Icesolation

A class assignment in my Robotics class back in grade 10 started a relationship between Beaverworx and I. The project was to build a simple Lego Robot and compete with other robots in a Sumo-wrestling tournament. Everyone had equal number of motors and amount of power supply to keep the competition fair and square. My robot design easily won the tournament; it incorporated a clever large front roller that suspends off the ground and rotates backwards which "lifts" opponent robot upon contact, thus decreasing its F(g) and hence F(f).

I'm not an engineer, never was. But the teacher put me on the team because I can solve problems creatively. Since then my relationship with Beaverworx flourished. I climbed to the top of the ladder in no time, picking up the responsibilities of a captain. I knew the robot inside and out, I knew the team from top to bottom. I'd appear in every presentation to figures from Ontario Premier to corporate CEOs. In the first two seasons of Beaverworx's existence, we consecutively qualified for the World Championships, picking up two champion titles, and along the way 6 other awards in quality, creativity, top-seed, rookie top-seed, Rookie All-Star, website award. At peak, Beaverworx is ranked top 15% internationally! Of course it wasn't all because of me we had these accomplishments, it's because of the teamwork of Beaverworx, a young organization with all the right pieces well on its way to be world-class.

In year 3 of my involvement with FIRST Robotics, my relocation to Montreal, Quebec ended my relationship with Beaverworx. My love for robotics and mentorship, however, kept me involved with the competition, a new relationship with Loyola Northern Knights 296 formed. My last encounter prior to joining Loyola was from the playoffs quarterfinals, the 1st-seeded Beaverworx easily "smoked" (pun intended, their motor blew up) the last-seeded Loyola team.

What irony is it to be "traded" from the top team to a bottom team? It's like if I were a player on the Washington Capitals and got traded to the Edmonton Oilers for a 28th round pick (which doesn't exist). Nevertheless, that was the call. I am now a Northern Knight of Loyola.

The hardest part of my transition to my new team is making use of the available resources. We lack the machines and raw material to manufacture, which is the critical step in transferring blueprint to cold steel. At the same time, I had to establish my reputation and credibility. They see me at first as no one other than the opponent who put away their dream for a first-ever championship.

Now as a part of Loyola Robotics, six months later, our work is showcased at Waterloo Regionals and what a different result we had compared to its previous season! This year we were part of the 1st-seeded alliance while my former beloved Beaverworx is seeded at second-last. Loyola went on to be undefeated in the playoffs and was later crowned as tournament champion for the first time in the 10-year team history. How worthy a celebration..

To describe my feeling, I flipped through the dictionary looking for a suitable word...couldn't find one. So I invented a new word, and hopefully you can share my understanding of this term.

My first season with Loyola was treasured with memories and experiences that were both exciting and, at the same time, "icesolated". It sure felt great to win, but on a deeper level, a feeling of icesolation shadowed over the celebration when I witnessed the destruction of a fine and respectable organization that I was a founding member of, a team I am so familiar with. Yet this time around, I'm addressing "Beaverworx" as "them", and "Northern Knights" as "us". I'm the one getting the cold-shoulder from a team I used to call my own.

If anything, I wish both teams could win. But there's nothing I can do about it.

It's icy cold.

Wait....ing...wait what?

You know...now that I think about this topic of "waiting" a tad more, waiting isn't such a bad thing after all. I'm saying this not because of the fact that I got to the Bus terminal at 10PM hoping to catch the 10:30 bus when the ticket I bought was for 20:30PM departure...Brilliant?

Nah..it wasn't so bad after all. I've had a really good conversation with a guy throughout the entire time; it made the 2-hour wait seem momentary.

So what good is waiting? Well, imagine life without the wait. Not only it'd be chaotic, there will be no life.

Picture a day when you don't have to wait for anything. All green-lights from home to school or your work, no more waiting for the ladies enter before you do, no more waiting in the elevator. Sounds good to me, but in fact, if you eliminate any sort of waiting, you'd teleport to your office, and that weekly or biweekly cheque for alllll your hard work you've been waiting for? Boom, it's instantaneously deposited into your bank, no more waiting in line at the bank. And that day you meet a special someone? That'd be now, no more waiting! As a bonus, you two get married, have kid, and all the sudden, they're in college and you're planning retirement..but as soon as you planned that, you're dead. Time didn't wait for you... As you can see, the ideas are starting to get a "little" pathetic.

Without waiting, there ceases to be the existence of time; but I'll leave that for someone mathematician to prove.

Without waiting, there will not be that anticipation for Christmas morning when you open the box with an iPhone inside, or that that heart-pausing suspense as you sit uncomfortably at your desk waiting to see your grades on that English paper, or the nerve-wrecking when you see a long separated someone. Waiting makes us appreciative of these moments, be it worthwhile or a waste of time.

There are certain moments we wait for, I'm pretty sure you have many of your own that you're thinking of right now. As "painful" as the wait could be, waiting gives rise to opportunities to those who are prepared to take the risk. We are constantly waiting for the right moment..the right moment to speak, the critical moment to stand up, the exact moment to act, and that moment to... the one you've been waiting for since you're 15.

It could be as a simple conversation with a friend you have just met while waiting for a bus, or the proposal that could increase the company profit by 400% that you've prepared for months to the board of directors , what we decide to do during the time we wait..that's when this thing called "life" takes place.

Wait.......ing

Do you ever think about how much time we spent waiting for something? I did, while waiting. I remember waiting for the day I enter college, waiting to be independent...

I waited in line to get my breakfast this morning, waited in another line to pay for my breakfast. I waited for the light to turn green to cross the road, waited for the masses to get out before entering Maass 100. I waited for the next lecture to finish, waited for the last lecture to end. Then I waited a bit more at the Metro station, waited a little longer to get to my destination.

