From September 2001 to April 2006, I have pursued a degree in Computer Engineering. It's cliche, but those five years have passed awfully fast. The early years are fading fast, but many projects, labs and outings from that period are still quite vivid in my mind.

Describing my entire five years requires more thought and space than I'm willing to devote. Obviously I hope my experiences and the friends I've made stay with me for a long time.

My future was entirely up in the air as recently as two months ago, but I have some good news to report on that front. This summer, I'll be returning to a former co-op employee. I enjoyed the work I received while there and the people I worked with, so I'm looking forward to going back.

And this fall, I'll be attending the University of Toronto to pursue a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering. When I chose to apply to grad schools, I was apprehensive about my chances of admission. But my apps went well and, after weighing a choice of a few schools, I know I made the right choice to attend UT.

I'd gladly take off the entire summer to travel, do Europe, maybe go back to Bermuda, but reality bites. Car payments and insurance, exempli gratia. I hope to do a week or two of Europe at the end of the summer, finances permitting.

In store for me this summer: a few running events (10km, maybe a half-marathon), convocation, a conference where myself and three others will be presenting a research paper, and enjoying the many cultural excursions Toronto in the summer can offer.

Since the last update, of the things I can remember off-hand:

• Aug, '05: had a good vacation in Ottawa; saw and learned much


• Aug - Dec, '05: had a great work term working for a tech startup in the Toronto area. Made the most of my time in the big city; checked out all of its attractions that interested me


• Oct, '05: ran in the Oktoberfest 10km run, placing ~80 of ~600 with a time of 43:40 in my first competitive race


• Dec, '05: entered a tennis doubles tournament with my pops and finished as finalists, only losing in the final


• Dec, '05: enjoyed the holidays back home with my family


• Jan, '06: began my final (!) academic term of university; with 5 challenging courses and 5 substantial projects, the term has left me with quite the workload


• Feb, '06: received my iron ring, the uniquely-Canadian symbol of a qualified and obligated engineer; I plan to wear it with pride (until I lose it)


• Future: grad school applications in progress, full-time applications in progress (read: I don't know yet!)

Oh my feet are killing me after a full day spent walking around the city. I'll have more to say about what we did on our first full day here in a later post.

On Tuesday night, our first here, we checked out a bit of the downtown scene and watched the Sound and Light Show, a slideshow presentation that projects Canadian-themed images and video with accompanying dialogue directly onto the Centre Block building. Pretty cool idea. We grabbed dinner at D'Arcy McGee's, an (obviously) Irish pub. What makes this one different from every other British/Irish pub is that it was actually designed and built in Ireland before being shipped to Ottawa. The decor and atmosphere did seem pretty authentic, although having never been to Ireland I can only guess what that may be.

Another full day of museums (read: walking) awaits us today followed by a dinner in Ottawa's ByWard Market.

Regardless, the term is over. It was a tough term, but that was due to an increased amount of responsibility I took on outside of my courses. I could ramble on about the term but don't feel like it and I know no one wants to read about it.

I did have 3 shitty things happen to me over a stretch of 3 days. On a Wednesday in July I woke up to find that my nice Sony car stereo had been stolen. Either the bastard picked the lock or I left a door unlocked. At least the window wasn't smashed in; the only artifacts are some dangling wires and a gaping hole where it used to sit.

The next day I received an email from my potential landlord telling me that, out of the blue, he decided to sell his house and move halfway across Toronto. Oh, but I was welcome to move in with him, his wife, young child, and visiting parents in the new house. It's just too bad it would have quadrupled my distance to work. Please.

And then that Friday after class I returned to where I had locked my bike to find it gone. In a possible warning sign that I blatantly ignored, there was a cut lock identical to mine lying on the ground next to the rack. I noticed it but locked my bike up anyway. But wait, there's a positive to this story! He left me my helmet, which I locked to the bike. What a final, suffocating kick to the nuts.

I had a depressing walk home that Friday evening. But whatever. $200 bucks out of my pocket and it never happened, right?

I'm off to Ottawa tomorrow for a vacation where I plan to immerse myself in culture before beginning work on the 15th. The 6-hour drive should prove to be a little dull with no tunes, but that's what talking is for!

