Airport.

I’m sitting inside the departure lounge of the Hong Kong International Airport now, waiting to board the flight to Taipei – yeap, I’m going there again!

I decided that I would take 2 days off from my last week at HW and go for a short holiday. And since it’s not that expensive and far to travel to Taiwan, I think it would be a good idea for me to go Taiwan again. After all, the last time when I was there, there were actually quite a lot of things that I didn’t get to visit, so it would be good for me to go take a look at those things that I missed the other time.

I’ve brought my MacBook along, and if I manage to get some wireless Internet access anywhere I’ll try to update my journal. But if there isn’t, I’ll see everyone on Sunday again!

Orientation.

I’m sitting inside one of the classrooms here at City University, waiting for the course orientation to begin. Unlike my undergraduate times, when orientation is always a big thing (if not huge), my postgraduate orientation seems like a rather low-key event. No cheering, no float building, just sitting in a room listening to the academic advisors giving speeches and sharing experiences. I think that’s a signal that I’m getting old. That said, I’m still excited about the session later.

Besides getting excited about the orientation, I’m also quite excited about my new job at Baptist University. I know I’ve been talking about it for days, but when I was at BU this afternoon to do some admin work, the general feeling is that I should be able to have an interesting time there. I don’t know how to describe the feeling – it feels like I’m not there yet physically but mentally I’m already one of them. I guess I’m someone who likes to be always associated with something.

The past week or so has seen a lot of my colleagues – within and out of my own department – getting news about me moving to BU. Nearly all of them are congratulating me about moving “one step up” to an university – which I find slightly amusing because in terms of job function I’m definitely not moving upwards. Oh well, perhaps that’s human nature – we always think the grass is greener on the other side. For me I haven’t get to see it yet, but I do hope the grass is indeed greener over at BU. Haha.

15 minutes to go to the start of the session and I’m still the only person sitting in the classroom. I’m pretty sure I’ve not gone into the wrong room, so where’s everyone?

New Week.

It’s the start of a new week – and with the commencement of this week, it signals the last 3 days of my work at this job. For some strange reasons I’m feeling very excited.

The weekend zoomed past without anything too spectacular. Basically I spent most of my time at home and divided the time between playing on my Wii, watching TV and doing some programming work on my computer. One thing I realised about doing an IT job is that while it is OK for me to be doing it, it’s actually very irritating. As far as programming is concerned, it is a do-able job, but it’s just so frustrating sometimes to be even doing it in the first place. Knowing how to do is one thing, but really getting down to do it is another. That said, if my life depends on a programming job I’d probably suck my thumb and go do it.

My colleagues are having a farewell lunch for me later. It’s good to realise that after all these months getting myself stressed out by the kids, I managed to get myself a group of good colleagues.

Didn’t sleep well last night – probably because I’m too excited by United finally winning.

Observations.

The air conditioner in my office is probably set to freezing point as it is horribly cold. What’s worse is that people sitting inside this office are not allowed to change the temperature – we have to ask someone else who’s not sitting in this office for permission to turn the thing up. Strange.

Just now as I was going out for lunch, there were a few policemen and traffic warden standing at the crossing. The pedestrian light was red, so I stood by the roadside waiting for it to turn green. Then at this point of time, a woman who is apparently delivering food crossed the road (with the light being red). The policeman on the other side of the road did not stop her, but as she came to the other side (the side that I was on), the traffic wardens stopped her and said that she did not obey traffic rules, and insisted on taking down her particulars. I didn’t know what happened after that, but that set me thinking about a few things:

1. Why did the woman still choose to cross the road when the policemen and traffic wardens were all standing by the crossing?

2. Why didn’t the policemen on the other side of the road stop her while she was trying to cross the road?

These are probably questions that only the few of them can answer. But it’s still interesting.

