Goodbye ETS! Again!

OK... I need to say Goodbye to ETS again because I just took TOEFL this morning -- though most graduate school does not require TOEFL for students who get their bachelor's degree in an English speaking institute, but one reputable one insists that only students who get their bachelor's degree in a US college or university could be exempted from TOEFL. As I am applying for that school, I took TOEFL.

And I hope this will be the real end of my dealing with ETS...

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And I am aware of the fact that this blog has not been updated for a long time --- that's because blogging has a very low priority in my schedule and recently I have been consistently getting higher priority tasks (the starvation problem in Operating System).

And it is very likely that I will continue to be very busy until X'mas. So check back after that and I may have a summer + fall semester summary here.

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Life is an opportunity to do something.

Goodbye ETS

Just received my GRE score today and got to know my AW score is 5.0 (out of 6), which is quite acceptable for me. So finally I don't need to worry about this, which is good.

Recently I have been moving as my parents bought a house and it is such a hassle... most of my evenings and weekends are devoted to cleaning up and organizing stuff.. hopefully I can get over this soon...

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Life is an opportunity to do something.

Midterm Review

More than half of 2007 has passed, and it may be a good time to review my resolutions for 2007.

• Do well in MAT357 Real Analysis and ECO100 Economics (2006 Spring)
• I worked very hard for MAT357 and the result turned out to be good, and I indeed learned a lot from the course. Working on a homework for a whole weekend was a pain during the term, but somewhat memorable in retrospect. Specials thanks to Jay, Sheng, and Andrew for all the enlightening discussions.
• ECO100 was pretty easy and I seldom attended lectures after the first test due to the low entropy rate in lectures. But I did get a good understanding on the basic stuff and result was satisfactory too.
  
• Status update: DONE.
  
• Perform well at Altera
• It was a memorable 12 months. I learned a lot, worked hard and had lots of fun there.
  
• Status update: DONE
  
• Take GRE
• Status update: DONE (awaiting AW score for final approval)
• Have a good summer research experience
• The work in Professor Kschischang's group is very fun and so far I have made some progresses. But more to be done before any real achievement.
• Status update: IN PROGRESS
  
• Get my driver's license
• Status update: TBA
  
• Pick a good design project topic
• I choose Universal Portfolio, under the supervision of Professor Wei Yu. We have a very strong group, consisting people with strong technical or business background. I am very optimistic about our final result.
• Status update: IN PROGRESS
  
• Do well in the 2007 Fall
• I am looking forward to it!
• Status update: TBA
  
• Make profit in Forex trading
• Nope, no profit so far. And my trading is in a dormant state as I don't really know how to make profit consistently. I may resume this when I get more time and more experienced.
• Status update: DEPRECATED
  

In summary, so far not bad. But there is at least one more important task --- apply for graduate schools and I will work hard on it too.

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Life is an opportunity to do something.

Tentatively, I am done with GRE

Yes, I am tentatively done, and will be finally done with it if my AW score turns out to be OK.

I went to the test center at 1, and after certain registration stuff, I left all my belongs to a locker , went into the test room and started the exam.

At the beginning, there was a whole bunch of crap such as how to use the mouse, keyboard, etc. Then the test program started to gather certain information about the examinee. Interestingly, when asked to input my school name, the University of Toronto did not appear in the Canadian school list, while others like Waterloo, McGill or even Lakehead, Laval were all there. So I skipped that page.

Soon writing started and the issue topics contained one that I had practiced before, so I chose that one. The argument was something full of holes and very easy to attack. Hopefully I have done well in the AW part.

Then the Verbal part started. It seemed the so called GRE Blue Bible (寄托蓝宝书) has a pretty good coverage on the words for the Computer-Based Test, at least after working on the book, I knew most of the words in today's exam and made some educated guesses for the rest. The reading was kind of tough, but manageable. I ended up finishing the section 3 minutes earlier.

After that was the Quantitative part, which mainly consisted high school level math questions. I was quite careful when answering those questions as generally Chinese people get full marks in this section and there is no way to recheck answers after you submitted them.

When everything was done, there is an voluntary test section and not interested in writing one more issue, I skipped that after taking a glance at the topic.

