Thanksgiving

Today in US is Thanksgiving holiday. I noticed that this holiday doesn't exist most everywhere outside of North America, but it doesn't matter, let me thankful. And what am I thankful for? Everything, everyone, that makes me who I am.

I have a huge bruise on my left thigh that I got during NPS, and it's still there. Normally I don't get bruised, and when I do I recover very quickly. My body is good at recovering in general. But this one doesn't seem to go away, and the bad part is that I totally don't remember how I got it.

My traineeship ends on Dec. 12th, and my flight back home takes off from Bucharest on 23rd. I originally made that 10 days of free time to resolve any logistical or other unexpected issues that may happen, but now I need to sort things out quickly so that I can use those days wisely.

Things I want to do in those days are (though I might left some things out):

1) Visit Germany (wherever Kai is and some other places)
2) Visit Netherlands (and meet up with some friends if possible)
3) Meet my capsunicas (faci team from NPS) somewhere in Romania

Would 10 days be long enough for all this?

As a sidenote, I need to get a haircut. It looks really weird after running.

ICPS 2008

As I mentioned before, somehow things worked out so that I can attend the biggest national conference in Romania as a facilitator. Last week, it happened, in an extraordinary way. As always I cannot write about all the stories from the conference and they are not meant to be, but let me just say that it was by far the best conference experience I've ever had in my 3 years of AIESEC experience (though I must admit that I feel like that at the end of most conferences).

After the conference, even right now, I feel like Neo in the movie "Martrix" when he first learns the truth about Matrix. Morpheus tells Neo that "You've been living in a dream world Neo", and Neo panics and says "No, I don't believe it...let me out!" And later he realizes that he can't go back to the world he used to live in.

I think I totally emptied out my energy tank AND my emergency energy back up at the conference, and because of that I caught cold...but even that's a good memorable gift for me. Thank you Adina, Alisa, Andreea, Dani, Eve, Marina, Marius, Sami, Shake, and Zakhida, for the greatest moments. We couldn't have done it if any one of you were not there for me, for us, and for the conference. Thank you all the delegates and OC members, everyone else who was there, you guys are the best.

Experience like this motivates me to do great things. I don't know why, it isn't like I want to accomplish great things to show off how awesome I am, but I want to show them and prove to them how they helped me to develop myself. So I beg you my friends, check this blog occasionally so that I can keep you updated of how I'm doing and where I am so that maybe we can meet up at some random places in the world.

Photos will be posted on our facebook group, as well as my Picasa album later. I could not take many pictures because the battery died after the first two days, even before the start of the conference. I assumed that it would last for the entire conference because it lasted through my entire 21 days long bike trip last year without any recharge, but because Zakhida was taking so many pictures during our faci meetings, my camera just gave up. Hell, even my laptop stopped functioning properly on the last day because I abused it so much for the week.

Japanese man without a working camera is like a hot dog without sausage, so I will make sure to bring its charger with me next time!

Oh, I made a post on my LC blog about this as well, if you are interested.

I call this Time Management

Yesterday while searching for more physical fitness training variation, I came a across a method called Tabata. It was developed by Izumi Tabata, at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan. I tried this last night and I approve the effectiveness of this workout.

Just as a warning, before you try this workout, make sure you are in a pretty good state of fitness. I say this is some high level exercise.

The only time required for this workout is 4 minutes. You may be wondering, "4 minutes!? I thought you were a long distance runner who used to run for hours!" Yeah I thought the same when I first glanced at the idea. I could barely run 1500 meters in 4 minutes (much slower now I guess), and that's less than a mile! What can you possibly do in 4 minutes and effectively workout!?

Well, the concept is simple. Pick your favorite workout drill. Let's say for the purpose of this post, push ups. But it can be any full-body (or somewhere close) exercise. Start your clock, and do push ups, as many as you can, for 20 seconds. Rest for 10 seconds, walk around or stretch your arms if you can still move, and do 20 seconds of push ups as many as you can after the 10 sec rest, and so on, 8 times. The key here is "as many as you can" and you'll notice that the number of push ups you can do in 20 seconds will significantly decrease as you go. I did this yesterday with push ups, jump squats, and ab twist, and I was totally exhausted upon the completion of this 12 minute session. And my hamstrings are in great pain at the moment because I have not abused them so much for more than 4 months now.