Security+

I went to take my CompTIA Security+ Certification Examination today and out of a full score of 900, I managed to get 885. I dare not say I did a lot of preparation for the exam (I was like studying the exam guide with the least amount of materials all the time), but since I’m just 15 marks away from the perfect score, I should be happy about it. Furthermore, I’ve gotten the first “professional certification” of my life!

Anyway the examination wasn’t exactly difficult (for those of you who have done CS3235 you would have known at least 70% of the material to be covered), and there is nothing hugely technical to cover. With a bit of hard work it won’t be hard to pass this examination. For more information of the Security+, visit CompTIA’s website at http://certification.comptia.org/security – I’m sure I must have posted this link before here, but I’ll do it again.

Anyway I’ve gotten myself a new job – I’ll be moving to the Hong Kong Baptist University in September as a student affairs officer. It might not seem to be the most exciting job ever (at least I know I won’t have chances to be traveling here and there), but at least I would have some proper fringe benefits, and since it’s kinda like next door to City University where I’ll be doing my Masters, it does look like a decent move. And yes, I’m actually quite excited about the new job (in the same way I’m looking forward to leave this).

I was in Shenzhen last week with a colleague for some site visit, and at the end of the visit, we went for dinner at a Korean restaurant. The food there was excellent, and the grilled beef was just wonderful:

The beef was very fresh, very juicy and very tender. Not needing to do the grilling ourselves make the whole experience even better. The price for this set of grilled beef? RMB130 – I’m sure you can’t find this kind of prices in Hong Kong.

Then yesterday me and my sister went to the Hong Kong Food Fair. The fair was slightly disappointing because they can’t sell cooked food, but there was still a lot of other types of food and beverages available. However the most interesting we saw was not any of the foodstuff, but this poster:

It was one of those promotional posters for a well-known confectionery, and I must give it to them for their “creativity” in linking bread with those great movies. Besides Initial D, a few other movies that they managed to make a parody out of included Brokeback Mountains (斷背包) and Gone With The Wind (亂世蝦仁), among others. It was actually quite hilarious.

I think I might go to Taiwan again next week just to take a break before starting work at HKBU. Since I’m going at the end of the holidays, the prices are actually quite reasonable. Besides Taipei, I also want to check out places like Yilan and Hualien – apparently there are a few train station on the east coast of Taiwan that has a great view of the Pacific Ocean. It would be good to see my relatives over there as well – it has been more than 10 years since I last saw them after all. I wonder if they can even recognise me. Haha.

Work.

The past couple of days at work have been spent programming. And suddenly I have an arrow shooting down my direction – I have to use XOOPS to build a portal for my college. I’ve always heard that XOOPS isn’t exactly a tough thing to play with, but my fear for PHP is always going to make it a bit difficult for me to come to terms with all these PHP-powered CMS. As for why I have a fear for PHP… it all went back to 2002 when I was asked to build the Computing Club website using PHP, which I knew nothing about at that time. So I spent much time trying to figure out the whole thing, and in the end I managed to learn enough to get the site up, but since then I’ve always tried to shun away from PHP as far as possible. Not fun, but well, I’ve got a job to do.

When I’m not programming, I’m contemplating about my job. To be honest, while I have no idea if all the other jobs that I’m applying would eventually take me in, I still don’t really feel like staying in the job. I find that I simply cannot come to terms with students with bad attitude, like those who claim that “they are here long enough so a new teacher like me should not fail them” or “even the senior teachers don’t fail them so a new teacher like me should not fail them”. I mean, there’s just no logic in those claims. If you are not worth a pass there’s no reason that I should give it to you. And I hate it when they try to threaten me with things like “I’ll reflect to who who who because you failed me” – I feel that it simply makes no sense in trying to teach students like these. It’s like, you are telling me that you want to hang around in class, play games, talk to people, have your own fun and not even bother to make the minimum effort to study, and at the end of the day you want me to give you a pass. I think anyone with the basic knowledge of being a human being would tell you that is not possible. My colleagues are telling me not to take it to heart with students like those, but it’s hard. It’s quite amazing to think that the scoldings I get are never from my supervisors, but from the students. Whatever happened to this world?

