I'm an alumna!

On October 23rd, I went to my convocation. Although it was rainy and gloomy, it had to have been one of the happiest days of my life, to celebrate an accomplishment, surrounded by the people I care about the most.

Despite the ceremony, it still didn’t hit me that I was officially done school. A couple days later, I was in Waterloo again to attend to some unfinished business. I went to campus a number of times, and seeing the students milling about, going about their daily routines, I finally realized that I would never be one of them again. Sure I could continue with grad school, but it’s a decidedly different atmosphere than the initial naivete of being a seventeen-year-old in a new place.

Last weekend was Halloween, so I somehow let myself get dragged to Screemers. I’m really not a haunted house person and essentially spent the time cowering in fear while screaming my lungs out. The day after, we hit up Tryst. Although planning was a giant pain in the ass (clubbing with a group when you live uptown requires a lot of coordination and patience), it turned out to be pretty fun.

Now that Halloween is out of the way, I can finally break out the tinsel and holly, and start looking forward to Christmas! I noticed that Sears at Eatons is already all decked out, which is awesome. *Cue holiday music*

When you are a girl in grade school, you don’t look up to your mom or adults. Instead, you idolize a slightly younger generation, but a few years older than yourself. You marvel at their vast knowledge of the world and degree of autonomy. When they talk to you, it’s genuine conversation, versus talking to adults who would mostly criticize and chastise. I was personally captivated by Amanda’s independence and her success. (She was in junior freaking high! She wore the prettiest hair accessories! She had a boyfriend!) I imagined myself at that age, and I saw myself living Amanda’s life. I thought, “of course, by then I will be just as cool as her”.

As you can probably guess, I wasn’t even close to having all the things she had when I hit that age. I had zero fashion sense (track pants all the way), didn’t have cool places to go out to, and was nowhere close to touching a boy.

I always had a picture of where I would be when I got to a certain phase in my life. I look at the people around me whose lives I am envious of, and I picture myself being in their position. But then when I reach that same stage, it’s nothing like I imagined. Sometimes I’m better off, and sometimes worse.

By now, most of the people I know are probably finished school. We might be starting our first jobs in the real world or trying to find one. It’s a defining yet puzzling moment in our lives. I’m sure many of us are familiar with the “quarter life crisis”, either through having experienced it or maybe being approached by a friend about it. It’s a time of reflection.

I never would have imagined I would be the person I am now. So I propose to you the following question:

Are you where you thought you’d be at this point in your life?

What did you imagine you’d be doing in your early twenties when you were 5, 10, 15 years old (hell, even just last year)? The kind of friends you’d have? Places and activities you’d enjoy? Your role in society? Your values and attitudes on life? The things you’d talk and joke about with your friends? Your accomplishments? Relationship expectations?

Oliver School

My elementary school in Edmonton was something quite special. It was a large brick building that looked like the proper educational institutions you’d come across in a movie or picture book. Not the uninspiring slabs of concrete with confusing room numbers that I’ve seen around here. There was a certain charm to it, especially during winter when the red brick walls stood out so beautifully against the piles of snow.

It was a small school with only about one class per grade. We didn’t have ‘O Canada’. We didn’t have French class. Every morning they would announce students’ birthdays on the PA system, and if it was your birthday, you can go down to the main office where they’d know your name and give you a birthday card and a pencil.

Around 10am, the fifth graders were tasked with delivering snack trays to every class. It ranged from milk and cookies to pop-tarts to my favourite, buttered corn.

From grade 3 to grade 5, our physical education curricula included mandatory swimming lessons. We’d pay about $20 and for a couple weeks, two times a week, we’d be ushered to Grant MacEwan (then a college, now a university) down the street and learn how to swim in their pool.

There was a General Store next to the gym where kids could buy things like bookmarks and candy (mostly candy). We didn’t have a cafeteria; we ate lunch in various classrooms where chaperones (sometimes parents) would supervise us. I loved going up to the library, on the third floor. It was like going upstairs to your attic in your house to visit your favourite old belongings. There were comfortable reading areas, and a computer lab with educational games like The Amazon Trail and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (yea it’s a book, but did you know there was a game too?).

