Wish for a peaceful, fruitful and successful 2010.

Happy 2010 to all our families and friends. What a year 2009 has been.. Praise God for smooth academics, good labs/bosses, many friends made in / coming to Boston, good health for loved ones and the many marriages made by God. Pray that God will continue blessing our families and friends and this household in the new year.

2010 is going to start with a blast, I know it already. Check out dear Boston on NYE.

Good holidays, everyone!

First X’mas for our chilli plants

While we were having fun in Grand Canyon / Las Vegas, our chilli plans were undergoing metamorphosis of their own…

 

They were bushy and full of red chillis when we dropped them off with Shengyong and Richie before we left. Alas the day we moved them was an especially cold and windy day – they must have been frostbitten because shortly after we reached Vegas, a very traumatized Richie and Shengyong wrote an email to let us know that the leaves started wilting and dropping.

 

 

 

 

Fortunately our chilli plants were so hardy.. Under plant fertilizer, much watering and TLC from the two guys, they started sprouting new shoots! They look very healthy now, albeit a little zen-like (think bamboos), but I think we can look forward to fresh chillis in a couple of months again!

P/S: Did I mention today happen to be cold and windy too, as we moved them back home?

Whale watching! Sept 19, 2009

Yes I am long overdue for a photo update.. The past semester has been crazy for me, having to struggle with a class I’ve never been good in, and another class that.. I just couldn’t do well enough in. Well thankfully for us, our days of working towards good grades are over, so dc and I are looking forward to some quality time in lab. LOL. Thank God for sustenance.

Boston has the fortune of being along the marine route of whale migration and every fall, hundreds of humpback, minke and finback whales as well as white-sided dolphins swim from the polar waters down to the tropics to feed over winter. This year we snagged a good deal from MIT to get discounted tickets for the whale watching cruise!

Excited about our whale cruise!

It was a sunny, albeit windy day. There were lots and lots and lots of people, do you see how the queue bended around and was still snaking on the left? Even with our discounted tickets, it was still a little expensive, so you can imagine how much profit goes into operating the cruise..

Yay group photo! (Check out the cute expressions of the guys behind us)  

Tenessa! She’s such a cute darling.  Tricilia to Tenessa: ‘Tenessa look at Auntie Chyan Ying (so I can take the photo). Later she’ll give you peanuts.’. After the shot was taken, Tenessa innocently asked her mother, ‘Where’s my peanut?’ She really does enjoy her food.

The Boston skyline. Nowhere as impressive as NYC, but hey, whales don’t need skyscrapers.

Check out the engines reving out. The catamaran was literally bouncing off the surface of the waters, and it was SUPER windy.

  

Men who love children and whom children love :) These are the men I admire.

Poor Yingkai had to carry the kids and stay balanced on the catamaran in the strong winds, because the children were afraid of being blown away!

  I can’t resist putting up this smart photo of Leonard. :)

Yes the absence of whale photos is too obvious to ignore. The truth is, we saw only spurts of water vapor from their blow holes from far far far away. I had the fortune of catching a glimpse of the tail of the whale as it was swimming, but dc didn’t see anything. The catamaran was really crowded, and once it stopped when it spots a whale, the whole boat will rock violently from side to side, not unlike a viking ship. Whale watching is quite a cool conversation topic, but… not quite worth the time and money. :(

To end off, here’s what we thought will happen before we went on the cruise.. haha. (Photo courtesy of Boston Tours) Guess our expectations were jacked up wayyyyy too high by promotional photos.

Juxtaposition of an excellent and "less-than-average" class

We have just ended the fall semester during when we took two engineering classes required by our program. In the midst of fulfilling these requirements, it was interesting that we were placed in the juxtaposition of (to paraphrase from the title) an awesome class and rather distasteful class (hereby referred to as Class T and F respectively). The many emotions and thoughts invoked in the process are precious and valuable to anyone who is interested in pursuing a teaching career in the future or just anyone else for interest's sake.

