Talk about change

Talk about change.

Well, it's been three months after I started my new life. I mean, taking the job, paying bills and finally living like a grown-up. Sorry for no update. Let me begin by walking you through my typical day. Get up between 6:30 and 6:50 am, I don't take morning shower. Breakfast was usually cereal but now I am digging rice more and more. Arrive at the office 7:30 to 7:45 am and start my day. Work is typically analyzing samples using TEM from various research groups internally from the company. Writing report is part of job too. I usually take off between 6 and 7 pm so I end up working 9-10 hrs a day.

Back home, kitchen is my little niche. I enjoy cooking a lot and want to make it more serious than just feeding me up. A piece of ribeye steak has become my official weekly ritual. TV is not my thing. Sitting in front of the balcony under a lamp and do a little reading have found more place in me. I finished one and half Harlan Coben mysteries after I've been here: Deal breaker and The woods. They are great books. Quick and dirty, you know what I mean. For more serious reading, I recently started reading Nikolai Gogol, finished his Overcoat. Great sarcastic writing style. Good thing they are short tales. My day is usually concluded in a hot bath. I can spend hours in it.

Did I mention I ride bike to work daily? The red one is my commuter. It's got a Brooks B17 special on it if that matters to you. And yes, it feels great! Also ladies and gentlemen, the black one is my roadie! 2008 Madone 4.5. When living in a small town you need to have some hobby to get the most out of it. Cycling has been become my thing. Don't ask how much it costed.

New Ride + Road Trip = New Life @ Midland

It's still the non-typical midwestern march weather, going up and down from 20s to 30s, an inch of snow or two. I am relocated to where my job is, Midland, michigan. To save some breath explaining where this little town of ~60k population is, here is the link. Yali and I started out from st louis, missouri in the morning. We were pretty at leisure the whole trip, even visited the Indiana dunes state park. Although the michigan lake was still all frozen and covered by snow. The first day evening we arrived at Ann Arbor, MI, the college town where U. of Michigan is located. It was about 10 O'clock in the evening, we were lucky enough to find a restaurant opened that late on the main street, the mongolian barbecue. The next day, we walked around ann arbor. Basically, its a pretty neat town, very similar to madison, WI, except without lakes. The Main street, Liberty street and the State street are the main business districts next to the campus. It was a very cold day. Yali and I managed to took a handful of photos of the campus. Due to the extreme weather condition, some pics of her are too twisted to shown. Overall, the campus of the U. of Michigan is very compact, with a large number of buildings densely populated. There are 5 or 6 chinese restaurant, we went to one of them called Jing Hua Xiao Lou for lunch. The food tastes OK, comparable to the quality in urbana, IL.

We left Ann arbor and hit an outlet shopping mall in Howell, 30 mins north of Ann arbor. On our way out to Midland, we were caught by a big snow. Oh, hey, in case you guys didn't see the picture above. It's my new vehicle, the 2009 (yes, 9) Subaru Forester. It's redesigned model. I was the first batch of people who bought it. The SUV has an electronic stability control, in combination with its famous all-wheel-drive technology, making it super stable in condition like snow and rain.

After moving into my new apartment in midland, We drove off to see the shoreline of the Lake Huron, which is within 1 hr from midland. Below is a pic of Yali's twisted face due to the harsh weather and the beautiful scene behind her.

Surface contraction work is covered by press

The surface contraction work, a collective result among Jim, Ruoshi, Dr. Tao, Dr. Menards, Prof. Nuzzo and me, has been selected as the cover for the April issue of Nature Materials, a premier journal in materials science. The work is also recently covered by the Illinois News. Check it out. For those of you who are curious why these photos are always shooted from top down, I have answer. The photographer who took my picture told me secretly: "Professors are typically old and fat, shooting the picture from the top would make them look better in the picture".

Science v.s. Engineering

John Rogers, a professor of Materials Science in Illinois, had gave a talk on how he spinned off a company from his research. At the end of the talk, he concluded with his favorite quote regarding science and engineering. It's from the famous scientist and engineer Theodore von Kármán:

Scientists discover the world that already exists;
Engineers create a world that has never been there.

Something to think about.

Graduation

If there are a few moments in my life when I can't help crying and hard to forget. This must be one of them. On March 14th, I said "good bye" to my group members and my advisor, Jim. This moment marks a point where I finally head out the ivory tower and walk into the real world. Yes, I graduate with my Ph.D. finally!

