There’s a bit of nostalgia in returning to Munich, a place that I’d visited a few times before a long time ago when I did my internship in Germany. I eagerly anticipated revisiting some of my favourite spots while venturing into new experiences.

Seeing the Neues Rathaus on Marienplatz reminded me of my previous visits, from a time where I had visited few foreign countries, seeing the world with young, fresh eyes.

I got to experience again the outdoor beer gardens – a fundamental part of beer culture. I eagerly sought out the ambiance of these social hubs, rediscovering the familiar taste of German sausages and beer. Unfortunately, since it was winter, most of the beer garden was closed.

Nearby the beer garden was the Eisbach, Munich’s famous river wave in the English Garden. Standing on the riverbank, I marveled at the skill and courage of the surfers who rode the powerful current with grace and determination. They made it look easy.

I stumbled upon a Ukraine War protest during my visit, and it reminded me that the war is a lot closer to Germany than it is for us living in North America. This unexpected encounter allowed me to witness firsthand the power of peaceful activism and the unity of Munich’s community. It happened to occur on the same day as the Munich Security Conference, where world leaders met to continue discussions regarding the Ukraine War.

Walking through the opulent halls of the Munich Residenz was like revisiting a bygone era, and it was a place I’d never been before. The grandeur of its rooms, adorned with ornate decorations and priceless artwork, transported me to a time of royalty and elegance.

The Munich Residenz is the former royal palace of the Wittelsbach family that once ruled Bavaria. The Wittelsbach dynasty originated in the 11th century and ruled Bavaria for nearly 750 years until the end of the monarchy in 1918 after Germany’s defeat in World War I.

As usual, I had to eat a pork knuckle, and I think I’ve now found the best pork knuckle in town at the Augustiner brewery. I saw that they had many locations, but the one I went to is the one right outside the Frauenkirche. They had perfected the crispy crackling skin with tender meat underneath. I still think about this meal. I used to go to the Hofbräuhaus, but I couldn’t help but notice how it had degraded over time. While it still retained its lively atmosphere and historical significance, it had become somewhat commercialized, geared more towards tourists, and most importantly, the food was worse (or maybe my taste buds back then were less sophisticated). Nevertheless, I found solace in knowing that Munich’s culinary experiences could still be found in other traditional establishments.

Another highlight is that I finally was able to book a spot on the BMW factory tour. I had tried in the past, but never early enough to secure a spot. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures. The tour goes through different parts of the car manufacturing process, e.g., the metal stamping, painting, and assembly. The process also shows how seamlessly robots and humans work together. It’s really cool to see robot arms putting a car together.

A friend of mine introduced to me the Schalznudeln, a pastry I’d never tried before. It’s essentially airy like a donut, and almost tastes like a beaver tail.

We just so happen to arrive on the last day of the Karneval. People were in the street drinking and dancing, local breweries set up shop in the main shopping street to sell beer, and people performed on stage. I’d always though the Karneval was a Cologne thing but clearly they celebrate it here too. It reminded me of the time I’d gone in 2011. It’s related to the Brazilian carnival and the American Mardi Gras – they’re all celebrating the same thing, just in their own way. The spectacle is cool, but the dark side of it is that people end up leaving lots of trash in the street. Luckily, by morning, the mess is cleaned up.

Returning to Munich was a bittersweet experience, as I rediscovered old favourites and uncovered new adventures. More photos of Munich here.

Cologne (Köln)

Last time I went to Cologne, I celebrated the Carnival and didn’t really see or do anything else. This time, I spent a half day checking out the chocolate museum and have a few beers.

The museum chronicles the history of chocolate, from the cultivation of the cocoa bean, to the industrial machines that produce the chocolate. Visitors can even order their own custom chocolate bar! They pick the kind of chocolate (white, dark, etc.) and can choose a multitude of condiments too.

I honestly was more impressed with the industrial chocolate making machinery more than the chocolate itself. As a graduate of mechatronics engineering, I can certainly appreciate the engineering behind these machines. The movements of each component is precisely controlled to perfectly pick up and drop pieces of chocolate or to pour liquid chocolate into molds, and the subsequently release them.

