Outside of India though, not many would have heard of the Jallianwalla Bagh – at least in English speaking countries. There’s a good reason for that though. In 1919, the British massacred unarmed civilians, killing at least 400 with over 1000 injured. Approximately 1650 rounds were fired on 20000 people.

Before the massacre, the area was mainly a public courtyard, but now it is a memorial of national significance. The brick building has white squares marked along the wall – each square marks a spot where a bullet impacted.

Nearby the garden, is the Golden Temple, a holy place in Sikhism. Anybody who goes inside the temple complex must enter barefoot and cleanse their feet by walking through a stream of holy water flowing in front of the door. Once inside, one can admire the golden plates of the temple reflecting the ambient light.

The Golden Temple is only a five minute walk from the Jallianwala Bagh, but when we visited the temple at night, we couldn’t actually see our destination clearly and actually got scammed by an autowalla offering to take us there! We didn’t need the car at all!

Just outside of the temple is yet another sight to behold. Literally dozens of people sleeping outside. Likely these are people who have just made the pilgrimage to the temple.

Unfortunately, there were too many people lining up to go inside the temple itself – it would have been amazing.

See more of Amritsar here

We almost missed our ride to the gun range too. We originally thought the tour was supposed to depart from the hostel, but it turned out the departure point was some 12 km away.

We could either take a taxi and be unsure of whether the taxi would be legit, or take the metro and have to watch out for pick pockets. Metro it was. It only costed us 2 UAH (equivalent of about 25 cents) per way. That made it the cheapest metro I’ve ever been on.

Our instructions were to meet him at a gas station by the metro station (which sounded super weird to me). We arrived at the gas station, but didn’t see the guy and wondered where the guy could be. For a bit I thought we weren’t going to make it to the gun tour.

We figured we’d ask the gas station attendant to borrow his phone. He didn’t speak English. It was only after a bit of charades were we able to call the hostel. At least the attendant being super helpful. We joked that the two Chinese guys asking him for help in the middle of nowhere (see below) in Kiev was the most interesting part of his day. We tried to tip him, but he politely declined.

The tour driver eventually arrives late and knocks on the window to signal us. The driver came in his own car and it was just a four seater. Looks like we’re the only ones going on the gun tour (sounds legit right?). He asked me if we were going to the shooting tour and so I said yes and off we went. Luckily he asked first, which showed that he was here for this purpose, which supported that the tour was legit and we weren’t going to get robbed or anything.

This guy’s car didn’t have seat belts. And because he was late, he drove way past the speed limit, and swerved through everyone. Despite that, I still felt quite self as he had really good control of his car. At least his car had suspensions unlike the Chernobyl tour van. Ten minutes later, we arrived at the gun range.

We fired a pistol to start off with first. Then it was what we came for. The AK-47.

The tour originally advertised firing an AK in automatic mode as well as shooting a Dragunov sniper, but instead of doing that we fired the AK in semiautomatic mode and shot a Mosin Nagant and a shotgun with a red dot sight. The kickback on these guns were way more than I expected. It felt like the whole gun flew back two inches. And I learned I’m not a very good shot. I also learned that the shotgun doesn’t have a lot of recoil and that it doesn’t take much effort to ready the next shot, unlike loading the next bullet on the bolt action rifle.

Between each clip, the guy at the gun range would ask us to go down range to retrieve our targets. I thought it was so weird that he’d make us do that. Each time I walked down, I made sure there was no one shooting. Luckily, they do care about safety and all was well.

Shooting these types of guns is something I’ve always wanted to do, but never could since these military grade weapons are common in Vancouver. It was definitely super fun and exciting.

On the way back, the tour guide drove at the same ridiculous speeds, and along the way he honked down a bus. We all got out of the car and he gave us each a USSR army canteen as a gift. Then he says, “you get off here and take this bus. It will take you back to the same metro station”.

It happened so suddenly, we had no idea what had just happened. He paid for our bus fare and he was gone. Being tourists, we had no idea how their bus system worked. We couldn’t even read the name of the metro station because it was all in Cyrillic. He could have screwed us over easily.

The bus was yellow and was the oldest piece of junk I’ve ever ridden in. But it got us back to the metro station and that’s all we cared about. If it had broken down, we would have been so screwed. After this experience, I wondered to myself why I did all those things despite such sketchiness. Still, all went well and now we have a good story to tell.