Friday at work I found out I've been given an office for the remaining three weeks of my work term. Someone came by to move my stuff from my old cubicle to new office Friday afternoon. The office certainly affords more privacy and space than my cube but more importantly lends me an air of status I didn't previously have.

Err...I'll level with you: I was moved because a new full-timer started today and he wasn't about to be given an office. Sets bad precedent, ya know? So they gave it to a co-op instead. I'm not sure if that's better but I'm not complaining.

I was in a mall bookstore perusing the new releases when a gravelly voice asked, "How do you define success?" I turned and the speaker was an elderly man sitting on his walker. He was in pretty rough shape: walker, hunched, sores covering his face, mottled hands. I took in his condition and grunted some weak response while inching away. He indicated a book he was holding, a hardcover marked down in price written by some attractive "expert" (pictured on the cover, of course), about finding success in your life.

I thought he may have been a touch senile and initially wanted to move on but as he spoke I decided to be polite and hear him out. He began by relating to me how he never was or will be a millionaire and that those who define success by such measures, such as the book he was holding, mislead themselves. He went on to describe how he was forced quit school and work to support his mother; join the army and go to war; lose his best friend in the war; find and marry a nice girl, as he phrased it; then lose both his wife, after 58 years of marriage, and two daughters; and finally that he now lives alone and has no one to talk to. He managed to patch together his life story.

I believe the message he wanted to get across was that he had learned long ago to define success in his life by other measures than financial success.

Which led me to ponder how I define success in my own life. I highly value things in life, the most important being my personal and family's health. But that isn't success, is it? I try to be a good person according to the image I have of what a good person should be. Again, not success.

Well, I presently think of my life as successful if each facet of it -- family, friends, school, work -- is successful on its own. Subconsciously or not, I keep these somewhat separate from the others and I think this allows me to turn to one when another struggles. Are such divisions naturally created by most people? I'd imagine they are. Perhaps those whose personal and professional lives are tightly interwoven have trouble escaping one for the other. Everyone needs a sanctuary, somewhere to turn when something else has gone wrong.

Each of these parts of my life I believed I consider successful through different measures. One immediately considers marks the yardstick for measuring success at school. At work, a person's salary or position within the company could define their success there. These are true to an extent. But I have come to realize that it is the relationships I have in my life that truly make me feel good about it or not. A serious rift between a classmate or co-worker and I would upset me more than doing poorly on an exam or failing to solve some technical issue at work. It is the relationships between myself and my family and friends that bring me happiness in life and what I've learned is my true measure of success.

Apple just reduced the price of the Mini to $250, a price I felt more comfortable spending. At twice the price of the Shuffle but with eight times the capacity and an LCD I felt the Mini was the better deal. The big name electronic stores are sold out of the Minis except for the pink model and Apple was offering free shipping, perhaps for a limited time, so I ordered it online. The Mini has more features that make the experience of listening to music more enjoyable, and that's ultimately what it comes down to.

I finally resolved to buy some sort of MP3 player after having to endure 30 minutes of noisy breathing and grunting from the schmuck on the treadmill next to me at the gym one night. He had on his music and probably wasn't aware of how much noise he was making. I took a look around and noted more people had personal music players than not and said to myself, "That's it! I'm getting an iPod."

I don't think much about Bermuda anymore; it's been almost nine years since we moved here. But it's still close to my heart. Today I came across two news items, one good, one bad, concerning Bermuda that I wanted to share.

Found via Bermuda's national newspaper, The Royal Gazette, the first item concerns a beach I lived one minute from and spent hundreds of hours at swimming, body surfing and running around as a child. The Travel Channel will be airing a feature on the world's top ten beaches and Horseshoe Bay is one of them, where they consider it "Best Postcard Beach." (See picture.) If only we had left when I was a few years older!

Bermuda's tourism industry, so vital to the island's economy, has struggled in recent years and led to several hotel closures. The slump began in 1996 with the brutal murder of an attractive 17 year-old female Canadian tourist. The trials of the two men responsible were botched by the Crown and one received a 5-year conviction for being an accessory while the other got off on a technicality. Understandably the family was furious and launched a campaign to boycott Bermuda. The entire affair was covered extensively by Canadian newspapers, with a large photo of her printed every story, and the negative publicity no doubt caused a drop in Canadian tourists. The increased apprehension towards flying and travel after 9/11 further contributed to the slump. Hopefully the feature will spark interest.