Afterward, we met up with a friend of mine who decided to move to Germany from America. He was so interested in Germany that he earned his C1 level in the Goethe Insitut examinations (it’s one level below native speaker), and when talking to him, I could always tell his future was in Germany. He found a job working at Deloitte and his German is so good that he doesn’t even speak English at work! Even I can’t do that with my German.

Next up: the bar. You can’t go to Cologne and not try the local brew, Kölsch. Germans outside of Cologne assert that Kölsch shouldn’t be considered a real beer, and honestly, I find it to be just okay. It’s not great and not terrible. A unique part of the Cologne pub culture is that if the waiter sees you with an empty glass, he will automatically serve you another one, regardless of whether you want one or not. The sign that you’re done is to put a coaster over the glass.

We walked around town a bit and went to probably the biggest landmark in town: the Cologne Cathedral. This Cathedral is the second tallest church in Europe (the first is in Ulm, also in Germany), with a height of 157m. It’s hard to imagine the size, but most of the buildings in Cologne aren’t very tall so this building appears to tower over the skyline.

Düsseldorf

Next, we drove to Düsseldorf. All we did there was walk a bit around town, but the streets just kind of look like other cities nearby, like Cologne, except Cologne has a giant cathedral to look at. We did come across a small celebration in the street though. I’m not completely sure, but I think it’s for the massive Carnival celebration that was gonna happen in late February.

The fun started later that night though. We were looking to get some dinner and went to a local pub. It was Friday night and the place was packed – so you can be pretty sure this place is good. Normally, you’d just walk in and sit at any free table – there’s nobody to show you to your seat like in America. There was nothing free anywhere.

A group of Germans signaled to us that we could join them and they’d make space for us. I politely told them that it was okay and we could wait, but they started shifting over so we ended up joining them. We chatted with them over drinks and they turned out to be super fun people!

A older couple were having beers with their son in law and his friend until we joined (they were drunk already when we showed up). They were so happy to chat with us and kept telling us how awesome we were for visiting Düsseldorf. One guy kept telling us in his German accent how “North Rhine-Westphalia is the most open-minded place in all of Germany”, how he grew up in Bavaria near Allgäu, but can never go back there because Düsseldorf is just so amazing, and that we should live here permanently.

Germans when they’re drunk, really like speaking English. One of them kept getting stuck on words and he’d ask their friends what the word was in English. I’d translate the words for him each time and eventually one of their friends literally just told him, “don’t ask us, ask him! He knows all the words!” They were super impressed by my German and it’s a pretty great feeling to know that my German is good enough to have these conversations with locals.

My friend on the other hand, could more or less understand what was being said, even though he couldn’t speak the words. In fact, he had a bit of trouble with his pronunciation, to the point that not a single server in any pub we visited in Germany understood him when he tried to order a Radler. This bar was no exception either, and I couldn’t help myself but laugh at his misfortune

As we left, we jokingly said we’d meet again at the same place and same time to have beers together again. I gotta say that most Germans I’ve met have been pretty cool.

That’s all for now!

• Cologne
• Düsseldorf
  

Bastogne

The Battle of the Bulge (known in German as the Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein – Operation Watch on the Rhine) was the last major German offensive in the western front during World War II. The Germans attempted to use this offensive to break the Allied offensive on that front and force the western allies to negotiate a peace treaty. The territory taken by the Germans during the offensive resembled a “bulge” on the map, hence its name.

During the battle, Bastogne was surrounded by German forces, and when the Germans asked the Americans in Bastogne to surrender, Brigadier General McAuliffe famously answered “nuts!” to the German request.

We stayed overnight in the same farmhouse which served as the former field headquarters of the legendary American 101st Airborne Division during the battle. The staff there mentioned that the same family still owns the farmhouse to this day and that some of them had perished in concentration camps during the course of the war.