What defines an excellent class, or what sets it apart from a bad one? In broad strokes, an excellent class is very similar to a bottle of good wine. The introduction or description must be elaborate and clear. In the context of wine, a decent description runs from the characteristics of the grapes used, the different tones the wine possesses, additional flavors from the aging process and even the kind of food it should pair with. Note the broad concepts: origin, content and applications. All these apply for a class. The teaching faculty should be clear what prerequisites are needed, explain and motivate each subject topic to be covered in the course and lead the students to fruitful application of the content in real world problems.

I used to be a wine idiot, picking up only three of the five primary tastes from any type of wine, namely sweet, sour and bitter. (I suppose it will be weird to pick up saltiness or umami in any wine.) Over the years through trial and error, I improved slightly (still not a wine connoisseur yet). To me, a glass of good wine walks you through the entire process of wine-making. When the cork is removed, you are greeted by fragrance that is weakly fruity and at the same time, almost earthy. As you take the first sip, basic tastes (sweetness and sourness) come in to remind you that everything starts with grapes. As the wine lingers in the oral cavity longer, the characteristic tones emerge. Some alcohol, upon evaporation, then carries the aromatic compounds it dissolves up the nasal passage to the olfactory receptors. These tones and smells, by tantalizing our senses, are almost a mapping of the fermentation and flavor development in our sensation universe. After you swallow the wine, aftertaste appears. Some flavor will persist. Depending on the wine, some amount of tannins will be left behind, giving you some unique texture on your tongue and cheek walls.

A good class therefore walks you through the process of knowledge making. In class T, the professor took time to paint the history of the subject and what have been accomplished thus far. He began on a blank page, almost at the point similar to 2-3 centuries ago where mathematicians and scientists were only beginning to scratch the surface of the topic. Each concept was illustrated and proven in the same way how pioneers in the field arrived at their conclusions. Most importantly, concepts were painstakingly explained in great details before the embarking of mathematical acrobatics. (It makes so much sense to make sure that students are clear with concepts so that they know why they need to a certain mathematical treatment, but you will be surprised not every teacher follows it.) Yet, equations were properly derived with all the assumptions, simplifications etc demonstrated. Important milestone topics were even introduced with stories of how the scientist made the discovery, why he did so or what happened to him after the discovery. Eventually, certain concepts were explicitly used on a problem relevant to the students. Again, all these seem like common sense, but it takes a great amount of organization to pull it off.

Class F transverses on a different path. From day 1, a lot of emphasis was placed on applications. In short, every lecture was almost like "if you know how to do this, you can solve this problem, that problem...." When the time came to the how's of problem solving, two and three equations were smacked across the chalkboard with the derivation skipped. The same theme repeats over and over. It's like telling you that this bottle of wine goes well with certain food and tanah, the bottle of wine is thrown to you with no bottle label, year or description. When you sip the wine, the same basic flavors keep swirling around your mouth, giving rise to nothing interesting. Worse still, quite a few equations were wrong. (Now imagine sipping a salty wine.)

You may ask, what difference does it make as long as the problem is solved and as long as the equations work? Well, the difference is for the former scenario, having experienced the process of "wine-making", the student now knows exactly what lies in the bag to create a wine to go well with a specific type of food. In the process, he understands the fundamentals of wine-food pairing, be inspired by the process of wine making and even with a certain amount of additional training, become a capable wine maker himself. Even better, because the fundamentals are understood, they can be manipulated or used properly in new, creative ways. For the latter, food-wine pairings can still be done. Sadly, it's more mechanical. Sweet wine goes with Food A. Dry wine goes with Food B. Wine-making always remains in a black box untouchable and unreachable.

After both Classes T and F, these two aftertastes still linger in my mouth. But it doesnt take much to predict which one will persist longer and which is the one I would choose to "pair with my food" when the opportunity arises.

1 more day to end of exams!

It's amazing how bad a certain class is in MIT

End of Thermodynamics.

:D :D :D