The Rainy Season

It has rained for more than a couple of days. I've longed for sunshine and a clear sky, but it is always gloomy. Occasionally it has drizzled, but more often, it has turned into heavy rain.

I recalled those sunny days when I could play in the park, at the beach, and in the front yard of our garden. Instead, I was trapped inside the house, just hearing the raindrops hitting the ground—which was covered by a shallow layer of water—and the house, which is made of wood and metal.

From another perspective, the rain is good or even necessary. It helps the flowers and vegetables in the garden to grow, as it provides water and nutrients. It wipes away the dust on the leaves and the dirt on the cement path.

A rainstorm is like a period of turbulence in life. You may not want it to come, and you might struggle to avoid it. But sometimes, it is just a necessary part of life.

Rain falling down is still much better than drying out in continuously endless sunny days.

Indoor playground

 My toddler seemed to know today was Sunday. He urged me to go to the shopping centre, so I had to put him into a pram and push him there. As soon as we arrived at the outdoor playground on Level Two of Westfield Chermside, it started to drizzle. After a while, heavy rain was pouring down. We moved back indoors, wandering around the shopping centre for an hour, and then went back home at his request.

After his older brother finished his gymnastics class, we drove to an indoor playground in a neighbouring suburb. It was very crowded today, maybe due to the rain. The two boys took off their shoes and swiftly climbed into the play area. I followed them to supervise. I had to bend my back as the height inside the facilities was too short. The older brother ran too fast, quickly skipping past a number of obstacles until he could no longer be seen.

"Where's my boy?" I said while climbing and searching. The little one followed me to help find his older brother. After spending a couple of minutes, I eventually found him on the top level. "I see you!" I cried out. He merrily ran away, asking me to catch him again. After a few runs, he said, "Daddy, could you pretend to be a monster and play the monster game?" I agreed and modulated my voice. "I'm a monster to catch you boys! Wow!"

The two boys ran away while giggling. When I approached them and stretched out my arms to catch them, they quickly hid near the ladders or slid down the slide. "You can't catch me!" they laughed at me. "Yeah! But I can't play on the play facilities."

There was another little boy who saw us playing and came up to me. He introduced himself and said, "Let me join you." Soon after, he became a friend to my older son.

Whether it was because of the weather or the crowdedness of the playground, we felt very sweaty. In a short time, the boys' hair was completely wet. We stopped for a while, bought some snacks, and returned to play after eating.

On the way home, I asked the brothers, "Are you very happy today?" No one answered me. I turned my head back. The little one had fallen asleep with a smile. The older brother also seemed to be tired and exhausted.

Playing with the children was such great fun that I felt as though I had returned to my own childhood. I didn't have the opportunity to play in a similar environment when I was a child. Therefore, I viewed playing with the brothers, to some extent, as compensation for my past.

My Self-study of Classical Guitar

After a few years of living in Australia, I wanted to learn a Western musical instrument in 2013. At first, I considered the flute or recorder, but they were too close to the Chinese dizi and xiao that I was playing, and I did not want to stop what I was used to. Later, I thought about the violin, but I did not think Grandma would support it as the sound was too loud. Eventually, I found the classical guitar, which generates a warm and gentle sound. Holding a guitar against my bosom was like cuddling a lover to sing gently. However, due to the study burden, I did not have time to learn it. This plan was temporarily postponed.

Regarding my study at QUT, I was grateful to have a principal supervisor who appreciated me a lot for a long time during the course. However, the situation changed dramatically after I came back to Brisbane from the ICCV conference at the end of 2013. He had no longer supported me for anything and instead intended to delay my graduation with irrational reasons. I could not understand the sudden change, which was too unexpected, but I argued with him, saying, "I studied day and night, from Monday to Sunday, with the purpose of graduating earlier. Thus, I think the time I spent in three years was equivalent to another student who studied for five years."

I knew I was lying to him as I didn't study that much, especially compared to some classmates like Kien, Ahilan, and Rajitha. But what else could I do? "Ah, I should strike!" I thought. Therefore, in the following couple of months, I didn't study at all. Instead, I bought a classical guitar from a local music store and learned it by myself. It was still not totally by myself, as I watched a lot of YouTube videos during that period.