They even decorated in the interior with old helmets and ammo boxes.

I wouldn’t consider the place in the middle of nowhere, but maybe trying to find it at night isn’t the best idea.

Just look for the tank turret out front I guess!

We tried going to the Bastogne Museum, but little did we know that the Bastogne War Museum was closed between 20. January 2020 to 19. February 2020. I knew it was low season, but I didn’t think it was so not busy that the entire museum would be closed for a whole month! The only exhibit we got to see was the East Germany open air exhibit outside showing off art painted on the tank, slabs of the Berlin Wall on old Trabants.

Nearby the museum was the Mardasson Memorial, a monument dedicated to the American soldiers who fought the Battle of the Bulge. Inside the memorial, carved panels tell the story of the battle.

The weather really cooperated with us today! We had clear blue skies all day, and got to see the the thin layers of morning frost over the vast farm fields.

Liège

The weather didn’t cooperate for long though because it became like this on our way to Liège…

The thing that surprised me about Liège was how seedy it was. We were hanging out around Place St Lambert, and it felt like people were subtlely eyeing us from the side of the street. In once instance, the moment we turned corner, a man glanced at us and immediately started walking in our direction. I glanced at him some more and eventually he went away. Yeah, we didn’t stay long in Liège.

I think one way to explain why it was so seedy was that Wallonia was no longer Belgium’s center of industry like it was in the late 19th and early 20th century. As the industry went to neighbouring Flanders, the local economy suffered.

Drielandenpunt

Next up, Drielandenpunt, the triple point between Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium. It’s also simultaneously the highest point in the entire Netherlands, a miniscule 322.5m above sea level.

Aachen

Not far away from the Drielandenpunt, was the westernmost city in Germany, Aachen. This is where 31 Holy Roman Emperors were crowned. Charlemagne (his bust pictured below) himself had his imperial medieval residence here.

The Aachen Cathedral shown below was the burial location of Charlemagne. The chapel shown in the middle is the location of the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperors. Despite the name, the Holy Romans Empire was neither holy nor Roman, nor an empire.

As a “holy” empire they weren’t exactly unified by religion. It wasn’t solely catholic and had a significant population of Protestants.

It wasn’t really Roman since for most of its history it didn’t rule over what the Roman Empire ruled over (although it did for a time) and its centre of power was ultimately in Germany. Arguably, the Byzantines or the Eastern Roman Empire was the true successor to the Roman Empire. They were a part of the Roman Empire when it fell and it continued the empire in the east until it fell in the 15th century to the Ottoman Turks.

Technically, it was an empire (at least officially) for a time, until their defeat in the Thirty Years War (1618 – 1648), which resulted in the kingdoms within the empire effectively receiving independence from the empire.

For lunch, I finally got the chance to eat Eisbein (bottom dish), a pork knuckle! It’s simmered for several hours in broth and served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes! If you like meat, this is the dish for you. The above dish is a schnitzel – thin slice of meat (thinned via pounding) that’s breaded and fried.

Bonn

From Aachen, we drove to Bonn to meet up with a friend, who moved to Bonn from Taiwan to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering. We were so full from lunch, we only had a small snack for dinner at a local pub.

Since it was a Bavarian pub, it sold Bavarian specialities like weisswurst (shown on bottom – literally white sausage). It’s a sausage made from veal! The bread in the basket is a very delicious German pretzel. It’s got a nice cripsy outside flavoured with salt with a soft inside.

After dinner, we explored the city a little bit and visited the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven. The house is one of the few remaining middle-class homes of the era.

Bonn is also the world headquarters of an amazing brand of gummy bears – Haribo! It was founded by Hans Riegel in Bonn, hence the name Haribo. People who hear about Haribo for the first time usually think it comes from Japan, and are almost always surprised to find out it’s German! The outlet store not far from Bonn city centre has a MASSIVE selection of all sorts of Haribo variants! It’s got gummy bears, sour worms, licorice, and more! I definitely recommend the gummy bears (of course), the frogs, coca colas, and the Phantasia pack!