The other news item is a fallout of the slumping tourism industry mentioned above. Trimingham's, a Bermudian department store founded in 1842, announced that it will be closing its doors for the first time in 163 years at the end of July. Located on unquestionably the most prime real estate in Bermuda's capital city of Hamilton, the store is uniquely Bermudian and part of the experience of visiting the island. I was stunned when I first heard the news as Trimingham's seemed secure and successful with seven locations across the island. If Trimingham's struggled enough to close shop then certainly the smaller stores are also struggling.

This is a clear indication of the extent to which the tourism industry has declined and I can only hope it improves before more hotels and stores close and Bermuda's culture is threatened.

Until now!

I'm just over halfway through my fifth work term and thought I'd share the courses I will be taking in my upcoming 4A study term. It's hard to believe we've made it through first, second and third year already. I still remember 1A pretty well.

But with only two study terms and one work term remaining the end is definitely in sight. I've enjoyed each school term more than the last and will be genuinely sad when it comes to an end, feelings in no small part due to my classmates. A unique experience of Engineering is that our class has moved forward taking the same core courses each term and have come to know each other quite well. Next term is the first where we branch off according to our interests. I hope to see familiar faces in my courses.

With Paul's urging here are the classes I am fairly certain to be taking next term:

ECE 411 - Digital Communications
ECE 431 - Radio Frequency Microelectronics
ECE 438 - Digital Integrated Circuits
CLAS 225 - Classical Mythology

Our fourth year design project is our fifth course. I'm considering taking a fourth technical elective in place of the non-technical mythology elective. However that coupled with the design project would make the term quite heavy. I'm also not sure what course I'd take in place of the elective.

An unintended consequence I suppose of selecting all my courses for the first time is that they won't all be scheduled in blocks. Instead I will have multi-hour gaps every day. Can't be helped.

Of course none of this makes much sense to this site's casual readers.

(Casual readers?!)

I've been following the NFL quite a bit lately, and, yes, much of that is giving into the hype. But I find that the product is exciting even once removed from all the pregame (over-) analysis.

I like Indianapolis to win it all. New England has a couple key injuries in their defense, the Eagles are worse off than the last three years with T.O. out (since I'd wager losing him is worse than never having him), and San Diego is too inexperienced. Of the true contenders, that leaves only Pittsburgh.

I don't think Big Ben's run can continue through the playoffs. He's had one hell of a run, but I think it ends next week. Indianapolis has a QB coming off arguably the greatest regular season of all time, three great receivers, and a strong running game. If their offence continues to put up the sick numbers they have been all season, they should plow through Denver like last year's wild card and make it through the next two rounds. Basically, if Manning doesn't get injured they'll be fine. Philly seems like the most likely contender they'd face in the Superbowl, since they're the only contender from the mess that is the NFC.

But without Owens it's hard to predict.

Another four month workterm begins Monday: a new job, a new company, a new city, and my last work report.

After parking at our friend's place at Yonge & Sheppard and taking the subway downtown, we received another indication of the shopping frenzy that has become Boxing Day. Almost everyone waiting for the northbound trains at Dundas station was carrying shopping bags, while everyone arriving was empty-handed. That soon would change.

Being Boxing Day we knew any mall would be busy, and especially in fashion-conscious Toronto, but I've never been to a mall so busy. Some stores had lines just to get in and many had '50% off everything' sales. There was so much I could have bought but held off on. Probably a good thing. I realize that most malls were probably touting deals and crowds like the Eaton Centre yesterday but it was still extremely busy. One also gets a sense of how multi-cultural Toronto really is: roughly 1 out of every 10 shoppers was white, and that is not an exaggeration.

I managed to take advantage of some pretty good deals on a pair of shoes and pants; each was roughly 25% of the original ticket price. We then had a satisfying dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, although the meal cost as much as my new shoes. The day was topped off with 'Meet the Fockers' for free, thanks to our friend, at a theatre in Mississauga on our way home.

