Where's the future?

So the other day my friends and I were talking about the life after graduation. This is how it started.

friend A: hey jon, u going to grad school after college?
me: probably, but i dont wanna go to grad school for engineering
friend A: what are you gonna do then
me: MBA maybe? but its just a plan for now. i dont really know yet
A: you going to graduate this year right? better start planning

which then I started thinking about the step-by-step plan after grad

me: so......i guess i'll find a job first and work for like 3 to 5 years before applying for grad school
A: what if you dont get in?
me: uh.....work more and maybe try again? i dunno, never thought of that
A: dude jobs are not that easy to find either you know?
me: yea, but hopefully by the time i finish school the economy will be better
A: yea, there are also more ppl coming out of college who are competing with you
me:......your point?
A: we're doomed. even if we get a job it's gonna be crappy, and you have to work for like 10 or 15 years before a promotion or something
me: what!? no way! it cant be that long. i mean a lot of companies are hiring ppl and they probably need to promote some ppl to get that open space for new undergrads.
A: or they can lay them off......youre too optimistic
me: find then, what's your plan?
A: finish college, get a job, then whatever
me: hows that different from mine?
A: exactly! it's not. so we'll probably be competitors in the future.

in one of my classes, there are around 100 people. despite the effort i put in, my grade is around a C+. and that's about 40 to 45 percent. That means there are 55 percent, or equivalently 55 people who can do better than me. That's only one school. Say if we make my rank around 50% of the class, there are always 50% of people who are better out there. With so many colleges, the chance is that there will be more supply of workers than the demand of labor, so the companies are gonna choose from the better end, which leaves me a little chance of finding a job, a stable job.

and then friend B comes in

B: hey! have you heard that UC's are going to increase the fee again?
A: yea, it really sucks. i cant even stay in school longer

the UC's are going to increase 40% of fee starting next quarter, and more raise in the coming year. Thanks to our broke government, students have to take the direct hit. As my professor always says: welcome to university of california, where there's high tuition, low service.

the story doesnt end here

B: when is this going to end
me: as long as our government still sucks, the fee will only go up. its a one-way street
A: hey! there's a protest thingy on facebook
me: you really think it's going to work?
A: seems like berkeley is doing something
me: dude, after all, we are only students. they dont give a shit about students because we have no power to fight against them
A: ditching classes?
me: so you can just not pay the fee?
A: see? more problems, we're really doomed
me: yea......
B: things are not that bad. i'm pretty sure some good solutions will come up.

From what i can see now, the only solution for me is to get the hell out of here asap and find a job. but according to A this is gonna be hard. and according to B i cant even stay at school. also according to myself I suck at doing well on school

so, where's the future?

trying things out

MouseHunt on Facebook

AS i Watched UP Again.....

I had a post about UP before, and as I watched it again yesterday I actually got something new.

I'm not sure if the staff actually meant to create this but this is what I got.

For Muntz, he represents Carl's old self--stubborn and captured by his own wish. For Muntz, anything can be done as long as he gets Kevin, so he killed many people to keep those away from his bird. Then we have Carl, who's dream was to move his house to Paradise Fall, and he's willing to do anything to achieve this goal including letting Kevin go......if he actually did that of course.

Therefore, if Carl didn't read the rest of the Adventure Book and found out his wife's message, he might turn into a second Muntz......except he has no dogs.

And this is why Muntz has to die. Carl's no longer his old self, so this "old self" must die or disappear. There we go: Muntz must die.

Another point: I mentioned that I thought disney wouldn't kill villains in a violent way. Well, I was totally wrong. They do it all the time. So we were watching Snow White Diamond Edition, and if you've seen it you know how the queen died--pretty much the same way Muntz died. My friend said that disney always kills the villains in the most dramatic way. I guess that's true huh......

Oh btw, when we were watching snow white, we found this movie really funny cuz it makes no sense at all XDDDDD

College Food Series: 青椒包肉(Ground Pork in Bellpeppers)

I wanna call it 翡翠團圓 but it's college food so it should not have such fancy name.....o well

Thanks to Veteran's day, I've got some break to create some new things. One of the reasons why I should thank the veterans lol.

Sometimes I really wish I had better skill at photo shooting, so I can actually change the name college food series to college food porn series......lol

Anyway, let's get to the topic

Since it's college food, it's really easy as any other recipes introduced in the series.

Ingredients:

1) bell peppers x 2 (I choose the green ones. they go better with the meat.)

2) ground pork 1/2 lb

3) ginger and green onion, some

Procedures:

1) marinate the pork with a little soy sauce, and the solution made of rice wine, ginger, and green onion. Pour enough to cover the bottom of the bowl. (don't use too much, or else the meat is gonna have a strong alcohol taste, unless you like it that way of course.......)

ps. to make the solution, simply pour wine into a bowl with chopped ginger and G.O. and squeeze the juice out of them.

2) chop the bell peppers into 8 pieces (4 pieces for each bell pepper)

Okay, so there are actually two ways to cook this thing.

Method 1:

Pro: meat will cook for sure

Con: longer processing time, the shape might not fit into the bell pepper

3.1) shape the pork into balls and cook them in a pan.

4.1) take the pork out, and then put in the bell peppers. Just cook one side. It's good enough.

5.1) add some salt (no soy sauce. it kills the color) to the bell peppers to add some flavor

6.1) put the meat into the bell peppers

7.1) you are done!!!!!!!