It's not an award or anything worth bragging, but finishing my degree reminds me of the oscar. Every time an award winner walk onto the podium and have to say something, he or she typically starts with "I want to thank...". I always thought it's a routine thing, hardly from the heart. It turns out, I was wrong.

I experienced such a moment last week, when I finished the defense and finally deposited my thesis. The format-checking guy in the thesis office put a stamp on my thesis, and said to me: "congratulation, you are a doctor now!" I walked out of the office, unreacted, but when I walked outside,
and saw a bunch of undergrads on the quad, I felt something profound has happened in my heart. I realized, I am not longer a student. From the elementary school to graduate school, I have always been a student. It's like I have been a student for my whole life. It doesn't feel good when someone strip the right off me in a sudden.

Being at school it's not an easy task, to many people. I am one of those lucky guys who can survive, or even kind of enjoy school for such an extended period of time. Not because I am smart. Some people still consider us a loser for getting a phd. I am just an average person. It's because, and now I know that, I have never been alone. There are always people who love me, support me and are willing to help me. My parents, my sister, my girlfriend are people who are always there when I need them. My advisor, Jim, has been the best teacher I have ever met. I learned tremendously from the members in my group, and from the great staff in the MRL. These people have shaped me, and I owe who I am to all of them. I now understand that those oscar winners might not be pretending to thank somebodies. It's simply an impluse from everyone's soul that, when you have achieved something great, you think of those who made this possible.

I am going to open a new chapter in my life. I hope my blog can be updated more regularly and more frequently, so that you, the invisible readers, can see how I evolve, and witness the ups and downs in my life. Do leave a comment if you are there. Don't you hate being invisible all the time:)

Brat Pete on Bianchi

In his interview with Larry King, the CNN famous anchor, Brat Pete rode a cruiser bicycle in New Orleans. Now he is caught riding a Bianchi road bike with a suit. I don't the source of this picture, but it's kind of funny.

Paper Acceptance and Job Rejections

There is no free lunch in the world. Good things are always accompanied by bad crap. My nature materials paper on surface contraction is finally accepted. The paper had began at the end of 2006. So it's been through a whole year of struggling to end up in somewhere. I have given up thinking on how important my work is. Time has made me feel bad. When Jim forwarded me the acceptance email from nature materials editorial, I was calm and at peace. I've been through enough to not make a big deal out of it. Challenges after challenges are waiting to me, I have to learn to move on wisely. Meanwhile, the two companies that I have interviewed with, the Shell Oil and the Praxair, both rejected me after a few months of reviewing me. I understood the economy is tough and getting into a recession. Praxair is not doing well this year. Pinggui told me that some people even have to be laid off. I can't complaint about my misfortune with shell. Thing just doesn't click. Working in the energy industry is what I always want to do. Hopefully, in Dow I will contribute my part to develope some new catalyst to save more energy.

Boston-MRS meeting 2007

I went to boston after the thanksgiving break to attend the MRS fall meeting. It's a big meeting in the field of materials science. Steven Chu, the nobel prize laureate in physics, gave an invited talk on the energy problem in the meeting.

My heart, however, was flying outside the conference. With a job-offer in hand, I felt zero pressure at the time. Teaming up with my fellow co-worker, Jiong, we ate in and out of Boston. It's my second time here to Boston. The first was with my parents. This time, I was mainly lodging in the culture district of city, near the manchester avenue and the convention center. To my pleasure, Boston is a very walkable city, unlike many cities in america (chicago, st louis, LA). Streets in Boston are clean, safe to walk on, and nice to look at. Boutique stores are around the corners, snobbish dressing pedestrians are walking around and the whole air brought me back to the 18th century colonial time.

Charlestown is my favorite town, next to the Anapolis, maryland in my list. The town sports two-story colonial houses everywhere. You walk here, you go back in time. The end of november was a little bit chilly in boston. But touring among the stone-paved streets made me feel warm.

I had a final round interview with Infinium lined up in the beginning of december. I decided not to go. So far, finance is not my cup of tea. We will see.

December begins my thesis writing. I also resubmitted my nature materials paper after 3 months of pause.

