“Korea DMZ” by Rishabh Tatiraju is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Joint Security Area at Panmunjom

The most worthwhile part of the trip was to be able to visit the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom or the so-called “Truce Village”. This is the part of the DMZ where people from the North and South can see each other face-to-face. Travelling here allowed me to see a piece of history that I was already interested in.

Before going in everyone had to sign an agreement, where one passage says, “The visit to the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom will entail entry into a hostile area and possibility of injury or death as a direct result of enemy action.” Luckily, the US soldier informed us that it was “highly unlikely for anything to happen”. We were also told to not make any gestures toward the North Korean guards or any tourists on the other side.

The blue buildings are conference buildings where meetings with both sides take place. They are placed such that half of the building lies on each side of the border. The gray/white building is the Panmungak, a North Korean building. On the first door on the left, a North Korean soldier stands on guard. Concrete slabs show the separation between the two sides. I guess this means I’ve technically been to North Korea – at least for a few minutes.

Third Infiltration Tunnel

Another destination we went to was the Third Infiltration Tunnel, which had the potential of being used to attack the South and its location was revealed by North Korean defector. This was known because there were clear signs of holes drilled in the rock for the next blast, and the holes were aimed toward the South side.

To prevent injury, everyone had to wear hard hats – which was a really, really, really good idea since there was a low ceiling and I hit my head at least a dozen times. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take any photographs underground.

“Third Tunnel of Aggression” by Josh Berglund is licensed under CC-BY-2.0

Dora Observatory Post

This is a place where one can look toward North Korea from afar – but photos are not allowed past the yellow line for fear of being mistaken for sniper scopes. It’s pretty barren on that side. If only my camera could take a shot like the image I found on Wikipedia!

“The view of North Korea from Dora Observatory” by Josh Berglund is licensed under CC-BY-2.0

Dorasan Station

Dorasan Station is one of the few places one can actually go to Pyeongyang, at least before 2008. Our tour guide happened to be named Dora, so when we got to Dora Mountain she said, in her accented English, something like, “Look! This is my mountain!”

Lunch!

Lunch was a delicious mushroom and beef hotpot with kimchi, salad, and other delicious goodies on the side (if only I knew what I was eating)!

Outdoor Military Vehicle Display in Imginjak

Nothing much to say here – just a showcase of various military vehicles.

Back to Seoul

The tour lasted the full day. It began in Imginjak and ended at the Joint Security Area. We had dinner (more on that very “special” dinner in another post) in Myeongdong and spent the rest of the night walking around there.

Link to more photos: here

Since members of the church are encouraged to do missionary work, some of them are assigned to Temple Square to work as tour guides. In the Visitors’ Center, there were many of them from different countries and the tour guides we got happened to be from Canada and USA.

The guides took us to the top of the North Visitors’ Center to show us an 11-foot tall statue of Jesus (picture from Wikipedia). While up there, the guides played a short audio clip about Jesus’s purpose and told us about their beliefs. Even though I’m not Christian, it was clear that they were quite devout and dedicated and such qualities are definitely admirable.

Next, the guides took us to the Salt Lake Tabernacle to see the pipe organ.

Then the guides asked us, “how many pipes do you think there are?” Me, not knowing anything about organs, merely counted the ones I saw on the surface and naively said, “maybe about 30”. It turns out I was off by several orders of magnitude. The answer: 11,623.

The building was built to house meetings for the church and was used for the LDS General Conference, but the church grew so large, that the occupant capacity of the building was exceeded. After that tour ended, we visited the newer and larger conference center.

We got a tour of the inside and it was massive with 21,000 seats. We were told that to play the church organ, the organist would have to have a PhD in that field.

The roof of the building had a beautiful view of the Temple Square and had a nice garden full of many varieties of plants.

Lastly, there is the temple itself. Unfortunately, it is not open to the public as it is sacred and there are strict entrance requirements. But at least it looks nice on the outside!

That concluded our tour of the Temple Square in Salt Lake City and then we made our way to the airport and flew back to Vancouver.

Link to more photos

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.

In an effort for the company to promote socializing with other interns working at Bosch, they organized what’s called a “Stammtisch”.  Literally translated it means, “regular’s table”.  It is a weekly gathering at a restaurant, cocktail bar, or club.  Together we drink beer and socialize, hence why I call it the weekly drinking day.  I met most of the interns at Bosch through this and I’ve even gone to Tubingen, Hohenzollern Castle, and Freiburg im Breisgau with them.  Soon we’ll be going to Köln (Cologne) and Paris.

At the first Stammtisch back in January, I didn’t know anybody except for the friend from Canada that I went with.  I didn’t really know what to expect.  When we got there, we found the Bosch table and introduced ourselves to the people already there.  I didn’t really know what to expect at the time.  Stereotypes of Germans told me that we’d probably end up drinking while we were there.  Sure enough, we did.  As someone who doesn’t drink a lot of beer, or alcohol in general for that matter, I was at a loss as to what drink to pick.  And so one of the interns recommended a beer called hefeweizen.  Hefeweizen is a kind of beer brewed with a large amount of wheat and malted barley.  I didn’t know that at the time, and all I knew was that it tasted damn good.  Definitely than the bitter North American beers.  A friend of mine described it as “drinking alcoholic, liquid bread”.  I am also told that it’s also got a lot of calories.  That’s okay with me, since I probably need to gain a few pounds, or kilograms as people use instead here.  I was also able to try a pale lager called helles.  This beer wasn’t as good as the hefeweizen, but that’s just personal preference.

Apart from just drinking, I also learned a bit about the drinking culture in Germany.  Like other cultures, Germans too will clink their glasses together before they drink, but one thing they must do is look at each person at the table in the eye while doing the clinking the glasses.  Otherwise, the person will be destined seven years of bad sex.  I don’t think I would have known that if I wasn’t told.

The location of the Stammtisch varies each week.  The first week I went, we went to a restaurant that had their own brewery, known as a “brauhaus” (how cool is that?).  Another time it was at a Spanish cocktail bar, that had cocktails at a discount if the party was large enough.  The most recent Stammtisch took place at a “disco”, which I think is German for club.  When I first heard the word, I immediately thought of The Bee Gees in the 70’s with their Saturday Night Fever.  I’m not a fan of clubbing, so I opted out of that one.

While drinking and socializing, I met a people from many different countries.  The group was a lot more multicultural than I thought.  There were people from Germany, France, Canada, America, China, Hong Kong, Iran, and even Mexico.  The only common language between all of us was English.  We all pretty much talked for at least 3 hours.  There were so many people that I ended up moving seats to get a chance to talk to other people sitting further away.  We went in there knowing nobody, but at the end we all weren’t strangers anymore.  Kind of like what Forrest Gump said, “Well I guess we ain’t strangers anymore!”