So if you are whining that you don't have time to workout and get fit, this might just be your only option. In just 15 minutes, you can achieve more than what an average American do in a week. But like I said, you should have a good base before trying this exercise, because not only this workout is exhausting, you may not have a good idea of "as many as you can" if you've never done a sport before.

Some ideas for a drill: sprinting, dumbbell thrust, burpees, standing long jump, and endless possibilities.

While you work out, maybe a good background music can help you get pumped up.

To-Do List

I had a talk with my manager yesterday, and I am forever grateful for my manager's understanding and virtue. He allowed me to take five days off from work in order to be a facilitator at NPS! I was actually invited by Kai to attend a regional conference in his region in Germany because he'd be able to pull some strings to give me a position in this conference, but I have to regretfully decline that offer. Flying to and from Germany just to be there for less than a week, come back to Romania to work for one more week just doesn't sound so efficient.

Now I need to get busy, because now I need to multi-task, which is something I fail miserably at doing.

To-Do List for the next few days...

1. Be prepared for my sessions at NPS - As Dale Carnegie once said, "Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident." My favorite professor at Georgia Tech that I took three courses with spends about four hours to prepare for one of his one hour lectures. Sessions are different from lecture in a sense that encouraging participation of delegates is more important than me speaking and presenting information without flaw for two hours. But I must spend a lot of hours into preparation regardless.

2. Endorsement Letter - A rough draft of it shall be completed today.

3. Planning my trip back - My internship ends on Friday, December 12th. My flight back to US from Amsterdam takes off on 23rd. I have more than a week to spare, so why not go to Amsterdam early, and travel around Netherlands and Germany for the first time? I'm sure there's enough out there to keep me busy for about 9 days.

And I may end up going to a global village in Iasi this weekend because I was asked to represent Japan, and was told that almost all trainees from Romania are coming for this event. The last time I was told that trainees from all over Romania are coming there were only 5 including myself, so let's hope that there are more than 5 trainees in Romania this weekend :)

Let's get busy!

Don't judge a book by its cover...or title

I know I need to be doing something else right now, like finishing up an endorsement letter for my friend, or talking to my manager to see what I can do for going to NPS (national preparation seminar) next week. I received an email from an MC member last night if I'm still interested to be a faci at this biggest national conference with over 500 delegates, and I'm really frustrated over this matter right now because facis need to be there on Monday for pre-conference meeting, meaning that I'll have to miss an entire week of work. So I don't even know where to start, but I'll try my best in obtaining the week without creating any negative image for AIESEC or myself. Besides, as of right now, there's nothing planned for me to work on next week anyway.

I just wanted to get something off of my mind　and present my favorite book that I travel around with, because this is something I've been wanting to do for a long time.



Last year, I bought a book in a discount used-book store in Japan, titled "次の恋はもう始まっている" which can be roughly translated to "Your next romance has already begun." I wasn't really looking for a direction on my next romance, and the book is more about life than love. I find this book very inspirational, and I wish that it was translated into other languages so that I can recommend it to my friends.

An excerpt from the book, translated (by me).

"...Dale Carnegie said in many of his famous quotes about how you can reach success. But I am a bit upset with him, because he forgot to mention about sudden nature of success. The hardest part about pursuing a goal in life is that you can't see where you are relative to your goal. Life doesn't work like "OK, I did this much work today, so I must be this much closer to my goal." You don't know where you are until one day, all the sudden, you reach your goal.

Why was it so hard for Christopher Columbus to succeed in finding a new continent? Because no one, including Columbus, didn't know that they were getting closer to their goal (or the goal even existed). He had to make two separate travel journals, one of which was a fake to fool his crews, to convince them that they haven't gotten too far from home. He also had to fool himself into believing his theory. And everyday was a fight between himself and his fear, along with his entire crew's fear.

Let's say here we have 100 people who want to become a successful novelist. After the first year, 50 of them will give up. After five years, there will only be 10 of them left. After ten years, only one person will remain and that person will get to be the novelist. It's a matter of how persistent you can be, not how talented you are in the discipline.

When a prisoner is told that he'll be imprisoned for ten years, he can endure it. But if he is told to wait for one more day after that ten years, he will try to escape. If you know what you to expect in advance, it's easy. But when things are uncertain, it isn't. The hardest thing in life is to keep telling yourself everyday 'tomorrow I'll get there, tomorrow I'll get there' until you finally do..."

Don't you agree?

And I forgot to mention this for a week. Hooray for Obama's victory!

