Vagabond's Next Adventure- China

I got a book to travel with me this time. An inspiring travel diary by a traveler who traveled for 10 years living almost a vagabond. His encounters and experiences make me feel like to travel again.

My next stop is China. The most populated nation on earth. This country is a rising dragon and is going to change the face of the world soon. As a chinese, how could i miss this place in my travel list, i am fortunate to arrange an internship oppourtunity in China and gonna live there for 4 months...another four months( after US and Finland).

This place is gonna be a great one, more exotic, more vibrant, more challenging, more beautiful.... I can feel that China is welcoming my arrival, he has some adventure to offer soon....

中国，我来了！

Priority Determines Value

  The way you set your priority determines your value. When you determine what you gonna do first among all the assignments or work, we tends to choose between urgency and importance. If urgency takes priority over importance, then how much you value your importance over urgency.

  It is always important to know what is the purpose of what you doing, this reflects your value over an organisation, a team, personal relationships and undertakings.

  So its time to realign our priority, to what we value the most. I will start to learn to value people, then growth and result.

Finnish-Good, Bad and Ugly

  So far I work with Finnish people; they always opt to high quality outcome. My teacher would buy a 40 Euro safety switch for my project to cut off power. For me, it’s too expensive to be done for a student project but he insists to do as safety switches will have the circuit breaking guaranteed features. The equipments and the setups of laboratory are also using industrial standard devices and products. Hence, I had a feeling of working in industry during in the laboratory. I feel great to have the insights of working in industry working with standard electronics from Siemens, Phoenix Contact, Omron, and ABB etc.

  Drinking is one of the best capabilities of Finnish people. They drink a lot. I mean very lot. I visited some bars before and I witness with my own eyes the amount they drank into their bellies. Sometimes in the street you can see drunken men doing weird things in public. I was a weird scene for me in the beginning, but now, it is completely normal. I can draw out a fact which agreed by Finnish people themselves: Finnish are shy; therefore they need to get drunk to be friendly to foreigners. This is very true, that when I was on a cruise, drunken Finnish people will approach and start a conversation with you.

  “Let’s have a coffee break!” This is the statement that comes out of my teacher after every lecture of 45 minutes. They have a good understanding of human brain that only able to focus at most 45 minutes. Hence, take a break, have a coffee and we shall continue our studies. I used to push myself too much and in the end make my body and mind exhausted. However, I could not believe that I am able to take a 5 hours lecture of a same subject with ease. I think the credit should goes to the coffee break.

  Depressing Winter Weather is the thing that I hate the most about Finland. During November, I was astonished by the white snow and I am as happy as a kid playing with snow, sleighing down the slope, making snowman and playing snow ball fight with friends. One month later, when temperature goes down to negative 20 degree Celsius, I was freezing along the way to school every morning. When I woke up at 8am, the sky is still dark until I have my lesson at 10am, the sun rises. Soon after the lunch and a couple hours later, sun sets and the sky is dark again at 4pm. During snowy days or cloudy days, you have no chance to see the sun. I miss the sun very much.

Finnish people like to stay away from the city during holidays, that’s why most of them have their own cottages for summer and winter. I was participated a winter activity in a winter cottage. We stayed in a forest in the middle of nowhere. We were in completely remote area where there is no man in the parameter of 25km. At night, we could see the clear starry sky and shooting stars are visible every few minutes. If you are lucky you could even see Aurora Borealis. I totally enjoyed the activities like sleighing and ice skiing on about 10 cm height snow. The lake is frozen and we could walk on the lake and went across to another land.

  Finnish youngsters are quite exotic in their makeup. They have extreme colour dyed to their hair and piercing in many parts of the face. Most of them smoke. They often wear leather costumes and metal rock resemblance clothing. It was interpreted that the reason of this behavior is due to they refuse to be invisible man. They want people to notice them and feel their existence. Perhaps they need to learn something from Spanish people where you can get a friend anytime with them.  

Europe Sum Up

  I have left my trail in Europe. Its been an in-expectable accomplishment in my student life. I always think of living Europeans cities which they are famous with history, culture and architecture. Indeed, i am impressed by the scenery there. Autumn in Prague, Hungarian boulevard, Extreme winter in Finland, Frozen sea in St Petersburg, Adorable Stockholm etc etc were nicely capture in camera and frozen in picture.

  I lived with the Europeans particularly the French, I learnt the way they live their life and also showed them how hardworking the Asians are. Europeans have more open mindset and somehow adventurous. If Asians were to learn from them, i would say stand up and speak out. Tell your idea and convince people.