I can’t wait to change jobs. If I continue any longer as a teacher I think I’ll go mad.

Friday.

The past few days are not exactly the best as far as work is concerned.

On the topic of work, let’s just say that a few people managed to piss me off for the irresponsible things that they said. I don’t think I shall describe the entire scenario, but I’ll just like to quote a physics theory:

Work done = Force * Distance

The smart people out there should understand what I am trying to say. If not, drop me a message and I’ll explain.

And yeap, a big thank you to the few of you who still remembered it was my birthday yesterday! I didn’t have any celebration because I was sick – down with another bout of the flu apparently – and had to see a doctor. Nonetheless, it was a nice little pleasant day despite having to return to work in the afternoon with a medical certificate.

So here goes:
Thank you Zhigen.
Thank you Edwin.
Thank you Rena.
Thank you Weihang.
Thank you Hui Min.
Thank you Ron.
Thank you Richard.
Thank you Calvin.
Thank you Kate.

Despite being still sick, I’m looking forward to the weekend.

Information Day.

Another lazy weekend went past and basically apart from watching TV dramas, playing on the Wii, sitting around and doing nothing, I didn’t really spend the weekend meaningfully. I was supposed to have been doing some revisions for my Security+ exam, but in the end lazy bugs got the better of me. Oh well, I can always do the revisions in school anyway.

I’m sitting inside the function room in college now for the course information day. To be absolutely honest, I’m not due for duty until later in the afternoon, but because my main office is closed for refurnishing for these 2 days, I’ve decided to temporarily make the function room my working place for this period. It’s quite interesting to be sitting here actually, because I see that most people are not exactly interested in a course in Computing! The counters at BizAd and Tourism Studies are filled with people (well at least the chairs there are all occupied) while my department’s counter has not seen a single soul since the day started. Maybe most people are still not keen on a course in IT, even though the dot-com bubble burst had actually happened almost half a decade ago.

That actually sets me to think about myself too. Is a course (or in my case a degree) in IT that entirely useful? Take myself for example – I graduated with an Computing degree, so that means that I’m supposed to be IT-trained. But when I actually am looking at technical things such as network infrastructure building, application development, my education suddenly doesn’t seem to be entirely useful. It’s like, my degree alone doesn’t seem to be able to convince employers that I can do the things that they ask me to do. It’s things like your MCTS, SCJP, CISSP, CCNA that tell the world that you know how to program in C#, you know how to program in Java, you know how to set up a Cisco network, etc etc. It does look weird – it’s like, if you want a career in IT, you do not just need your degree, but also a lot of all these commercial certifications. And given that technology advances ever so quickly, whatever certifications you have now may become obsolete in 3 years’ time (I mean, people are talking about the next version of Windows when Vista is barely out). And when that happens, it’s time to get another certificate. This looks like an endless loop.

Whatever it is, I am still focused on my Security+ – I hope to get it cleared by next week, if not this.

And yes, sitting inside this function room isn’t that bad after all because I do get to see some of the prettier colleagues at the other departments – always a nice thing on a Monday morning!

MTR.

I’ve been taking the MTR to work (and back home) everyday lately, not just because that it’s slightly faster, but also because the walk to the Lam Tin MTR station provides me with an opportunity to move that lazy body of mine. The walk is short – about only 15 minutes – but it still is some form of exercise. OK I hear you laugh.

Anyway I just feel like sharing some things that I see or experience in my MTR journeys to and from Lam Tin and Cheung Sha Wan. I’m sure they aren’t uncommon, but nonetheless they just looked weird to me.