Seeing my progress come slowly, I felt I had become a useless human resource in the eyes of my principal supervisor. He finally agreed to let me finish the course. My classical guitar playing then had to be interrupted when the final seminar of my degree was scheduled.

At the end of 2014, I joined the BPM team led by Arthur, who had appreciated me a lot some years ago. However, in a professional development review at the end of 2015, he stood on Moe's side to blame me significantly, using some irrational reasons. He seemed to be very unwilling to do that, but I could not understand why he, as the leader of the team, had to do something that he didn't want to do under Moe's request.

At home, I resumed my guitar playing. Despite still not being able to play anything smoothly, the gentle sounds did soothe my broken heart. When I touched the strings, my heart found a remedy through my fingers.

 My contract with QUT terminated in early 2017. Before I went to China for a job at Shenzhen University, I practised a lot. From then on, I could play a simple melody.

As soon as I arrived in China, my parents bought a metal-string acoustic guitar for me. They knew I'd suffered a lot. They hoped the guitar could give me some delight in life. They urged me to find a teacher. I had a couple of lessons with a teacher in a musical training centre which was mainly for young kids. I quit later as I didn't think it was that useful. My understanding of music was different from the teacher's.

After my marriage in 2019, I started classical guitar practice again. I began to watch tutorials online. I felt the online lessons were wonderful. I even purchased a few courses on platforms like Udemy. Slowly, I made progress every day. I learned the alternation of fingers during playing. I learned to play chords. To accompany my guitar playing, I learned music theory, composition, playing guitar while singing, the care of fingernails, and changing strings. There was much practice required for every one of these aspects.

Later, I investigated using a guitar strap to play guitar while standing. From 2025, I've practised almost every day.

 Practising guitar has integrated into a routine for my daily life. Many a night, I am holding a classical guitar, cuddling it like a beautiful lover, plucking the strings gently, as if murmuring with a lover, and devoting myself to the world of music. Then, my soul is relaxed.

Talking from Nobel Prizes

 The Nobel Prizes in 2026 were announced last week. As usual, the announcement of the Nobel Prizes can always be controversial and trigger much discussion. When the Nobel Prize for Physics was announced in 2024, a familiar name caught my attention: the winner, Geoffrey Hinton. He is, of course, one of the most famous machine learning pioneers alive. However, shouldn't his research be in a field other than physics? Yeah, the name of his machine learning model is the Boltzmann Machine, but there is little connection to the physical world, which is similar to two different people with no connection sharing the same name.

In late 2013, when I was conducting research in computer vision, Clinton suggested a reference about facial expression recognition to me, which was based on a variation of the Boltzmann Machine. I found Hinton's paper published in 1984. This was the first time I had encountered a paper that was too challenging to understand in a short time. Maybe I had too many challenges to tackle during that period, making my progress slow. In addition, Sridha seemed to have changed into another person since I came back from attending ICCV 2013 in Sydney. He no longer appreciated or supported me. Nevertheless, the difficulty of understanding the Boltzmann Machine made me lose some confidence. I was very glad in 2024 to see Hinton awarded a Nobel Prize, which meant the paper itself was hard enough.

During my days in academia, I was grateful to work with someone who had the same capability as any Nobel Prize winner. I mean Professor Wil van der Aalst. He was the first author of the C-YAWL paper, but I didn't know he was that famous when I was working on C-YAWL. In fact, his contributions could definitely be awarded two Turing Awards. At the end of 2014, he visited QUT. I told him that I was the master's degree student from several years ago who did the C-YAWL development, and that I was glad to meet him, the first author of the paper.

"Ah, I see! You did C-YAWL!" He sighed and said he was really very glad to see me in the BPM team. I told him that I'd finished my studies and migrated to Australia.

"You should be very glad to settle and work here. I know many people in China want to migrate to Australia, as I often visit Tsinghua University," he said. He gave me a gift, which was a school bag that QUT had given to him.

