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Location:Lester St,Waterloo,Canada

Very Irregular Lifestyle...

Well, I mainly means my time of sleeping. Though I sleep almost exactly 8 hours per day in total, the particular time of my falling sleep and waking up, is largely random. Well, in fact, not "random" but "too far from the 'normal' style."

Take the last 48 hours as an example. On Tuesday, I slept from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. and woke up just in time to attend the lecture. After the lecture, I went back to my dorm. I had no lunch because by the time of lunch, I felt too sleepy and just fell to bed. I woke up to find that it was totally dark, and it was about 6:30 p.m. Hence, I struggled up, withdrew some cash and went for a dinner.

After that, I worked on my laptop for a couple of hours. By the time of 10 or 11 p.m., I felt sleepy again. I thought it was good because I just wanna do some adjustment! Hence I just turned off all the lights and fell to bed. When I opened my eyes again, before which I thought I had slept for several hours, I found it was "still totally dark outside". I picked up my watch and found it was only 2 a.m! I thought I'd better do some tedious reading to get myself sleepy again. Hence, I took a good bath and picked up some library books. I spent a hour to finish one of them, and them consumed some supply. (a Big-Mac!) I eventually surrendered to my desire of turning on the computer. In a word, I fell to bed at 5 a.m.

I felt I cannot sleep anymore by 7 a.m. and decided to work by the pond behind my hall. I was pretty cold outside by that time, and that make me sober. However, I finally gave up and returned to my hall at 11 a.m. After lunch, I stayed up until 4 p.m. when I cannot stand anymore, and fell to bed. I woke up to find that it was 8 p.m.

First Time to Lose An Expensive Item

God damn it! Son of a bitch!

I've been thinking to buying a volume of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman of myself, and several days earlier, I suddenly realized that the Stat. Mech. textbook we adopted is definitely the best I've ever seen on elementary level. Hence, I made up my mind to buy them both last afternoon. I must be too sleepy to forget putting them into my schoolbag, I just dumped the plastic bag on a chair in the canteen, and put my bag on it. My appetite turned out to be so little, and soon I determined to leave, I just instinctively picked up my school bag, and forget all about the book.

It was not until 8 p.m. that I realized something about the book. I rushed to the canteen, and astonishingly found that there are still a great many of people there. Definitely, the bag can no longer be found.

I just wonder who will need two books like that! Damn it! The price is over HK$300, my typical budget on meals for a whole week! Son of a bitch!

Academic Bunkers Sieging

"I moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed 'em what I've got."

I chose this piece of lyric to be my QQ signature, just before I "moved like Harlow in" the homework done by "Monte Carlo" method.

There is a famous idiom in the profound Chinese language, "Fuck time and time again, and love will eventually be generated". That's just what Monte Carlo did to me. When I began to learn it, I never considered it anything practical, and thought that the more determinstic methods are preferable and would converge at a far higher rate. However, after learning it for so long and doing so many problem with it, I've learned to enjoy this kind of thing.

However, the problem this time is that: the midterm and the deadline for this assignment just knock into each other, which, needless to say, means a ultimately arduous battle due to the lack of time. This turned out to be absolutely true.

There are four problems, each of which was estimated to require 5 to 6 hours on average to be completely done. Almost all I had were Tuesday and Wednesday, so I have to work 10 to 12 hours per day. It seemed to be a relatively small number, but studying problems is definitely different from lying on the lawn reading. I compare the former to an academic "Bunker Sieging".

I've seen sieging Bunkers with Hydralisks or Dragoons, and I know how bloody the scene is. However, I thought I had a few "academic Guardians and Reavers", and, above all, determination of blasting it to the ground. Hence, I had some confidence.

The full assault began at the night of Monday. Before that, I've done almost all the analytical work during the last weekend as preparation. The first two problems are essentially identical, i.e. finishing one means being able to finish the other in a matter of minutes. However, there are some subtle technical problems lying in front of me.