That concludes our 7th day. The next day we’d travel to more German cities – Cologne and Düsseldorf.

Photos:

• Bastogne
• Liège
• Drielandenpunt
• Aachen
• Bonn

Heidelberg

Heidelberg probably has the most picturesque old town in the entire Germany. Out of all the views I’ve seen in Germany, this is one of the best.

The view is from the ruins of a castle that was destroyed during the Thirty Years War (17th century). I believe the old town is mostly in the Baroque style.

For breakfast, we had a very traditional German pastry, known as a Berliner. It’s similar to a doughnut, but without the hole, and it has a jam filling on the inside and powdered sugar on top. They’re super delicious and not insanely sweet like a lot of American doughnuts.

For lunch, we had more traditional German street foods. The top of the bottom image is currywurst, cut up sausage with curry ketchup on top. The flavour is a very savoury sausage with a slight sweet and spicy zing of curry. The bottom of the image is a bratwurst in a breadroll with mustard. Everything about this is better than the American hot dog. Better sausage to bun ratio, better bread, better sausage, and better mustard. And of course, fries are seasoned with mayonnaise instead of ketchup.

After lunch, we drove up the hill across the river from the old town and visited an old ampitheatre. Why is this amptitheatre interesting, you might ask? It’s actually a relic of the Nazi period for holding propaganda performances.

The main allure of Heidelberg itself is its picturesque views both in the old town and up on Heidelberg castle. Visitors can easily enjoy this by strolling through the old town and making their way up to the castle (there is also a tram), which are main attractions of the city.

Zweibrücken

From Heidelberg, we drove to Zweibrücken. It was a slight detour from Luxembourg, where we were actually trying to go, but we had read about a cool observatory decorated like R2D2, so we thought we’d check it out! It would have been cool to look through the telescope – after all the sky was completely clear of any clouds.

Driving to the place was super scenic! Nice rolling countryside hills with towering wind turbines.

From there we continued our drive to Luxembourg.

Luxembourg

We crossed the border into Luxembourg at dusk and stopped by the town of Schengen. This is the place where the Schengen Agreement was signed – the agreement that removed the hard borders between its European member states.

Normally, it’s possible to walk across to the island to see the small exhibit that discusses the Schengen Agreement, but we were super surprised to see the river at such a high tide (it did rain a lot the past couple of days). On the right of the picture, there’s a little shrub, street signs and flagpoles poking out of the water.

By the time we reach Luxembourg City, it was nighttime. To our surprise, the city looked deserted even though it was only 19:00. People walking on the street appeared drunk. There was even a guy taking a leak in the street without even trying to do it in an alley!

We walked around a bit to check out the town, but otherwise, there wasn’t much to do at that hour on a weekday.

We didn’t stay too long in Luxembourg, and we continued our drive to Bastogne, where we’d stay the night.

Photos:

• Heidelberg
• Zweibrücken
• Luxembourg

Vaduz

Vaduz is the capital of Liechtenstein, a country that some people have probably never heard of before, and people who have heard of it probably don’t know where it is on the map. In fact, it’s a tiny country that’s sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria. Miraculously, this country, originally a part of the Holy Roman Empire, never got conquered. It survived empires rising and falling around it, namely Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon’s French Empire, Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, and Nazi Germany, just to name a few. Because it survived the political upheaval around it, it is still ruled by a prince (i.e. a principality) like it always was.

The above image shows the residence of the prince. It feels like some strange anachronism – a prince living in a castle on top of a hill ruling over his subjects, but in a modern time.

Even though it’s the capital of Liechtenstein, it only has ~5000 inhabitants – by no means large at all. Its vibe is quite different from other European cities – it doesn’t have a fancy old town or anything, but there are several museums of art and history, as well as the Princely Wine Cellars, which is a vineyard where guests can do wine tastings.

I jokingly asked the fellow at the tourist info centre if he’d ever met the Prince of Liechtenstein, and he actually said yes! He said that everyone who turns 18 gets invited to an event called the Young Citizens Celebration (Jungbürgerfeier) to meet the prince.