My job in the BPM team at QUT was not going smoothly. Rather, I thought I had been bullied by my supervisors again and again. I didn't know why. In the end, I lodged an official complaint—not about the bullies, but about the authorship matter of the C-YAWL paper. I thought Wil would stand by my side. However, he denied my contributions, which left me rather shocked. In fact, I just wanted to have a reconciliation on that matter at the time. I think the authorship of the paper will eventually damage his reputation if he cannot achieve a reconciliation with me.

One day, in my university dormitory roommates' WeChat group chat, I said I didn't think those with Nobel Prizes or Turing Awards were really all better than me in research. At the very least, I was better than Professor Wil van der Aalst in process mining, and much better than Professor Simon Lucey, who led the Australian Machine Learning Institute in Adelaide. My roommates laughed at me. I found it hard to explain it to them. I was disappointed that they didn't believe me, so I quit the group without any hesitation.

Outdoor Painting

Yesterday we went to the Emergency Services Expo in 7th Brigade Park, which was not far from home.

I noticed this event through a painting group on Facebook called “Urban Sketching”, which organises outdoor sketching from life around Brisbane every week. Since I picked up my painting brush again last year after abandoning it more than 20 years ago, I have mainly painted individually, with occasional play sessions with my young sons. I have longed for communication and discussion. That’s why I suggested going there, imagining I could even make friends with the same hobby.

It was hard to park our car. We drove along the edge of the park and parked our car in a quiet street nearby. We were surprised to see so many activities and various types of vehicles, including police cars, ambulances, fire engines, and bin trucks. My toddler was most interested in playing on the jumping castle, and my older boy was excited to get lots of toys from each organisation, which were positioned under umbrellas.

“Where are the painters in the Facebook group?” I puzzled. After a while, I found an old man sitting on a bench in a pavilion, with a large sketchbook on his lap. I wanted to say hello to him but decided to hold off for a while, as I thought I should finish those activities with the kids and then went there to draw together. A pavilion with a water tap next to it and surrounded by trees was a wonderful spot for painting landscapes from life.

However, I underestimated the number of organisations at the expo. When we finished walking around and participating in those activities, it was already afternoon. When I arrived at the pavilion, nobody was there. Later, I saw a group of people gathering underneath a big tree where there was a great shadow, which was precious on this very hot summer day. On the ground, there was a pile of sketchbooks lying around.

I went to greet them and said, “It is a pity that I missed the painting session as my boys were attracted to the games.”

“Yeah, you cannot paint anything with young kids. Members in the group are basically in the retirement age range, but we organise events every week. You’re welcome to join the next activity.”

We returned to the pavilion, brought out the painting tools and paper, and the two boys merrily started to create their artworks. It was still fun to paint in the open air, despite still only being with my two young boys.

My Journey to Cantonese Opera

My classmates did not believe I could speak fluent Cantonese when I had just started my bachelor's degree course at Xidian University. "We know a lot of people migrating to Guangdong Province!" they said. In their minds, I was one of them. I then explained that my ancestors had been settled in Southern China for a long, long time. There had been at least several generations in my hometown before I was born. They didn't believe this, as they thought my Mandarin was too good, and most significantly, I didn't know any Cantonese pop songs from Hong Kong.

Until one day, we went to a KTV, and I was urged to sing a song. I browsed the list of songs on the machine and couldn't find a song I knew, as I seldom sang pop songs. However, I quickly glanced at the category and found the item "Cantonese Opera." I then sang a piece of famous Cantonese Opera—Fragrant Sacrifice （香夭）from Princess Flower (帝女花）. From then on, everyone in my class knew I could speak Cantonese, as everyone knew Cantonese Opera had higher requirements than normal pop songs. In reality, Cantonese is my mother tongue. The people in the area where I grew up speak standard Cantonese, whereas people from my hometown village speak a different dialect. But I had left the village at the age of four years old.

Mum and her mother, who was my grandma, were enthusiasts of Cantonese Opera. From an early age, I was submerged in Cantonese Opera music. Traditionally, in the region where I lived, both Cantonese Opera and Cantonese music had flourished in history. Despite this, those traditional cultures had declined, especially in our generation. Grandpa often bought us a large volume of cassettes of Cantonese Opera from Hong Kong. Almost every child has a period of rebellion, especially around puberty. I know I was an exception to this. From childhood to adulthood, my mum has been the most important person to me, and I always listen to her. Her influence on me is always much stronger than that of any of my friends.

