited). My professor wants me to do the interview in Japanese. I tried to hide my Japanese skill so I could spend more time practicing before using it in a formal setting. Unfortunatly I got preempted... the reason? My marks for my Japanese courses have probably come out and they probably turned out good (a copy is sent to my professor). He told me that my Japanese was good and that I should do the interview in Japanese. Damn, well here goes nothing. It'll be a trial by fire.
It is now 11:02 pm, test at 9:00 am, arrival time to exam room at 8:30 tomorrow. I've been meaning to review notes but I'm sick of review. I wanted to read my old projcet report but couldn't bring myself to do that either. Probably later tonight.
After exams? I will celebrate and go travelling. Plans? Tokyo, Nagoya (expo), Hokkido, Taiwan and Korea (if I can squeeze Korea in). I'm going to be burning a hole in my wallet, but what the hey, it's now or never!
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Sendai from Above
I went to the Aeru building yesterday (tall building in Sendai) during a break from studying (a 15 minute scooter ride from the droms) to catch the sunset and took a few pictures of Sendai from above. There are plenty of high rise buildings in Sendai but I can say honestly, I much prefer the asthetic looks of the buildings in Vancouver-- there is a sense of style in Vancouver. In Sendai the buildings have a bit of a boxy look. But don't mind me, I'm just kind of spoiled comming from Vancouver (and spent way too much time taking walks in Coal Harbor).
Looking North West
Looking West
Looking South West
Looking East
Looking way west. The buildings on top of the mountain (if you can see them) is the Engineering Department. The nice thing about Tohoku University is that it's literally located right by a pretty big forest. A section of the area is sanctioned off as a nature preserve. Very beautiful, went scootering around there one late afternoon. I'll be going for a hike there the next chance I get.
More photos on life in Japan to follow, stay tuned!
Looking North West
Looking West
Looking South West
Looking East
Looking way west. The buildings on top of the mountain (if you can see them) is the Engineering Department. The nice thing about Tohoku University is that it's literally located right by a pretty big forest. A section of the area is sanctioned off as a nature preserve. Very beautiful, went scootering around there one late afternoon. I'll be going for a hike there the next chance I get.
More photos on life in Japan to follow, stay tuned!
Friday, August 26, 2005
Be square!
After much effort (like a 6 hour tutorial) a German friend of mine taught me and a bunch of friends how to cube. The guy is absolutely amazing. He holds a record of cubing in about 30 seconds. The current world record stands at 11 seconds, the record before that one was 24 seconds! As for me, it takes me about 4~5 minutes to solve a cube. And now back to studying, I'm almost done!
Can you do the cube?
Can you do the cube?
Pictures from Naruko Trip
Been a while since my last picture post. I went on a trip waay back in the Beginning of August... never got around to posting pictures but finally here they are. I went to Naruko which is north of Sendai, known for their hot springs. We didn't stop by at a hot spring house, but we went hiking instead.
Japan has a beauriful country side, though most people only get to know the cities. The rice fields and lush forests around make for a wonderful sight. For those that do make their way to Japan someday, definately check out the country side!
Pictures here.
Japan has a beauriful country side, though most people only get to know the cities. The rice fields and lush forests around make for a wonderful sight. For those that do make their way to Japan someday, definately check out the country side!
Pictures here.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
An interesting Biography
I decided to do some random reading today and I stumbled across a short and interesting biography of the Mayor of Sendai.
Involved with the volleyball club in middle school, part of the sailing club in high school. Graduate out of Tokyo University (the supposed holy grail universities in Japan). Did work in industrial commerce, started several of his own small and medium venture companies.
Holds a first level black belt in Judo, Part of a Pan-American Judo organization at the first (beginning level).
Um wow, interesting character.
Here's a question for you readers. What would your biography look like today? What would your biography look like in 10 years? Interesting, eh?
Involved with the volleyball club in middle school, part of the sailing club in high school. Graduate out of Tokyo University (the supposed holy grail universities in Japan). Did work in industrial commerce, started several of his own small and medium venture companies.
Holds a first level black belt in Judo, Part of a Pan-American Judo organization at the first (beginning level).
Um wow, interesting character.
Here's a question for you readers. What would your biography look like today? What would your biography look like in 10 years? Interesting, eh?
Innocent Mistake
I finally caught the bike "thief" today when he decided to come out and get my bike. It turns out it was a friend of mine (still is a friend) and it was all an interesting little mistake. My friend, Resa, got a bike from his friend and this friend gave him the bike key and told him the general area where the bike was (which so happened to be right near mine). What it turned out was that the key fit into my lock perfectly and unlocked my bike. Huh, would you have guessed at that.
This is a picture of my bike
And this is a picture of the lock
In Japan, all bikes here come with a standard lock located at the front wheel of the bike usually. The mechanism is pretty simple-- a pin comes out and prevents the spokes from turning. As you can see in the picture there. So it turns out that Resa's friend gave him the keys to the bike and told him where it was, all he had to do was plug the key in to a few bikes and 'ta da' that's the bike.
Had a good laugh over that one. Resa's a good guy from Iran and that would probably explain why I had a sticker on my bike indicating that he paid for a bike parking fee.
Nearing the last leg of my cram session with 5 days left. Meaning I have time to review and prepare something for my interview on the 31st. I'm looking forward to the end of this. I have been in my room for so long. Well I took the weekend and Monday. I slept so much it was unbelievable. I also wake up really late (well that is because I go to bed really late).
On a side note, I've been downloading tons of music. I clocked in at 2 gigs today. Decided that I should acquire some Japanese music to listen to. People that I am currently listening to:
Koda Kumi
KOTOKO
Do as Infinity
Hitomi Yaida
English music I'm currently listening to:
Natalie Imbruglia
4 Strings
Thievery Corporation
Smash Mouth
Avril Lavigne (apparently she's really popular in Japan!)
Audioslave
This is a picture of my bike
And this is a picture of the lock
In Japan, all bikes here come with a standard lock located at the front wheel of the bike usually. The mechanism is pretty simple-- a pin comes out and prevents the spokes from turning. As you can see in the picture there. So it turns out that Resa's friend gave him the keys to the bike and told him where it was, all he had to do was plug the key in to a few bikes and 'ta da' that's the bike.
Had a good laugh over that one. Resa's a good guy from Iran and that would probably explain why I had a sticker on my bike indicating that he paid for a bike parking fee.
Nearing the last leg of my cram session with 5 days left. Meaning I have time to review and prepare something for my interview on the 31st. I'm looking forward to the end of this. I have been in my room for so long. Well I took the weekend and Monday. I slept so much it was unbelievable. I also wake up really late (well that is because I go to bed really late).
On a side note, I've been downloading tons of music. I clocked in at 2 gigs today. Decided that I should acquire some Japanese music to listen to. People that I am currently listening to:
Koda Kumi
KOTOKO
Do as Infinity
Hitomi Yaida
English music I'm currently listening to:
Natalie Imbruglia
4 Strings
Thievery Corporation
Smash Mouth
Avril Lavigne (apparently she's really popular in Japan!)
Audioslave
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Armed and Dangerous (watch out thieves!)
I know of atleast 3 bikes being stolen, 2 of them were my friend's and the last one was mine. Today at 2:00 am I saw a suspicious guy walking around the bike racks (my window is located right outside the racks) who have since walked away. I wasn't so miffed about having my bike stolen (I have a scooter now right?) but people that think that they can go around stealing things don't sit well with me. I found my bike elsewhere in the bike racks. Interestingly this thief actually parked my bike at some "bike parking zone" and paid for the parking fee! Can you imagine that?
As a parting gift, I inherited a BB gun from Olen among many things... like spices and herbs up the wazoo, but that is a different story. So here is the little devil that I have got here.
Non lethal, and just stings. Apparently the current batch of international students that are going home had a thing for BB guns and ran around shooting all the time leaving welts on each other. I have now parked by bike in a place where I have a line of sight to my bike and since I'm up late most of the time, I hope to catch the thief... but I don't have any intentions of shooting him because 1. That person will know who I am, 2. That person will know where I live and 3. Getting into an extended conflict is not worth the effort (I have to live here for another 7 month's you know!) There are much better ways of skinning a cat!