November-2

Dow chemical gave me a heart-warming impression. I arrived at the MBS airport (midland, bay city and saginaw) at ~11:00 pm in the evening, and found Bob Johnson, the manager of the microscopy group, was waiting for me in the pick-up area. I was escorted to the Ashman hotel, owned by Dow, and checked in to a very nice room with a king size bed. At 7:00 am in the morning, two senior staff members greeted me morning in the hotel lobby, and bought me a breakfast. They were nice, down to earth and approachable. Then it went the typical on-site interview routine: presentation and one-on-one. I will skip through this part. At noon, a manager of the analytical division, Paul, took me out for a lunch. I carelessly mentioned that I cooked some italian food, then I found myself in a small but fancy italian restaurant. Paul turned out to be a food-lover like me, and we clicked by finding out that we are both a meat lover! He gave me a little lecture on a fancy italian aged vinegar, the one served with olive oil. We also talked about the the nature around midland. I confessed to him that I am a water lover, and he told me that he owned a boat. Yes, I think we clicked.

About 5 pm, my whole day interview ended. I was guided outside the interview room, but to another office. "Another interview ?" I asked myself. Surprisingly, they handed me an offer letter, with salary on it! I was speechless, really. They told me it's rare to hand out offer on spot, and I was found to be a right person for their position. Forget to mention what they are hiring me for: a TEM researcher focusing on catalyst. I had a feeling that I am getting this job but not that quick. It's the first real job offer in my life. To be honest, tears started to pump up my eyes.

On my way to the MBS airport (thanks for Hong Liang who gave me a ride), I reflected on this whole job-hunting thing. My dear girl friend has been very very supportive. I had to admit that I am a fragile and sort-up a pessimistic person, always looking at the dark side of anything. It's amazing that I remain depression-free so far, based on how I view things. It's my girlfriend who cherishes me every time I need and gives me hope. She deserves the GIRL FRIEND OF THE YEAR. I also wanted to thank my family, my parents and my sister. Without their supports through telephone and emails, I can't go this far. One of the best things about modern human civilization, I read from the Penguin World history, is that we depend more and more on each other, than ever before.

From Will Smith's the pursuit of happyness, I realized that the feeling of happiness won't arrive at your heart unless you try really hard. I did, and I feel it now. It feels really good. Too good that I didn't give a damn when they told me that my flight was canceled in the pre-thanksgiving night.

Two advises for my fellow job hunters: 1. prepare. read as much as you can to know enough of the company, the industry and the world. This has to be started early, maybe 1 or 2 years before your job hunting. Read english newspaper, nytimes is a good one. Economist is also a place where I learned a lot. I strongly recommended them. 2. don't be pessimistic.

November

My life-struggling, hope-finding, research-ignoring, advisor-off-pissing job-hunting story climaxed in November, a not so cold holiday month. I prepared for an on-site for praxair, scheduled on nov. 15th, an interview for an x-ray science post-doc at argonne national lab on nov. 20th, and had to catch a flight to the midland, michigan for Dow chemical on nov. 21th, the day before thanks giving.

The praxair company is located in Tonowanda, NY, a small suburban industrial town near the Buffalo city. The city's got some appeals: it's got toronto and the niagara fall right next door, and it's famous for it's chili chicken wings. Buffalo is small but it has three major sport teams: baseball, football and hockey. Not bad, huh? It's also in the snow belt. In winter it easily got blanketed by 6-8 inches of solid state H2O. I was told by a real estate agent that last year, too many trees were bent down by heavy snow that the traffic was literally paralyzed. Well, not that kind of my dream city. But it's got some water near by. The lake erie, if not to far away. I also bravely enough to walk to the Anchor bar, the original birthplace of the buffalo chicken wing, and ordered a single with a beer. The wings were OK, at best, not up to my expectation though. Over and over again, I was convinced by a notion that, don't put too much false hope on american food. However, I have to give credit to my dear girl friend, for being my live GPS towards the bar. Remember I was walking in an almost abandoned downtown in a rustbelt city. Caution and boldness are critically needed.

I forgot to mention the interview. It's again a two-day event, first day a presentation, and second day a full-day battle with 8 managers. It's quite exhausting, at the end of the day. Most of the questions are similar. Pinggui has also attended my presentation. I appreciate her support truly. She is a friend indeed. I put a lot of hope to the praxair interview, after hearing nothing from shell.