Soon the final score came out after I confirmed that I wanted to report my scores. The score for the Quantitative part was 800, and the score for the Verbal part was 190 marks above my general expectation of 600. The result was definitely satisfactory and I have to admit that I am pretty lucky today.

Feeling relieved, I walked back home. It is good that I am done with GRE for now and can focus on something more important and fun -- summer research. Hopefully my next blog post can bring some more exciting news.

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Life is an opportunity to do something.

PEY Finished

Yesterday was my last day at Altera Toronto, meaning that my PEY (Professional Experience Year) is finished.

It was a speical year, as I took a break from school and worked in an industry setting. I have learned quite a bit practical stuff, got to know how a business operates, as well as gained some insights into the whole semi-conductor industry. I also had lots of fun there and made quite a few friends. Though there were still many things could be better, I don't regret spending this year at Altera. On the whole, it has been a good year.

Now is the time to delve into summer research...


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Life is an opportunity to do something.

Finally, done Real Analysis final!

The most stressful semester, and the most stressful exam in my college life, is history now.

However, there was not much relief for me when the final was done. It was a little bit unbelievable for me... "Am I done? That's all?" That was probably my feeling at that time.

I did a lot to prepare for this exam --- I asked for a week's off from work, and study day and night for it. Real Analysis is a beautiful, profound and intriguing subject, which makes the process less painful, but there are also pressure and frustration acting in an opposite way. Sometimes I get reminded about the days I prepared for the Chinese National Matriculation Examinations --- I can feel that pressure level was similar... You can say either I have great pressure recently, or I didn't have much pressure when I entered that critical exam a few years ago.

I originanly planned to take GRE at May 12, but now there is no way for me to make it on time --- I am far from ready, while not many days are left. So I will postpone it a bit. I need a break --- I will still be busy, but I need some time to think, to reflect, under the state of less pressure.

My work term will end soon at May 7. Before that I need to work hard to get my undone tasks done. After that, I will head for the summer research I have been looking forward to.


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Life is an opportunity to do something.

Weekly Update

A few updates......again, I am busy recently.........and will be busy for a while........ sometimes I think I am too busy. For example, Song talked about an interesting algorithm problem on his blog and I thought it is intriguing too. However, I am too busy to do more investigation on that... It is a shame... I think maybe I am pushing myself too much sometimes... I will try to improve that when I am not busy.

So, what keep me busy then?

1. Work at the company. At least 1/3 of my day is spent there...
2. Course work. Real analysis is not that easy now... Prof. Pugh emphasize a lot on geometric understanding of concepts, which is quite powerful, but it also takes a lot effort to visualize things. And the midterm is coming soon!
3. Prepare for GRE. I registered it a few days ago and the test day is May 12. I hope I can finish this crap before I dive into my summer research.
   
4. A lot misc. stuff --- forex trading, tax return, do a body check (I haven't done so for a few years ........), get a new pair of glasses.. etc. etc. etc

Meanwhile, I also need to start preparing for Grad School Application. It is a lengthy process...
Cathy is ahead of me on this. She will attend quite a few interviews for dental school in the near future. I wish her all the success in her interviews --- so I can get my free dental care in the future ;)



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Life is an opportunity to do something.

Goodbye 2006, Hello 2007

A Brief Summary of 2006

• Ski Trip
• Rank of 2005 Fall (comes out in 2006)
• Nortel Institute Undergraduate Scholarship
• Montreal and Ottawa Trip with Cathy
• Rank of 2006 Spring
• Starting working at Altera Toronto
• The Adel S. Sedra Outstanding Student Awards
• IEEE Canada-Toronto Section Scholarship
• Andrew Alexander Kinghorn Scholarship
• Point Pelee Trip with Cathy
• Fail to take the driving test
• First paper
• B. Liang, S. Drew, and D. Wang, "Performance of multiuser network-aware prefetching in heterogeneous wireless systems," to appear in ACM/Springer Wireless Networks
  

2007 Resolutions

• Do well in MAT357 Real Analysis and ECO100 Economics (2006 Spring)
• Perform well at Altera
• Take GRE
• Have a good summer research experience
• Get my driver's license
• Pick a good design project topic
• Do well in the 2007 Fall
  

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Life is an opportunity to do something.