While traveling to Cheung Sha Wan from Lam Tin, I have to get off at Prince Edward to change to another train from the Tsuen Wan Line. Because Cheung Sha Wan is just 2 stops away from Prince Edward, I always try to find the most strategic position to stand on the train such that it would be easy for me to get off and at the same time I would not be blocking others (which usually mean somewhere in front of the 2nd seat from the end of the row of seats). The funny thing (or maybe it wasn’t so funny after all) that happened yesterday was that 3 persons – a schoolgirl, a middle-aged woman and a middle-aged man – got on at Prince Edward and decided that they would stand right in front of the door. I initially thought that they would be getting off at Sham Shui Po, the immediate next stop, so I didn’t pay too much attention to them initially. Then what happened was that when the train pulled over at Sham Shui Po, none of them moved. So they remained standing right in front of the door. During the short 30 seconds or so that the train stopped at Sham Shui Po, I saw 2 people have to get on from another door because these 3 people simply refused to move away from their position. The worst thing was I saw a young man apparently wanting to get onto the train at the last minute almost getting his body hit by the closing door because of these 3 people. The door was closing, and if there was a space for him to get on he probably would have, but there wasn’t any, and the man had to back off from the door because he knew he couldn’t get on. I could see the anger on his face, and I was actually a bit pissed as well. I don’t condone dashing onto the train at the last minute, but to block others’ way such that they can’t get onto the train wasn’t exactly a nice thing to do as well, especially there was still quite a bit of room in the train itself.

Then I was traveling from Cheung Sha Wan back to Lam Tin in the evening, and as usual the train was packed. I was lucky to have gotten a small space to stand near the left-sided door (I get on from the right-sided door at Cheung Sha Wan but would get off at Prince Edward from the left-sided door). As the train pulls over at Prince Edward, I suddenly saw a woman appearing in front of me. Apparently she had gone below my arm that was holding onto the vertical handrail. I didn’t really understand why she found the need to do that, especially when I have already moved forward to anticipate getting off the train. When the door opened, she immediately dashed out from the door and ran towards the other side of the platform – while the other train was nowhere in sight. So what happened was that she wanted to be the first person to reach the other platform. It would have been understandable if the other train was there, but the amusing thing was that even though she was the first to reach the other side, I still managed to get onto the other train before her because her entry point was blocked by exiting passengers on that train, while I was given a full clear path. When I got on the train I just thought… “all these trouble for what?”

Every morning when I get out from the Cheung Sha Wan train station, there would always be a few old women standing at the exit at the ground level to collect those free newspapers that people have finished reading and get rid of. While I think that’s perfectly fine, the behaviour and the position of these old women were nothing impressive for me. As far as behaviour is concerned, they usually would automatically assume that as long as you are holding those free newspaper in your hand while getting out from the station, you wouldn’t want them. So what they did is either hold up their hands and anticipate that you pass the papers to them, or outrightly grab the paper from your hand, whether you have any intentions of giving it to them or not. Then for positions, I probably wouldn’t have bothered if they were standing by the side of the exit, but they apparently don’t:

They always stand right in the middle of the human traffic flow, and I honestly don’t think that’s such a nice thing to do, even if they are at the age that they are at. I know I should be compassionate, but when they are blocking your passage way, it’s really hard to be compassionate, if you ask me.

It’s people like these that make an otherwise boring MTR trip interesting. While I don’t necessarily like what they do, it’s still worth a mention.

School.

Time certainly flies. It’s Wednesday and we are in August. August is always a special month, no matter which year it is.

Went over to Wan Chai yesterday for an interview which turned out to be a bit surreal. The technical test was not easy (I think I only managed to get half of all the questions right), as quite a fair number of questions were on C/C++, something that I have never learned before (the closest was C#, but it’s nothing like C/C++). To say that the technical test was a blow would be about just right. In the end the interview (plus the test, of course) took almost 2 and a half hours, and I was really exhausted by the end of it. I dragged my tired body back to school, and basically spent my time doing some reading up on my Security+ certification exam.

Come to think of it, I really should have spent more effort in my programming skills when I was in university. Thank God I have that little bit within me left, otherwise yesterday’s technical test would be quite an awful embarrassment for me. Whatever it is, it’s time to continue finding other jobs…

Back to revisions.