RTS - Regional Training Seminar

For the past 4 days I was in Durau, Romania, for RTS. In AIESEC Romania, right after recruitment, individual LCs hold a local training seminar (LTS) for new members to get jump-started and for old members to further develop themselves in terms of @ quality. This year, three LCs (Constanta, Iasi, and Galati) agreed to hold their LTS at the same time, same location. Trainings were held separately, but parties were held together. Interesting concept. But even more interesting is the fact that the conference was held in a monastery. I think this is the first and last time that I see an @ conference held at a place like this, but who knows, maybe I'll be proven wrong.

On the way to Durau in a maxi-taxi (basically a van), delegates were told to form groups of three for room assignment. I was not familiar with people in the van because they were mostly newly recruited. But I was told to pick two people, so I said in reply "maybe someone else can pick me instead." In the end, I ended up staying in a room with two girls. What more can I ask?

What I didn't know before arriving at the conference was that meals would not be provided, period. A delegate must either bring enough food to last for four days or obtain food somehow from somewhere. It was a surprise for me but it makes sense. It is actually the same way in the US, regional conferences are not required to provide 3 meals a day (though most of them provide 1 or 2). So my diet became seriously imbalanced during the conference, but it just adds some fun to the conference and let you appreciate your regular eating habit.

I was involved in the old-member track, and I did much more work than I expected doing at this conference. On the first day of sessions, I was involved in a LC simulation session where everyone in the session became members of EB and planned every aspects of LC operations for a year, quarter by quarter. I was a VP OGX, which is something I have no experience in. I learned a lot about local realities in Galati during this session, and it brought me back some memories because it was exactly like LTR (leadership team retreat) we do at @GT...locking ourselves in a small room with flip charts to brainstorm about LC operations. We could only do this for two quarters (six months worth) because of time constraint, but if we were to continue planning for all four quarters without stopping, like how it was originally planned, I think I or someone else would have jumped off or thrown someone off the balcony. On the second day, I had some trainings on situational leadership and leadership qualities. Great sessions done by Ferdi and Klin, though I wasn't even in the recovery process yet from the wild night. I stayed awake through all the sessions regardless, sometimes I even impress myself.

I also met some guys I acquainted two weeks ago from Iasi, as well as many new members. The conference would have been even better if all the trainees from other LCs could come and push more international side of AIESEC along with the leadership side. But from the reactions I saw from new members, I can tell it was a great conference. I cannot express everything in words here or this post would become too long for easy reading, so tell me if I missed anything critically important so that I can be more inclusive.

By the way, here are some pictures I took, although I feel like my skill in capturing the perfect moment in still picture is diminishing lately.

Election Day

It's Election Day. American citizens go vote NOW! Here's a picture of the day.



Recently, people started asking me "aren't you cold?" because I seem to dress lightly compared to normal and sane people. I think I spent too much time in American high school and college - where some people seem to magically go through the entire winter with just t-shirts, shorts, and sandals. I'm not that crazy, I normally wear two layers of clothes and a pair of jeans, but I guess I'm almost there. Let's see what happens in the coming weeks as it gets colder.

Spring 2009, here I come!

I just finalized registration for the classes that I'll be taking next semester, spring 2009! This semester (hopefully) marks the aqcuisition of my mechanical engineering degree, though it may not be my last semester at GT because I'm seriously considering to go for another degree. I think this traineeship experience gave me the time and environment I needed to think about what I'm truly passionate about, and that's one of many things that I feel grateful of AIESEC.

Anyway, here are the classes that I'll be taking next semester.

ME 4053 - Mechanical Engineering Systems Laboratory
ME 4182 - Senior Capstone Design
ME 4210 - Manufacturing Process and Engineering
PSYC 2070 - Engineering Psychology (social science elective)
PHYS 2022 - Stars, Galaxy & Universe (free elective-2000 level or above)

I'm sure there are better options for electives that I don't know about, so if you know any interesting (yet easy) elective, please let me know. It's hard to believe that an Astronomy class is the easiest elective that Georgia Tech got to offer, so someone please prove me wrong. At many universities, there are always options like PE (physical education) to fulfill the requirement, but I guess GT ignores the importance of being physically educated.

Just as a reference, here is the course description for PHYS 2022.

"The objective of this course is for the student to acquire a working knowledge of stellar, galactic, and extra-galactic astronomy as well as naked-eye observational phenomena."

Sounds super exciting, isn't it?