the next big one

It was 2016 when I first learn about the impending California earthquake. I’m eating in the University of Waterloo’s Bombshelter Pub, and the light is fading outside as I read The Really Big One by Kathryn Schulz in the New Yorker. It’s an award-winning piece about the earthquakes resulting from the North American tectonic plate……

“The Act of Making It”

I was really fortunate to have been given the opportunity to write something for the UWaterloo English blog as Valedictorian, so I did! Thanks especially to Dr. Jennifer Harris for the support. We are so thrilled to congratulate Amy Zhou, UWaterloo English and Economics, who has been named valedictorian and will be speaking at convocation……

Hungry for Summer

I like to visualize transition cards in the movie of my life. At this one, the end of my undergraduate degree, I imagine a snapshot of a heavy, dark, misty day on campus (somewhere like that small wooded area between Modern Languages facing the Arts Quad), ground dark with spring rain, with the word SPRING in……

Ottawa’s “deliberate crudity of design”

“In Ottawa, where much of our downtown architecture is styled the way it is, how do the emotional reactions of her citizens contribute to the way they live, work, and play in the city? How does it contribute to the overarching character of the city?”

WHY I VALUE AND LOVE MY HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE DEGREE FROM ONE OF THE WORLD’S BEST STEM UNIVERSITIES

(thanks Sally for pushing me to write this) It’s true! I love and value my Social Science and Humanities degree from one of world’s most notable STEM schools, the University of Waterloo. It isn’t that its Social Science and Humanities programs are bad, they just pale in comparison to the behemoth engineering and math programs we……