Realm of the Imponderable

Somehow the idea of going back to Singapore to work doesn't seem all that bad to me, as opposed the the views held by many of my peers. I wonder if it's because the trait of quiet acceptance has been so thoroughly and subtly drummed into me that it's there but I never realized it?

Life as an underpaid but not (at least for now) research assistant

It's been a week since I arrived here, sunglass clad and reeking of car air freshener after my 18 hour drive south from Michigan. IHMC is a small research institute here that prides itself on providing technology that augments human capability, or removes human disability. The latter appears to be a closer description of the project that I am working on.

Some of the people here are (based on their past accolades) some of the most intelligent people I have met. Jerry, the overseer of the project I'm working on, has probably published more papers on the mechanics of human walking than anyone else. The projects here are extremely varied, ranging from exoskeletons to tongue displays. The latter consists of a grid of electrodes stuck to your tongue that are able to stimulate your taste buds in certain patterns so that you can "see" patterns on your tongue. Sounds like an outlandish idea but it apparently works.

The research assistants here are all very interesting people. Many of them hail from overseas, Europe and such. No jugglers, unfortunately. And some of them are apparently big fans of warcraft (The RTSG, not the MMORPG) and play in the office on occasion.

People and work aside, however, the town is pretty run down. It felt pretty much like a trip out to rural Malaysia when I drove through the so-called suburbs of the city. Even in the downtown area there are no high rise buildings, no busy, bustling streets or anything. One big indication of how laid back things are around here: shops in my area don't even open monday to friday, more like tuesday to thursday, and afternoons only, or something like that. All I can say is, I'm glad IHMC isn't run down, I have internet and AC at home, and there's a nice beach nearby. The beachfront is pretty well developed, as property there would obviously be quite expensive and hence profitable to develop. Too bad the beaches are mostly artificial though.

So as for my project.. it's to build a device to help an injured person to walk. Someone injured in war, with a spinal injury of some sort resulting in partial paralysis. Right now almost everything is still up in the air, and questions are all still wide open.

A little bird told me recently that I have been remiss with posting on this blog. I had assumed that my readership had dwindled to the magic number of zero, at which point it seemed pointless to write when the only audience would have been myself.

But then, I think, perhaps even for such an audience, it may be worthwhile to write. People keep journals of their lives and it is only much, much later that these journals seem to develop any sort of value. If that person turns out to be someone famous, that is.

So, as I am packing up to move to Florida where (hopefully) I will have an enriching and *insert cheesy optimistic blurb about education and broadening knowledge and whatever* I had a couple of random thoughts:

Will I ever come back to Ann Arbor again?
What have I learned during the (roughly) four years that I've been here?
What have I left behind?
Five years down the road, where will me and my friends be?
Isn't it amazing, if you have some skill in packing, how much stuff you can fit into a station wagon?

Will I ever come back to Ann Arbor again?
The answer to the first question would be, very likely yes; but with a little sidenote that the more interesting question is when, and why?
Would I visit Ann Arbor ten, twenty years down the road? I don't think so. By then, all the people I knew here would have moved on. The university would still be here, as would the students and the particular atmosphere and feel that they would bring to the air. But then again, I cannot truthfully say that the school spirit, the very strong sense of identity, has rubbed off on me. The sense of belonging, at least to me, is more in the people that I meet, and the friends that I made here. It would make little difference if we were to have a reunion here in the heart of the institution that brought us all together in the first place, or in some other place like California, or even back home in Singapore. I have friends here in Ann Arbor who are likely to remain here, and that's pretty much the only thing that would make me want to come back to visit.

What have I learned here?
Beyond the obvious things that I learned in the classroom, there are many lessons in life to be gleaned from living by myself without the protective umbrella of my parents less than a stone's throw away. Recall Aesop's fable about the two guys carrying their donkey. His lesson there was: think for yourself, what others say or do may not be right. But, usually it is. You can learn a lot just by talking to people. When you're out in an unfamiliar place, you need to get to know the lay of the land. First thing to do: Find out who to talk to. Second: talk to them. Third (or concurrently, whatever) find out yourself what the hell is going on. The internet works wonders. But you gotta take some things with a pinch of salt. How do you know what to trust, what to interpret lightly and what to not even bother to read? Talk to people. But in the end, it's your experience that should be the judge.