Therefore, when all my friends became interested in pop music, I still stuck to Cantonese Opera. Intrinsically, I think there are other reasons which may be more dominant. First, I loved traditional literature, especially poems. In senior high school, I was the best student in this area in my class. The language used in Cantonese Opera was close to traditional poems in China. Second, I was keen to listen to complicated music. The structures and melodies of pop music are simply too simple to my ears. Third, I liked to play Chinese bamboo flutes, dizi and xiao, which traditionally are used for Chinese traditional operas. Fourth, I have a good voice with a wide pitch range that allows me to sing both the male and female characters.

I had been addicted to playing the xiao during the time when I lived in Xi'an. Mostly I played Cantonese opera music. I keep this hobby as my daily routine until now. The stories in Cantonese Opera have given me much inspiration and taught me a lot, which includes history, traditional values, and literature. In the days of research, I often listened to Cantonese opera music while conducting research.

In early 2012, I applied for a tutor position at a university when I was studying. A programme leader said he wanted to appoint me as a lecturer. However, this triggered huge objections from others in the same research group. "He is not good at English!" "Opportunities should be first given to people born in Australia!" "He doesn't like to work with others." "It seems he is rather confused." "How ridiculous to work on weekends to try to graduate earlier, which I've never heard of!" "Why give that many opportunities to an overseas student from China?" As I didn't want to hear any of these words, I put on a headset, opened YouTube in the browser, and listened to my favourite Cantonese opera music.

In recent years, I've read some books to know more about this traditional art. I noticed that the education systems for Cantonese opera were different between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province. 

I like Cantonese Opera. It is the traditional culture of my hometown. I'm proud to be from a place with such a treasured culture.

Sowing

Mum had harvested vegetables in the vegie patch of our front yard, leaving an empty space with no plants. "Do you want to plant some flowers?" I asked the two boys. "Yes, to plant flowers!" they agreed merrily. "What do you want to plant? Sunflowers, bougainvilleas, roses, or others?" "Sunflowers! Yellow flowers!" Sunflowers seemed to be their preferred choice.

The other day when I was at Woolworths, I purchased two bags of seeds: one for sunflowers and the other for wildflowers in various colors. After the older brother finished school, I led them to the garden patch. I showed them how to use a spade or a shovel to dig a hole and then put seeds inside. Finally, I told them to cover the seeds with soil. "In this way, the magpies will not be able to find them. Otherwise, they will fly here to eat them," I said. The last step was, of course, to water them.

To encourage the boys in their gardening work, I purchased an elephant-shaped watering can from Kmart for them. "To have flowers, you have to water them every day!"

I think it is very meaningful to guide the boys in sowing flowers. Sowing is the effort that we devote. Don't envy the flowers in your neighbors' gardens. If you want your garden to be flourished with petals, you have to first sow!

About Simulation Techniques

The final project of my undergraduate degree, which was entitled "Multicast Switching Technologies in High Speed Routers", was supervised by Associate Professor Fan Yang. I chose him to be my supervisor as I had a very positive impression of him in his lectures on switching technologies. One day I sent him an email to discuss a statement from the textbook, which had made me rather confused. "Your understanding is correct, and the way to express the idea in the textbook is a little misleading," he responded quickly. "How would you like to do the project?" he asked me. "If you really want to do an excellent project, I can guide you to use a couple of network simulation tools such as NS2 or OPNET." "Yes, I want to try my best and learn as much as possible from it!" I said with a determined voice.

However, I soon became regretful for this. In the final semester of university, I first devoted myself to finding a job. I wanted to find an employer who could allow me to break the contract with ZTE. After many unsuccessful attempts, I had given up. Instead, I used almost all available time to prepare for taking the IELTS test, with a plan to study in Australia. After finishing the examination, it was merely a week or so before the due date of the final project. At the time, it had no longer been enough for me to learn those simulation tools. I was thinking of writing a program by myself from scratch. I wrote an email to my supervisor about the basic idea, and he confirmed with me that the basic idea was rational. Therefore, in my final project report, there were a number of pages of a C program appended, which simulated an algorithm from a paper. It was a console program without any visualization. What the program did was simulate the algorithm to calculate throughputs.