I've only slept for hardly 3 hours-- I stayed up until 5 a.m. and fell to the bed. However, it must be that I'm way too tired to ever sleep! I lay on the bed idly until I can no longer stand the sun out of the window, and determined to wake up and continue my work. However, I made little progress. I suddenly remembered that I told Bill I'll "kick into Chen's office and ask him about it", and I just set out.

It was not so easy to find Chen's office but I eventually made it. I told him that I've only slept for 3 hours last night but apparently he showed no sympathy so I determined to focus on the problems. He provided little help and told me that he cannot found where the problem lies until he see my code--that's the most ridiculous part--I assume that a professor should be familiar with all sorts of common mistakes students frequently make! Hence, I left his office disappointedly. Before my depart, he said, "Goodbye and have fun!", to which I reply, "Thanks if I can learn to consider it to be funny!"

I had my lunch (which is sold as "breakfast" by Mc'Donald) and returned to the dorm. After 1 or 2 hours of working, I cannot stand any longer, and fell to the bed...

When I opened my eyes again, I struggled to recall what was the last time I was conscious and tried to guess when it's most likely to be. I finally figured out it's probably early evening of Wednesday. I picked up my cellphone and was simply frighten out. 16 calls! Most of them from Haobo! Another of his SMS said that he'll have supper with a PG graduated from SYSU and asked me whether I will be there, I agreed without hesitation.

That PG turned out to be majoring in physics in SYSU (thus my direct major-mate), and he's just so kind and nice! However, I was still way too sleepy and had to leave pretty early. When I arrived at the dorm, however, I feel not a bit sleepy, and had this intense desire to finish it before dawn.

Now lemme make a brief report of my progress by then. The professor said one of my results in the third problem was wrong, but by the time I paced out of his office, I suddenly came up with the whereabout of the mistake, and fixed it immediately to reach the correct result. However, it was much, much more time consuming to run the program than to code it. I'd no mood to re-consider the first two problem, and had not begun with the fourth.

A figure of the third problem is also very hard to plot, and I didn't finish it until midnight. By that time, very surprising, Kaihan was online! I told him about my story and he was astonished, too.

Suddenly Become Cold!

After sleeping for barely 5 hours, I forced myself to wake up, grabbed the t-shirt and the pair of shorts I wore yesterday, and made myself "good to go".

If I was still more or less sleepy when I'm opening the gate, I dare say I was definitely not after it: I was suddenly surronded by the air tranfered from warm to cold overnight! In fact, I'm more shocked by the fact itself than being frozen. For the first time since I come to HK, the idea of "I'm wearing too little" came across my mind.

I ran to the McDonald's on LG5 and ordered my routine breakfast. That cup of "hot cholcolate", originally served as sleepiness-dispeller, now became a way to make myself somewhat warmer.

After CP, I bought myself a good amount of supply in the supermarket, found myself a seat by the pond at the back of UG Hall 4 (a place I've been planning to visit for a long time but never managed to), sat down and began to read about crystallography. It was, just I expected, no more than one hour before I began to feel uncomfortable: upset, sleepy and cold. I recalled my plan of "doing something meaningful during November", and told myself to keep on reading. However, these uncomfortableness just accumulated, and I gave up by leaving for lunch.

After lunch, I had a great sleep until 5 p.m. when I was awaken by this damned phone call. It's from a classmate I met in PHYS351 and it was then that I began to realized the fact that we had an appointment to review the course together this afternoon. I jumped up from the bed and met them. He find me a very nice indoor place to study. We left there at 7 p.m. When we paced out of the door, a gust of freezing wind of the evening nearly froze me into a statue. The boy wore far more clothes than I did, but he also began to shiver. He looked at me and said in an astonished tongue, "don't you feel cold? You're wearing so little!"

After dinner, I went to the library, stayed there until 11 p.m. to finish reading 3 books (!). Then I thought it was "enough for today" and returned to my room.

So, the autumn is ending and the winter is approaching...

But that's not the thing I have to worry about now-- it is the exam tomorrow.

Routine Updates Returns!

Briefly speaking, I've been indulging myself in all sorts of amusements, ad hoc PC Games, during the whole October, and was too exhausted to write anything. I feared my English level will just go down, but I found it hadn't yet, a very good news.

