The end of the beginning

Someday, it might be in my best interest to stop with the dramatic post titles. But, honestly, sometimes it just works.

But that aside, you’ll never guess where I am again — because you don’t have to — you can see in the picture up there that I’m at the same Starbucks that I sit at every Saturday morning to do this.

Today, though, I’m facing out the other direction through the window. You still have to fit change in your life somewhere (although it is also still raining. At least it’s now warm and raining).

This week was nice, but went by quickly. On Tuesday — and this was kind of unplanned — there was a conference at school for people in my major (all the professors were there, all the seniors were there showing off their senior design projects, it was pretty neat). I went just to see who I would be able to connect with there (in person and on LinkedIn) — I shook the hands of a couple of professors that were very well known to everybody but me. Events for networking! I should’ve started with those sooner!

Wednesday was the interview for that dream internship I want over the summer and fall terms (again, the drama just fits here). It’s a pretty interesting-sounding position, especially if the thing I’m interested in is metrology and testing semiconductor devices (which, again, honestly: it is). They told me I would hear back in a week or two, so I’ll have to remain all over my email inbox, as I usually do.

Even more interesting was the place where the interview was — there’s a semiconductor fabrication facility owned by the state government that’s pretty far from where I go to school, but a long drive that was well worth it. Not just that, but I heard yesterday of another conference that one of my professors is looking to take students to. It’s the second week of finals, but luckily for me I don’t have any tests that week — I told him I’d like to go. It’s on the same campus where I just interviewed (convenient and cool! This is a place I want to get to know).

So I officially deem this period of my personal history the “end of the beginning” (so I hope), the point at which I stop being confused about my future and not sure what classes I like and when I double-down on all of the things I think I might be good at in order to improve my career prospects and become a better person.

Or something along those lines, whatever helps me sleep at night (in combination with the occasional melatonin supplement…).

I checked with the registrar earlier this week to (hopefully) confirm that my double-major is now registered in my academic plan, and if all is well then next spring semester after I, if all goes well, come back from my long, happy, and fruitful internship of great success, then I’ll only be taking electronics and Mandarin classes. Another step toward the future, I think.

The other step toward the future that’s quantifiable is the birthday that I have coming this Friday (so I’ll be 20 years old, a very clean and round number that’s a multiple of 2, 4, and 5). After that comes the thing that I consider the event to look forward to in the next week — the orchestra performance the following Saturday, by which I hope to be in possession of this really epic barrel.

The small things, maybe. I mean, it’s not that small, it’s a pretty nice barrel — my clarinet professor had one and let me try it the second week before my last lesson, and it was a pretty miraculous solution to my tuning and intonation pains. At least, that’s how I remember it — I don’t know, I’ll have to wait until I have one. But I hope to have one soon.

Image credit Ludovic Lubeigt, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Just yesterday, we were back in the 國際語言文化創業課 and the professor who’s going to act as our tour guide in Taipei was giving us a summary of the travel itinerary for the week. Over the course of the class, we also saw a couple of Taipei cityscapes, and it’s surprisingly nice (I’m mostly used to American cityscapes) except for the strange discrepancy between the height of the Taipei 101 and every other building around it. I thought I’d share.

I have one or two meetings remaining with my group partners before I go there to meet them in-person, and we’re sort of working on our project (but still, really, near the beginning) — I took one of the presentations that I gave them a while ago and decided we could turn it into our final presentation, but first wanted to convert it from a LaTeX Beamer to something editable online.

I took the PDF slideshow and put it into a PDF-to-PPT converter online, and the result was surprisingly good, but it still wasn’t necessarily group-workable — so, I uploaded the .ppt version to Google Drive, and then after opening it in Google Slides it converted it to a .pptx and opened it using the Google Slides online viewer, where you can invite other G Suite accounts. I invited the two group partners and reveled in how surprisingly intact my Beamer was in Google Slides form after 3-4 conversion steps. Technology truly is great.

The professor who was giving us the tour summary yesterday said that last year (the first year that they ran this program), the groups ended up spending most of their time in Taipei finishing their project because they hadn’t done it before the trip, and recommended against doing that because Taipei is an interesting place with lots of things to see and we should be seeing them instead of making a slideshow in a hotel room. I agree.

Anyway, it turns out that we don’t have any activities planned for the Sunday of the trip, which means my first two days there are free — the Saturday and Sunday — and I have a little more independent travel time before the program than I thought I would. I still have no clue what I should do, but I do know that I like trains and that the 高鐵 is fast, so my options are open, but I don’t think I’ll have time to see distant things like 金門 or lower Okinawa (if I went there, then I could technically say that I had “been to Japan”, which would be fun).

Aside from looking forward to these things — the same things I’ve been looking forward to forever — I have one more week here at school. That’s one more week of assignments to do — at least they’re all on my to-do list now & nothing else comes in to fill the empty spots of the assignments that I’ve just completed — but I do have a sizeable lab report due in a little over a week (and there’s some oxide thickness data that nobody thought to write down, which is unfortunate…).

After these things are done, I might try shutting my blinds before I go to bed and seeing when I wake up. Maybe I’ll do it for a week or two and collect some data.

我用了一些月注音符號輸入法輸入繁體字，但有一點不方便，打字很慢，昨天開始用繁體拼音。我一些月前也用繁體拼音，但覺得用注音讓我了解別的中文方法。大概是這樣，但還不方便。

我覺得要是你是中文學生，你就應該在鍵盤用拼音，在手機用注音，有的時候試一試在計算機用注音。但，在中文課別人都用簡體中文。考試的時候，問題用簡體字，我的回答用繁體，好像我當「抵制」。

在台灣，可能要讓我很高興因為環境都有繁體字，特別好看。很期待。

I can’t think of anything else to do except for finish those assignments all over my to-do list. In a week, hopefully things will be better.

Be back then! Thanks again for reading.