Double my dating?

I am not a person who totally ignore women in my life. However, I always make friends with women but not having relationship. My belief is the most important thing for myself is chasing success. Once upon a time an European Judo champion, Winfred Holtzen, said his goal was flame and glory. I think he and I are same type of people who seek success. But he has normal life and knows how to talk with women. As I've grown up, I found almost all my former classmates had gone through some relationship matters. I am just an exception. I've found it is hard to change myself. Once I am in study mode, I wish I can be the best. And that's why I got myself over stressed in my semester in NUS.

Before I left Singapore in August, I thought this exchange semester would be a real good period to let me change my mind a bit. After I came here, I tried to live differently this time. In the first two weeks, I danced two times with other exchange students in the student's club on campus. I learned how to shake my body in club. I also learned how to cook some simple dishes. One day I called my french friend Franck. He was an exchange in NUS. And he is very good at hooking up with girls. When I told him that I was in Denmark, he said"Man, Denmark is a wonderful place, you should enjoy some blonde girls." I knew that his favorite was blonde hair girl all the time. Actually I am OK with all races, even African.(I don't know why a lot of Chinese think dark skin is ugly.) Then he sent me his secret bible, a book named "Double your dating."

From a mathematical point of view, I would not change after reading this book, because my dating in the past is zero. In math, zero times two is still zero. Anyway, I just started reading the book and thinking how to change myself a bit.

But after all, I found those suggestions from the book and my friend were strange. For example, man need to use gel and perfume in order to attract women. I think using these two things is good to keep a good image, but I'm not sure whether it works for attraction. One advice from my friend is I need to wear Italian shoes, but I think those kinds of shoes are expensive for me. I still like Converse and CAT, since their shoes last longer. I also don't like hip-pop style which usually requires white basketball shoes, because I don't play basketball.

I think it is hard to change myself, isn't it. After having a training with world champion in Holland, my will of working hard towards success is even stronger than last time. Maybe that's the human nature that everyone has their own path. Yes, I do share some value with Mr Winfred. Anyhow, we are not 100% same.

More Choices

After living here for almost 5 months, I found Denmark is a quiet beautiful place for living. Salary for bachelor degree holders is very high. They can earn about 6000 Singapore dolor per month. I visit my friend Rune's home last week. His father was an engineer. He has a 180 square meter house with a yard. I can never an engineer in Singapore can have such a big house. Driving 10 minutes from his house to north will reach a beach. There is also a large area of forest in that town. I really like the environment here in Denmark. That's why I told Mr Blackstone that I might leave Singapore one day.

I think Singapore is a nice place. Everything runs efficiently. The city is clean. The crime rate is low. The university education is one of the best in Asia. But there are too many places in this world for me to choose. We always try to be better off, don't we? Actually I don't feel I am a Chinese. In fact, it is the other way round that Chinese is one of my characters. Singaporean and Danish are also parts of me. I think Mr Blackstone is right. that it's good to be a citizen of the world.(He is right again? He is always right, isn't he? Sensei, do you feel warm in your heart now?)

I think I should go to United States next time as Mr Blackstone suggested. Then I can watch NBA or NFL in stadium.

10 Radom Things Meme

(1) I like listening Rock songs. I like rock songs from all different countries. Last time I usually follow British rock bands. Now I found some bands from other regions are also quite good.

(2) I like fruit, especially apple. Usually I can eat three or four apples per day. I also like fruit juice. My favorite brand is Florida Juice. I often buy the 2 liter pack. I can finish 2 liter juice in a day.

(3) I like watching NBA. I am a big basketball fan. I started to follow NBA since 1991 which was the year that Micheal Jordan led Chicago Bulls won their first NBA champion. My favorite player is Micheal Jordan. And in 1990s, Chicago Bulls' players' teamwork was extremely good. It was a joy to watch their games.

(4) I don't like Singlish, because I think it is not proper English. I don't dislike people who speak Singlish. I dislike people who take it as "National Pride".

(5) During lectures, I only sit in the middle of the first row, even nobody sits in the second row and the third row. I feel sitting close to lecturers gives me better opportunities to interact with them. By doing this, most professors from Engineering department know me well. I remember once upon a time when one professor was teaching electrical noise, he pointed me and said "Noise is very common in our world. For example, in this lecture there is a lot of noise affecting my speech, but this guy who sits in front gets less noise".

(6) I like comic and animation, especially Japanese adult comic. Currently my favorite comic is Gantz which tells a story of a group of people who use high-tech weapons against aliens. It is a PG-18 comic which include a lot of bloody fighting senses.

(7) I like all kinds of history, history of wars, history of economics, history of technologies....
I think I am affected much by medias after knowing some histories. Recently I am quite interested in the French Revolution. I want to know why a revolution happened in a rich country at that time, how this conflict started, and whether the revolution brought the "justice" or gave more troubles to the French society.

(8) I like news about politics. I think maybe every man on this world share this point with me.

(9) My favorite subject in middle school was physics. I attended two times Physics Olympics competition. Unfortunately, I never passed the first round. I was very sad of my failure for a long time. However, I think it was not a bad thing. Being successful in earlier life does not guarantee being successful later on.

(10) Sometimes I'm an extremely lazy person. I like to sleep 9 or 10 hours per day in winter. So I am not that lazy in Singaproe.

Team Competition

It's quite good to feel the spirit of competition again, but in a different country this time.

