Searching for JBert

No Honor in Honorable Mention

Yesterday I received the fellowship equivalent of being accepted into a terminal masters program at a school where you had applied for a PhD. According to the nice e-mail I received, I have been 'accorded an Honorable Mention' by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for their Graduate Research Fellowship program. Was there really any point to giving me this award? It has absolutely no money or anything else attached to it. Were they just trying to save my feelings, and couldn't tell me straight out that I wasn't good enough for their fellowship program?

I checked last years website and saw that they awarded about 1,000 fellowships, but about 2,000 honorable mentions. I don't know how many applications they received in total, but it appears they are more than generous in giving out the honorable mentions. Can somebody explain to me the purpose of this? Is it suppose to look good on my resume or something? Do I even bother telling the graduate school I have already been accepted at that I 'won' this award?

I'm not too concerned about it, I already have funding from Stanford and I threw together this application in two days, but it seems like the honorable mentions serve no purpose whatsoever.

April 1 2006, 5:08pm

Flying Frustrations

Last time I checked Malaysia and China were pretty close together. If I am correct and they haven't gone and changed the world map on me, then why is a flight to Malaysia more expensive than a flight to Australia or the United States? Yes, it is an international flight, but it's only about 5 hours. Really short in comparison to flights to LA or Sydney. Yet for some reason these flights are still cheaper. Grrr.

These expensive flights are hindering my plans to travel to Kota Kinabalu over May break to hike the mountain of the same name. I might have to look into a different trip, but all the research I have been doing has made me very excited about Malaysia. Now I'm not sure what to do.

March 12 2006, 7:36pm

Updated Photos

Wow, two posts in one night. This just didn't seem to fit with my first post but I still wanted to let everyone know, that I have finally up dated the photos on my website. It is now complete with photos from my vacation to Thailand and Greg's visit to Shanghai and Beijing. Coming soon will be the pictures Greg took in China with his cool new camera.

For those of you who didn't know, Greg came to visit from February 3 through February 12. He flew into Beijing where I meet him flying (basically) from Thailand. We spent four days in Beijing, seeing all the tourist sights: the forbidden city, Tiananmen Square, the summer palace, the great wall at badaling, one of the Ming Tombs, and of course Mao's dead corpse. Then we flew to Shanghai, so I could show him around my hometown. In Shanghai we did all the expensive fancy stuff (which comes at a surprisingly cheap price). We ate at M on the Bund, had drinks and enjoyed the view at Cloud 9 bar on top of the Jin Mao tower, went skiing indoors, shopped for real Tiffany's jewelry, and enjoyed the serenity of the Yu Gardens. It was a great time, although sometimes a little cold. Especially considering Greg was coming from warm Los Angeles and I was coming from tropical Thailand. We also met up with Greg's brother Cliff, who also lives in Shanghai. He showed us every place in town to buy expensive watches and jewelry. He even tried some on. That's one perk of being a foreigner in Shanghai. All Chinese people assume you are rich, so you can walk into any store or any restaurant and be treated well, because the staff assumes that you have money to spend.

February 26 2006, 8:56pm

Sailing Chaos

It has been an absolutely crazy day. I haven't written here in a while, but life here just hasn't been that interesting. The new semester started, and I am teaching all of the same classes. I am still going to Kung Fu whenever I can. (And getting very bruised in the process, but it is suppose to make me stronger so I keep toughing it out.) And of course there is sailing.

Today was the first weekend I had been sailing in over a month, and it was absolutely crazy. The wind was blowing hard, probably 25-30 knots and the lake we sail on is quite shallow so there were crazy white caps. We were suppose to race, but no races actually happened. This was the heaviest wind I had skippered a wanderer in and it was almost too much for me to handle. Wanderer's are badly rigged with the main sheet coming from the end of the boom. This makes it very hard to pull in the sail. Especially in heavy air. I had a lot of difficulty pulling the sail in. I was just laking in physical weight and upper body strength.

After about 15 minutes on the water I tacked and started sailing downwind. Sailing downwind we were caught by a gust that death-rolled the boat and we capsized. Wanderers are difficult to capsize and therefore also very difficult to right again. My crew and I tried for about 10 minutes to right the boat, but no success, so another boat rescued my crew from the water (he wasn't wearing a dry suit) and left me with the boat. Now I had no chance of righting the boat on my own. I was forced to keep the boat from turtling and wait for the committee boat to come and help me right it. I waited, and waited and waited. Three different sailboats came out to see if they could help, then left again and I still waited for the committee boat. I waited for about 45 minutes, standing on the centerboard, waist deep in water that was only 8 degrees Celsius constantly buffeted by waves, and still the committee boat didn't come to help me. I had no chance of righting the boat on my own, now that it was completely filled with water, so I was just forced to wait.

Finally they came to help me, but they clearly didn't know what they were doing, because instead of coming to leeward of my boat and helping me throw up the mast. They instead came to windward of me and the wind pushed their boat into mine almost crushing me between the two boats. I jumped out of the way and they pulled me into their boat leaving my boat behind. The result of this was my boat, without my weight supporting it, began to turtle. We drove back to right it, but again the motor boat was pushed into the sailboat, this time running over it putting a crack in the hull and lodgeing the mast in the mud at the bottom of the lake (which bent the mast and broke a shroud). This make it much harder to then right the boat. It was quite frustrating to have kept the boat horizontal for about 45 minutes to have the committee boat damage the boat and make it harder to right it, when all they really had to do was throw up the mast.