Now I'm more or less tired of these, and have made up my mind to spend the whole November on more meaningful things like reading. Hence, I wish I could update here in time.

There will still be 22 pieces of articles in November. As to October and September, I'll manage to write down everything worth remembering.

That's all for today.

Suddenly I Miss My Home

I've just recovered from the common cold, and am still suffering from this painful kanker on my tongue.

I've been tired of all kinds of amusement, temporarily or not, and the only thing I wanna do is to make full use of my time to do something, anything, meaningful.

I was working on my assignment of Computational Physics when I suddenly have this feeling.

It might be something that make me think of my childhood. Anyway, those memery, those golden memory of the "good old days" just come to me.

The lighthearted days. The games with my young pals. Those simple happyness and sorrow. Those cares I received from my parents and my...home.

Suddenly I, declaring that home is but a place for 3 meals and 1 bed a day, had a sudden impulse of utterly loneliness. At this instant, I suddenly felt that: wherever I go, whatever I do, however much I hate the binding from my family now and then, home is always there.

A New Record

A little before 9 a.m. last night, I was very sleepy, and, according to the principle of "maximum my comfort at every instant", I directly went to bed, without even turning off the computer (so that I can keep all the chating record on QQ during my sleep).

I had such a perfect, wonderful sleep, probably the best since I came to HKUST. When I woke up, the first instant I thought it had been dawn, but when I struggled up to read my watch, I found it's but 12:30 a.m.

After waking up and drinking some water, I decided to do some reading in bed. I read some Computational Physics, and when I can read no longer, I went to took a good bath. When I went back to my room, it has been 3 a.m.

After doing a little reading, I found I cannot resist the tempt of computer, so I played some PC game, SC followed by Mount&Blade.

When I'd had enough, I thought it was time for some more sleep. However, when I raised my head, I found it had been DAWN! The time on the computer showed that it had been 6:30 a.m.

It is then that I realized I've set up a new record: staying up until dawn!

I went to bed, and, quite surprisingly, woke up before 12:00. That's only 6 hours of sleep! Even plusing the nap, it is no more than 8 hours!

Very Uncomfortable

I was very exhausted, irritated by the god-damned homework of Computational Physics and was in a very bad mood, when I found Y's portrait on QQ became bright.

Hence we talked, she told me that she's gonna break up with her boyfriend, because she's too tired of loving someone that is too faraway from her. She said she had been very unhappy these days.

Suddenly I felt this unusual rage inside of me, I suddenly felt like slap on her face and shout at her with my top voice. I made up my mind to pick a fight. Hence I told her that I'm so fatigued and upset that I might shout, but it would not be her fault at all. Then I began to fight.

I told her directly, with burning words, that she's favored by the destiny that she can get a boyfriend with ease in high school, and that she can achieve love without any effort. I said that she just sat there, and a bunch of boys, including me, would chase her in succession, and be turned down in succession. "These facts are nice. However, not everyone is favored by destiny! There are a lot of people, like me, that are depressed because they have never felt the warmth of girls! And you are telling me you're depressed because you've been tired of having a boyfriend!"

I considered nothing about the outcome, I don't care whether she'll feel worse or not. I just wanna shout. "Last time you told me that being moved is not equivalent with love, and that one should not hook up with someone only because he or she has affected her or him. I know you made no effort to get a boyfriend, and you fall in love with each other SIMULTANEOUSLY, that's great! Congratulations! The only thing I wanna tell you is that I'm not so lucky as you! I have to deliberately chase a girl in order to win her love! And how should I chase? By doing something to move her!"

I said a lot of such words, and ended with "You think you're very unhappy, huh? In my eyes, you're too lucky to endure such an amount of luckiness! Have a look at those around you, like me, that are making great effort to chase their loved ones, and you'll surely feel happy!"

I feel far better now.

The Hall System of HKU

Last night, I was wandering in the website of answers.com, aimlessly searching for introductions to famous universities, when I came across such a paragraph from the "Criticisms" part of "University of Hong Kong" page.