The wait for sunset didn't seem long over the engagement in the Fifth Dimension, though disrupted by the wearing of my body couldn't wait to receive a little supper. But I waited..waited for the sky to darken, the air to shrink, the moon to rise... I waited for the clock to strike twelve, then pick up some grocery on my way home. I'm waiting at the terminal for bus transfer, sitting down, writing this, and waiting for the last train to come.

The midnight commuters carry a common sober look; their countenance says it all about the day's happening... Their slight lean against the poles of the train, just to buy a little comfort while waiting a few minutes until they get home, and wait for the sunrise to start fresh another day in their lives.

We wait for everything.
Waiting for that day, for that person
perhaps someone to enter our life
perhaps a special someone to love.
While we wait, someone, too, await us
But the wait will be over one day,
At a random place, a random time
As she says,
"What took you so long.."

Theory of the Fifth Dimension- PART II: The Fifth Dimension

The human mind is a complex thing. Different philosophical schools have argued for centuries over the nature of the existence of the mind as a separate identity from the physical brain. I'm not going get into the cyclical debate over that matter (no pun intended), rather, I'm taking a practical approach to establish the theory of a Fifth Dimension of the human mind.

NATURE OF THE 5D

At times we are engaged in some activities, we mentally separate from our physical selves. Those phenomena are common if you were to have any experience in competitive sport, yoga, or solving differential equations etc. Those activities previously described are temporary state of "physical detachment". However, for some people, they live almost completely in worlds they created in their minds. THAT world, is what I call the Fifth Dimension. The fact that time does not stop during the engagement in this "mind-away-from-body" period proves that it is an extension of the fourth dimension (hence Fifth) instead of having its own entity.

As spontaneous as a touch of rain drop on the skin, the transition from 4D world to the 5D is instantaneous. A connection is made to the 5D when the mind is highly engaged in a series of thoughts, in which the physically senses are perceived but not processed.

SOCIAL PHENOMENA

Some people find the 4D world disagreeable. For whatever reason they aren't content with a world that is flawed, filled with imperfections (by these, I mean a 4D world that is different from what they wanted it to be, relative to those standards, the world is imperfect)

Therefore, instead of having to encounter "real" people and do "real" things, they complement their life experiences in the fifth dimension, where they can even form ideal friendship and relationship, and experiences they could not otherwise pertain in the 4D world.

SOURCES OF 5D ENGAGEMENT

As established neuroscience suggests, people's emotions and experiences are much associated with certain types of neurotransmitters released. To live is to experience these emotions, which is ultimately controlled by chemistry; while one feels the adrenaline rush of sighting the finish-line, another experience the same chemistry by obtaining the most powerful weapon in a violence-based video game. Any experience from a virtual reality that results in changes in body chemistry is due to the existence of a fifth dimension.

If I were chatting with a friend on Facebook while someone asks me what I'm doing, I'd say I'm chatting with a friend, EVEN THOUGH, what I'm physically doing is looking at a 2D plane while pressing buttons with my fingers. But, my mind is engaged in the fifth dimension while I receive all the emotions (not that I have emotions..if you know me) and chemistry as if I were to talk to the person in my room. I had to talk to this friend via a virtual space called internet, because I am unable to do so in the 4D world.

ON UNIVERSAL 5D

The highly established fifth dimension bothers can be misleading. Do understand that I'm not saying the 5D is a negative dimension, the 5D gave us the Oscar movies to watch and Pulitzer books to read. But, with the outpour of 21st century technology in "highly-realistic virtual-reality simulators", some people extended their engagement in the fifth dimension just a little too much. What can I say to those people? What can I say to those who watches TV 14 hours a day, those who is "dating" 3 hours on MSN each night, those who live on Facebook (or the internet) and updates status three times every hour in order to get attention, and me, who just spent 30 minutes once in a while typing these useless articles on an insight that he thinks is worthy to share?

What should be said, has been said.
Thanks Voltaire.

Theory of the Fifth Dimension - PART I: Summary of "What is Where, up to now"

This came to me one day when I was having lunch at the Bishop Mountain Hall cafeteria. In enjoying my meal, I lost track of time and did not realize the time that had passed. These thoughts gave rise to the theory of the Fifth Dimension.

DEFINITION

I'll begin with a definition of "dimension": property of space (dictionary.com). Mathematically, there exists a 4-Dimensional world. While modern physics theories have suggested up to 12 dimensions, I'm not getting into that. Five is enough for me.

KNOWN DIMENSIONS

We start with 1D, it's simply a virtual point. Take a point on a Cartesian plane for instance, the point (4,3) is not the same as (3.999999, 3.000001). One could extend this argument that a point is finite, therefore infinitely small change to it entirely changes the property of the point. The "Big Bang" theory gave rise to the concept of compacting infinity into a point in space. Therefore a point is infinitely small or infinitely large, depending on its parameters.

2D is simply a plane, 3D is the dimension of the world we live in; we can mathematically represent any physical object. As an analogy, 3D maps "what is where"; for example, a treasure box with width of 20cm, length 40cm, and height of 50cm, is located at the location (400, 300, -20).

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity brings 4th Dimension into consideration. The 4th Dimension is somewhat non-trivial, it consists the property of time. One can think of the 4th dimension as the independent variable that corresponds to a 3D representation at that instant. Take the previous example, the 4D addition would be, "The treasure box....on January 8th, 1991.

Now... the fifth.

PROBLEMS WITH THE 4-D

Though the 4D is sufficient to map "What is where at what time, up to now", it did not take in the account of the human mind. I shall introduce the 5th Dimension in PART II