The Need to Create

Category: Blog

  • To Law or Not to Law: Financial Concern

    First, be realistic. If I work in industry and do R&D… Canadian immigration website, location: Toronto. Job category: Science and Research Engineer I, bachelor degree and 0-3 years of experience in the field: 61k to 72k. Engineer II, bachelor degree and 2-5 years of experience in the field: 79k to 96k. Engineer IV, a bachelor’s…

  • To Law or Not to Law

    On May 21st, I will have my PhD oral exam, which means I will graduate in one year. Once again, I am put on a crossroad. There are several options. Two stand out. First, do a postdoc and pursue an academic position. Second, do a Law degree and find a legal related job. It is…

  • MRS Spring Meeting

    MRS Spring Meeting

    Last week, I blogged for MRS spring meeting. This is the first paid job I had outside research and TA. It was absolutely fun. During the meeting, I often got back in my room at around 9-10pm, and slept for 4 hours, woke up, wrote a post or two, and then slept again for 4…

  • Missing a flight, again

    Missing a flight, again

    I was 10 minutes late for my flight to San Fransisco this morning. The flight was on 9:30am. I know that I have absolutely no excuse to miss a flight not so early. But…. So for the second time in my life, I missed a flight. It seems to be the kind of mistakes that…

  • Why I enjoy the joker

    Why I enjoy the joker

    “I think we take a vicarious pleasure in the problems that they present, in the pain that they inflict, and not least of which in the demise that they suffer at some point,” says Stephen Lang, who plays the vengeful, scar-faced military officer Miles Quaritch in Avatar. “It’s like having a vaccine,” says Karen Sternheimer,…

  • Drafts cleaning

    This morning, the time is changed; 2 am became 3pm, so I lost a hour in this 23 hour day. Now it is 12:19am, Monday, but on the old clock, it should still be yesterday at 11:19pm, which is too early to sleep. So I feel like doing something in this hour that should belongs…

  • Richard Feynman: Physics is fun to imagine | Video on TED.com

    Richard Feynman: Physics is fun to imagine via Richard Feynman: Physics is fun to imagine | Video on TED.com. Some thoughts: 1) Feynman once said if our civilization ever pass one piece of knowledge onto the next civilization, whatever form of life that civilization is, it is the structure of an atom. 2) The video…

  • Critical Self-assessment — Spiritual

    When I tell my parents that I have advanced to another belt in TKD, my father likes to remind me that the purpose of martial arts is not to get a belt or even to know how to fight. Instead, it is a way to keep fit and to discipline the body; it is to…

  • Critical Self-assessment — Professional

    Having the first paper accepted, published, and printed, naturally I felt a sense of relief. When I started out, I was told that if one didn’t get a paper out after the second year, the pressure would mount quickly. It surely did. Now after the first project, I am more or less free to do…

  • Critical Self-assessment – Economic

    “It’s not about money, but sending a message.” — Joker, The Dark Knight “Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.”  —…