After returning from buffalo, I tango on to prepare for my talk in argonne and dow. The position I was interviewing for at argonne is a post-doc X-ray researcher, under prof. Ian Robinson's group. The spot was left by his former postdoc, Ross Harder, who received a permanent job offer from Qun Shen's group. Qun Shen is also a co-sponsor for the my intended position. The interview went very well. I talked about my work on coherent electron diffraction, the electron version of what they are doing using x-ray. After the interview, they gave me an offer on spot, not so surprising. What is surprising is that, Qun Shen, the group leader, even persuaded me by saying that I can be converted to a full time staff member after 1-2 years. I headed right to the o'hare airport, weaving my way in the rush-hour chicago traffic, trying catch a flight to midland, michigan.

October-2

October was one of the most fruitful months along my job-hunting trail. When the democrats and republicans are working their ways to the white house, I was working mine to a paycheck.

Before I went to shell's on-site, I did a campus interview with Xerox, the photo-copy machine maker. My optics background hooked me up with this. It went well, but ended up empty-handed as well.

I also got a campus-interview with praxair, a company making industrial gases. To impress the interviewer, Dr. Loyld Brown, I arrived at his info session almost half an hour earlier than it started, in a rainy evening. I also found out his was a student of Prof. Zukowski, doing colloidal science for his phd thesis. These efforts paid off. I got invited to their on-site interview two weeks afterwards. It's scheduled to be in the second week in November.

I also went to chicago to interview with a trading company, the Infinium Capital Management, for the financial engineer position, on Oct 26th. The story was funny. I arrived early, and went to do some reading in the stairs, and found myself locked in the stairway. I panic, called the HR, left her a message, and luckily finally got out without calling 911. The rest of the interview was more like get-to-know-about you. I basically chatted with these guys, telling them my favorite sports, books, authors and, oh yeah, why I am interested in finance. It's tricky question, because you can't tell them it's got good money. On my way driving home, I joked with myself, it must be their loss if they decide to invite me to their round.

It's a funny world. Like how unexpected and unpredictable the stock market is, Infinium sent me their final interview invitation. That marks the end of the october.

You might wonder, hey man, what's up with your research. Is your advisor on sabbatical or something? Folks, you reminded that I am still a graduate student who is expected to do research for a skinny living. My research basically halted after June, when my parents visited me. My nature paper about surface contraction was rejected in June. I submitted it to nature materials after some
minor refinements in July. In august, I got the review back, and the referees asked for some clarifications without rejecting the paper. Some of the issues raised by the referees are tough to answer. Then came my job-hunting season. Meanwhile, my diffractive imaging paper was submitted to science in September. Unfortunately, and according to my advisor, surprisingly, it was rejected in October by the editor, without being sent out for external reviewing. We were upset. But I put that aside as well. The surface melting experiment that I proposed as my summer research plan, was essentially not happening. I have to say thank you to Jim, my generous advisor, who put up with me and paid me for doing nothing in these months. He deserves the title, EMPLOYER OF THE YEAR.

October-1

It's always difficult to make a long story short. I am doing my best, fella.

I've got a call from the Dow Chemical company on my way back from the california trip. They invited me to their info session on a monday night. I did not know until I got to the session that I was not guaranteed an interview spot. But the day after that night, they called me and assigned me a spot the wednesday morning. As always, I choose 8:00 am . I always believe in the first-comer advantage.

In the interview with Dow, I talked to Ali Shah, who's an pakistani grew up in hong kong. We had a nice conversion, and of course I won't hesitate to mention my cantonese-speaking background and hong-kong related cultural upbringing. Just in case he's interested.

I started to realize that preparing for an interview seriously is no less than for a final exam. I got serious for the SRD, after Xiaoyu, a postdoc from john roger's group, told me that she was rejected after attending the SRD. My expectation plummeted, and my full-carbon-bike dream blurred. Nothing can stop me from my bike, I told myself. I found myself googling anything about shell, reading their financial and technical reports, taking notes, wiki-ing about catalysts, marketing myself as a catalyst expert in my presentation, making up sharp questions to ask, and even reading all the articles about the oil industry from the economist.com (it's a great website, I have to recommend). I went to such a great length and almost became a quasi-expert in the energy business. All these efforts, I found later, had widen my eyes and deepen my knowledge to the business world.