Eventually, after I took the mainsail down we were able to right the boat and tow it back into the yacht club. I don't feel so bad about capsizing today though. I was one of three boats to go over, and one of them may be out there still. When this boat (a Red Dragon) went over, it took on so much water that it essentially sunk and became impossible to right. There were at least three attempts made to right the boat, none of them successful. This is in part because the boat is too big to be towed by a single rescue boat. Hopefully they will be able to raise it tomorrow once they can get a more powerful boat out to it.

That was my day of sailing. It involved much more swimming than sailing, and I don't know if I will be able to lift my arms tomorrow, but despite it all I had fun. And I am quite thankful that I was wearing my dry suit and I had it repaired. Without it the amount of time I spent in the water could have been fatal. (That's why my crew was rescued almost immediately after falling in.) If I didn't have a dry suit I would have been rescued too, but I would have been forced to abandon the boat, and it could have gotten even more damaged. As it was I was very cold by the time I got out of the water, and was thankful for the warm restaurant/clubhouse to warm up in.

February 26 2006, 8:42pm

Return from Thailand

Happy Valentines Day, everyone! And of course extra special wishes to a certain person in Burbank. I just wish I could be with you today.

I just returned from vacation and I am currently in the process of getting all my pictures together to post on this webpage. However since I took over a gig of pictures in Thailand, Beijing, and Shanghai, getting them posted is no small task and it will take me a little longer.

Thailand was absolutely amazing some highlights (and disasters) included: getting to the airport to find that my planes departure time had changed and nobody informed me, rock climbing on limestone cliffs on Ko Phi Phi, getting my openwater SCUBA certification, getting an ear infection in both ears and an eye infection, scuba diving with sharks and sea turtles, watching live Thai boxing in a reggae bar, almost getting into a physical fight with a taxi driver, seeing more beautiful wats than I ever imagined existed, seeing the death railway bridge on the river Kwai, riding and bathing with elephants, sliding down waterfalls, getting to pet tigers at a tiger temple, having the bike I rented get stolen, seeing ruins of the ancient Thai capital of Ayuthya, choosing my dinner from a wide selection of vendors at a night market, having my lunch stolen by monkeys, drinking delicious iced Thai coffee from a street vendor out of a plastic bag and randomly meeting a fellow teacher from my school in the Bangkok airport.

I stayed at a hostel that only cost $1.75 in Bangkok, and would get dinner for just 50 cents. The weather was beautiful and warm during the two weeks that I was there. It only rained at night, but this helped to cool off and make it possible to sleep. I showered everyday in cold water, because there is no hot water plumbing (at least not in the low end accommodations that I stayed in). I got to see both the souther coastal region and the northern mainland and mountains. The ocean and beaches were beautiful, but I actually preferred northern Thailand. It was less touristed and it felt more authentic than the foreigners playground atmosphere that the south had. All in all it was a great trip and I highly recommend it.

That's enough about the trip for now. I will post later to include more Thailand stories as my trip to Beijing and Shanghai with Greg.

Tuesday February 14 2006, 10:25pm

Parents Meetings

I am currently in the midst of hosting parents meetings. Parents of my students have come wandering into the classroom where I am sitting and they want to talk to me about their child's performance. I even had one parent who could not speak any English. This meant that I had to hold an entire conference with her in Chinese. It was really exciting to get to use my Chinese and speak with this parent. Other than that parents meeting have been very dull. It's funny how only the parents of the good students show up. The bad students, whose parents' you would really like to talk to, never seem to take an interest in the child's lives and come to parents meetings. Hmmm, maybe there is some correlation here.

On a different note, I had my first language exchange meeting two days ago. It was a lot of fun, but it also highlighted a lot of the differences between American culture and Asian culture. These girls I meet with thought nothing of asking me questions like "How old are you?", "Are you ready to get married?", "Do you dye your hair?", and other questions that would seem inappropriate to ask someone the first time you meet them. I actually had a good time talking to these girls and hope to see them again. Next time I hope we can practice speaking Chinese, so I have a chance to improve my speaking as well.

Friday January 20 2006, 3:58pm

College Again

I feel like I am in college again. I just got back from the office now. I have spent most of my evening calculating total term grades and writing comments for all of my students. The worst part is that I am not done yet, but I decided to go home and get some sleep. I simply refuse to spend all night at work. The thought of pulling an all nighter for a teaching job is just miserable. Especially given the fact that unlike when I was in college, I cannot just return home in the morning and sleep all day long. I actually have to show up for work tomorrow and work a full day. Sometimes I don't think the job is worth what they pay me.

On the topic of work, I am also currently tutoring five students from the local division. They are preparing for an English speaking contest. The contest is centered around a discussion of a science article, thus I as the resident English speaking science expert at this school was called upon to help these students prepare. I met with them today and had them read article an article about dark energy and the expansion of the universe. They complained it was too hard. It seems like the school would have done better choosing someone who did not major in physics to help these students.

Finally on an unrelated note, my plane tickets for my trip to Beijing were delivered today. I am currently in possession of three round trip plane tickets and a single one way plane ticket. (The one way ticket belongs to Greg.) Does this seems excessive to anyone else?

Tuesday January 17 2006, 2:22am