In grade two, I had Mrs. Anderson for my teacher. At the end of the year, she invited the entire class to her house for a party and BBQ. We also got treat bags, on top of birthday gifts throughout the school year. I’m pretty sure this gave me unreasonable expectations for future teacher-student relations.

Every Christmas, the entire school (grades K-6) gathers in the gym for an assembly. Mrs. Anderson played the piano and we’d sing Christmas carols together with lyrics on a large projector.

Across the street was this old abandoned mansion. It looked like it had deteriorated from its previous grandeur, so we all thought it was haunted. I think some ballsy sixth graders might have explored it on Halloween one year.

Although I was only in grade 2, the neighbourhood was safe enough that I’d walk to and from school everyday by myself.

I miss elementary.

I’ve tasked myself with the simple deed of finding work. It’s rather amazing how complex the application process has evolved into. There was a time when you just submitted your cover letter and CV to a manager, and if you’re a serious contender, go in for an interview. Now, hiring policies encompass everything from having to register for online applications, tracking down references, answering essay-type questions, standardizing tests such as cases, multiple interview rounds, Superdays, and probably an arm wrestle or two. Yes, the point of interviews is to “assess fit” and “determine suitability”, but some of these endurance marathons feel like an evaluation of how deep corporate can rip apart your soul before you crumble into grains of despair, and the extent to which you’d fellate HR’s middle finger.

So far the job hunt has not exactly been kind to me, and it’s making me restless because I can’t stand sitting at home all day with nothing to do. The guilt of unproductivity has actually been a great motivator for me to get other things done like cleaning up around the house, organizing my finances, and just all-around consolidation of my life. This lack of interesting things to do has also provided me with an abundance of time to sit and think. Think about my next challenge to myself.

The world is shrinking, there’s so much going on, and it takes a lot more to understand things.

(Note: This post is very graphics-intensive. Also please ignore the dates on the photos in this post. I didn’t bother setting up the camera properly.)

My residence is in this area. If my building was taller I'd be able to see the water

The view from my room. Ya. A hospital.

Ok that might be a slight exaggeration. I came in with low expectations and it met my low expectations. The facilities are all old and gross. Compared to UWP, it is, in politically correct terms, a shithole. In fact, living here has made me appreciate UWP so much more. I have cut my shower time down to 10 minutes because that’s when the hot water runs out. I have also accepted the fact that I will be greeted with a stream of freezing cold water for washing my face/hands because there is no hot water in the sink taps.

View from a bridge beside my residence

As for the people, there are a surprisingly large number of Canadians here, though there are definitely more from America. I live in an all-girls exchange students residence and almost half my floor is from California.

A nice tropical touch

I spent the entire second day (ie. my birthday) running around HKU, taking care of administrative errands. My residence is about a 10-15 minute bus ride to the main campus. I set off on my own, which was obviously a great idea because I wasn’t aware you had to yell out to the driver when you wanted to get off. Thankfully I had a very nice driver who took me back along his route to where I needed to be. I expected blank stares or annoyed conversation, but the passengers were also very patient and willing to help.

Le bibliothèque

The campus itself is the most confusing 160,000-square-meter plot of land ever. You can walk around with a map and still get hopelessly lost because the area is so hilly, the buildings are old and inconsistent, there are tons of stairs/escalators scattered around, and “ground floor” means nothing. On the other hand, the campus is simply beautiful. It’s filled with vegetation (many palm trees for some reason) and there are amazing views from nearly everywhere. Also, the 30% student discount at Starbucks doesn’t hurt.

An awesome-looking building. I think it might be the grad house..?

Registration and everything took me the entire day, and then I went for dinner and a bit of wandering in Mong Kok with a couple of new friends. It was my first time on the MTR. I was as impressed by the cleanliness of the stations as much as the efficiency of the system. TTC can suck it.

Langham Place in all its long-arse-escalator-ed glory

The next morning, I headed to the official orientation for exchange students. After that I went exploring on the campus and around HK with some other students. We wandered Central, the viewing deck of IFC, and watched the light show in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Central/Pokfulam area from the viewing floor (55F) of IFC

The streets of HK

Hong Kong Island from Kowloon

The rest of the weeks has been kind of a blur of shopping trips and touristy activities. Some highlights are Victoria Peak and a tour of Kowloon/New Territories attraction points.

