My Graduate Survey Answers

Please state the reasons for your answer above (i.e. recommending or NOT recommending the UG program you have completed to other students.)

I would recommend the UG program, but also let them know what it's really like so they have no delusions about life at HKUST.
Pressure can occasionally feel overwhelming. While I enjoyed my time here, I am not sure this is an experience I would like to repeat. To be flatly honest, given another choice, I would have chosen the other universities that accepted me. True, most universities are like this, yet at the same time, I think the cultures of other universities may be more positive.

However, I am proud of what I am achieved, accomplished, the skills I have acquired, the attitude I have developed and the ideas I have contacted.

What is good about this university?
 
You will find people you like to work with/have fun with, people you don't like but have to work with.
You will learn to cope with pressure. You may find yourself without guidance, but that develops your character.
You will find yourself doing things you thought you'd like but then didn't. This will make you find the things you really love and hence your direction.

What needs to be improved in this university?


Make it bigger. At least twice as large. Set less exams and more projects. Actually teach people how to manage their time and life well.
Everyone should have to take mental health first aid or psychology. It would have saved a lot of grief when things don't work out we want and have to handle failure.
Help your students succeed. Why should half the class be below average when everyone could be 90% or above? Why are people happy with being "above average"? "Above average" isn't excellent. That means people DON'T even UNDERSTAND all the material.
It's not an issue of pulling grading curves or students being lazy. The issue is why are people not aiming higher or achieving excellence? Where is the culture for excellence? Right now, we have a culture of "above average".
This is probably a major issue for many universities. Not only is it holding potential back, it is this very belief that makes people average. People who wish to live meaningful lives won't get it by setting the goal of beating others, but by feeding their desires to achieve.

Other general comments:

Encourage entrepreneurship. After taking entrepreneurship courses, I think every student should be an entrepreneur. True, few will actually succeed commercially, but so-called failures are infinitely better than no result at creating future success.

The market is too volatile today. Bad economies make being an employee a real pain, besides being fired first. It is however awesome for entrepreneurship, for taking risks, because many experienced/skilled people will be looking for work and willing to work for less. Job training is no longer the main goal of education.

Everyone should go on exchange somewhere sometime. It teaches adaptability and makes one confident that one can thrive anywhere. People are only going to get more mobile in this century. And I knew students who have rather narrow outlooks which were completely broadened after just a month of exchange.

20 Years of Experience in Water Drinking

Q- Why drink water?

Water. 

The enabler of life. Humans can take a liter an hour in the hottest places, or die.
To get minerals. In nature, pure water doesn't exist. There's almost always something in it.

Q- What water to drink?

Electrolytes!
When we say water, we aren't talking pure H2O. While we can drink pure water, we need salt and minerals. Without them, we may eventually get water poisoning - the normal electrolytic balance is disrupted and the brain is most sensitive to it.

I found during the half-marathon just how much electrolytes are necessary before, during and after the race. I started off drinking 3 or 4 cups of water with 1 sports drink to go. At the turn-around point, I found that my vision became brighter and glare-y. Switching completely to sports drink helped things back to normal, except the sugar was causing small sugar crashes soon after. There wasn't a work-around to this issue. The sports drink also felt rather diluted. Perhaps I should bring my own rehydration salts and next time.

Coconut water is great stuff, with similar composition to blood plasma. I could drink nothing except coconuts in Vietnam and Malaysia. I didn't feel any different after drinking and sweating.

Fluoride
I did a 6 month long experiment soon due to end. I drank only distilled or non-fluoridated water, and no drinks. From the start of 2013, I hauled bottled water back home and to dormitory ever few days. I alternated between mineral water and distilled water, depending on which was on sale. I made drinks whenever possible.

The result?
My mind became clearer. I felt smarter. Reading novels, I could see clearly everything so exquisitely described by the finely chosen words.

Reduced sleep requirement. I woke up from clearly defined dreams every morning. The details could so good that for a short moment, I forgot it was a dream and reacted like the waking me.

I could very easily pull all-nighters. If I was fully engaged, it didn't feel any different whatever the time was. I could work fully until 4am and still wake before 9am the next day. Of course, I only did that twice, knowing the long-term consequences.

While logical reasoning did not become clearer, I found my visualizations form clearer images. This is very interesting and under-researched, because this means there are actual high-level effects, with effects over entire populations.

However, I could work longer without fatigue. It was as if my mind felt lighter and more agile. I was able to focus greater effort at my interests, and less able to force myself to do anything. It wasn't that I was more willing, just that it was easier.

I also found a difference between remineralized and distilled water. Distilled water did not feel as hydrating as mineralized water - my mouth would still feel dry and furry after distilled water.

Mineral water comes in many different forms. Some charge a big premium over where they are from, branding, texture and taste. Watson's (the mineral type with blue-caps) are good enough for hydration purposes, though to my tastes, even Chinese purified water tasted better. The greater cost is not worth it - it's cheaper to add a powdered drink of your choice.

So am I going back? Not a chance. I attempted a withdrawal, which resulted in a significant loss of productivity and mental clarity (mental fog) I'd rather not experience again.

Temperature
Based simply on feeling, this should be obvious. Since we are warm bodies, warm water is the natural choice. Warm drinks give a relaxing, cozy experience. I can also drink more warm water than cold water, with the warm water being absorbed faster than the cold water.
There is also evidence that warm drinks help digestion, and that seems to make scientific sense too. Enzymes work optimally at specific temperatures. Fats are more fluid in warmer liquids.