Team Formation

I think this is where a lot of students struggle when things go wrong.  It’s always possible to get a teammate that is hard to work with.  While it is no fault of either person, the two personalities (either in values, cultural background, style of working, way of thinking, etc.) are different enough to cause disagreements.  At times, the disagreements can become so heated that the team’s progress in the project is hindered.

I realized that there were communication issues among each other in the group, which delayed progress in the early stages of the project.  These issues came about in the form of misunderstandings of what people said during team meetings.  I found myself in the position where I was expressing my own interpretation of what people said in the hopes that everyone would reach a common understanding.  As the project went on, family issues prevented one member from continuing this project further.  In a way, this eased our communication problems since communication between three people was a lot easier than between four people, based on what I experienced in the project.  Afterward, our team became a lot more efficient and progressed at a faster rate than before.

One of the things that the mechanical engineering curriculum at UBC teaches is team dynamics.  After learning a lot of theory as to how to work best with teams, doing projects with other people puts that knowledge to the test.  Some people don’t really manage working with others and feel set in their ways.  Differences among people exist and I realize that adjustments in the way I work with them is required in order to promote a healthy functioning group.

Project Scope

In retrospect, I would have advocated reducing the project scope since; I feel that the hours we put in were beyond what the course asked for.  I estimate that each member put in over 300 hours on the project.  Since a large part of this course is about design justification, time is very realistic constraint that can limit project scope.  At the same time, there are other courses to worry about.  By spending extra time on 45X, less time is available for other courses.

In the beginning of the project, I couldn’t predict well how long things would take.  Therefore, time for “messing up” or “unforeseen consequences” should be budgeted for.  Many people say things like “I can finish this in about 2 hours”, but in reality, it will take him two days.

Documentation

Very often I found myself referring to old dossier documents to find out information that I needed to know. For example, if I forgot how much something cost, I looked back on the dossier to find out.  If I forgot one of the project requirements, back to the dossier I looked.  At times, it is a bit of a pain to write some sections of the dossier since I couldn’t make sense of the some of the wording.  To deal with it, I had to ask the project supervisor during team meetings.

Project Logistics

I booked as much machine shop time as we could ahead of time knowing that we would need it.  The team would have liked to send in parts for the waterjet or have the technicians work on them, but we were way too late for that.  With a simpler project scope, we could have designed our parts faster and could have been further ahead in those manufacturing lineups to decrease the lead time.  My teammates and I spent quite a bit of time in the machine shop to get as much as we could ready for the design review.  At the same time, I had to look at when ordered parts arrived such that things would arrive in time so that we had everything prepared while building the prototype.

Time Management

While doing 45X, I was also working on New Venture Design and Thunderbots at the same time, which also took up a lot of my time.  As with design projects, they take up the most time relative to other courses.  For me, I had to juggle these three for the entire year.  This gave me a lot of stress at times, but it taught me to be more productive.  For example, on the way home, I would be responding to e-mails that I received during the day so I would have more time to work on the project when I got home.  Since my commute to campus is 1.5 hours just to get to campus (one direction), I had to learn how to make use of this time.

Project Management

I took up the role of “project manager” in the beginning of the project and this role showed me a lot of the logistics that had to be considered in a project.  Very often I found myself asking for progress on certain tasks and pushing teammates to finish faster.  Different issues often came to my head that I had to find an answer for such as “are our parts going to arrive in time for machining” or “do we need to have another meeting with the client”.

For Future 45X Students

Don’t wait until the last minute to do something.  There is always something that needs to be done in this course from beginning to end.  Mech students like to aim high, which is good, but 99% of the time there is not enough time to accomplish the “perfect” design that they always aim for.  This leads to a lot of sleepless nights or worse, a prototype that isn’t ready to be handed in.  Be ready to bite the bullet and make compromises like cutting features to make work less for the team and to meet deadlines.  No design will be “perfect” at the end of the course and this fact, however brutal it may be, must be accepted.

Paragraph Spacing

setlength{parskip}{7pt}

This goes in the preamble of the document (after the document class stuff, but before the begin document line).

Removing Page Numbers

thispagestyle{empty}

This gets rid of page numbers for that particular page, but the numbering sequence continues on the next page.

Adding Unnumbered Sections into the TOC

section*{Introduction}
addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Introduction}

By default, unnumbered sections do not appear in the table of contents and therefore they must be added manually.