It was quite the day and made up for last year's Boxing Day when similar plans fell through at the last moment.

We just finished opening gifts. I am very happy with the thoughtful gifts I received from my parents: a couple things for my car, a George Foreman-type grill, socks & underwear, a Chapters gift card, and winegums ;).

I've found that during University there is no better or relaxing time than the two weeks surrounding Christmas. Whether coming off a school term or work term, I can act like a normal person for those two weeks. In other words, do absolutely shit all. Not to mention the two holidays that are jam packed in there. I hope to be making a trip up to Toronto tomorrow with my buddies for some Boxing Day shopping (and saving).

Marks came back and I smoked 3B. I earned my highest average yet by over 6%. I'll be interested to see what my class rank is, as I may not be too far off the Dean's List. I doubt I'll make it, though; your term average minus your percentile rank must be at least 80%, which is pretty damn tough. Having an easy elective helped, although SOC 101 wasn't my highest mark. Looking back, this was easily my most successful term when both academics and co-op are considered.

Well, I begin work on Jan 3 so I've got about a week left to relax and move down. I haven't thought about that yet, as I've been too busy doing nothing at all. Feels nice.

Lots of good sports on today: Indiana-Detroit brawl round II (hopefully!); Kobe vs. Shaq (aka Corvette vs. Brick Wall); NFL; and finally Canada's World Junior Hockey debut. I can't say that all the sports on today will endear wives to sports-loving husbands on this most sacred of days, but you've got to follow it nonetheless, Christmas or not!

Top that off with a delicious Christmas dinner and that's quite the relaxing day.

I last left you with a quick note on the last day of my 3A work term in Windsor. Since then I've moved back home to Waterloo, busted my balls for 4 months in my 3B term, and all the while tried to maintain a semblance of a life. That 'semblance' was a fraction of what I used to do during school terms; I worked harder this term than any other. As a result, I didn't get out as much as I wanted to or should have. But the harder work showed through on midterms and hopefully will again on finals. One highlight of the term was my class' victory at a cross-engineering trivia contest. Paul Teehan wrote up a little summary of it.

In retrospect, 3B wasn't as difficult as 3A. Mind you, I took six courses in 3A and five of those were ECE core classes, one of which destroyed me (324 anyone?). This term, I had four core courses and one easy elective (SOC 101!). On top of that, one of my classes was a Joke. I enjoyed the other three, however.

It's sad in a way that we're finished third year now. As Teehan put it, my class has been together for the same four core classes since first year but we'll each be branching off in different directions to pursue our interests in fourth year. We've been through a lot together. However, there isn't too, too much choice regarding fourth year electives so many of us will still be together. More hacky sac between classes!

But it's obviously awesome now that we're into fourth year. I get to select all of my courses now, which is something I'm sure Arts students take for granted since first year. The additional freedom of both courses and schedule will be nice. We can also ligthen or increase our workload as we so choose. But not me; I plan to take four ECE courses next term.

The end is near. Two academic and two work terms remain. It's a little alarming being so close to The Real World, in that it signifies the last significant life adjustment until retirement at about the age of 60 (give or take, preferably take). But I'm considering grad school, which means, as my friend Jeff wisely put it, I can "shelter within academia for a little while longer."

I'll be working in Burlington beginning in January for 4 months. It's an awesome job and I'm really looking forward to it. I decided to pay a little more for housing and accordingly have a nicer place to live than my accomodations in Windsor. I don't think I've looked forward to a term this much yet. I could be working down in warm and sunny San Diego instead but I opted for the better position over the high pay and perks of working down in Cali. I don't regret my choice.

I think that's it for the 'Life Update.' Hopefully subsequent posts will be more frequent and deal with more insightful things as opposed to 'what I've been doing the last two/three weeks.' I implore you again: Stay Tuned!

I'm moving back home either tomorrow or Sunday but in my mind I'm already back. The amenities of home have been calling to me all summer.

So I bid Windsor a fond farewell. I don't have plans to come back but I'm sure I'll be back here some time in the future for one reason or another.

Meanwhile, my immediate future will be spent relaxing at home and spending some quality time with family and friends. Oh, and working on the vaunted E&CE work report. Damn.

On to 3B.