In July of 2008, when I'd just graduated, I was engaged in the training program for fresh graduates in ZTE. I was assigned to the department of CDMA network planning and optimization. In the real world, network planning typically relies on simulation as the initial step. This is because setting up a wireless network is of high cost and complicated. Many calculations are done inside the simulation tools. After the installation of network facilities, a road test is compulsory to test the signal strength in every corner of the place, and adjustments are usually needed as a later step.

In 2009, I enrolled in a course at QUT in Australia. In the second semester, I enrolled in a unit about operating systems. The virtual machine is a type of simulation which simulates the hardware from the ground up. At the same time, I was doing a project in the Microsoft eResearch Centre. The project was related to the Windows CE embedded system, where simulation was used as a tool for development.

In early 2010, I enrolled in a unit called "AI for Games", which taught computer games agent development. This was probably my favourite unit at QUT. In this unit, we explored the OpenSim platform, an open-source project written in Mono.NET. It was a Second Life simulation platform. Various algorithms had been learned during this time, with the honey bees optimization algorithm, the Mini-Max human chess competition algorithm, and the distributed behaviour models that used to model collective behaviours among the most impressive ones.

Several years later, I began to draft a thesis on the topic of "Unusual Event Detection in Crowded Scenes" in the area of intelligent computer vision. I realized that many abnormal events with security interest are impossible to obtain with a sufficient number of instances in real-world surveillance footage. "When we can't get them in the real world, how do we test them?" I wondered. Then I suddenly thought of the OpenSim simulation that I'd learned before. If the videos generated by computer graphical simulation were not looked as real enough, I thought we could also use a set of robots to simulate. While a group of robots moved together, we could apply the distributed behavior models to simulate movements in the real world. Then in the conclusion chapter, I said cross-disciplinary research, such as including simulation techniques, was compulsory in this research topic.

In 2015, I was working on a paper on resource allocation management in the area of process mining. We first used simulated data with a well-known ground truth to evaluate the algorithm in ideal conditions. Then we applied it to a real-world dataset, and verified it with business feedback. Professor Wil van der Aalst, who was the "father of process mining", had given the section I drafted very positive comments, which I had been very proud of until now.

However, I do believe simulation is overused in telecommunications engineering research. I've read many papers in these areas, and many of them only have simulation-based results. I've always considered those papers as incomplete. "When are you going to start simulation?" Professor Huang urged me when he was pushing me to have a paper in pattern recognition, where simulation was rarely used, when I was working in Shenzhen University.

In around 2020, I started some development for mobile applications. Simulations for different models of mobile devices were used extensively to develop mobile apps on a desktop computer.

My University Roommates

The summer of the year 2008 was full of both amusements and anxieties. I knew that I had been deceived by ZTE but I couldn't do anything to change the result. The study in the final semester of university was rather relaxed, as we only needed to finish the final project, which everyone would be able to pass, whereas we couldn't get the highest rank no matter how well we did, as the highest rank had to be given to those who would continue to study postgraduate studies at the same university, which was a ridiculous policy. Games, dinings, parties, and various farewell activities had fulfilled the life of a student at this time. I was not sure when I would be able to meet those who lived with me in the same room for four years once we departed from the campus.

The time in ZTE passed quickly, as every day I would be heavily engaged in the training organized by the company for fresh graduates. I didn't realize the days would be that hard to spend after I quit the job.

I missed the many nights I chatted with roommates on bed until falling asleep. We shared many experiences in life. While they were jealous of my family background as I had a grandma living in Australia and they sometimes said I would go to Australia sooner or later, I was in my deep mind jealous of those who grew up in the countryside. In my blurred memory, I had longed for the natural world since my family moved to the urban area from a rural village when I was still a toddler. Chen Chao said his hometown was surrounded by mountains and there was a river that many students had to swim across to go to school, which sounded like the most romantic style of life to me. Many a time I urged Liu Zhengqiang  to ring the phone number of the dormitory opposite to ours, only to get some excitements when hearing someone from Room 317 get up to answer the phone while the call suddenly stopped. Most of the time, Mo Can was silent. But suddenly he would utter one to two wonderful ideas that impressed others to remind us for his existence.