Hall system

The Hall system has created controversy as some students have complained of being subject to hazing, and to harassment in their daily lives at Hall, being compelled, for example, to engage in late night meetings and other "social" activities, even though these incidents would be considered quite tame by the standards of certain other countries.

Many students also argue that the current Hall administration and admission system is unfair: each Hall is dominated by a small elected committee of students who have significant control over who is accepted to the Hall (there is an objective point system for admission, but subjective interviews also play a role in giving committee members control over acceptance). It is alleged by many former students that they lied about high-school extracurricular activities to be accepted, and upon joining the Halls must participate regularly in activities or else run the risk of being forced out of the Hall. Furthermore, newer halls such as Starr Hall, adopt (to a lesser extent) the traditional Hall customs rather than developing their own culture, such that only a narrow range of Hall culture is available for choice by prospective students. Hall-committee students have recently expressed the view, in letters to the newspapers and elsewhere, that overseas exchange students should not be domiciled in Hall, since they do not appreciate Hall culture.

A committee was set up in 2002 to examine the development of the Hall system, but it has been criticised by many students and academics as being non-transparent, and dominated by a select few students who are pro-tradition.

That said, most students who have gone through hall life have retained fond memories of it, and even consider it as being one of the most rewarding periods of their lives. Many have remarked that those sports and social activities, harsh and time-consuming they may be, have managed to foster in them a sense of esprit de corps and has also helped to enhance their strength of character, social skills and EQ, which have stood them in good stead in the years after graduation. Many friendships gained during that period also proved to be life-long.

Well, I have to say, I used to appreciate HKU, even struggled to be accepted in it. However, after reading this, I felt I was so lucky that I've failed to enter HKU!

Always Quiet

Lyric By Wenshan Fang

Sung by A Sang

On the deserted street,
I want to find someone and confide.
Making such decision,
is for the loneliness that accompanies me.

The love between us,
Just like the landscape you pass by.
You strided on and on,
But your feet never lingered for me.

The love given to you is always quiet,
In exchange of the occasional concern from you,
It is a movie about three people,
But my name never appeared.

You said love is like cloud,
Beautiful while wandering aloft freely.
I finally believed that,
The reason of breaking up can sounds appealing.

The love given to you is always quiet,
In exchange of the occasional concern from you,
It is a movie about three people,
But my name never appeared.

The love given to you is always quiet,
I made up my mind at the beginning.
I thought only a history is enough,
Only to find that love must be responsed.

The love given to you is always quiet,
In exchange of the occasional concern from you,
It is a movie about three people,
But my name never appeared.

The love given to you is always quiet,
Except teardrops indulge themselves on my face.
The "yuanfen"* is used to explain,
The fact that you love me no more.

*"Yuanfen" is one of the few common Chinese phrases that has absolutely no counterpart in English. It can be seen as "prearranged relationship". e.g. "There's yuanfen between them." can roughly be put into "They're destined to become lovers".

One Year Ago...

I was sitting in front of my laptop, watching the "ultimate Korean Tear-Bomb"-- the MTV of Because I am a Girl. Though I've been acquainted to all the plot, I still burst into tears once more. Not only because of the effect of the MTV, but also because the memory it brought to me.

The first time I heard it was almost one year ago, when I was taking the selective course Mental Health. The course was about dealing with love. I still remember that I wept for almost one hour, and realized the power of "Korean Tear-Bomb" for the first time. Before that, I thought I'd become a pure pedant, and had lost the ability to be moved by a short MTV. However, I found that I was still a human-being that can be affected by these things.

Before that, I have adopted a lifestyle of "Book-Food-Bed", and have little interest in things like love. Though I've been enjoying being with Y, and had considered chasing her, I was not at all sure because love was, before the MTV, not as reading. It was that event that helped me to make up my mind to formally chase her. Though, as you all know, it failed, it was the first time that I devote myself in loving a girl, and thus will be remembered for good.

Oh yes, academic. I can read for almost 10 hour each day, without feeling especially irritated or exhausted. I never felt sleepy during the noon break; if ever, I can just take a very short nap on the desk, and continue reading terrible things like functional analysis. Games? I only play teeny tiny ones, very old and boring, but I didn't felt the life tedious at all.