All I just need to know is who is it and where he lives and the next time it gets stolen, I'll just come his door leave a post it note saying something like
"I know who you are,
I know where you live,
you won't know where or when,
but I'm going to get'ya. Yarrrr!"
and leave a pirate flag sticker on the door. Ain't that cute? If worse come to worse, I'll just start playing practical jokes on the poor bastard. Muah ha ha ha ha!
As a parting gift, I inherited a BB gun from Olen among many things... like spices and herbs up the wazoo, but that is a different story. So here is the little devil that I have got here.
Non lethal, and just stings. Apparently the current batch of international students that are going home had a thing for BB guns and ran around shooting all the time leaving welts on each other. I have now parked by bike in a place where I have a line of sight to my bike and since I'm up late most of the time, I hope to catch the thief... but I don't have any intentions of shooting him because 1. That person will know who I am, 2. That person will know where I live and 3. Getting into an extended conflict is not worth the effort (I have to live here for another 7 month's you know!) There are much better ways of skinning a cat!
All I just need to know is who is it and where he lives and the next time it gets stolen, I'll just come his door leave a post it note saying something like
"I know who you are,
I know where you live,
you won't know where or when,
but I'm going to get'ya. Yarrrr!"
and leave a pirate flag sticker on the door. Ain't that cute? If worse come to worse, I'll just start playing practical jokes on the poor bastard. Muah ha ha ha ha!
Monday, August 22, 2005
"Envy" in different languages
The neat thing about living in an international dorm is that I am exposed to so many cultures and the one thing that really struck me is that almost everyone here from places like Sweden, Germany, Columbia, China, Taiwan and more can speak atleast 2 languages, their mother tongue and English... and they are throwing a 3rd into the fray with Japanese as they are studying here in Japan.
As for me, I feel a little out gunned linguistically knowing only 2 languages, English and Japanese as opposed to these other people. I would have to say that the people that learn English do it out of necessity, because their country does business in the English world and the language of international academia is also in English.
Sooner or later, the distribution global powers are going to shift. China, India are now gaining momentum, who knows what the global landscape might look like in the next 40 to 50 years. Me, comming from a mainly mono-lingual culture (well most of us in Canada don't speak French, especially those of us in the West), I see it as a potential problem if we aren't able to communicate with other cultures, becuse we might actually be dependent on them one day.
Given the time, I would definately like to study more languages. In the future, I probably will. Learning more languages isn't the whole point of the story however, I think the most important part is to understand how to learn multiple languages efficently with enough command to communicate reasonably well to a native (with the hopes of gaining fluency).
Armed with the basic concepts of syntax and conjugation of words one can learn fairly quickly the basics of most languages (the real trick is the vocabulary). Fluency is achieved when you understand the nuances of how people communicate and the story is just that. But of course, it is easier "said" than done.
As for me, I feel a little out gunned linguistically knowing only 2 languages, English and Japanese as opposed to these other people. I would have to say that the people that learn English do it out of necessity, because their country does business in the English world and the language of international academia is also in English.
Sooner or later, the distribution global powers are going to shift. China, India are now gaining momentum, who knows what the global landscape might look like in the next 40 to 50 years. Me, comming from a mainly mono-lingual culture (well most of us in Canada don't speak French, especially those of us in the West), I see it as a potential problem if we aren't able to communicate with other cultures, becuse we might actually be dependent on them one day.
Given the time, I would definately like to study more languages. In the future, I probably will. Learning more languages isn't the whole point of the story however, I think the most important part is to understand how to learn multiple languages efficently with enough command to communicate reasonably well to a native (with the hopes of gaining fluency).
Armed with the basic concepts of syntax and conjugation of words one can learn fairly quickly the basics of most languages (the real trick is the vocabulary). Fluency is achieved when you understand the nuances of how people communicate and the story is just that. But of course, it is easier "said" than done.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Post exam vacation spot 1
1 more week till exams. 3 Tests down 2 more to go. Just have to review controls and practice my "English" exam (which isn't as bad as I anticipated), run through all the tests again. Prepare for an interview and I'll be done by the 31st. Yay, and to celebrate, one of the first things I'm going to do is going on a trip...
and I'm planning on going to Taiwan!
a bunch of friends have gone home to Taiwan so I figured that I'd pop by there and go visit them do a tour around the island and come back a week later... and then do some more vacationing throughout the month of September :)
I'd better go learn some Mandarin right after exams!
and I'm planning on going to Taiwan!
a bunch of friends have gone home to Taiwan so I figured that I'd pop by there and go visit them do a tour around the island and come back a week later... and then do some more vacationing throughout the month of September :)I'd better go learn some Mandarin right after exams!
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Going away parties, too much to handle?
Yesterday Fred (from America) and Mikiko (Swedish girl) had their going away party. International students, Japanese people, all you can drink and food. It was quite the party.
I had my revenge against Abby for out drinking me the last time we downed a beer. Friends shot edamame (green soy beens) at each other, met a Japanese person called "Saiko" (sounds like "Psycho"). We made fun of Abby (from Taiwan) who got "Intimidate" and "Intimate" wrong after she blurted "Do you want me to 'intimate' you!?" after some guy was bugging her. No, we didn't let her live that down for a while.
The food was pretty good and I had a bunch of drinks. What else. Austrailian girls are eeeeevil! Apparently they were teaching some Japanese girl pick up lines. Who ended up blurting them out at me. It started with "Hey you're hot," then "I love you," then "I want to have your children." Tsk tsk tsk I wasn't about to let them have their way with me :) I shouted back "You're gonna have to deal with twins if you're going to mess with me!" laughter ensued.
More interesting, while I was talking to Fred... when he suddenly stopped talking and started staring. I looked around and caught what he was seeing. Apparently one Korean gal was complaining to another friend about her boobs, the other was checking them out telling her that they were "OK." Some of the Japanese girls caught Fred staring and asked him if he thought his boobs were okay and proceeded to check them by poking at his chest. I couldn't help but laugh.
After 2 hours, our all-you-can-drink time limit elapsed and the party moved on to Karaoke. I didn't attend however, I had to headed back to the dorms to give a friend of mine heading back to Taiwan her present --> mango pudding (yes it's quite popular over here :). An army of friends were in her room, like 5~6 of us helping her out clean everything before she had to go the next day.
I got back into my room by 2:00 am... woke up at 10:00 am and was late for a special lecture on MicroElectricMachine fabrication techniques by 30 minutes.
I had my revenge against Abby for out drinking me the last time we downed a beer. Friends shot edamame (green soy beens) at each other, met a Japanese person called "Saiko" (sounds like "Psycho"). We made fun of Abby (from Taiwan) who got "Intimidate" and "Intimate" wrong after she blurted "Do you want me to 'intimate' you!?" after some guy was bugging her. No, we didn't let her live that down for a while.
The food was pretty good and I had a bunch of drinks. What else. Austrailian girls are eeeeevil! Apparently they were teaching some Japanese girl pick up lines. Who ended up blurting them out at me. It started with "Hey you're hot," then "I love you," then "I want to have your children." Tsk tsk tsk I wasn't about to let them have their way with me :) I shouted back "You're gonna have to deal with twins if you're going to mess with me!" laughter ensued.
More interesting, while I was talking to Fred... when he suddenly stopped talking and started staring. I looked around and caught what he was seeing. Apparently one Korean gal was complaining to another friend about her boobs, the other was checking them out telling her that they were "OK." Some of the Japanese girls caught Fred staring and asked him if he thought his boobs were okay and proceeded to check them by poking at his chest. I couldn't help but laugh.
After 2 hours, our all-you-can-drink time limit elapsed and the party moved on to Karaoke. I didn't attend however, I had to headed back to the dorms to give a friend of mine heading back to Taiwan her present --> mango pudding (yes it's quite popular over here :). An army of friends were in her room, like 5~6 of us helping her out clean everything before she had to go the next day.
I got back into my room by 2:00 am... woke up at 10:00 am and was late for a special lecture on MicroElectricMachine fabrication techniques by 30 minutes.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
How Inconvenient
We had an earthquake in Sendai just 5 minutes ago. The building runbled, the doors shook and I was in the can. It could've been worse! I could've been taking a shower!
All is well here.
"Shaken, not stired"
All is well here.
"Shaken, not stired"
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Life does exist!
Allright, so I might have been obsessed with the news and other things the last little while, that isn't to say that I don't have a life here.