I missed the many days we went to classrooms together, we went to library together, we mischievously peed in the bush on the river bank together after dining out, we fought with each other with snow balls in winter, and we played in the swimming pool together in summer when Zhang Dehao pushed me to the pool unexpectedly only envying I could swim. They didn't believe I could speak Cantonese simply because I had been seldomly interested in pop music from Hong Kong until one day I sang a piece of passage from a famous Cantonese opera in a KTV, which had made them startled.

In the several months after leaving Xi'an, I often thought of the old days and was eager to know how others were. It seemed that I was just on a holiday that was longer than a normal summer vacation rather than having permanently leaving Xi'an. I occasionally felt a bit regretful to leave Xi'an too early, but if I continued a postgraduate course there, many of my friends had departed and lived elsewhere. 

“Are they talking about me?" I wondered. "Do they still remember me?" I wondered. "Do they know I am under huge pressures?" I didn't wonder, as I knew they weren't. They envied me for studying in Australia but they didn't understand the pressures I was suffering. They had always thought of me growing up in a very rich family, and they couldn't believe that every step I'd taken was in fact full of challenges. 

One day in a forum of our university, I read an anonymous post about a fresh graduate's half year's experience in a small, non-capital city in Sichuan Province. "Is it written by Chen Chao?" I wondered. Not sure why I would think it was written by Chen Chao, as it really didn't expose the author. However I did have a feeling from the way of narrative that it must be written by my roommate Chen Chao. I was mostly impressed that the article mentioned that one of his very good friends had gone overseas, making him rather lonely. "Am I the one overseas? His very good overseas friend must be me."

Time passed fast. Several years had been passed before I had the opportunity to meet one of them. In December of 2016, more than eight years after our graduation, I met Mo Can again in Shanghai. Despite he still remembered and was concerned about me, he'd lost ideas about many topics I discussed with him, including academic life, Australia, and immigration. I had felt the distance between us, despite the Shanghai gathering was the best among all that I met my old classmates! I met a few friends from Room 317 in Hangzhou, and felt rather disappointed with the coolness.

In 2017 I returned to China to work for a year and a half. In 2018, unexpectedly I met my French roommate Zhang Dehao and my Hebei province roommate Jia Chenggang. I had to confess that there had been a wall among our minds. The wall was caused by time and physical distance. I then realized that I was even more comfortable with two of my closest Chinese friends in Australia, as at least we could understand each other's lives better.

Classmates from our dormitory room have set up a WeChat group. At first we had discussions regularly. However, as time passed, I found my mind had become more and more distant from theirs. Eventually I decided to quit, as I had been tired of arguing with them.

Friendship is always unable to fight with time and distance, no matter how close you once were!

My Little Sketch Book

I have a sketchbook that is so small that I can even put it into a pocket, and as a result, I can easily carry it everywhere and sketch whenever I am interested in something in my view. Last year, when I resumed my hobby as a painter, I typically started painting from photos. However, I later found it a very bad idea. The photos contain too much useless information, while they often miss those important details. Through this process, I could understand in depth that photos are very different from paintings. Later, I found that fine art paintings from rapid sketchings from life are a good approach. That is, we first use a pen to rapidly draw when we are physically on the scene, then when we have time and settle well at home, we can paint a bigger picture with more details and in a more finished style.

I switched a few types of sketchbooks and eventually narrowed the small one. If we are going to sketch a complicated view, we can separate the view into a number of sketches. When we paint the full picture at home, there is a process to composite them into a single picture. I think this a suitable way for me to create art works.

From then on, I put my little sketchbook in my handbag. Whenever I am boring or see something interesting, I will use a ballpoint pen to sketch one to two pages. Gradually I found that life is full of curiosities, full of excitements, and full of hopes.

Shorncliffe Pier

 My wife had addressed the two boys again and again for not going too far away, as they would be tired and probably were not able to return back to where we parked our car when the brothers were riding a bicycle and a scooter. However, the brothers ignored her summon and rode as far as they could to Shorncliffe Pier.