Why, at that time, can I be so easily brought to tears?

Why, at that time, can my love be so simple and true?

Why, at that time, can I truly enjoy days without much entertainments?

The Sit-In

This should be recorded on 24th, but there were, as you can see, something more meaningful than that to be recorded, and I have to delay writing it down.

As I've mentioned in Anti-China & Anti-Mainland Part II, a majority of local students were struggling for their "Hall Position", and some of them think it is Mainland students that caused such problem. As I've been in Hong Kong for a longer time, I found that I'd badly underestimated how critical the problem of house was. In Mainland, providing sufficient dormitory is never a big problem, and the problem is how to compel all the students live in the dormitory. In Hong Kong, the situation is just opposite. It's never a problem to have students who beg to dwell in the dormitory, and the problem is whether they can get enough land to build dormitory for all the students. In Mainland, a lot of students would rather rent a room near the campus at a higher price than dwell in the uncomfortable dormitory. In Hong Kong, a lot of students would rather tolerate the dormitory than paying a 10 times higher price on renting a room nearby. (In UST, even if you're content to pay a 10 times higher price, you may probably fail to find a vacant room nearby.)

Knowing this, I became quite a bit sympathetic to the students there. If I am force to choose between spending 3 hours on bus every day and sleeping on the lawn in the campus (or sharing a bed with a close friend), I'll react far more violently than them.

On September 24th, the students who suffered from the situation above organized a sit-in. In Mainland, where the concept of democracy is less accepted, such a "sit-in" by students is definitely impossible-- the students will be dispelled by force and the leader (organizer) will surely be cruelly penalized. I saw the sit-in after lunch, and ran back to the my room to fetch my digital camera despite it was raining cats and dogs outside (and my pants got totally wet), and returned just in time to take a group of photos.

After taking these photos, I suddenly had a wild idea. I wanna talk to one of them and to know them and their idea more. It's quite a bit dangerous, because they might answer my question with fist. I prepared myself physically and mentally, and chose a bunch of seemingly kind student, and sat beside him.

"Excuse me, can I ask you a couple of questions please? I'm not a reporter of any kind. I'm just curious to your behavior."

They peered at me, "Sure", one of them said.

"Well, it seems that some of you are more or less against Mainland students, is it because of reasons like they've occupied your resources and grabbed opportunities that should have been yours, or is it just the problem of hall position?"

"We're content to have more friends from Mainland, were it not for the problem of hall position." he said.

"In fact, we are not against Mainland students, since it's not their fault. It is the university to be blamed. We're here today to declare our unsatisfactory to the university." another one said.

That make me feel much safer. I said, "In fact, I'm an exchange student from Mainland..."

"OK! So let's speak Mandarin."

Therefore, we had a good talk. They seemed confident with their viewpoint until I asked, "So, if UST solve the problem by cutting the number of local student it will accept in 2008 by half, what will you say?"

"That's ridiculous...So what shall those students do?"

"Go to Mainland! If more and more Mainland students are coming to Hong Kong, the universities in Mainland should have more and more vacancies."

"The universities in Mainland are worse and less famous!"

"That's right! So we can compete for the limited positions in UST. Winner gets all, loser sucks! There are more than 20 students who apply for exchanging to HKUST, and I have to defeat all of them! Is it because you're inferior academically than us?"

I thought my question can only be answered with fists this time, but they just smiled and avoided answering. It disappoints me!

That night, when I was coming back to UST with Feng, I told him that I talked to the sit-in students. He was shocked, "You may well probably get beaten!" However, I'm not, even after asking a offending question like that.

The Report is Finally Finished!

Today, I finished my first formal homework assignment since I came to Hong Kong!

Needless to say, it is the assignment of Computational Physics. As you know, I completed all the calculation one week ago, so writing the report seemed to be easy for me. However, it turned out to be quite irritating to finish the job. The lesson is: even if one have finished all the research work, and get all the result needed to write a paper, it is still very involving to actually produce the paper.