I've been in Japan a little too long now!
I even eat fruits with chopsticks (I don't even have a set of forks!).. those are chopped pineapples and that was breakfast :)
The picture above was dinner. Flour coated chicken with Szechwan pepper fried in garlic butter and a side of pasta in olive oil, garlic salt, lemon pepper and basil with chopped green peppers. Wow that's a mouthful (literally! haw haw).
Mood lighting anyone? I did some decorating today. I got some chrismas lights and threw them up now I can work on my computer in the evenings in dim lighting. It's a lot nicer than having room lights blaring at full blast all night.
And that's my random update for the evening :) Time to do some reading!
I've been in Japan a little too long now!
I even eat fruits with chopsticks (I don't even have a set of forks!).. those are chopped pineapples and that was breakfast :)
The picture above was dinner. Flour coated chicken with Szechwan pepper fried in garlic butter and a side of pasta in olive oil, garlic salt, lemon pepper and basil with chopped green peppers. Wow that's a mouthful (literally! haw haw).
Mood lighting anyone? I did some decorating today. I got some chrismas lights and threw them up now I can work on my computer in the evenings in dim lighting. It's a lot nicer than having room lights blaring at full blast all night.
And that's my random update for the evening :) Time to do some reading!
Other ways of fighting softwood lumber
Weapons are to war as leverage is to negotiation.
When it comes to negotiation, it seems to me that either Canada is unarmed or doesn't know how to fight. I was reading the news today, Gordon Campbell treatening to restrict resource trade with the US. What took him so long to come to this conclusion?
Unfortunately, details in the news are scant interms of what resources he is going to restrict and how he is going to do it. Without knowing either one cannot tell whether if it is feasible or to do so or not. At this moment in time I am currently not interested in doing the research to see whether if Canada should make this move (I have other things to do). But the decisison making conditions should be apparent. As I will outline briefly.
Should Canada restrict trade of natural resources such as gas, oil, water, electricity and etc, economic damage to both economies needs to calculated. If damage to American industries are going to be significantly greater than to Canadian industries, then serious thought should be made to go through with this move while providing suitable compensation to local resource companies to reduce damage on our side.
Cutting US access to cheap resources and energy (which is why the US is trading with us I presume) should drive up prices in US markets or reduce profit margins for American companies (resources they acquire will become more expensive if they cannot get them from Canada).
Suppose the following situation. I will use wood as an example. Suppose that wood is sold to the US for $1 a piece. An hardware outlet purchases the wood for $1 and has a 200% markup, selling the wood for $2. Suppose that the wood is sold to construction companies and through their work the value of that wood increases by 400% and is sold to the consumer for $8.
Next presume that the US sells their own brand of wood for $1.2, assume that the same process occurs and the consumer purchases the finished product for $9.6. The value that Canadian lumber offers to the US economy in this case is $1.6. For every $1 that we don't sell the US loses $1.6. This is one form of leverage. The real factors are probably different, but the more processing our products go through in the American market, the more value they get out of it and hence price fluctuations at the lowest level (ie resource level) will be felt the most as it propagates through to the end product.
There are more factors at work here, suppose that Canada did severly restrict selling lumber to the US. Understanding "suppy and demand," that would cause lumber prices in the US to rise and the net result will be amplified to the consumer. By how much, that would be hard to predict, but the effect would be greater than the imaginary "$1.6" damage from the previous example. A much more detailed analysis is necessary to better understand the effects of Canadian trade on the US economy.
Now, to simply take the $1 as a loss is silly and what Gordon Campbell mentioned in the news release that Canada is looking for other countries to sell our resources to (ie China, etc) is to reduce the damage done to us for not trading with the US. This is a step in the correct direction.
Furthermore, the American lumber lobby groups supporting the trade dispute should be pressured. Motives of governments are based on demands made by strong lobby groups, since these lobby groups are the ones that support the government most strongly it is in the interest of the government to appease these groups. Going head on against the US government is not the key to resolving this issue, because it is quite evident that American based lumber lobby groups (whose names I cannot recall at the moment) want to keep Canadian competitve factors minimized in American markets.
The trick to solving this dispute is to apply pressure on these groups from within the US. The strategy I propose is for either the Canadian Government or lumber companies to appeal to people further down the lumber chain (people that use the lumber in construction and consumers) that they would be losing value by not buying cheaper Canadian lumber interms of reduced profit margins (from more expensive building materials) or increased price (which is passed on to the consumer). I personally believe that reduced profit margins will make the strongest incentive to encourage a dispute against lumber lobby groups from within. This is what exactly needed to weaken support for the softwood lumber dispute.
When it comes to negotiation, it seems to me that either Canada is unarmed or doesn't know how to fight. I was reading the news today, Gordon Campbell treatening to restrict resource trade with the US. What took him so long to come to this conclusion?
Unfortunately, details in the news are scant interms of what resources he is going to restrict and how he is going to do it. Without knowing either one cannot tell whether if it is feasible or to do so or not. At this moment in time I am currently not interested in doing the research to see whether if Canada should make this move (I have other things to do). But the decisison making conditions should be apparent. As I will outline briefly.
Should Canada restrict trade of natural resources such as gas, oil, water, electricity and etc, economic damage to both economies needs to calculated. If damage to American industries are going to be significantly greater than to Canadian industries, then serious thought should be made to go through with this move while providing suitable compensation to local resource companies to reduce damage on our side.
Cutting US access to cheap resources and energy (which is why the US is trading with us I presume) should drive up prices in US markets or reduce profit margins for American companies (resources they acquire will become more expensive if they cannot get them from Canada).
Suppose the following situation. I will use wood as an example. Suppose that wood is sold to the US for $1 a piece. An hardware outlet purchases the wood for $1 and has a 200% markup, selling the wood for $2. Suppose that the wood is sold to construction companies and through their work the value of that wood increases by 400% and is sold to the consumer for $8.
Next presume that the US sells their own brand of wood for $1.2, assume that the same process occurs and the consumer purchases the finished product for $9.6. The value that Canadian lumber offers to the US economy in this case is $1.6. For every $1 that we don't sell the US loses $1.6. This is one form of leverage. The real factors are probably different, but the more processing our products go through in the American market, the more value they get out of it and hence price fluctuations at the lowest level (ie resource level) will be felt the most as it propagates through to the end product.
There are more factors at work here, suppose that Canada did severly restrict selling lumber to the US. Understanding "suppy and demand," that would cause lumber prices in the US to rise and the net result will be amplified to the consumer. By how much, that would be hard to predict, but the effect would be greater than the imaginary "$1.6" damage from the previous example. A much more detailed analysis is necessary to better understand the effects of Canadian trade on the US economy.
Now, to simply take the $1 as a loss is silly and what Gordon Campbell mentioned in the news release that Canada is looking for other countries to sell our resources to (ie China, etc) is to reduce the damage done to us for not trading with the US. This is a step in the correct direction.
Furthermore, the American lumber lobby groups supporting the trade dispute should be pressured. Motives of governments are based on demands made by strong lobby groups, since these lobby groups are the ones that support the government most strongly it is in the interest of the government to appease these groups. Going head on against the US government is not the key to resolving this issue, because it is quite evident that American based lumber lobby groups (whose names I cannot recall at the moment) want to keep Canadian competitve factors minimized in American markets.
The trick to solving this dispute is to apply pressure on these groups from within the US. The strategy I propose is for either the Canadian Government or lumber companies to appeal to people further down the lumber chain (people that use the lumber in construction and consumers) that they would be losing value by not buying cheaper Canadian lumber interms of reduced profit margins (from more expensive building materials) or increased price (which is passed on to the consumer). I personally believe that reduced profit margins will make the strongest incentive to encourage a dispute against lumber lobby groups from within. This is what exactly needed to weaken support for the softwood lumber dispute.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Big Stick Diplomacy, Self Interest and Niceness
Pakistan develops cruise missle technology. Their comment?