Shorncliffe Pier was a wooden bridge that stretched from the shore to the middle of the ocean for tourism and fishing. There was a fishing group holding an activity when we arrived, and thus it was very crowded, with fishing rods leaning on the fence. As usual, there were also some people coming for leisure. A few of them were leading dogs, while some others were pushing baby prams. What a peaceful and pleasant view!

At the end of the pier was a pavilion with a white roof. It was very enchanting when viewing it from far away, just like a small white cottage floating on the ocean. It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday, with golden sunshine gleaming on the waves, which was more astonishing and splendid than any painting that was possible to create. I liked to hold a cup of coffee while leaning on the fence and listening to the ocean waves and winds, as well as feeling the warmth in the golden sunshine.

Shorncliffe Pier was one of our most frequently visited spots. When I came to Brisbane for a course at QUT, it was just a small, ragged pier, much shorter than the current one, despite the surrounding area being the same beautiful. I am not sure from which year on the current pier has been built.

When I had finished a contract with QUT and before the start of a new job at Shenzhen University, I often drove here with my parents. We tried fishing like others but couldn't catch any. Nevertheless, it fulfilled the days when I was rather dreary.

In recent years, when we came here, we had seen a couple of spectacles. One day we played here until dark and saw a full moon rising from the horizon of the ocean. On another day while there, it was raining. Then we could see a giant rainbow across the sea.

Jacaranda

On an early day of this school holiday, we went to New Farm Park. "I think we should admire the jacarandas, as spring has arrived," I suggested. 

My wife reminded me, "I'm afraid there will still be some days before the peak."

 I said, "Well, I have to agree with you, but it will be a pity if we wait for them to bloom and there's a heavy rain before we go there. So, I think we'd better go there today and we may visit again in a few weeks."

When we arrived at the park, we saw that a few jacaranda trees were blooming while others were not. "It is so interesting that the purple flowers are concentrated on a few trees," I said to the boys.

There's a pedestrian and cyclist shared path along the Brisbane River. The two boys merrily rode their bike and scooter there. We went across a few spots with blooming bougainvilleas, which decorated the riverbank greatly.

I saw a jacaranda tree standing next to a metal fence, with purple flowers flourishing on the branches. Inside the metal fence was a quiet garden with a bench just underneath the jacaranda tree. I then imagined to be the owner of this quiet garden, sitting on the bench under the jacaranda tree and leisurely seeing the purple petals falling to the ground. This gave me the inspiration to paint the watercolour painting called "Jacaranda" recently.

Not long after that, the boys became tired. It was too hot to do sports, even though summer hadn't come yet. On the way home, I agreed with the boys to purchase a couple of bags of seeds to grow flowers in the garden.

Ocean Views

I am grateful to live in the northern suburbs of Brisbane, as it is so convenient to go to the seashore. In the old days, when I was living in Indooroopilly, it was not that easy.

As the warmer season has arrived, we’ve resumed our activities at swimming pools. Despite living close to the Chermside swimming pool, we are keen to travel a little further to the Sandgate Aquatic Centre, which is located on the shore. Next to it is a café with great ocean views. My wife enjoys holding a cup of coffee and taking photographs.

The weather was not good yesterday, but as painters usually believe, bad weather can be more beautiful. When the sky was overcast and the trees were shaken fiercely by winds from the ocean, the view was naturally like an ink and wash painting. Though there was a big umbrella covering our table when we had lunch in the café, we still got wet during a shower, as the winds blew the rain at us from all directions, making it impossible to escape.

After lunch, the two boys — one riding a bike and the other riding a scooter — were chasing each other on the path along the seashore. The tide had receded a great deal, leaving a soil beach that was wet and mostly covered by shallow water. It was interesting to see water birds wandering leisurely on the beach.

The trees on the shore were very special. Having experienced winds and rains from the sea, they had grown into shapes and forms that we typically couldn’t see elsewhere. They stood on the shore like some most delicate statues, crafted by Mother Nature.

In a few spots on the shore, we saw strange rocks. Occasionally, there were crabs hiding on the rocks.

I will never get tired of ocean views. Different places on the shore have different spectacles. They are different at different times, under different weather conditions, and in different seasons.