  Europe is the leader in environment protection effort, their environmental consent has been inhabited in their daily practice, we need to have this mindset and be responsible with our usage in environment. I learnt this culture and i would love to bring it with me.

  Culture is the best souvenir you can take back from travel.

Loneliness, Privacy, Calm

 Friends gone out for trip, for some reason i didnt follow then as i have plans for that soon. Hence, this weekend, i will stay with myself.

 When i walked back from school, i saw Christmas candle lights by the window, the light shone from the inside, through the gap between window coverings. It felt so warm. I guess this is the warmth from home. I miss home.

 Then after i saw a huge Christmas tree with lighting bulb on it standing still in the common yard. The feeling of Christmas has come. Xmas songs start humming in my head. My mind flashes back how i celebrate xmas at home.

 Feeling calm, i entered my empty flat. Turned on the classical songs in my computer, i started cooking something warm, something reminiscing-my curry chicken.

 "Rhapsody On Paganini"playing as my food is hot and ready to served. Signing off with the mixture feeling of loneliness, total privacy and calm.

Impact

  When you been asked why you do what you do, i am thinking of IMPACT. I want to work my stuffs which brings impact to my project, community and world. This reason is the motivating force to keep me working and make me live a great life.

  While getting impact to the world, you have to innovate. Innovation is about renewing ideas, invention in a realistic product that change people's life, improve well being, restore environmental resources and make sustainability the bottom line of working things out.

  Personally, as an engineer to be, we design to realize innovation from plain invention. We make things accessible to everyone within reach. We expand new possibilities and improving technologies that emphasize on expand more capabilities.

 While toolset changes as technology improving, human mindset have to change as well to make innovation happens. From telescope enable mankind to see farther space and broaden the horizons in mind, motion camera taken out of the box and capturing motions from different angle of the play instead of standing still facing the stage as a normal stage audience view. We should use out technology wise to do new things and not use something new to do old things. 

 Mindset change is the ultimate set to bring innovations, and innovations bring impacts, and impacts improve mankind lives.

                                                                                                                  -inspired by Autodesk University

My Visit to ERA

Electric RaceAbout-ERA is the runner up of the recent Automotive X Prize. Today I have this great oppourtunity to pay a visit to their workshop where the legend of student built EV is happened.

As I seen from the student poster about ERA:

2 years ago, a group of Finnish engineering students with innovative minds, started an electric vehicle project from an empty table.

Working hard, learning step by step, together with the help of talented teachers and experts, gave us a lot of experience.

The automotive industry is now in the changing point, ERA vehicle project can show that high quality Finnish engineering is ready for that change.

The passion to the automotive world keeps our team to focusing hard to one great goal, success in the Automotive X Prize competition in the summer 2010.

The goal of the Progressive Automotive X Prize is to inspire a new generation of viable, super efficient vehicles to offer consumers more choices and make their lives better as a result.

For me, this looked like a declaration of motivation to me for my future undertaking. My counterparts prove to me this challenge is not impossible for undergrads. They done it superbly well with over 60 partners from industries and government, highly performance car with power train of the future, sporty-eye catching aerodynamic body, and a great deal of knowledge to learn.

I am very excited to see these phenomenons happening around, the trend is starting fast and young. This is the wave that I am gonna to ride.

Following the trail, this lead to another great electric automaker-Tesla Motors. One of the Founder, Elon Musk is a great example to follow.

I will start my project with a WHY as the central value. Why I do this? Those who are in pursuit of WHY will do what is right. So Why?

1^st: To prove that we can have alternative solution to combat global warming. In terms of technology, we must equipped ourselves with technological solution and knowledge to use energy in a more efficient way. In mobility, car is major part in human’s life. Electric vehicle will be the future solution.

2^nd: To redefine Malaysian engineering. German is famous for their upmost quality product, US is leading the innovation and Japan for their depth of research. As a Malaysian engineering student, the best I can do is product a high quality product that can go on par with other counterparts in an international platform.

3^rd: To create new value for future business. Since electric drive will be the solution for mobility, new value will be added to current products. Better motor, better control, better power electronics, better battery, better drive train are the sectors to be market for business in future.  

4^th: The fulfill thirst of knowledge. As for mechanical students, what else could be more interesting and technological demanding than building a car? Electro-Mechanical is the best scope to learn in my bachelor degree.

5^th: To win in the coming Shell Eco Marathon Competition. A platform is needed to prove your work. A defined standard, rules and test track is set up for the engagement of engineering strength for students in Asia. SEM 2012 is my stage.