"Mr Ahmed said the "milestone" launch had been a success, adding: 'The nation is proud of its team of scientists who have raised the country's prestige in the comity of nations.'" --BBC article, here
This statement I don't understand, actually it's really kind of silly. What do weapons have to do with "prestiege"? I also laugh that developing long range weapons capable of carrying nukes falls within the "comity of nations." Which, by the way, means "Courteous recognition accorded by one nation to the laws and institutions of another." (reference: dictionary.com) Riiight, [sarcasm] I am sure that everyone will be pleased to hear that their neighbour is stalking up on weapons, "legally" [/sarcasm] . Unfortunately, in reality this is a result of tit-for-tat relations between India and Pakistan and their long standing rivraly. Understandable that Pakistan wants weapons to provide India with more disincentives for war.
But this idea got me thinking about pecking orders, morality and stable systems.
Pretend that you have a pecking order based solely who can beat up who. Suppose that you have person B that can beat up person C, therefore person B can have their (I use the word 'their' because it is gender inspecific) way over person C whenever they please. Is this fair? Let's ignore this for now until I introduce person A which is stonger than person B. Assuming this the laws of "morality" holds true for this society, then person A should have every right to smack person B around whenever they chose to have their way.
What if person B complains about rights to "sanctity"? In this case, that statement is a non-argument-- person B didn't adhere to them in the first place, thus it is perfectly "moral" for person A to smack B around. There is a reason why people at the most fundamental level (I'm talking about individuals, not companies or perhaps even countries-- companies, atleast, follow a different set of rules) don't out right push each other around based on how powerful they are-- society is large and there is almost 100% certainty that there are people more powerful than you.
I should talk more about "morals," atleast my interpretation of them, so here it is: Morals is a conceptual set of rules of behavior equally applied to all persons in a system.
This definition of morals is not hard set and I am obviously welcome improvements to my definition or discussion. If you think that my definition of "morals" is incorrect or another word/concept is more suited feel free to post comments.
The point about morals I want to make is that morals do not define what is "good" or "bad" conduct, but rather what is fair conduct. Using the former example that people higher up on the pecking order can have their way, it is perfectly fair for someone that pushed another around to be pushed around. Sure they might not like it, but that's fair, this is a moral system.
Consider the absurd case to illustrate this point further. Suppose the same situation, B tells A that A cannot retaliate (dispite A being more powerful). B then proceeds (or shall I say attempts?) to push A around. This does not work, because it is silly. It would be like saying that given 2 identical particles in a physical system that one obeys a different law of physics compared to the other. This case of behavior is immoral and like inconsistent laws in physics, immoral (inconsistent) systems are often short lived. Result: B gets busted.
I said earlier that morals do not determine what is "good and bad," but to have a system of morals without knowing what is good and bad is somewhat useless. I will introduce the concept of "self interest" here. I define self interest as "what you want." What is good lies within your self interest, what is bad is outside of your self interest. The person that defines your self interest is you. I want to present the idea that the moral code we follow are the products of self interest.
Again, let's consider the A,B,C model. Let's extend the model such that for every person that exists, there is a person that is more powerful than the last. In other words, suppose that there is a person that is stronger than A, let's call this person Z and there is a person more powerful than Z who is X... and so forth, the pattern continues. Suppose that all persons are carrying the same amount money and it is not in their interest to lose it but everyone is interested in having more. Assume that stronger persons can forcibly take money from weaker persons. Now consider the question, will the stronger person take the money from a weaker person?
The answer is no, but this is obvious. But I did not drag you through all this to come to an obvious solution. There are more interesting things if we take a closer look at the results, shall we?
Let us look at both cases, both of which are moral but one is prefered. It is clear that 2 equally fair systems exist. The case where all persons took from each other (assume that the pattern continues forever and we approximate the system as having "no strongest person") and thus have nothing versus the system where no one takes and everyone has money. The reason why the latter system is chosen over the former is because of self interest, which I assumed that all persons within the system would rather not go without money. The implication I make here is that self interest governs what moral system we choose... and that I argue that there can be more than one moral system. I thought that was interesting!
I want to take this further, I want to also say that this system is stable and say that this is a "nice" system (in more ways than one). Suppose that immoral conduct did occur within this system. Suppose that B is a delinquient, B takes money from C, what happens now? A realizes that this is not fair (immoral situation), A could take the money and keep it, but it is not in A's interest to do so (else Z could take form A, a new moral system would be selected but this is not in the interest of other members of this system). The system is self restoring-- A takes the money stolen from B and returns it to C. The system is "nice" because it is self restoring; in Engineering and Mathematical systems, we call this a "stable system" or a "stable state"... the action of B would be considered a "perturbation" (deviation from stable state). Isn't it wonderful? An aside: the origins of niceness at the most selfish level can derived purely from self interest-- Niceness is self-supporting! (A comment like this was published in 1999 in Time Magazine' s Millineal Edition which had an article "On the Origins of Niceness")
What I described isn't something new. I think it is well understood and this concept falls under "Game theory," which is a discription of an "incentive based model" (definition taken from Wikipedia)... I prefer to explain game theory as a model of "self interests" in a system and how the system evolves over time as "self interest dynamics." But I'm running away on a tangent...
These ideas are not new, actually Nobel had similar ideas over 100 years ago when he invented dynamite:
"My factories may make an end of war sooner than your congresses. The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops." --Alfred Nobel
Nobel thought that if he could make weapons so powerful that it would inflict terrible damage to everyone for anyone to go to war. He understood well enough that he wanted to provide the world with enough disincentive for war to end. Could this be what Pakistan be doing? This probably is half true. The world is going to be in a lot of trouble if everyone decided to take the other "moral" system and blows everything up with nukes. I seriously hope humanity isn't that stupid.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. " --Albert Einstien
"Mr Ahmed said the "milestone" launch had been a success, adding: 'The nation is proud of its team of scientists who have raised the country's prestige in the comity of nations.'" --BBC article, here
This statement I don't understand, actually it's really kind of silly. What do weapons have to do with "prestiege"? I also laugh that developing long range weapons capable of carrying nukes falls within the "comity of nations." Which, by the way, means "Courteous recognition accorded by one nation to the laws and institutions of another." (reference: dictionary.com) Riiight, [sarcasm] I am sure that everyone will be pleased to hear that their neighbour is stalking up on weapons, "legally" [/sarcasm] . Unfortunately, in reality this is a result of tit-for-tat relations between India and Pakistan and their long standing rivraly. Understandable that Pakistan wants weapons to provide India with more disincentives for war.
But this idea got me thinking about pecking orders, morality and stable systems.
Pretend that you have a pecking order based solely who can beat up who. Suppose that you have person B that can beat up person C, therefore person B can have their (I use the word 'their' because it is gender inspecific) way over person C whenever they please. Is this fair? Let's ignore this for now until I introduce person A which is stonger than person B. Assuming this the laws of "morality" holds true for this society, then person A should have every right to smack person B around whenever they chose to have their way.
What if person B complains about rights to "sanctity"? In this case, that statement is a non-argument-- person B didn't adhere to them in the first place, thus it is perfectly "moral" for person A to smack B around. There is a reason why people at the most fundamental level (I'm talking about individuals, not companies or perhaps even countries-- companies, atleast, follow a different set of rules) don't out right push each other around based on how powerful they are-- society is large and there is almost 100% certainty that there are people more powerful than you.
I should talk more about "morals," atleast my interpretation of them, so here it is: Morals is a conceptual set of rules of behavior equally applied to all persons in a system.
This definition of morals is not hard set and I am obviously welcome improvements to my definition or discussion. If you think that my definition of "morals" is incorrect or another word/concept is more suited feel free to post comments.
The point about morals I want to make is that morals do not define what is "good" or "bad" conduct, but rather what is fair conduct. Using the former example that people higher up on the pecking order can have their way, it is perfectly fair for someone that pushed another around to be pushed around. Sure they might not like it, but that's fair, this is a moral system.
Consider the absurd case to illustrate this point further. Suppose the same situation, B tells A that A cannot retaliate (dispite A being more powerful). B then proceeds (or shall I say attempts?) to push A around. This does not work, because it is silly. It would be like saying that given 2 identical particles in a physical system that one obeys a different law of physics compared to the other. This case of behavior is immoral and like inconsistent laws in physics, immoral (inconsistent) systems are often short lived. Result: B gets busted.
I said earlier that morals do not determine what is "good and bad," but to have a system of morals without knowing what is good and bad is somewhat useless. I will introduce the concept of "self interest" here. I define self interest as "what you want." What is good lies within your self interest, what is bad is outside of your self interest. The person that defines your self interest is you. I want to present the idea that the moral code we follow are the products of self interest.