Method 2:

Pro: it stays in desired shape, shorter processing time

Con: If you are not good enough to tell whether the meat is cooked or not, you might be eating raw meat later, it's a bit hard to turn it upside down sometimes

3.2) put the raw pork into the bell peppers

4.2) put them in the pan WITH THE MEAT FACING DOWN. It simply cooks faster this way. Also because the meat takes longer to cook. While waiting for the meat to cook, add some salt to the bell peppers

5.2) when the meat is almost cooked (tricky part, be careful), turn all of them upside down to cook the bell peppers

6.2) when both the meat and the bell peppers are completely cooked (you can tell the meat is cooked by sticking a chopstick in, if it goes through without a "sticky feeling," the meat is cooked.) turn off the stove

7.2) EAT!!!!!!!!!!!

You know.....my original plan was to make this blog very professional.....

very professional by filling it with recipes, deep analyses of basketball, shows, or other stuff, but if you look at the category section on your right, the one with most entries is "random."

Great......totally failed.......and here's another "random" entry

It's a beautiful weekend......

Yes! It sure is a beautiful weekend, but unfortunately I don't really have time to enjoy it. When you are a college student, you have two choices:

1) don't study and be doomed in the future

2) study hard and still possibly be doomed in the future

Either way, there's no win-win situation. After all, the college will own you no matter what, and you have no way to escape. Being in San Diego is a luxury to me, but I just can't really enjoy the nice weather or beautiful beach because I'm either at the library or in the lab all the time. Right now as I'm typing this, I'm in the lab. Yes! The lab that I did this in.

I gotta say it feels good when you can have the entire room by yourself and no one's gonna yell at you when you talk too loudly. At the same time it feels really lonely being here when you know some people might be at a party or at the beach or whatever. Well, at least there are some people in the next room so I don't feel too bad.

Every time when it's close to a weekend, I tell myself that I can finally get away from all the school work and rest a little. Well, guess what, weekends do not mean anything to me actually. I'll end up studying somewhere anyway. The only difference is that I don't have classes on weekends, but that's just an extra 1 or 2 hrs each day. How does that help, right?

Being an engineer means that all your work will take a tremendous amount of time, and that doesn't include reviewing notes for tests. True, we might only have one midterm for each class, but we have other things like projects that can take up to 3 or 4 weeks to finish, assuming you work hard everyday.

my life, or I should say all the engineers' lives are pretty boring (fine, all the engineers I know). A typical conversation of two engineering students is like...

A: hey, did you study for *** (code for a class)

B: no, I was studying for %%% (another class)

A: gosh! I wish I had more time! ### (yet another class) is totally killing me

B: well i still have a project due next week for $$$ (and yes, this is a class too)

A: crap! we're doomed.

What? You say this is a typical conversation for all students? Fine, how about this one...

A: dude, when can we finish this crap? I still have matlab assignment to do.

B: well, assuming we can finish this today you have all tomorrow.

A: gosh this is hard.

B: That's what she said!

A: ......... I'm bored of this. I wanna do something fun

B: Well, there are some NMOS's you can play with.

A: What am I gonna do with those?

B: I don't know. Build a current mirror or something

A: that requires BJT you dumb ass

B: Well, MOS can do the job too

Well, you get the idea. You may find this entry really pointless or something. Yes, it's supposed to be pointless. I just wanna whine about things. That's all.

But yea, my weekend can be summed up with four words: working in the lab.

Fun? I don't know. You get to be the judge.

Sometimes Your Effort Just Doesn't Pay Off

Today I got my midterm back and noticed that my score was incredibly low. I asked myself: "WTF!? What is going on?????" As I went through the test, I noticed that all the points I lost was an accumulation of little mistakes. However, this is not my point.

Afterwards, I started thinking: "Am I just careless or is it meant to be?" Few days ago I got another test back, and yes it was like kamikaze. I was pretty pissed off and thinking of how much I studied for the test. I get pissed off easily when it comes to academic stuff such as scores, grades, stupid prof's, etc. I just don't show it in front of people and try to be cool and happy with what I got. The fact, however, is that I'm never happy with what I get. Someone called me having a standard that is way too high, but I think it's about right. Judging from the fact that I came from an Asian high school where people compare scores and grades all the time, having standards like that does make sense, and I'm very used to having high standard (to me it's not really high, but to other people it is.) My mom once told me that I wasn't in high school anymore so things will definitely get harder, so don't think about getting good grades all the time. I agree with her, but I just can't stop setting standards like my high school standard. Throughout the years of college I learned one thing: getting A's is not easy, especially when it comes to engineering classes. yet getting A's is still like a must-achieve thing to me.

That's why I study all the time. Okay, I need to clarify one thing. Of course everyone studies, but I'm pretty sure no one studies until like 3 everyday including Fridays and Saturdays (I admit I don't do it all the time though.) However, every time when it comes to a test, i get all nervous and my thought just goes like "phew"----completely blank, so I kinda have to go through my own thought process and try to grab that slim knowledge that remains in my brain. Of course, the result is never pleasant, and this always makes me wonder: is it really worth studying so much?

On the other hand, my friend once told me: "Jon, you think you studied so much but always failed on tests. Well, I say it's because you don't study enough, so you fail." True, I agree with him to certain extend, but I only have 24 hrs in a day after all, so how much time do I need to commit to studying to get what I want?

I learned that the world is not fair and humans are not equal after all in my first year of college. I see someone who never study, sleep in classes, and don't even buy the textbooks getting A's, like, solid A's. Compare to them, I'm like a total nerd, but the scores do not show that.

I feel like one day I'm just gonna give up on everything and go take like 10 shots and pass out. I know I'm probably going to have a huge hangover the next day but, o well, who cares. I hope this will never happen, but I have a feeling that the threshold is near......

Well, it's sad that things do not go the way you want, but I guess this is life. At least toughness makes us appreciate the happy moments we have.

But I still want good grades......