Only in HK can you eat Burger King/McDonald's with a view like this

HK Island (foreground) and Tsim Sha Tsui/Kowloon (background) view from the Peak

Part of Chi Lin Nunnery & Garden

Life in HK and at HKU in general is a bit different than back home. HK has a 5.5-day work week. People are at work on Saturday mornings (there are even some classes too but thankfully I don’t have any) and dress casually. People like to be out. At midnight, on the streets, there are always masses of young people milling about. Their homes are too small for them to have privacy (much less their own rooms) so there’s not much to do other than going out. People don’t sleep either. At 2am, the dorms are as rambunctious as ever.

Profs are nice enough, but they may be too nice. Apparently it is perfectly acceptable to chat with your neighbours during lectures. I’ve even seen people answer their phones in the middle of class. If you actually want to hear what the prof has to say, it’d be in your best interest to take a front-row seat.

I’m a little apprehensive about the classes here. The students seem to be very bright and the environment very competitive. In any case, I will try to update this blog more frequently with shorter posts.

I gave people some pretty random explanations, like how I was bored last term, because I wanted cultural exposure, experience a new school, or “cuz it sounds fun”. Those are not untrue, but probably not the real reasons.

Around springtime, I might have been going through some kind of mid-mid-life crisis with mixed thoughts about what I’ve done and achieved so far in my twenty-ish years. I found the answer to be ‘not freaking much’ and labeled my life as rather unremarkable. Also it seems that this entire year has been a test of my breaking point, with its many joys and disappointments, successes and failures, which shook me up a little.

I’ve always been content with a ‘make do with what life hands you’ kind of adage. Then I realized I wasn’t satisfied. There was so much out there that I needed to experience, so it felt suffocating to stay in the same town, with the same people, living the same life. I felt like those around me were sprinting past, making their own routes through the landscapes, while I was just plodding along the beaten path. Being younger than most of my friends only added to my innate fear of being left behind, which I suppose finally got the better of me. I couldn’t sit around passively hoping for anything to pop up – I’d have to reach out to opportunities myself.

Excusing the sheer cheesiness, I guess the bottom line for why I wanted to go on exchange is some soul-searching. I want to discover, meet new people, do random things, make mistakes, learn from them, become a more worldly person. It’s partially a challenge to myself, to be thrown into a brand new fast-paced environment without any crutches, and keep my head above water. Five months is not nearly long enough, but I’m hoping for the dizziness of the experience to set me straight. I can barely take the monotony anymore, and I want a complete 180, but still be able to find my way back. Although this is my home and I’m surrounded by family and friends here, it somehow still feels empty, so I just need to leave for a little while.

And wouldn’t you agree that it’s the picture books you read as a child that leave the most lasting impressions?

J. Bach – Air

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We used to giggle at the song title (“on the G string”…yep, totally immature), but this is a very very relaxing and beautiful piece.

F. Chopin – Grande Valse Brillante

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It’s a happy waltz! I have a thing for waltzes…

J. Strauss – The Blue Danube

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Probably the most famous waltz. There’s something about music set in 3/4 time that makes you want to dreamily dance and glide around.

P. Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No. 1

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I love the strings melody at 2:25. I think strings and piano were made for each other.

The problem with classical, because it’s so expressive, is that it can get overly depressing or epic. I don’t feel very encouraged reading about the Bipartite Matching Algorithm set to Holst’s Mars. In fact it just makes me more agitated. Last term I found jazz/easy listening to be more appropriate. As the genre name suggests, it’s light, you sort of don’t even notice it, but it lifts the heavy silence of individual study, and you can think on top of it. Just wanted to share some tunes on my playlist:

Eva Cassidy – Fly Me to the Moon

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Diana Krall – The Look of Love

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Michael Bublé – L O V E

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Okay, that last one may be too happy. So what do you listen to when you study?

Members of this generation have lived their lives like track stars trying to run a marathon at the pace of a 100-meter dash — their parents typically waiting at every turn with a stopwatch.

And it’s like the biggest reality check you can have thrown in your face. All that hard work, just to… move back in with your parents? Ugh. FIX IT!

Pretty true.