There are two problems that are relatively "theoretical" i.e. I'm required to analyse something mathematically, without using computer to do some practical calculation. Last night, when I've finished all the "practical" ones, I began to think of them. The first one was very straightforward but involving (i.e. you know how to do it right on first glimpse, but it take a lot of time to actually solve it). However, with the help of the invincible Mathematica 7.0, I was able to finish this problem very quickly.

After that, I discussed with Bill Chow, a seemingly capable local student who also took the course. I was in hope of finding some help, but finally I found that he was asking for my help all the time. He said he had some difficulty with the problem I had just solved, so I sent him my answer. To my surprise, instead of being grateful, he asked me why I "didn't use the Lagrange interpolation formula". I said, "It's very easy with the help of Mathematica, anyway. If you use the Lagrange thing, you have to expand it, which is more involving." He said, "They took me a long time to solve..." I said proudly, "That's why I chose to learn Mathematica and Matlab!"

He was apparently envious, for I found a shortcut to do some thing that cost him hours in a minute. Soon he told me exaltedly that his answer was different from mine. I was a little nervous at the beginning. However, I gave almost blind trust to Integrated Software Packages, so I read the note again. I soon found "hints" that were very supportive to my answer. I showed him, and he, defeated, had no word to say.

The other "theoretical" problem is far more difficult, and I, as a compensation to my "rudeness", modestly asked for his opinion. He said he had no idea at all and simply threw it at me. Hence, I had to struggle through it, alone!

I didn't made any progress until 2:30 a.m. today, when I found one definition in the problem is "utterly absurd", as I wrote in the report later. After telling the professor that I modified that part so that the problem would make a little sense, I began to solve it. It was even more involving even though I modified it. With the ultimate power of Mathematica, I got the answer, but I didn't believe it, because there were two points where a "beta" have the same value, but they turned out to be equal to 1 and 3 respectively. I returned to the note, which said the "3" was right, but it didn't discuss if the "1" is correct at that point. I spent a lot of time dealing with this annoying thing, but without any progress, hence I just left it there.

I woke up hardly before 1 p.m. (another record in Hong Kong) and had lunch. Then I turned on the computer, where Bill was waiting. He asked me for my work the moment he saw me online, and I gave him my "insane solution". As I've expected, he doubted my modification, but he soon accept its necessity. However, he distrust my result via using Mathematica. In fact, he was hostile to it.

Bill: but sorry.. can you tell me how to expand that equation??
Pony: It's a Taylor expansion, isn't it?
Bill: yes
Pony: Then why not simply give the final result?
Bill: i want to do it by hand once..
Pony: You just do it with in the regular way we learned in Calculus, no shortcut, it seems. With some labor, you can get the correct result.
(A long silence)
Bill: OK...may be i just trust your result...==.==

Later, he talked about "steps" and "explanation" with me.
Bill: I think professor don't suppose we use mathematica to solve.
Pony: You can add a sentence like, "After eight hours of involving algebra, I finally get:"
Bill: are you kidding.....
Pony: You were talking about explanation, and you're a bit hostile to software package.
Pony: So that's the best explanation you can write.
Bill: ok...because i feel guilty that i didn't go through the step myself..

His words made me quite uncomfortable. Anyway, I'm very proud of my first report, whatever grade it will get. As to "forbid the using of ISP", I've thought of a whole set of excuse to deal with that.

Come Across

Sun By Stefanie Sun

Hearing the departure of winter,
I woke up at a point of some year.
I thought, I waited, I expected,
But the future cannot be rearranged.

Cloudy, evenfall, ouside the window,
Someone is waiting in tomorrow.
I looked left, and right, and the front,
How many crooks should love go through before it arrives?

Whom I will come across, and what the dialog will be like?
How long is it before I meet the waited one?
I heard wind, from subway and the crowd,
I'm in a queue, holding the number for love.

I fly forward, across a sea of time,
Both of us has got injured in love.
I peer at the road, the entrance of love is narrow,
Coming across you is the most beautiful accident.

Sooner or later, the riddle will be answered.

10th Anniversary

Dedicated to the best love tragedy ever appeared on the Internet in Chinese language,

And to the immortal love whose power can overcome the distance between love and death.