Hohenzollern Castle

From Vaduz, we drove into Germany, to where the House of Hohenzollern began, Hohenzollern Castle. These are the same Hohenzollerns, whose family members once ruled Prussia and the German Empire, among other places. Even the last Kaiser of the German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm II, is a Hohenzollern. Today, the castle is still privately owned by the family,

The only way to see the interior of the castle is to pay for the guided tour, and on that guided tour there are no photos allowed. The coolest part of the guided tour is the room showing the entire known family tree of the Hohenzollerns. It even goes into detail as to which branch of the family is part of the Catholic Swabian branch, or the Protestant Franconian branch.

Today was the first day of the trip that actually snowed! The last several days were a bit windy and cool, but still above zero centigrade, but suddenly today, the weather dipped and it started snowing!

It’s kind of nice driving while it’s snowing as long as it’s not a total blizzard.

Stuttgart

In 2011, I spent eight months in Stuttgart for an internship while I was in university, and since then I went back again in 2013 and now again in 2020. I remember in 2013, it still felt pretty nostalgic, but now nine years later, I found that I’ve forgotten a lot of places and barely knew my way around. The feeling was totally different. It felt a lot more distant – like a place I used to know.

Before we left, we planned to eat at Sophie’s Brauhaus, the brewery that my friends and I used to go a lot to. I knew what I wanted to order before we even went – spaetzle with lentils and sausage. Spaetzle is a German pasta with eggs (as a opposed to other types of pasta which may not have as much egg in it). It’s easily one of the most Swabian dishes there is (Swabia is a region in Germany with its own culture and language). And of course we ordered beers, because after all we were at a brewery. I even ordered a bananenweizen – a wheat beer mixed with banana juice (yes, it’s a thing).

When I ate the dish, it didn’t connect with my nostalgia at all, I just remembered having nostalgia for it. Same with the beer I had. This was the place I had my first real German beer, and now there was zero connection between what I tasted now and the nostalgia. I mean the food and the beer was still delicious, but in my head, I definitely was looking for that emotional connection.

Photos

• Vaduz
• Hohenzollern Castle
• Stuttgart

There is a Uniqlo here! I wish I got paid to say this, but it’s the greatest clothing chain in existence.

Gotta love these Bierbikes rolling down the street.

Our main reason to come here was join in on the party that is the Eurocup. A giant screen was set up at the Brandenburg Gate just to show the games. We stuck around to watch Poland play against Portugal!

The weirdest part, that before the game started, they did Kiss Cams, which was fine, but they did this with straight men too… shudder

These people know how to chill.

We met some of my friend’s German friends and they took us to a warehouse that was converted into a bar with a giant screen just to watch Germany VS Italy. According to them, going to that place to watch the game has brought them “good luck” when they went to see Germany VS Brazil in 2014. Definitely one of the greatest games of Football I’ve seen – what a close game between Germany and Italy with a 6-5 Germany win after a penalty shootout.

And of course, when in Germany…

Link to photo album: here

Woodland Park Zoo

The sign at the zoo was quite welcoming!  I don’t go to the zoo very often, but it’s always nice to see penguins, leopards, cheetahs, and other exotic animals. I wanted to throw meat into the pen, but I’d get kicked out.

This peacock was quite photogenic. The moment people came, he spread out his feathers for all to see.

This elephant is coming right for us! If this was South Park, the elephant would have been blown up by a bazooka or something.

This little guy was scraping the meat off of the bone.

Here is a godless killing machine staring us down.

Too bad I didn’t have my usual camera, and I had to use my phone camera for everything.

Feierabend

One of the few things that is guaranteed to pique my interest is a nice German pub.  The food I like to get is always the pork hock.  Super stereotypical, yet super delicious. The place had decorations that looks really stereotypically German, but the food and the beer were all very authentic.

This place also had 1-liter beers! The taste instantly reminded me of the time I spent in Germany and if I could hold my liquor better, I would have drank way more of these, purely for its taste.