Defining a New Style with fancyhdr

fancypagestyle{plain}{%
fancyhf{}}% clear all header and footer fields

New style definitions should go before the very last curly brace.

Unnumbered Sections Not Working with leftmark and rightmark

section*{Introductionmarkboth{Introduction}{}}

For some reason, unnumbered sections don’t play nice with fancyhdr and don’t get treated as real sections when the leftmark and rightmark commands are used.  By using markboth, it fixes the problem.  Now my headers show the correct section name.

Bulleted List

begin{itemize}
item Here is a bullet.
item Here is another bullet.
end{itemize}

Numbered List

begin{enumerate}
item Here is item one.
item Here is item two.
end{enumerate}

Referencing Sections by Name

section{MyFirstSection} label{marker}
section{MySecondSection}
In section~nameref{marker} we defined...

Requires the hyperref package!  Put the line below in the preamble.

usepackage{hyperref}

Linking to a Website

href{http://www.example.com}{Link}

Umlauts

"{o}

That gives an o with an umlaut.  Just replace the letter to get an umlaut on a different character.

I really should have posted this week ago when it happened; time did not work in my favor. After having worked for a while, I met a few interns, and I went on this trip with them. We met up in the morning to take the regional express train to Tubingen. Upon arriving, we made our way to the old town. While walking, we saw a river separating the town similar to Heidelberg. The streets also looked similar to many historic German cities. There are probably some distinct differences between each city, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about the architecture of the period. We then took a bus to the main attraction of the town, the Bebenhausen Abbey.

Walking around the monastery kept reminding me about Diablo II (the nerd in me talking). It was quite reminiscent of the Rogue Monastery, but we obviously were not being chased by sword-wielding skeletons. Located in the outer cloister is the tourist information center, church, cemetery, and various historic buildings.

Walking further into the monastery, we came arrived at the inner cloister. A large hallway enclosed the area on all sides, with doors in the hallway leading to rooms for public display. Along the wall were stone plaques dedicated to the history of the place. In the center is a fountain that has been dried up and I don’t know if it is used in the summer. It kind of reminded me of an exhausted health/mana fountain.

The rooms inside the monastery contained information and artifacts displayed for people to see. In one of the rooms, there was a entrance to the catacombs. Maybe if I went down there I’d find Andariel.

The next day, we went to visit Hohenzollern Castle, the ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern family. Two castles had previously been constructed there before, but were destroyed during war or due to lack of care. The castle that remains today was constructed for Frederick William IV of Prussia. The sole purpose of the castle’s construction was as a memorial to the Hohenzollern family and not as an actual residence for anyone.

Along the battlements of the castle stood statues of Prussian royalty. They probably didn’t fight in many battles and since they didn’t look very physically fit to me. They probably just ate a lot.

The castle possesses a lot of defensive structures, but since this castle was built only as a memorial, it was all just for show.

The top level of the castle was the central courtyard. Along the battlements was a view from 855 m above sea level.

We took a tour inside the castle, but unfortunately, they did not allow photography on the premises. The ballroom of castle contained pillars of pure marble even though nobody ever used it. Nowadays, the castle is open for tourists and private functions such as weddings.

Inside one of the rooms were paintings on the wall dedicated to remembering each member of the House of Hohenzollern. In the hallways were paintings of various people and of the two previous castles that were built. One of the paintings was of Baron von Steuben. He assisted the Americans during the Revolutionary War and received a thank you letter from George Washington for his service. Since monarchies dominated at the time, there was talk of choosing a king to govern the United States, but obviously that never happened. At the time, their choice was one of the members of the Prussian royal family.

Some rooms displayed some personal items of the Prussian Kaisers. Apparently, a lot of them liked tobacco and even had a really fancy looking box for tobacco snuff. Despite how unhealthy that sounds, one of those boxes took a bullet for one of the Kaisers and saved his life.

The most significant item was the Crown of Wilhelm II. It contained so much and so many different kinds of gems that it was worth millions. It sat inside clear glass display, but looking closely at it, there was a whole slew of motion detection devices around it for security. Unfortunately, because of my terrible memory, I can’t really remember much more. I thought the castle was Heidelberg was amazing, but this one completely beats it.

Photos:

• Tübingen
• Hohenzollern Castle