Again, let's consider the A,B,C model. Let's extend the model such that for every person that exists, there is a person that is more powerful than the last. In other words, suppose that there is a person that is stronger than A, let's call this person Z and there is a person more powerful than Z who is X... and so forth, the pattern continues. Suppose that all persons are carrying the same amount money and it is not in their interest to lose it but everyone is interested in having more. Assume that stronger persons can forcibly take money from weaker persons. Now consider the question, will the stronger person take the money from a weaker person?
The answer is no, but this is obvious. But I did not drag you through all this to come to an obvious solution. There are more interesting things if we take a closer look at the results, shall we?
Let us look at both cases, both of which are moral but one is prefered. It is clear that 2 equally fair systems exist. The case where all persons took from each other (assume that the pattern continues forever and we approximate the system as having "no strongest person") and thus have nothing versus the system where no one takes and everyone has money. The reason why the latter system is chosen over the former is because of self interest, which I assumed that all persons within the system would rather not go without money. The implication I make here is that self interest governs what moral system we choose... and that I argue that there can be more than one moral system. I thought that was interesting!
I want to take this further, I want to also say that this system is stable and say that this is a "nice" system (in more ways than one). Suppose that immoral conduct did occur within this system. Suppose that B is a delinquient, B takes money from C, what happens now? A realizes that this is not fair (immoral situation), A could take the money and keep it, but it is not in A's interest to do so (else Z could take form A, a new moral system would be selected but this is not in the interest of other members of this system). The system is self restoring-- A takes the money stolen from B and returns it to C. The system is "nice" because it is self restoring; in Engineering and Mathematical systems, we call this a "stable system" or a "stable state"... the action of B would be considered a "perturbation" (deviation from stable state). Isn't it wonderful? An aside: the origins of niceness at the most selfish level can derived purely from self interest-- Niceness is self-supporting! (A comment like this was published in 1999 in Time Magazine' s Millineal Edition which had an article "On the Origins of Niceness")
What I described isn't something new. I think it is well understood and this concept falls under "Game theory," which is a discription of an "incentive based model" (definition taken from Wikipedia)... I prefer to explain game theory as a model of "self interests" in a system and how the system evolves over time as "self interest dynamics." But I'm running away on a tangent...
These ideas are not new, actually Nobel had similar ideas over 100 years ago when he invented dynamite:
"My factories may make an end of war sooner than your congresses. The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops." --Alfred Nobel
Nobel thought that if he could make weapons so powerful that it would inflict terrible damage to everyone for anyone to go to war. He understood well enough that he wanted to provide the world with enough disincentive for war to end. Could this be what Pakistan be doing? This probably is half true. The world is going to be in a lot of trouble if everyone decided to take the other "moral" system and blows everything up with nukes. I seriously hope humanity isn't that stupid.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. " --Albert Einstien
This is going to be... "fun"
The closer to a deadline the more productive I get. It's even more interesting when I'm in a panic (sort'a).
I got a form last week to confirm choices for what subjects I will be taking for my entrance exam. I initially thought I was going to be taking 3 subjects, Math A (integrals, differentiation, vector calc and basic differential equations), Math B (Laplace Transforms, Fourier Transforms, differential equations) and Control Theory (I hated that course when I was in UBC).
After reading the form I got, I am supposed to be taking 4 courses for examination... I'll be throwing ElectroMagnetism into the mix, I was surprised since I got the gist from the old exams that I would only need 3 courses. The best part is that I left all my electromagnetism notes in Canada, plus my text book. I'll be having that Fedex'd to Japan and working off some of the library resources.
There is a possibility that I might have to take an english test too. What the hell? I asked the main office last month if it was necessary and they said that it wasn't. I asked the Mechanical Engineering (that's the official department I am under) office to see if I needed the English test and they said yes. I will not be amused if I need to take the English test because it is not trivial. It means that I need to translate some tough looking prose from English to Japanese. This I am not prepared for and nor will 3 days worth of study have me prepared for that test if/when it occurs. This detail will have to be straightened out tomorrow.
Finally I will have an interview with my professor and several other people from the department. I can already guess what they're going to ask me: "Why did you choose this University?" "Why do you want to study MEMs technology?" "What kind of skills do you have?" "What do you like?" etc etc.
Personally, I like interviews because the topics you can cover are open and the important part is that you can admit that you don't know something without looing like a fool (interesting thought, no?). In a test, you get docked marks if you don't know; in real life you can propose a hypothesis, lay out your assumptions do some research and make a plan to go from there. I will be looking forward to the interview because it'll be something refreshing to do after sitting through 4 tests over 2 days.
As of today, I have 18 days left to study for 4 courses. Wish me luck!
I got a form last week to confirm choices for what subjects I will be taking for my entrance exam. I initially thought I was going to be taking 3 subjects, Math A (integrals, differentiation, vector calc and basic differential equations), Math B (Laplace Transforms, Fourier Transforms, differential equations) and Control Theory (I hated that course when I was in UBC).
After reading the form I got, I am supposed to be taking 4 courses for examination... I'll be throwing ElectroMagnetism into the mix, I was surprised since I got the gist from the old exams that I would only need 3 courses. The best part is that I left all my electromagnetism notes in Canada, plus my text book. I'll be having that Fedex'd to Japan and working off some of the library resources.
There is a possibility that I might have to take an english test too. What the hell? I asked the main office last month if it was necessary and they said that it wasn't. I asked the Mechanical Engineering (that's the official department I am under) office to see if I needed the English test and they said yes. I will not be amused if I need to take the English test because it is not trivial. It means that I need to translate some tough looking prose from English to Japanese. This I am not prepared for and nor will 3 days worth of study have me prepared for that test if/when it occurs. This detail will have to be straightened out tomorrow.
Finally I will have an interview with my professor and several other people from the department. I can already guess what they're going to ask me: "Why did you choose this University?" "Why do you want to study MEMs technology?" "What kind of skills do you have?" "What do you like?" etc etc.
Personally, I like interviews because the topics you can cover are open and the important part is that you can admit that you don't know something without looing like a fool (interesting thought, no?). In a test, you get docked marks if you don't know; in real life you can propose a hypothesis, lay out your assumptions do some research and make a plan to go from there. I will be looking forward to the interview because it'll be something refreshing to do after sitting through 4 tests over 2 days.
As of today, I have 18 days left to study for 4 courses. Wish me luck!
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Tanabata in Sendai
I wanted to buy spoons today.
Last week, I held a dessert party in my room and now, mysteriously one of my spoons went missing. On Friday, I made a batch of Mango Pudding to give to the secretaries at the International Exchange Center (because they're so nice and I felt bad after telling them of all the dessert parties I've been doing and never had the chance to invite them out [yes, the international students invite the secretaries out to events!]). I gave them a container of mango pudding and included a spoon for them to dish it out to their colleagues in the office. I won't be back into the office for atleast a month... and I gave them my last spoon.
The Tanabata festival for Sendai (cf. wikipedia description here) started on Saturday and I would finally have time to see the festival on Sunday. I needed to buy spoons and hit the gym to check if my automatic bank payments worked for my monthly gym subscription. I headed out this morning at about 11:00 am to make my way out there.
I walked around the main arcade where the Tanabata festivities were being held. There were people everywhere walking around and looking at the decorations. To the left, you'll see the streamers hung for the Tanabata festival. From what I've read, they represent "woven threads," for what reason however, I am not sure. I tried asking some Japanese people and even they didn't know off hand.
Alot of people were out wearking Yukatas and Jimbeis (Summer Kimonos for women and men, respectively) so it was rather nice seeing everyone in such festive spirits. Along the street were lots of vendors selling food, beer, toys, shoes, etc. I saw a place that were selling really cheap sandals that I wanted to buy, since they're good for rainy days and my feet won't be soaking wet the whole day if I were to wear them. I didn't stop to buy them because I had other things on my mind, like finding some food to eat.
I walked and walked and eventually found a kaiten-sushi restaurant (one of those conveyor belt sushi restaurants) but they were remarkably busy, but I really wanted to eat in one. The line ups were really long and I didn't feel like waiting so I kept walking looking for other sushi restaurants. I walked another km to the train station to find a place to eat there; big mistake, I should have known that all the restaurants there would be extra busy. Sendai is famous, nationally for their Tanabata festival so everyone comming to see the festival came by train and stopped off to eat at the restaurants in the station.