The Gap

I have to thank Mr Winnie who is one of my coaches in Singapore Judo Club. He recommended me to visit his previous club in Holland. I've learned a lot from this visiting training.

This club is in Town Haarlem which is 15 km away from Central Amsterdam. The day before yesterday October16th, I arrived there at 3:30pm. Some kids there told me the adult training would start at 7:30pm, because there would be two training sessions for U15 and U17 before it. So I sat at the side and watched the two sessions. Mr Winnie didn't tell me much about his club. When I was watching the U17 training. I was surprised about their speed of throws. I realized that this club must not be an ordinary club. I talked with a player's parent who was sitting beside me. He told me that this club is the best Judo Club in Holland, the coach for adult session is the current Holland national team coach, and most players who would train with me at 7:30pm are from Holland national team. Then I realized that Mr Winnie gave me too few information before I came.

I became stressful and nervous. I felt afraid of attending the night training. From my experience , I knew even these U17 boys can throw me. I knew I would be thrown like a pizza. I had my Judo uniform and belt in my bag, but I didn't want to take them out. When the U17 session was over, it was 7pm. I just sat there and told myself I would just sit there and watch the coming training, because the gap between my standard and them is really huge. I could see the players in this club are really good. That parent sitting beside me found my problem. He said "It's Ok to at least give a try." I just said "I think I will just sit and watch." At 7:20pm, he got the assistant coach who was a big old man with white beard to give me some encouragement. That coach asked a player to bring me to the changing room. And then at 7:30pm my training started.

There were about 25 players on the mats. Most of them were from Holland national team. Among them, there was one African Dutch named Elmont who won the year 2005 world judo champion. There was also a guy who won the 2 runner-up in Beijing Olympic. During the training I really felt what good Judo really was. They could thr0w me like throwing a piece of pizza. I never had this feeling when I was in Singapore. Once I got used to their speed, I started to move faster and fight harder. The situation became better. Although I still got thrown every minutes, I made a few good throws on them. The training was compact. There was only one break during the training. The rest of time was practice and fight.

It is really a fantastic feeling to train with world champion. It'a also a lesson for me. It seems the gap between me and them is the standard of Judo. In fact, the real gap is attitude. In the training, they fully used every minute on improving their skill. They fought hard and attacked as much as they can. When I was in my training in my club, sometimes I relaxed a bit and didn't put 100% effort. I really feel shame about what I did in my past trainings. I didn't have the correct attitude of training. And now I understand Mr Mori better.

I have made a lot of friends in two weeks' time. I really feel that there are not big differences between people from different regions. With some communication skills, it quite easy to make friends. One of my lecturer from Nanyang Ploytechnic said the Chinese people are always Chinese people, the yellow skin makes a big difference. But I didn't what she said in here. Sometimes I don't even who I am. In fact, I don't care.

The Sense of Past

It is interesting to feel the differences in different regions. I remember one of my teachers said that it is not good for me to always stay in Asia. He is right. (He is truly a wise person. Sensei, do you feel warm in your heart again? Ha ha ha.) I used to think I understand this world. I was wrong. Now I know how narrow my mind was.

Singapore is a nice place to stay, even though the city is overcrowd, working is more stressful and Singlish is terrible to listen. However, there are not many places can perform as efficient as Singapore. Opening a bank account takes a week while in Singapore only takes a few minutes. Copenhagen has a much longer history than Singapore. I visited the down town and the old castle in north. In here a lot of old figures and roofs are made of copper. Wherever I visited inside city, I can feel a sense of copper. It is really an interesting feeling.

"Mummy 3"

This video really made me laugh. It's like watching a parallel universe where insanity is the norm.

I have to say some people's mind are really narrow.

This media must be sponsored by the company who produce the movie "mummy 3".

Micro Bug

This set of pictures is about a micro bug. Its length is around six millimeter. It has two arms which can do rotary motion. When the arms rotate down, they will lift the bug up and drag it to move a small distance (around 1mm). By repeating the arms movement the bug can slowly move forward or backward.

The biggest difference between of a usual size robot and micro robot is they are made by different material. Usually robot is made by steel or aluminum. While for micro robot they are usually made by silicon. The main reason is in micro world it is difficult to some assembly process such like pick and place. It require extremely accurate machine. By using those developed IC manufacturing technologies for silicon process, robots parts can be easily made on silicon wafer. Scientists have invented some clever ways like micro stopper, micro lock, and micro welding for parts assembly on silicon wafer. So silicon is the dominant material in today's micro machining.

The other main difference is the motion of actuator. In usual size robot, the actuator is electromagnetic motor. While in micro robot, the actuator is usually electrostatic motor. Electromagnetic motor provide rotary motion while electrostatic motor provide linear motion. Since it is difficult to fabricate electromagnetic motor in micro and nano scale, electrostatic motor is more widely used.

UC Berkeley Webcast

I find it is really helpful for me to watch Berkeley web cast. http://webcast.berkeley.edu/index.php Now I have learned a lot on MEMS. Maybe NUS should also make some lectures' web cast open to public.

I think the main problem of providing open web cast is more students will depend on web cast instead of lecture and some of them will think they can do last minute study. I think this is not a problem if NUS grades students based on module requirement, which means if more people can't reach the requirement of certain modules there are, NUS should fail them. The problem of NUS is the school doesn't like to hurt people by failing them. Last semester, one of my professor complain to me that the school didn't let him fail students. I think NUS really need to change its thinking in the future.