September 18th, 1997

Flyindance Sent Her First Email to Slorr

The Figures Released

Today, with the data calculated last night (this morning, in fact), the almighty Lord Maverick plotted them out with Matlab. As a showing off, I'll post them here for you.

Well, should Professor Z. Y. Chen ever found this page, and accuse one of his students of "copying these from Pony into his paper", just come and find the author of that paper, and he'll explain.

The trajectory of a particle in a field, with different step h, from 10^-2 to 10^-5.

The energy of the particle mentioned above. It's supposed to be a constant, but error is inevitable in computational physics, the only question is how large the error is.

The motion of a pendulum, solved with Euler's method, a very rough method for ODEs. The line "below" is for the angle it turned in respect of vertical. It should be perfectly periodical, but error make it greatly distorted. The line "above" is for angular velocity, it is even more distorted.

The same pendulum, solved with Velvet's method, a method particularly suitable for 2nd-order ODE with periodical solution. You can see its advantage.

Stay Up Late for Serious Stuff

I've never gone to bed early since I came to Hong Kong, but this is the first time I do it for serious stuff, instead of entertaining myself.

Well, more seriously, for the damned involving assignment of PHYS382: Computational Physics

The algorithm is not difficult at all-- at least the core of them. Most of them are about interpolation and solving ODE, the methods for the latter are most straightforward-- the error is relatively great, of course! The greatest obstacle for me is the familiarity of the C language.

I began my life as a "coder" with Basic, and switched to Pascal at the age of 16 or so. I've only learned some Java before I came to university, which is the only thing I learned that at least has some resemblance with C. Of course I studied the idea of Object-Orientated with C++, but I never bother remembering the exact format of its code. I systematically learned some C language in a course one year ago, and got perfect mark in the final. That's all I had before I took the course.

The first obstacle is how to access the files on the hard disk. One of my classmates recommended a website with useful information about C++, but just wanna do it with a pure C style. Hence I searched the Web via Baidu until I found a page with the knowledge I needed.

Understanding how it works is way too far from actual coding, because so much practical problem should be considered. It is particularly hard for a theoretical physicist like me, who spend all day doing ideal experiments in the head. While dealing with the interpolation, I thought more point given would be more accurate, and used 500 points for calculation. Needless to say, it simply overflowed. The final result would not diverge, but during the calculation, huge numbers are to be dealt with. I realized it only after carefully analysis the algorithm, and reduced the number of points to 50, and it turned out to be just fine.

ODE solving is also far involving than I imagined, and some least expected errors are came across that made me call Baidu for help from time to time. One of these ridiculous things is: Before actually begin the calculation with floating number, one must do a meaningless calculation to make the Turbo compiler load a somewhat system to deal with floating number. This meaningless calculation will definitely go wrong, but the meaningful ones after that will go right. It is one of the flaws of Turbo compilers, and I only realized it by writing some tiny programs to test it.

Hence, I stayed up until almost 3, struggling with these codes, seemingly perfect but giving wrong result. I used all sort of debug methods I've ever learned. It is really agony to do such arduous, bad job. Finally, I got them all right.

However, during the process I've reviewed and learned many techniques I'll doubtlessly come across in other assignments. By that time, I think I can do them right far more quickly!

A First Setback

Unexpected, really unexpected.

It had been a long time since I failed to foresee what might happen in an exam last-- although it was not an exam, it was but a fucking quiz. It had been a long time since I have this feeling of being caught off guard last.

Though I acknowledge that it was my responsibility after all, and I don't wanna give any excuse. May it be that a 10-minute-quiz has never been experienced by me, or be that I utterly hate that TA with ridiculous glasses. I know I've underestimated this damned quiz. Not the difficulty-- I've received as much information about it before the quiz as now. I just thought these elementary things are nothing to my skill, and given time, I can sort them all out even if I cannot remember some particular formula-- given time.

In fact, it is not that the time is too limited for me, although the damned TA began to distribute papers after she began the timing. The problem is that I'm frightened when I found the limited time. Though, knowing this now, I'll not be frightened ever again and will do far better next time, the failure this time won't be changed.