The SRD finally came. It's my first on-site. Yes, I am newbie. It's got two days: the first day I presented my research to a technical group at the Westhollow Technology Center in the suburb of houston. To my surprise, and theirs, the technical group is no catalyst group. It's a materials science group, or metallurgy group. That means, all my marketing strategies emphasizing catalyst-research were wrong. I told myself not to worry, they will pay attention to my transferrable skills.

My second SRD day was an the one that I had spent the most time preparing for. It had three parts: personal interview, case study and group fight. In case study I am a regional manager trying to tackle problems for a oil company in a small country facing a lot of issues. In the group fight, I teamed up with an indian girl, Lowri, to fight for the Shell social fund to improve our community.
I guessed I did not do too bad. When I finished everything and found myself in the bed at my girlfriend's place, I received Shell's email: "we are looking for position for you". That means, I was not offered a job immediately, but they were trying to hook me up with something. "It's good enough", I told myself, putting a question mark to my full-carbon bike dream.

Hi Fella

Dear Non-existent Readers:

I haven't shown up since Sept. 2007, till now for no good reasons. It's a busy
and stressful semester, mainly because I was in the bloody mud of job-hunting.
The philosophy of blogging or logging is to document our life. So, here we go,
let me briefly tell what I have been through in the past few months.

Sept:
After my parents went back to china, I started to hunt for a job. No big
deal, isn't it. Hold on! Let me give you a little bit of my info. I am an international (to be specific, chinese) male, PhD student in materials science, doing TEM for a living with no work experience. When you plug this information, it basically screens out 99% of the available jobs. Monster.com does no good for me.

So I spent two weeks to attend some seminars on how to prepare a resume and a cover letter, and then found myself in the September engineering career fair in the U of Illinois. I was like a fish in the ocean. I wore my contact lens. I put on my girl-friend's-gift suit. And I talked to recruiters like a you-never-piss-me-off salesman. Like no child left behind, I got my first campus interview with a flash memory maker in Cal, the Spansion. Suzette, was the lady that interviewed me. Officially, that was my first
job interview in US, which lasted about 40 mins. I was told that I was exactly what they wanted. To be honest, I was flattered to hell. But that's all I got from them. No follow-up afterwards.

I was lucky to find the afternoon tea-party of the Shell oil company in the digital computer lab building in the afternoon before their interview day. Of course I brought my weapon with me, I mean my resume. After couple pretentious greetings and chattings, I went straight to the core: "Can I get an interview?" Pinggui, a good friend of mine, reminds me that you've got to be bold. Employers honor that. "That's a good question", said the HR lady. I left the tea-party empty-handed. But at 6:00 pm, they called me: " Jason, are you available for an interview tomorrow at 11:00 am". "Are you kidding me? I mean, yes", said me.

Dave Hamilton interviewed me on the campus, on behalfed of the Shell oil. We started by introducing myself, talking about my research. I was smart enough to not going too deep and making it just not too shallow for him. I assumed he's got a technical background. Then the fun part came. I was asked to choose among four topics to discuss: global standarization, alternative energy, blah and blah. I chose thealternative energy, figuring that my geeky soul might help. I talked about the pros and cons, the plan, the detail. Dave seems to be pretty happy about my answers. When my turn to question came, I sort-of did an answer-check:"so does shell has any plan in alternative energy and what is its criteria to choose the location". Dave and I extended the interview by 30 mins to answer my question happily. We even touched the politics of china and russia, and learned why capitalists concerned about the local politics of where they are investing.

I walked out of the interview room, still empty-handed, but full of satisfaction. One week later, I received an email that they are inviting me to houston, texa to attend the on-site interview, the Shell Recruitment Day (SRD). At that moment I was thrilled. I remembered Iwas doing TEM experiment when I got the email. My first reaction was, everyone who got invited to an on-site ends up getting the job. I was so sure that I started picturing myself riding a full carbon bike on the houston beach.

The rest of the September was filled with hype, hope, uncertainty, and a microscopy conference in the sonoma wine country in California.In the conference I met Bin, my good friend who's working for FEI co. now, and told him about my coming interview with Shell. I also forgoed a wine-country trip to conduct a phone interview with Dupont in the hotel. My dear girl friend joined me after the meeting, and we spent a wonderful weekend in the monterey penusilar south of san fransisco. It is a heaven-like location. It's got the pacific ocean every corner, and we did jog around the 17-miles pebble beach, have breakfast in the morning, visited the aquarium, and breathe the hell out of the fresh atmosphere over here. I promised to myself I got live by some water.