graduation...

It's been a hectic few days for me as I struggled to finish packing, decide where to put what (which is incredibly challenging when you have 3 destinations to consider, europe, san francisco & singapore) and to get thro graduation...so here's a summary of my bittersweet story of my past few days...

1. I realize that packing is a revealing experience...it reveals how much rubbish I've stored in my room that I never got to use...as one browse thro the closet, you come across items tat represent lots of special memories (it's kind of funny to read thro my michigan acceptance letter now...)..and the most revealing thing has got to be the amount of dust collected in the room when you haven't done a single sweep of the floor for the past 8 months...what it all amounts to is a terribly unhealthy environment to sleep in, which is probably i ended up falling sick and catching a bad cold on the day of my graduation~ sucks~

2. So i'm the marshal of the EECS department during the commencement ceremony...the rehearsal the previous day was supposed to be short...except that I mistook "Crysler Center" for "Crysler Arena"...which essentially means that I walked into an empty crysler center at 6:55pm thinking how can the whole engineering school squeeze in the little auditorium when the other marshals were gathering in the indoor stadium at 7pm back in central...so with a bit of luck with catching buses and the stamina of a fleeing fugitive, i arrived at Crysler Center at 7:20pm...just in time for me to go up stage...haha...tat was close..

3. While packing stuff is a problem, finding a place to put them is even worse...to cut a long story short...i distributed my stuff between fernando's house, Henry's house, with my parents and myself...after this i'm pretty sure i can ace any logistic management class..

4. So...my parents are finally here (on friday) after 9 hours of solid driving and sniffin their way (often with unsatisfactory accuracy) from toronto to ann arbor...Of course i was really glad to see them. My parents have aged physically, likewise i have definitely aged too...but it's still a great relief to see my folks...it's a fortunate thing that in spring time it only gets dark at 8:30pm...so i managed to show them around central campus b4 it gets dark...we ended the night with a sumptous meal at TK Wu...at this point I kno i'm at the point of falling realli sick but i guess the adralin carried me over till the next day (grad day)...

5. We had a pretty jialat accommodation arrangement with my aunt & uncle sleepin over at Fernando's place and my folks sleepin on my bed in my small single dorm room...fernando really is a great friend...he actually had to sleep over at his friend's place so my relatives could sleep in...the 3 of us on the other hand had a realli rough nite...firstly my parents had to squeeze on to my single bed...then i had to sleep on the concrete floor..the sleepin bad really doesn't help much and the guys next door were movin out till the wee hours...so essentially i did not get any sleep at all...

6. grad day! altho i'm tired as shit...the show has to go on...i was really worried abt raining but fortunately the weather forecast was wrong...it was pretty windy thou...anyway, i use masking tape to make two chinese characters "Ba Ma" (father and mother in chinese) on my graduation cap...of course they're pleased...anyway, the morning graduation was ok...the speakers weren't too great and the weather's obviously not the best...but it's still cool to sit in the Big House one last time and took some awesome pics on the 50-yard line...alsot took some pics with my freshmen buddies ryan and henry...then we came back to my dorm room and get dressed up for the afternoon engineering commencement where i'm the marshal...the whole thing was draggy as expected but it's cool to listen to Larry Page, co-founder of Google and Michigan Alumni, talking abt entreneuship...anyway, as the marshal, i was first to take the stage for my Deparment and i told Larry "thanks for ur speech...i will start my own start-up one day" while i shook his hand on stage...i didn't really feel proud or anything close mainly cos i was really gonna collapse and the whole ceremony is kinda long...one thing i like thou is that the Dean spent a fair bit of his time talkin about the involvement of engineers in public policy in his speech..i think we do need more engineering-background ppl to be in a public service positions, especially where rulings regarding the latest technology and research is concerned...in tat sense i think the american senate has alot to catch up on..anyway, took more pics with william, mei jin, derek, joy (she actually came down to see derek's grad!) & ling chung jye...realli wish my lo po is here too but i kept telling myself i'd see her in a week :)...rite now i sld just concentrate on getting well so i'd be in top shape when i see her in london! yeay!

7. so i definitely had a fever last night...but after 12 hours of solid sleep, i think i'm back on track, thou the running nose still bothers me...brought my parents to check out north campus and took more pics at my OLED lab...then came back and sold my guitar and said bye to fernando for the last time (he's been sleepin out for the past 3 nites...owe him a big one man...and he's even helpin me to store my desktop over summer and sendin them to me in san fran...wat a great friend..)...ok..this insert is too long and my parents are sleepin like pigs now..haha...i think i sld take a nap too :)