Actually, the story got me thinking about this new day in age. Facebook is only a few years old, and already it’s being used by student groups and companies alike. Now my professional society wants me to sign up for Twitter in order to follow their happenings. I am dating myself here in saying that I use Facebook but not Twitter, but I always considered these sites (including blogs) a time-waste, so should they really be mandatory for my career??

Speaking of blogs, the recent hit movie “Julie and Julia” is based on a book that is based on Julie’s blog. Julie cooked her way through Julia Child’s entire buttery cookbook. In the end, Julie is upset that Julia didn’t seem to like her, and I wonder how Julia would have felt about the movie. But then again, Julie’s book/movie put Julia’s book on the top of the bestseller list after 48 years, something Julia herself wasn’t able to accomplish. Julie. Just goes to show the incredible power of a blog that people like to read.

And now, I’m going to go interview UROPS for the position of being my manager when I get offered a book or movie deal based on this blog… I wonder who will play me in the movie?

A few months ago I organized an event for the Cambridge science festival (CSF), teaching optics to the general public. We got support from the Optical Society of America (OSA), the MIT Museum offered to host the event at their location, and the CSF did all the publicizing. It’s amazing how much support you can get when you volunteer your time! I worked with a couple other students, and we put together a nice set of demos to go with the main topics we wanted to teach. You can see some of it here (in 3D if you have red/cyan glasses) and a fun video i made here.

The preparation was really fun – I spent a few nights in my apartment trying to remember how to wire up basic circuits, making sunset in a jar, and filling a giant fishtank with sugar and water. One night my roommates and I set up the blacklight and painted secret messages on the wall, and another I made diffraction gratings out of pantyhose and tried to explain Fourier Transforms to my friend, hehe. It’s amazing how many questions (”why is the sky blue? how do rainbows work?”) that i thought i knew the answer to, but when i went to explain, I had new questions and had to look deeper to really understand it. Sometimes we think things are simple because they’re basic, and there’s no better way to challenge what you think you know than to teach it to others.

As a result of this event, I was invited to be part of the OSA Student chapter executive and got to meet the CEO of the OSA, who was excited to see what we’re doing and offered her support. I met a lot of people and have a lot of really cool toys in my lab now that will help me explain parts of my research. I guess you know you like your chosen field when the line between fun and work starts to blur…

I remember the first time I learned about  π. I was in Grade 9 math class, and we were learning trigonometry. My mind was already blown by Mrs. McLean’s recent introduction of the IMAGINARY variable, i, and I, thought, “what is this hokey magic - they just made up a fake number to fudge their answers!”.  Then, as I groggily woke up from a small involuntary nap on my desk, i watched her derive the equation e^iπ=-1 and i nearly flipped!  I thought i was still dreaming. You can’t put two irrational numbers together with an imaginary one and get something so simple as -1!!

Anyways, i came to understand this equation over time, and now that I do phase imaging, i deal with e, i and π everyday. But I think that was one of my earliest memories of being shocked by the elegance of math and wanting to know how and why such complex (hehe) things could have such real implications.

It really is “only at MIT” that I can feel comfortable telling such a nerdy story without getting stuffed in a locker. And speaking of complex numbers, let me share with you another great equation that I made up myself:

get it?? bee x ear = polar bear!

Be^ar in polar form!!

oh, come on, it’s hilarious!

Actually, i’m back in singapore, working at the SMART center for a few weeks.  It really is 30°C here (Boston is 30°F).  And while i do appreciate the sunny days, i still miss not being at MIT for the snowstorm today, despite all the problems it will cause.  I grew up in Canada, so it’s natural for me to like winter - we always found ways to enjoy it - skating, skiing, pushing each other off giant snow piles…

I also am missing one of the great traditions of MIT, Independent Activities Period (IAP). Every year i participate in one thing during IAP that i would normally never do: taking a business class, spanish lessons, learning to play hockey, and last year, graduating from “Charm school (possibly NSFW video) .  Maybe someday i’ll train for the integration bee, or finally get to see MITHenge.

But in missing out on IAP, i am getting to see and be part of the building up of a new research center in singapore, the Center for Environmental Sensing and Monitoring (CENSAM), a part of the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMART).  Its great to see how this place has become an active research centre which was built up from nothing.  Brings a tear to my eye…  Oh, and I get to do experiments with a 10W death laser here…  That’s cool, too.

But then when it’s over , it feels so  good.  You don’t have anything that ‘has’ to be done, and you can go home to Canada to enjoy Christmas with your crazy family and friends.  Ok, now i’m talking specifically about my life. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Toronto and my mind keeps trying to think of what urgently needs to be done right now, but the answer is: nothing.

So now i’m going to go do just that.

It has several spellings and generally constitutes it’s own sentence; a tribute to the many emotions it conveys (particularly frustration). Possibly has roots in the Pirate language, although their use was generally much jollier.

Today being the first day of finals week, i think it’s a quite fitting word of the day. I picked it up after walking through the Athena cluster in the student center and seeing it written all over the faces of the poor scared undergrads. I myself don’t have any finals, but have also been banging my head against the desk all day over a different, much larger beast than finals: research. One that also won’t be over on Friday, no matter how hard I work in between then and now.

Sometimes I have to open a newspaper and read about earthquakes and elections and movies, just to remind myself that I don’t have it so bad, and research *gasp* isn’t everything. Except when i accidentally open up the Tech, and see stories about finals week and research breakthroughs - that doesn’t help.

Actually, he was referring to the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) program, a major collaboration between MIT and universities in Singapore. Just yesterday the Singaporean government announced $1.2B more for research, including a state-of-the-art new SMART research building.

A few months later, i am sweating in a dorm room at the National University of Singapore, at 5am (thanks to jetlag), writing this while i listen to crazy birds outside and wait for sunrise. I’ll be here for another week, visiting some of our collaborators and buying expensive optics toys for the SMART lab.

With many international research programs, MIT is a leader in the race between universities to establish global connections. As an undergrad, i participated in one of the first of these, the Cambridge-MIT Exchange. I spent my junior year at Cambridge University in the UK, playing football(soccer) and drinking wine at Harry-Potter dinners. Besides that, I got to experience a whole new way of learning, with no psets (only finals at the end). This resulted in a lot of $0.02 weekend trips with Ryanair, followed by 6 weeks of studying 14 hrs/day. It prepared me better for grad school, where all the learning is done on your own and there aren’t as many deadlines.

At MIT, you can also create your own international experience. Last year, i stumbled upon an ad at Harvard looking for interns at a German Quantum Physics lab. I was learning german and, quantum physics sounds fun, right? so i applied, and ended up spending 2 hectic months in Munich, working at the TUM.

Before I came to MIT, I hadn’t left America, and now I’m on the other side of the world. I love to travel, but actually living and working in another country is so much more revealing than just being a tourist. So here’s a little piece of advice from one SMART student to another: Come to MIT, but then, once you get here, leave, while you’re still here, if that makes any sense.