I want more of that beer now. It was a good taste of a beer from my once home away from home.

Crabpot

The next day was another day for food. After a brief walk through Pike Market, we went to Crabpot for some seafood. I had heard many good things about this restaurant, namely how customers get a wooden mallet to smash open crab shells. We ordered the Crabpot seafeast and so when the food came, they took the bucket of food and poured it on the table for us to go at it. They also gave us a mallet and a bib (it gets really messy).

I liked the food, but my only complaint is that there wasn’t enough of it! After the meal, we chilled for a bit longer at our friend’s flat before going back to Vancouver. It was a nice weekend getaway. Honestly I feel that I should do more of these – it somewhat satisifes my constant urge to travel. Luckily, I’ll be going to Japan soon so that’ll be fun!

More photos here

This gave us a lot of opportunities to find out what was wrong with our robots before the real competition began. We found out that are mechanical and electrical systems were quite robust, while our software system was the weakest link of the three.

In the downtime, we were taken on a tour of the nearby Eichbaum Brewery. The tour was quite difficult to follow because it was pretty much all in German. Even though I had learned some German, it was still quite difficult for me to follow.

I had been to Mannheim before and both times I went to Mannheim before this time, I had a very negative experience. The first time, I got food poisoning (I still remember which restaurant it was), and the second time, my friends and I waited at the Mannheim train station for 4 hours for a train to Berlin with a scheduled departure time of 12am.

Having had lived in Germany before meant I recognized a lot of brands like food chains, department stores, cell phone companies, etc. Because of that, my teammates often asked me different things about Germany such as how German phone plans worked and how to sign up for a plan. I explained it to them and even asked the cashier at the supermarket who didn’t speak English about phone plans.

On another day, we were also taken on a tour to the nearby city of Heidelberg. I had also been here before and vaguely knew my way around. We hiked up to the castle again, but we were there in the evening so the inside of the castle was closed by the time we arrived, so we just went as high as we could.

After spending a few days in Mannheim, all three of the teams organized transportation together to Eindhoven, where the real competition would begin. The workshop allowed us to see what our robots were capable of and what we could improve on early, so that we would be better prepared for the real thing.

Link to photo album here

As I sat on the plane, my mind began to wander. I had this weird fear that something might go wrong like I would get mugged or something or maybe there was some fundamental mistake in my trip planning.  I was reminded of the time my wallet was stolen in Brussels and I certainly didn’t want anything like that to happen again.  And then I thought about how much fun I had when I lived in Stuttgart.  I have very fond memories of my experience in Germany.  I then felt a slight rush of emotion and almost reliving some of my experiences in my head.  Then I figured I just had to be confident with my trip preparations and let myself have fun on this trip.  After all, not many people get an opportunity like this.

The last two were pretty artsy, and I felt that as fun as it was, I never thought I was good enough to actually pursue it as a career (and I still think so).  It could also be because the way I was raised taught me that a career in the fine arts would be useless in the real world.  I’m not saying that it is, but that kind of thought very often prevailed when students made career decisions.  I forgot about pursuing web and graphic design as a career and left it alone as a hobby.  I still do this today and am still quite satisfied with this decision.

When it came to math and the sciences, I did really well in high school (which doesn’t really say much as university showed).  I thought about what I could do with these.  The few career choices that came to mind were careers like: computer programmer, mathematician, physicist, chemist etc.  Surprisingly, the thought of being an engineer never came across my mind.  At the time, I had only heard the word being used, but never knew what it was.

I talked to a few of my friends about what they were going to take in university.  A few of them told me they were going into engineering.  Intrigued, I looked to find out more.  The gist of what I got from the Internet was that “an engineer applies math and physics to design things that makes life better.”  I also found that UBC and SFU both had information sessions for engineering.  I visited the information session at SFU.