A little disappointed, I at first decided to skip lunch and go for a walk instead. Close by the station was the tallest building in Sendai, otherwise known as the "Aeru" building. I headed to the roof of the building to the observation deck to take a look at the city from up above. The view from above is spectaular and I enjoy going there from time to time. I have yet to go there at night to see the city lights (it's summer and it gets dark after the building closes).
After hitting the observation deck, I checked out the restraunt right by the observation deck (one of those nice posh restraunts) and I was in luck, they had a lunch set for only $25, well I wasn't complaining for a 6 course lunch.
The picture to the left here is the waiting room while they prep up the table for customers. The only sad part was that I went alone. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing... though I'm not sure if I was friends that they would be willing to shell out $25 for a lunch, but it was worth it.
I ran into friends right after lunch hanging outside of the train station, what luck. I tagged along to catch some coffee with them.
This is what happens when you have 13 people crowding into a coffee shop. We were also evil and asked for separate bills and hung around for a long time and made other people wait for us before we had to leave.
The group had to split up and I had to meet up with a Phillipino friend since we arranged to check out the Tanabata festival when it started. The city had the roads blocked off and groups of performers took to the streets entertaining different sections of visitors along the way. We got to see marching bands (way too many of them), a dance squad, Japanese firefighters doing stunts on a really tall ladder and cheerleaders. Unfortunately I had to leave the event a little early to check the automatic transfer with the gym. Ended up leaving an hour before the parade was over. Oh well... but it gets better.
Unfortunately I didn't have pictures for the last part, but I headed home after checking things with the gym. The automatc payment did go through and I was in dire need of a shower and had a stack of laundry to do. I hit the local convenience store to get some change for the washing machines when I heard drumming in the courtyard of a University near by. I had to go and check it out.
It turns out they too were doing a little festival up there. They had a stage, an intimate sort of thing with only about 30 people. They had a few performers and musicians entertaining to Japanese music. They broke out the beer and snacks and we had a picnic in the courtyard. It was all free, these people are amazingly friendly. The floor opened up and I joined everyone dancing around the stage doing some kind of Japanese folk dance :) When I do come back to Canada, I have something new to try when I go clubbing!
The really cool part of this group of people was that there were tons of old people out there having fun and hell, old people know how to party better than the young ones! I had a great time listening to these guys crack out the microphone and started singing. They started rotating through people and there were a few international students out there whom I've never met from China and they sung just beautifully. I on the other hand had to fall back onto "If you're happy and you know it..."
I was a little embarrased when I was going up to the stage... not because I had to sing, but because Canada has so little history compared to the Japanese. These old guys were singing all sorts of folk songs and they sounded terrific. But hey, Canada is like a baby compared to asian nations, we're only in the ball park of 200 years old as opposed to Asia that is thousands of years old? Well atleast they enjoyed my singing, I was greeted by the "grannies" and "grampas" who poured me a few glasses of beer after. I even got 2 boxes of tissue paper as going away presents (they were giving them out for some reason).
So finally I got home and did my laundry... and still, I'm without a spoon. Maybe something interesting will happen the next time I try to buy a spoon.
Quote of the Evening
"Not wearing a shirt either?"
"It's too damn hot to be wearing anything!"
Last week, I held a dessert party in my room and now, mysteriously one of my spoons went missing. On Friday, I made a batch of Mango Pudding to give to the secretaries at the International Exchange Center (because they're so nice and I felt bad after telling them of all the dessert parties I've been doing and never had the chance to invite them out [yes, the international students invite the secretaries out to events!]). I gave them a container of mango pudding and included a spoon for them to dish it out to their colleagues in the office. I won't be back into the office for atleast a month... and I gave them my last spoon.
The Tanabata festival for Sendai (cf. wikipedia description here) started on Saturday and I would finally have time to see the festival on Sunday. I needed to buy spoons and hit the gym to check if my automatic bank payments worked for my monthly gym subscription. I headed out this morning at about 11:00 am to make my way out there.
I walked around the main arcade where the Tanabata festivities were being held. There were people everywhere walking around and looking at the decorations. To the left, you'll see the streamers hung for the Tanabata festival. From what I've read, they represent "woven threads," for what reason however, I am not sure. I tried asking some Japanese people and even they didn't know off hand.Alot of people were out wearking Yukatas and Jimbeis (Summer Kimonos for women and men, respectively) so it was rather nice seeing everyone in such festive spirits. Along the street were lots of vendors selling food, beer, toys, shoes, etc. I saw a place that were selling really cheap sandals that I wanted to buy, since they're good for rainy days and my feet won't be soaking wet the whole day if I were to wear them. I didn't stop to buy them because I had other things on my mind, like finding some food to eat.
I walked and walked and eventually found a kaiten-sushi restaurant (one of those conveyor belt sushi restaurants) but they were remarkably busy, but I really wanted to eat in one. The line ups were really long and I didn't feel like waiting so I kept walking looking for other sushi restaurants. I walked another km to the train station to find a place to eat there; big mistake, I should have known that all the restaurants there would be extra busy. Sendai is famous, nationally for their Tanabata festival so everyone comming to see the festival came by train and stopped off to eat at the restaurants in the station.
A little disappointed, I at first decided to skip lunch and go for a walk instead. Close by the station was the tallest building in Sendai, otherwise known as the "Aeru" building. I headed to the roof of the building to the observation deck to take a look at the city from up above. The view from above is spectaular and I enjoy going there from time to time. I have yet to go there at night to see the city lights (it's summer and it gets dark after the building closes).
After hitting the observation deck, I checked out the restraunt right by the observation deck (one of those nice posh restraunts) and I was in luck, they had a lunch set for only $25, well I wasn't complaining for a 6 course lunch.The picture to the left here is the waiting room while they prep up the table for customers. The only sad part was that I went alone. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing... though I'm not sure if I was friends that they would be willing to shell out $25 for a lunch, but it was worth it.
I ran into friends right after lunch hanging outside of the train station, what luck. I tagged along to catch some coffee with them.
This is what happens when you have 13 people crowding into a coffee shop. We were also evil and asked for separate bills and hung around for a long time and made other people wait for us before we had to leave.
The group had to split up and I had to meet up with a Phillipino friend since we arranged to check out the Tanabata festival when it started. The city had the roads blocked off and groups of performers took to the streets entertaining different sections of visitors along the way. We got to see marching bands (way too many of them), a dance squad, Japanese firefighters doing stunts on a really tall ladder and cheerleaders. Unfortunately I had to leave the event a little early to check the automatic transfer with the gym. Ended up leaving an hour before the parade was over. Oh well... but it gets better.Unfortunately I didn't have pictures for the last part, but I headed home after checking things with the gym. The automatc payment did go through and I was in dire need of a shower and had a stack of laundry to do. I hit the local convenience store to get some change for the washing machines when I heard drumming in the courtyard of a University near by. I had to go and check it out.
It turns out they too were doing a little festival up there. They had a stage, an intimate sort of thing with only about 30 people. They had a few performers and musicians entertaining to Japanese music. They broke out the beer and snacks and we had a picnic in the courtyard. It was all free, these people are amazingly friendly. The floor opened up and I joined everyone dancing around the stage doing some kind of Japanese folk dance :) When I do come back to Canada, I have something new to try when I go clubbing!
The really cool part of this group of people was that there were tons of old people out there having fun and hell, old people know how to party better than the young ones! I had a great time listening to these guys crack out the microphone and started singing. They started rotating through people and there were a few international students out there whom I've never met from China and they sung just beautifully. I on the other hand had to fall back onto "If you're happy and you know it..."
I was a little embarrased when I was going up to the stage... not because I had to sing, but because Canada has so little history compared to the Japanese. These old guys were singing all sorts of folk songs and they sounded terrific. But hey, Canada is like a baby compared to asian nations, we're only in the ball park of 200 years old as opposed to Asia that is thousands of years old? Well atleast they enjoyed my singing, I was greeted by the "grannies" and "grampas" who poured me a few glasses of beer after. I even got 2 boxes of tissue paper as going away presents (they were giving them out for some reason).
So finally I got home and did my laundry... and still, I'm without a spoon. Maybe something interesting will happen the next time I try to buy a spoon.