Second is that you need to go out and do stuff. In Singapore, everything's cut and dried. Everything's planned for you. You're spoonfed what the government or people in authority think you should be getting. Doing things out of the norm is frowned upon. It reeks of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Over here, you do what you want. There's billions of things to see and experience out there and what you need to do is find the subset of things that interest you and go do them. Paradoxically, College is the best time to do it. You are living on a shoestring budget, but you have the most time and the greatest freedom to see the world. Take part in some research project. Join some weird club that you've never heard of before. Do something you've never thought of before (Or wanted to do but just never had the chance to). Ever wanted to literally take a baseball bat to a computer? There's an event here called springfest where you actually get a chance to do just that. So you have the most time and opportunity to do things but the least amount of money to do them. Then when you start working the situation reverses. Or sometimes you don't have money and you also don't have time. That's what we call a sucky job... because it sucks to be you.. ;)

Thirdly, never underestimate the power of teamwork. It has the ability to make a project into a huge success, it also has the ability to turn a good project into the most miserable failure of your life. You remember all that teamwork stuff they taught us in the army? Bullshit. In the army its one person barks orders at everyone else and everyone else scrambles to do them. That's easy. When you're in a team where everyone's an equal, and not everyone has a clear set of responsibilities and goals, then you're going to need some brain re-wiring from the army mentality. You need to make sure everyone knows what you're thinking. You need to know what everyone's good at, and what everyone's bad at. You need to know how to guesstimate things like time, money and other resources. In Singapore, they describe leaders as people with this mythical thing called "vision". PFffffttt... like they're some kind of oracle or prophet. Good leaders are just people who know what they want, know how to judge a person (what they're good at, etc), know how to use what they have, and most importantly, know how to convince you that what they want is what you want as well. By that criteria, Singapore minsters are terrible leaders. They want more money, the rest of the people just want to get on with their lives.

What have I left behind?
Nothing, really. Some stuff that I sold to some random people.. maybe a little legacy with the juggling club, having achieved the status of the best devilsticker who's been a member of the club. Maybe I left an impression on some of the professors here. Maybe some of the projects that I've worked on might have some impact on the research that goes on in the university. Maybe I could have done more by getting more deeply involved in a research project of some sort. I didn't run for any student government; I don't like leadership roles of that sort. I don't like to be in the limelight, I prefer the background, being the wizard that magically gets things working. For the most part in my class projects, I have actually been in that role.

Have I made any impact on the Singaporean students here? I think I have. Maybe not earth shattering or rousing them up to be the greatest academics or leaders of whatever. One thing I'm fairly certain of is that I'll be remembered as the person that juggled fire. Another thing perhaps is for my work in the freshman orientation of 2004. To this day I still have a copy of the video / slide show I made for it and it was there that I also experienced the vast difference between working in a group of Singaporeans, as opposed to working with an American or international group. Till this day, I still puzzle over how the orientation committee spent half an hour debating a simple thing that was chair placement and when or how it should be done. If we were hosting dignitaries or famous people, sure that's an important issue but we were dealing with wide eyed, fresh out of school (or the army) Singaporeans who probably wouldn't care less if they had to arrange their own chairs or whether they sat next to someone's parents or not.

Five years down the road, where will my friends and I be?
That's the hardest question to answer, but the more informative thing to think about is how did my answer to that question change over these last 4 years?

When I first came here I didn't even think about that question. I just thought, all I want at the end of this is a job that I like, probably something to do with robotics or mechanical engineering or that sort. The second part hasn't changed. I still like robotics, and am keen on any job that's related t it. But also, other questions come to mind now. What else do I want to do with my life? What are the things I enjoy doing and how can I go about doing them? What's the big picture - the possible far reaching effects of whatever I work on? Or the things that I do? Bill Clinton said something during his commencement speech about giving back to the human race, of somehow through all the skills that we've acquired, give something back and make this world a better place. Idealistic? Definitely. Something we should work for or at least keep in mind? Again, definitely. And I think in the long run, anything that I do or work on will ultimately benefit someone out there.

But life's not all about work and no play. So what do I want to do outside of work? Well, there's still a billion and one things out there to do. We cannot all do everything. What do I like to do now? World of Warcraft? Certainly, but one 's life can't revolve around a computer game. Juggling? that too, and I'm not like the professionals who have some magical ability to practice 7 hours a day, everyday for years on end. I like to be recognized as a skilled juggler. I like to teach other people how to do it, or now to improve. I like to perform. I don't have the stage presence that other people have, the ability to command an audience's attention for however long the show is. I don't know if I'll ever get that. But just the personal satisfaction of doing a new trick is a lot. What else is there.. traveling? Aye. Where to? I don't know. I like nature. Hiking, all that stuff. And somehow my instincts tell me I should get all that done soon before things like pollution and global warming make a mess of the whole place. If it hasn't done so already.

So, the time has come to bid farewell to Ann Arbor. A quiet, (yet vibrant when the students are about) town in the (almost) American Midwest where Deans dress like pickles on Halloween, where smoking Marijuana is not considered a criminal act, where American Football is such a big thing that on football saturdays the town virtually comes to a standstill, where I made friends with some of the most whacky (and intelligent) people I've ever met and above all, the place where I learned many valuable lessons in life.