Captain’s log, stardate August 14, 2012

I’m starting to blog again to keep people updated about my life.  I’m moving to Waterloo in two weeks, only an hour an a half away from my family, which gives me just enough distance to fall out of touch.  This will be the looking glass into my life.

I guess I never really stopped blogging, just repurposed it.  I like bloging because its a way to organize thoughts that can be accessed anywhere.  I’m still getting used to wordpress, but I can tell you it’s a definite improvement over the last blogging webapp I used.

For the last year or two, I’ve been writing in paper journals.  There are some things that are just easier to write in pen.  Plus, since I’ve started working as an engineer, my sketching has improved.  Sketching on a computer just isn’t the same.

Looking back to some of the posts I made before, I can tell I’ve definately changed.  What the hell was I thinking posting that bad poetry in the last post?

Anyway, I think an appropriate first post should be where I am currently in life:

Well to start off, it’s a week to my 25th birthday.  I haven’t planned anything for it yet because I’ve been worried about my health for the last month.  I’ve been battling Achalasia, and I’ve lost 16 pounds in the last month.  I seem to have it under control now, but losing that much weight that quickly gave me a serious shock.

I’m currently working as a Battery Engineer for Magna ECar systems.  Without giving too much away, I’m working on lab scale battery manufacturing process development. I did my PEY year here, and decided to come back just for the summer to get some extra experience and make some money.  I was also considering taking the summer off, but ever since PEY, I’ve become accustomed to living with an income.

I’ll be starting a masters in Systems Design Engineering in September.  I applied to Waterloo SYDE in my final year, but not for this project.  I got scouted by another professor because I had interest in optimization and had some experience in electric vehicle modelling.  I’m really glad that I got scouted for this project, because looking back I don’t really think I was all that interested in the program that I applied for.  I’ll be working on a project for Toyota, and will be optimizing the Prius powertrain.  Horray!

This will be my second time moving away for school.  Compared to moving to China, I think this time will be more challenging, but less adventurous.  Since I’m living in an off campus townhouse, I’ll be doing grown-up stuff like paying hydro bills and cooking.  I’ll be paid a research grant by the university, but it probably won’t cover ALL my expenses.  Still, I’d like to give financial independence a shot.

My hobbies change over the years.  Currently I would say my hobbies are: dance (popping, house), music (classic rock, dubstep, house, hiphop), anything sci-fi related (reading ecotopia, watching futurama).  I’ve lost a lot of weight so I’d like to start going back to the gym religiously like I used to.  Autonomous vehicles also have caught my eye, and I might be trying to learn a little more about that in the near future.

… and thats me in a nutshell!  I bet I’m going to look back at this post 2 years from now and laugh at how naive I was.