Quote of the Evening
"Not wearing a shirt either?"
"It's too damn hot to be wearing anything!"
I can't believe it's not English!
I was at fireworks yesterday which was an hour train ride from Sendai to a place called Ishinomaki. I'll have an album up soon of what I've been up to. But I thought I'd show off this little gem of Japanese Engrish.
I was sleeping on the train on the way back from fireworks when I woke and looked up at the advertisments on the top of the train (like the advertisments you have at the top of the inside of a bus). I did a double take because I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I even had to ask a friend to double check the spelling on his electronic dictionary and yup, lo and behold, my eyes were not playing tricks on me.
I offer you this!
Click on the image for a bigger view-- the Drug lords in Japan are into weddings!
Good times were had. Just imagine all the strange looks when an Asian, a German and a Russian walks over in front of the people sitting below the poster to take a close up shot of this picture.
Snip Snip
I also had my hair cut recently (again). This is my second time having my hair cut in Japan. The first hair cut didn't turn out as well as I hoped... so the second time around, I brought my laptop to the barber with a picture of me with a good haircut. Unfortunately it didn't turn out like I showed the barber either. I might have to find another barber and see if I fare better the next time around.
The hair cut isn't all that bad really, short hair is good for me since it is really hot over here. We're breaking 34 degrees here with high humidity, which makes for yucky stickyness.
T-3 weeks to entrance exams.
I was sleeping on the train on the way back from fireworks when I woke and looked up at the advertisments on the top of the train (like the advertisments you have at the top of the inside of a bus). I did a double take because I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I even had to ask a friend to double check the spelling on his electronic dictionary and yup, lo and behold, my eyes were not playing tricks on me.
I offer you this!
Click on the image for a bigger view-- the Drug lords in Japan are into weddings!Good times were had. Just imagine all the strange looks when an Asian, a German and a Russian walks over in front of the people sitting below the poster to take a close up shot of this picture.
Snip Snip
I also had my hair cut recently (again). This is my second time having my hair cut in Japan. The first hair cut didn't turn out as well as I hoped... so the second time around, I brought my laptop to the barber with a picture of me with a good haircut. Unfortunately it didn't turn out like I showed the barber either. I might have to find another barber and see if I fare better the next time around.The hair cut isn't all that bad really, short hair is good for me since it is really hot over here. We're breaking 34 degrees here with high humidity, which makes for yucky stickyness.
T-3 weeks to entrance exams.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Disturbing buy/sell outs
I was reading the news today with regard to Canada and BC and I have been quite disturbed with what I read today. I was just reading that Terasen Gas was bought out by an American Company, namely, Kinder Morgan of Houston in the story posted here.
If you do not know much about Terasen, this company is the major natural gas distribution company for BC which deals with gas distribution to residents of BC in addition to owning assets in terms of gas and oil pipelines for distribution into Canada and the States. In addition, Terasen also controls pipelines for water distribution in BC. If you are interested in learning more about Terasen Gas, their webpage is located here.
I am uncomfortable with the buyout of Terasen by an American company as it gives the US stronger access into Canadian natural resources. Canada has the second largest oil reseves in the world with its reserves in Oil Sands (cf. PDF report here) and the largest fresh water reserves in the world. With current ongoing disputes such as softwood lumber, which BC has just won in the WTO courts, the US still refuses to remove tarrifs on imports of Canadian lumber into the US (the US has so far collected and is holding $5 billion in lumber tarrifs, which is Canadian money). Frankly, putting the management of distribution of Canadian natural resources at the hands of an American company is not a prudent decision under current circumstances-- why would you want give control of energy distribution to an American Company?
I will say this much, it is not entirely the fault of the government that this happened, though they did allow the possibility for this to happen after splitting up BC gas into a production and distribution company (if I am not mistaken) which are on the stock market. The problem with this is that a company can be bought out as it just happened now due to management decisions and shareholder agreements that bring the most value to them (the shareholders voted in favor of Terasen being sold). Share holders could careless about Canadian or US interests so long as the company they invested in makes them money. Now the question is, what is this decision going to cost BC and the average person.
I will say right off that I am no expert in the energy market and I have little understanding of how gas distribution companies work and the current state of energy trade regulations. I have already tried looking at the financial reports and investor information of Terasen Gas to determine their assets and customers (if you have both pieces of information you can determine how they make their money). Unfortunately I haven't been able to find much details on neither pieces of information. If anyone does know how the energy industry works please feel free to contact me as I do want to learn more about this industry.
The reason is the following: I would like to confirm or disprove the following concern I have with the US growing needs for natural resources such as gas and possibly water in the near future. What is to stop the American owned Terasen company from diverting Canadian resources into a lucerative American market, which could lead to rising prices in the Canadian market for gas? Looking at this from the point of supply and demand, if you have an American customer that might be more willing to pay more for gas than a Canadian company, they may have preference to sell resources to the Americans, unless if Canadian customers pay atleast the same price. I highly doubt that Canadian customers will face shortages of fuel, but it could lead to higher prices.
The above is a possible scenario I concocted based on guesses and assumptions (and hence could be far from the truth). I could come up with more possibilities but they would be little more than stabs in the dark which is not what I want to do (but I do want to raise why is it important to look at the implications of this event, which was the point of the last example). Without a better understanding of the business of Terasen gas (which seems to have little details posted in their webpage) I cannot understand the full implictions of the sale of this company to the US, which bothers me. What I exactly need to know is what service do they provide and what do they control in terms of natural resource flow to the US.
The other thing that needs to be understood is why did this company get sold and what value did the shareholders of this company saw interms of letting Terasen get bought out by Kinder Morgan.
It is now 1:47 am. Time for sleep.
If you do not know much about Terasen, this company is the major natural gas distribution company for BC which deals with gas distribution to residents of BC in addition to owning assets in terms of gas and oil pipelines for distribution into Canada and the States. In addition, Terasen also controls pipelines for water distribution in BC. If you are interested in learning more about Terasen Gas, their webpage is located here.
I am uncomfortable with the buyout of Terasen by an American company as it gives the US stronger access into Canadian natural resources. Canada has the second largest oil reseves in the world with its reserves in Oil Sands (cf. PDF report here) and the largest fresh water reserves in the world. With current ongoing disputes such as softwood lumber, which BC has just won in the WTO courts, the US still refuses to remove tarrifs on imports of Canadian lumber into the US (the US has so far collected and is holding $5 billion in lumber tarrifs, which is Canadian money). Frankly, putting the management of distribution of Canadian natural resources at the hands of an American company is not a prudent decision under current circumstances-- why would you want give control of energy distribution to an American Company?
I will say this much, it is not entirely the fault of the government that this happened, though they did allow the possibility for this to happen after splitting up BC gas into a production and distribution company (if I am not mistaken) which are on the stock market. The problem with this is that a company can be bought out as it just happened now due to management decisions and shareholder agreements that bring the most value to them (the shareholders voted in favor of Terasen being sold). Share holders could careless about Canadian or US interests so long as the company they invested in makes them money. Now the question is, what is this decision going to cost BC and the average person.
I will say right off that I am no expert in the energy market and I have little understanding of how gas distribution companies work and the current state of energy trade regulations. I have already tried looking at the financial reports and investor information of Terasen Gas to determine their assets and customers (if you have both pieces of information you can determine how they make their money). Unfortunately I haven't been able to find much details on neither pieces of information. If anyone does know how the energy industry works please feel free to contact me as I do want to learn more about this industry.
The reason is the following: I would like to confirm or disprove the following concern I have with the US growing needs for natural resources such as gas and possibly water in the near future. What is to stop the American owned Terasen company from diverting Canadian resources into a lucerative American market, which could lead to rising prices in the Canadian market for gas? Looking at this from the point of supply and demand, if you have an American customer that might be more willing to pay more for gas than a Canadian company, they may have preference to sell resources to the Americans, unless if Canadian customers pay atleast the same price. I highly doubt that Canadian customers will face shortages of fuel, but it could lead to higher prices.
The above is a possible scenario I concocted based on guesses and assumptions (and hence could be far from the truth). I could come up with more possibilities but they would be little more than stabs in the dark which is not what I want to do (but I do want to raise why is it important to look at the implications of this event, which was the point of the last example). Without a better understanding of the business of Terasen gas (which seems to have little details posted in their webpage) I cannot understand the full implictions of the sale of this company to the US, which bothers me. What I exactly need to know is what service do they provide and what do they control in terms of natural resource flow to the US.