Now, what to do? I've already got the name of the "answer boy", but it will not be appreciated by most Mainland students. I have to do better in every other aspect to avoid being taunted, and see what I've done!

Expecially her, I know. I kind of wish I can leave a better impression in her heart. If she know my mark, what would her say?

Professor is another problem. I was trying to show how much I'd learned to him. It seems that he looked on me as an outstanding student. If he found I cannot get good mark in a quiz, what would he say?

Let it be.

A Summary of the Previous Adventure

Yesterday I came across T. Y. Liu on QQ, and she asked me at what time I sleep most of the night. I said, "12:00 p.m is quite early, while 2:00 a.m. is quite late for me." She appeared to be quite surprised and concerned, said, "Why the hell do you sleep so late!" She added later, "It's not like in Zhuhai, you're so far from your home and family! You have to take good care of yourself!" I replied, "Okay, that's for the concern from my dearest sister :) I'll handle that myself!" However, "I was thinking to myself", it had been already several times when I stayed up until 3 a.m. Due to the lack of sleep, I felt so tired on the night of Tuesday that I took a nap at 10 p.m., woke up by 12:30, and stayed up until 3. Due to this, I woke up the next morning to find it has already been almost 10 and I'd missed the lecture already, so I just skipped it. What I wanna say is, that's definitely not the only outrageous thing I'd done these days.

There was a somewhat TV series, in which there was such lines. A man yelled to his mistress, who asked him to be "responsible" and to marry her. He said, "I'm a man. I need adventure. I need to something new and exciting. I wish each day, each hour, would be lived differently from before! I want each minute and each second to be different from before, do you understand!" I'm not intended to find myself a mistress(though I'll not reject fooling around with some other students), nor do I have any interest in prostitute, but I totally agree with his words about the nature of man. I hold this as self-evident, that all man are born to explore and to adventure. A man should never be satisfied, at least in youth, with what he has learned, see, and experienced. Instead, he should endeavor to try what he has never tried.

Explores, as well as adventures, might be risky, but for men, ultimate delight always comes along with risk. Learn to face the risk and to deal with risk is the required course for each male student in the university of life.

I'm a scientist, at least planning to be one. Do you remember how the outstanding scientists in the Terran force report to the army? It's "Explorer reporting!" All the scientists are born to be explorers, to explore the secrets of this universe we live in, to explore the regions that is unknown to man, or to explore dangerous aliens buried in the ground.

I long for exploring, I long for adventure, I long for attempting things I've never done before, legal and illegal (drug is an exception, of course!).

However, one thing about her word is right, "It is not like Zhuhai", it is not like China, it is not like that my parents can control my behavior, and that's why I can do these outrageous things, and that's why I enjoy the life here, so much.

Zhuhai is a city I've lived in for two years, but I've not explored it much, nor has this city got anything worthing exploring. There were something new and exciting for me during the first semester, and I still remember the days when I did all those I've never done in high school, like play turant and skip classes, like have long chats with Racoon all night long, like visit Shenzhen along with him by sea. Those are just so exhilarating! However, that was still Mainland, and new things were, after all, relatively little. What's more, I hade to report all these to my parents, and I had to think before doing things they would probably disagree. I stopped doing those by November, 2005, partly because the depression of my first failure in relationship. Each day is the same as before. Eating the same food, sleep on the same bed, studying seven to ten hours day after day. Should it not be the classes, I'm afraid I could have lost the concept of date already.

There was one of my favorite porn novels called The Enslaver of Dragons, in which there were such words about one of the dragons, who became the mistress of the hero, "Her life before can be simply summarized into seeking for food, flying, fighting with dragons that incur her dislike, occasionally killing bandits near her lair. The life now is so fresh, strange and interesting, and what'll happen in next minute is completely unpredictable. Before that, even if the God of Creation, the God of Fate, or even the God of Dragon tell her themselves that she'll fall in love with a human, she would rather think that these gods are nuts. However, if she's gonna be back to the dull life before, she would rather die."

That is exactly the same feeling of mine. And that's why I love the life in Hong Kong.