In high school, it didn’t take me very long to realize that the things we were learning were going to be either obsolete or not applicable to real life by the time we entered the work force. Most subjects were too simplified and high level. Those four years were mainly used to secure a foundation for higher learning, and to help us develop the skills needed to achieve and strive for further knowledge.

I predicated my future on the basis that through the university courses I take, I would emerge with the necessary education to apply directly to a job related to my field of study. My expectations were that I’d find something I took to – a personal “thing” I enjoyed, and could see a future in. I sort of discovered an interest in finance through process of elimination, but I find that I’m unsatisfied with my learning. I know courses like MATH239 and CO370 are supposed to help with “analytical and critical thinking” development in addition to teaching us the material, but I still feel like it’s a waste of my time.

On the other hand, the finance courses I’ve taken so far don’t seem to go in depth enough. Investment Management was supposed to be interesting, but I feel like I haven’t really learned much. Efficient markets, portfolio theory, options pricing, okay, but it seems that this course is too broad, still “building a foundation”, and there’s still so much more to know. It’s like whenever something starts to become slightly interesting or go in depth, we’d just move on. If everything I ask “why?” to is “beyond the scope of the course”, where am I supposed to find the answer? Would I be forced to pursue post-graduate education? I want to know more; the details, the innards, the linkages, the “icky” parts that are glossed over.

I guess what it comes down to is that I just don’t feel ready to hit the job market. I don’t think I’ve learned everything I need to. And having only one year left, I don’t think I will. I realize more and more that education is no replacement for valuable industry experience. In a strange way I feel that undergrad has failed me. This is just something that’s been frustrating me lately.

Today an NYT article caught my eye: Obama Pushes Broad Rules for Oversight of Derivatives. Basically the US government is considering regulation for standard derivatives (like the ever-so-toxic CDS). With these kinds of articles, I usually find the comments to be more interesting because objectiveness gives me a lot more insight. I think it’s great that major newspapers decided to publish online articles and allow for community discussions. The reader interaction really supplements the content well. Also for some reason, the first thing that popped into my head after reading this piece was the amount of ISDA headaches that would arise… @__@

In other news, I ate cookies for lunch today. Yesterday I had a medium pizza by myself. I’m probably going to die early.

Yoko Shimomura – Legend of Mana ~Title Theme~

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Ms. Shimomura has worked with legendary game developer Square-Enix on a number of titles, including the Kingdom Hearts series. She is also the mastermind behind the music of the currently unreleased Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Personally I’ve never played Legend of Mana, but this opening theme is just so beautifully epic.

Nobuo Uematsu/Aki Kuroda – To Zanarkand

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Okay I know this one’s somewhat overplayed (especially on piano), but it’s still so sad and pretty! From Final Fantasy X.

Nobuo Uematsu – Eyes On Me [Piano Solo]

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Beautiful arrangement. Also enjoyable to learn and play on piano. From Final Fantasy VIII.

Yoko Shimomura arr. Kaoru Wada – Dearly Beloved

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This is a recurring theme in the Kingdom Hearts series. Yeah, it kind of just repeats, but nostalgia practically overwhelms me everytime it’s paired with any sort of KH clips. Also it’s very soothing and makes great background music for when I can’t fall asleep :P

Utada Hikaru – Hikari [Orchestrated Version]

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I was so happy they played this at Video Games Live. Already a truly epic piece, it sounded AMAZING with a live orchestra. From Kingdom Hearts.

In school-related news, I’ve survived my first week. Not much of an accomplishment, as I have previously survived 7 “first week”s. After this term, I will have two more terms (one year) of school and then be rudely shoved into the real world. I’m also co-op job-hunting again this term so we’ll see how that goes.

Jin and Mark came to Waterloo to visit for a few days. Yesterday I went to my morning class, then had lunch and grabbed ice cream with some fellow mathies. Afterwards, we spent about 3-4 hours just trying to decide what the hell we could do for the afternoon/night. In fact, we dragged it all the way until dinnertime, and Mark had to go home to Markham. The rest of us went for dinner at Rude Native Bistro. Later, we somehow convinced Mark to drive all the way back to Waterloo to join us for some board games. After a while I got really tired and passed out around 2am. Turns out everyone else slept at 6am.

The weather was pretty much terrible all day today so I’ve just been staying in. Still haven’t really accomplished anything. I should probably do some more reading…