The other thing that needs to be understood is why did this company get sold and what value did the shareholders of this company saw interms of letting Terasen get bought out by Kinder Morgan.
It is now 1:47 am. Time for sleep.
Monday, August 01, 2005
Beauty, fun and motivation
Have you ever experienced a time when you were doing things that you really enjoyed, had a lot of things going on and had a great time and then the things you did ended for some reason (say summer vacation ended, or music camp was done) then tried looking for other things to do that but couldn't think or find anything that was exciting for you to do? I am sort of at that point at the moment and so thinking about this has made me wonder "what motivates people?"
Motivation to me is some thing really really important. You can tell the big difference between a really motivated person versus a person that is just doing things to get by. With motivation, there is a sense of purpose for what you are doing, it means something to you. When things mean something to you, it becomes important and you become obervant about it and then you learn a lot about it. Without motivation, it might feel like you're doing meaningless stuff.
Take for example. Learning math. Cliche has it that math is boring and most of us don't use it in the real world. I couldn't think that that statement is further from the truth. Why is it that we study strange things like the differential equations and matrix equations or learning how to solve simpler things like ax^2 + bx + c = 0 back in the old days of high school math? What was the meaning of it? You learn that it is useful later on when solving things like a differential equation when you look for the roots of higher order polynomials. At the time it was just academic acrobatics for me... (well that was just one application, but there are more... and simpler applications :)
It was probably a miracle that I learned math-- I did it because I thought it was fun (especially the physics related problems!). I only thought it was beautiful later on when I realized that I could use math to model things like a bank account and project it what it might look like when a person turns 65 (it's a first order differential equation), do thing like image processing and find targets in a picture or do probability calculations for poker which earned me a lot of money (note to poker gang in Canada... pretend you never read that last statement :). *Now that's beautiful!*
You know what? I also sucked in math in my first year in University. Hell I even got 64% in my first calculus course simply because I wasn't motivated. Little would I know that I would end up teaching it years later to a first year student that failed her first mid-term and walked out of the course getting 90%+ on her final exam. The reason I became good at the math was I suddenly discovered how beautiful it was. I remember solving on my own that the area of the circle was pi*r^2 and the volume of a sphere was 4/3*pi*r^3. I finally got this when I a playing with the basic integral equations I learned...
I never really started to understand calculus math until my second/third year of University, when I was taking a fluid dynamics course and we had to calculate the flow through a pipe (water flows slower at the edges of the pipe and faster in the center) or things like the total pressure of the water acting on an object in water (the interesting thing was pressure increases as you go deeper in water, that is why nitrogen gets compressed into the blood in divers and comming up too quickly causes nitrogen to bubble out of the blood inside your body and causes the 'bends' illness). I thought learning things like that was wonderful because the math I was learning suddenly became useful. Since then my math marks jumped up, math became interesting to me again and I really enjoyed teaching why math was interesting to other people.
There is a reason why I am writing this-- I am having a hell of a time right now buckling down and studying Japanese like mad. I know I have 1900 Japanese characters to learn, then there is vocabulary and then I need to find my own style of self expression. I borrowed a Japanese novel a few weeks ago... I spent 2 hours reading 9 pages. I got tired and fell asleep after that and couldn't bring myself to read those books afterwards.
There is another reason-- I've been reading research papers to learn more about the field. I have a hell of a time trying to read into these papers because I keep getting really tired when I read these papers and I don't feel that I've learned anything valuable after reading them. So I am having mental road blocks from looking into them at the moment.
Instead, what have I been doing? I've been playing computer games instead in my room, late at night when I have "nothing else to do." I play things called "turn based strategy games" and I love these games to bits. I love all sorts of strategy games and play them for hours on end. I've even done calculations for one strategy game to try and find the most optimal method of growing my empire and seeing what are the costs for making certain trade offs (do I buy that fancy tank now or do I wait and invest more in factories and get that tank later?). I like playing these games because I understand the mechanics of these games really well. The manual tells me exatly how the basic laws of the game work and what are the formulas. With this information, I can make the decisions on how to apply them to find ways of beating my opponents effectively (or understand how exactly I lost).
The trick behind this all is understanding what motivates you to do/learn things and foster the right conditions for you to become motivated. I'm probably just frustrated about the way I'm learning Japanese Kanji and my research topic because the stuff I'm reading is ugly, boring and unmotivating (is that a word?).
Motivation to me is some thing really really important. You can tell the big difference between a really motivated person versus a person that is just doing things to get by. With motivation, there is a sense of purpose for what you are doing, it means something to you. When things mean something to you, it becomes important and you become obervant about it and then you learn a lot about it. Without motivation, it might feel like you're doing meaningless stuff.
Take for example. Learning math. Cliche has it that math is boring and most of us don't use it in the real world. I couldn't think that that statement is further from the truth. Why is it that we study strange things like the differential equations and matrix equations or learning how to solve simpler things like ax^2 + bx + c = 0 back in the old days of high school math? What was the meaning of it? You learn that it is useful later on when solving things like a differential equation when you look for the roots of higher order polynomials. At the time it was just academic acrobatics for me... (well that was just one application, but there are more... and simpler applications :)
It was probably a miracle that I learned math-- I did it because I thought it was fun (especially the physics related problems!). I only thought it was beautiful later on when I realized that I could use math to model things like a bank account and project it what it might look like when a person turns 65 (it's a first order differential equation), do thing like image processing and find targets in a picture or do probability calculations for poker which earned me a lot of money (note to poker gang in Canada... pretend you never read that last statement :). *Now that's beautiful!*
You know what? I also sucked in math in my first year in University. Hell I even got 64% in my first calculus course simply because I wasn't motivated. Little would I know that I would end up teaching it years later to a first year student that failed her first mid-term and walked out of the course getting 90%+ on her final exam. The reason I became good at the math was I suddenly discovered how beautiful it was. I remember solving on my own that the area of the circle was pi*r^2 and the volume of a sphere was 4/3*pi*r^3. I finally got this when I a playing with the basic integral equations I learned...
I never really started to understand calculus math until my second/third year of University, when I was taking a fluid dynamics course and we had to calculate the flow through a pipe (water flows slower at the edges of the pipe and faster in the center) or things like the total pressure of the water acting on an object in water (the interesting thing was pressure increases as you go deeper in water, that is why nitrogen gets compressed into the blood in divers and comming up too quickly causes nitrogen to bubble out of the blood inside your body and causes the 'bends' illness). I thought learning things like that was wonderful because the math I was learning suddenly became useful. Since then my math marks jumped up, math became interesting to me again and I really enjoyed teaching why math was interesting to other people.
There is a reason why I am writing this-- I am having a hell of a time right now buckling down and studying Japanese like mad. I know I have 1900 Japanese characters to learn, then there is vocabulary and then I need to find my own style of self expression. I borrowed a Japanese novel a few weeks ago... I spent 2 hours reading 9 pages. I got tired and fell asleep after that and couldn't bring myself to read those books afterwards.
There is another reason-- I've been reading research papers to learn more about the field. I have a hell of a time trying to read into these papers because I keep getting really tired when I read these papers and I don't feel that I've learned anything valuable after reading them. So I am having mental road blocks from looking into them at the moment.
Instead, what have I been doing? I've been playing computer games instead in my room, late at night when I have "nothing else to do." I play things called "turn based strategy games" and I love these games to bits. I love all sorts of strategy games and play them for hours on end. I've even done calculations for one strategy game to try and find the most optimal method of growing my empire and seeing what are the costs for making certain trade offs (do I buy that fancy tank now or do I wait and invest more in factories and get that tank later?). I like playing these games because I understand the mechanics of these games really well. The manual tells me exatly how the basic laws of the game work and what are the formulas. With this information, I can make the decisions on how to apply them to find ways of beating my opponents effectively (or understand how exactly I lost).
The trick behind this all is understanding what motivates you to do/learn things and foster the right conditions for you to become motivated. I'm probably just frustrated about the way I'm learning Japanese Kanji and my research topic because the stuff I'm reading is ugly, boring and unmotivating (is that a word?).
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