There, I got a whole slew of information about engineering.  Each department in the faculty and a lot of student teams set up booths explaining what they were all about.  To entice potential incoming high school students, they displayed a lot of cool things that they designed like helicopters, computer games, and just fancy gadgets.  At that point, I thought to myself, “wouldn’t it be so cool to build something like that?”  I had no idea what kind of work the projects entailed.  I was really focussed on the final product.  I had no concept of what happened in between.  To me, engineering seemed like the first half of that picture at the top.

I also went to the mechatronics information session there and that’s where I first learned about that discipline.  I really liked the idea of blending mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer engineering together.  It seemed like a great combination.  The first thing that popped into my juvenile mind after was, “Cool! I can build robots like the ones people see in movies!” That kind of thought was quite naive, but regardless, it was the thought that dominated at the time.  Such was the thinking of a child.

That pretty much convinced me to go into engineering.  The next question was, “what school should I go to for that?”  I knew I didn’t want to go too far away from home, so I really only had two options: UBC or SFU.  I thought long and hard for a long time and eventually decided on UBC.  At the time, I didn’t know if I made the right choice, but I did have two reasons for doing so.

One was the international reputation that UBC commanded.  I could go to Hong Kong and talk about UBC and people would know what I’m talking about.  Even people in Germany have heard of UBC.  SFU?  Not so much.

UBC also let me live in a home away from home in a way.  I lived in Port Coquitlam and the commute from there to UBC took 1.5 hours each way.  In order to avoid having to deal with that intense time sink every day, I got a spot in residence.  That would teach me to live independently while having support from my parents.  To this day, I am still glad I made that choice.  I really did learn to live independently.  In fact, I wrote this while I was still in Germany, thousands of kilometers away from family.

After making my choice of doing engineering at UBC, I got acquainted with the UBC campus and the residences and so once school started I was prepared.  I was totally taken aback to how university life was different, but I managed to adjust.  In the end, I went through first year with pretty good grades (high enough to be guaranteed entry into whatever specialization I wanted).  Even then, I still had no idea what engineering was all about.  The stuff I learned was all just theory.  If anybody asked me to design anything, I would have been clueless.  I still had not bridged the gap between theory and practicality.

During the summer after first year, it became time to make yet another career-defining choice: What discipline in engineering should I do?  I researched pretty much every single one and I was left with three choices: mechanical engineering, engineering physics, and computer engineering.  Even though I researched them all, I had no idea what they were all about.

I remembered the mechatronics info session I went to a year ago.  The thought of building a robot still floated in my mind.  As naive of a thought as that was, it got me really considering the mechatronics option in mechanical engineering.  I looked on the Mech website and found out about the Mech 2 program.  I really liked the way the curriculum was organized.  I thought it had a great mix of learning theory and actually applying that theory to projects.  I agreed with its goal of breaking down the artificial barriers between subjects.  At that point, my mind was set on doing Mech.  I had already missed the deadline for going straight into mechatronics from first year, but I felt that I could get in after second year.

Second year in mechanical engineering really taught me what it meant to be a mechanical engineer.  I found out that Mech wasn’t just about cars, planes, trains, and boats, and that those things were only a small facet of a discipline with an abundance of possibilities.  I found out that not every single engineer does design – some are in research, product safety, and even maintenance.  Despite those other kinds of engineers, my primary interest still lay in design.  I learned the process of actually going from just an idea to a final product – something that no info session ever taught me.  In fact, some engineering curricula programs don’t teach it either.  They seem to half-expect its students to figure out on their own and know how to apply the theory themselves.  I had really interesting and useful classes that I could really apply in engineering designs.  I could go on forever here, but the important thing is that after knowing all this, I still wanted to stay.  It’s what I wanted to do.  I wanted to design and build things.  Every now and then someone will talk about some other profession having a better salary, but that doesn’t matter.  Interest trumps that.

Looking back, I found it quite absurd as to how I ended up in mechanical engineering, but it’s what happened.  I started off knowing next to nothing about the profession, and now I can’t think a better option.  I am now in my fourth year of mechanical engineering, and if someone gave me the chance to go back and pick something else, my choice would not change.