Q- When to drink?

The best time to hydrate is immediately after getting up. If you're like me and weened off air-conditioning for sleeping at night, eight hours of sleep is also eight hours of drying up and using up energy. The body is in great demand for water and food.

The second best time to hydrate is steadily throughout the day. Water is consistently gained and lost through all sorts of processes. To stay balanced, replenish as soon as it is lost.

If having a water source near you all day isn't possible or not your style, the best time to drink is an hour before meals. That's when you'll be feeling hungry and sometimes, that feeling doesn't mean you need food. Water can delay the response until you can get a meal. It will helps digestion too.


Q- How much?

It is entirely true that one can go with not drinking water at all. We get water from food and other drinks all the time.

I'm not concerned with minimums. I consider "getting enough water" to mean that urine is always clear and the mind/body are feeling great.

Based on my water bottle estimates, I was drinking 1.5L average for winter days and 2L as summer heat sets in. And this is just for mineralized water/mixed drinks.  There is no way my urine could be entirely clear with just a liter of water a day.

For a half-day (~5-6 hour) summer hike, I need about 2L to feel as if I was sitting in an air-conditioned room. I just used up 1L playing 3 hours of tennis outdoors in the hot afternoon. That's not including pre- and post- hydration, which are just as important.

Conclusion

• Drink water with electrolytes, excluding fluoride & other pollutants.

• Good water is a nutrient - it makes you feel better.

• You need more than a liter of clean water a day. 2 Liters is very reasonable if you're not big on drinks.

• Replenish fluids as/before you lose it - not afterwards.

Almost Graduated. (An Ongoing Post Tracking Changes until Graduation)

Cooking: The Spanish omlette looks like a pie of sorts. I can fry a decent omlette myself.
Cleaning: I have done zero cleaning in my dorm except for washing out the covers. Don't intend to.
Programming: Projects mostly. Looking for open source project to actually write code or documentation for.
Reading: Still on Sword of Truth. The author hasn't ceased to amaze me. Also reading the Bible and Ayn Rand a page at a time. Together they give a unique perspective on life and philosophy.
Sports: Trying to keep up the running, so that I may be ready for marathon next year. May be unlikely given my career, but I'm training while I can.

What I meant about trade from SOSC1000A (Game Theory)

Trade makes everyone better off, some better off than others. The trick is to maximize your gains and then not caring what the other people gain.

Night @ HKUST

Little dashes of light gleamed white brightly on the calm wavy ocean.

As 9pm came, the lights went off, yielding to the darkness, and the occasional cool night wind. Restaurants closing, staff waving each other off, students going home.

As I look to the staff quarters, I see the calm night life of families, of professors watching after dinner TV, and I start wondering what it's like back home (or what Mom and Dad are doing).

I guess as busy people, we don't often get the night to ourselves, to admire the serenity and everything in slow motion. This has to be one of the things I love most in HKUST. Whether I'm around people, or alone, I get this feeling that my time is mine to enjoy, whatever way I please. Maybe that's just me.

The weather is just right today - temperature's just right about air-conditioning.. I feel like I should to spend the night outside, sleeping by the sea, breathing fresh air. Sometimes, I just don't get why the buildings are designed like air-conditioned boxes, when everyone could be outside enjoying the air.

Simplicity. Why was Angry Birds so popular?

The brain likes to simplify things as much as possible. A wall doesn't have to be exactly white for us to see it/call it a white wall. Angry birds feels nice because it is extremely simple for the kind of things that it wanted to represent. There was just enough detail on that bird to quickly form a well-defined, clear mental image. In fact, it is so clear we have no desire of adding anything to it. This makes us comfortable and puts our mind at ease.

Just like the no-smoking sign.

Wizard's First Rule reads nicely and comfortably because the descriptions are to-the-point and fed just at the right time - just when the reader is anticipating it. Fitting the expectations means no revision/recoding is necessary or done. The author, Terry Goodkind, is careful to present details exactly when most people will start wondering about it.

These expectations are cognitive habits hidden in plain sight. We keep using them, yet they are harder to discover because of other cognitive tendencies, like not wanting to think more than you have to, aka getting used to something.   

One such tendency is for direct descriptions in simple wording. This is simply parallel with the Angry Birds form distinct impressions in minds. We want representations as clear as possible, not fuzzy, untouchable shapes.

A sense of mystery also helps engage/hypnotize the user. "Why did you do this?" The discontinuity makes one waste CPU cycles and relax, at least until the person actually thinks about it. Very common examples of this include IPad interface. It is very distinct, and one has to wonder why there are so many gaps between icons, how the icons can follow my fingers on the screen, why things expand at the rate they do. All this is far from arbitrary, yet just thinking about it is enough to make the mind try to chase its own tail - the dog never gets it.

Simplicity repeated leads to more simplicity, not less. The mind becomes more and more efficient at processing the same thing - more of it becomes unconscious. It is the progression from unconscious unknowing - not having any mental model at all, to unconscious knowing. Any discontinuity has been related to other discontinuities to form continuities. When all discontinuities have been found and connected, there are no more distinctions to snag onto consciously.

All this fit together to form user-friendly, engaging software.

War and peace

I find it really strange when people would read the most depressing paper in a nice peaceful park.

I dont get it.