My International Friends - 2

 In the second semester of 2009, I was enrolled in a unit called "Enterprise Software Architecture," which is probably the most influential unit to me. The second assignment was to work in a group to develop a service-oriented architecture system. My Vietnamese friend, my Malaysian friend, and I formed a group. Every late afternoon, we would gather together to do the assignment. Our Vietnamese friend was very good at C# and became the main developer for the C# component. I took charge of the Java component, and our Malaysian friend focused more on the report as his English was the best among the three of us. When we were tired or hungry, we would go to Queen Street to buy food for dinner. Besides studies, we had lots of conversations, which allowed me to know much about life in their countries. I was very grateful to know them in my first year after arriving in Australia, as they gave me a strong feeling of friendship after I left my homeland.

We almost got full marks on the assignment, and my Vietnamese friend said it was like a miracle as too many of his friends failed the unit. This excellent academic performance directly led me to the opportunity to work for C-YAWL in the BPM team with Marcello, who was from Italy and had just got his PhD degree earlier that year. I'd heard many times that he was the best PhD student QUT ever had in this area. The main reason for me to choose to work with him for a project was that he still didn't have any research students. I thought it was more likely to be able to do a challenging project with him. I had a very good impression of him in the unit, as whenever I raised a question, he could answer it clearly and rationally. Many years later when I joined the BPM team again, I often felt it a pity to not be able to work with Marcello, whom I viewed as more of a friend than a teacher.

During the summer holiday, I stayed mostly in the office of the BPM team on Margaret Street. I made a few friends, including an exchange student from Tsinghua University and a PhD student under Arthur from Iran. I was very unfamiliar with the culture in Iran. However, through sincere conversations, we could still communicate. It was then that I realized that problems in an individual's life are typically quite similar, no matter where we are from. He wanted to do research as he felt proved to himself if he could solve tough problems. However, he felt it too hard to progress in his research, putting him under huge pressure. In addition, he still couldn't win Arthur's trust to provide him enough financial support. I could fully understand his dilemma.

The start of the first semester in 2010 was rather melancholy. My Vietnamese friend and Thailand friend had graduated. I almost couldn't find them anymore on campus. Except one day I saw a familiar back view—my Thailand friend was photographing on campus. He said he'd got a job and used half a year's earnings to buy a camera.

My mind was rather disturbed during that period under financial pressures and anxiety due to immigration policy changes. Moreover, my scholarship to the SAIVT research group was said to have failed. "Is it really that competitive? I don't imagine who can get the scholarship when you can't!" Marcello said when I told him. "Two students from Sri Lanka just joined the lab." I said, "I think I've lost to them."

To make myself happier, I enrolled in a unit called "AI for Games," which was lectured by Rune for computer games' agent development. Most students in this unit were in the major of computer games, and they really liked what they were studying. "In fact, you're hard-pressed to find a job in the computer games industry!" Rune frankly said, "But you're most likely to get a job in other related areas like simulation or computer graphics." I asked my Malaysian friend whether he was worried about a job. "Not at all. If only one in the class can find such a job, I will be that one." He's always optimistic, and this was why I said I would be happier to study with him.

One afternoon, I entered the BPM team's office to submit all materials to Marcello. He was in Arthur's office. I heard Arthur blaming him with his fluent English in a bit of a Dutch accent. "Do you know how important this work is? You should give the project to a PhD student rather than a master's degree student by coursework!" Arthur said. "Arthur, but he's excellent. He's more excellent than any PhD student in the team," Marcello said. "I know he's excellent. I can't disagree with you on this point. But this is not your paper. It's Wil's!" Arthur said.

I then knocked on the door, and Arthur's face suddenly smiled merrily when I came in. I told him that if they found any issues in the codes I submitted, I would still try my best to fix them. Under Sridha's plan, I enrolled in a unit for signal processing and image processing. I grouped with two students for the assignment: one of them was from India, and the other was from Saudi Arabia. The student from Saudi Arabia often asked me to tutor him. Then later he said I was his friend. "Do you want to migrate to our country?" he said. "No," I refused politely. "I don't think I can master your language that easily."

Sea Birds

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny Sunday, and my family went to spend a day in a seashore park in Redcliffe Peninsula.

Having finished lunch in a pavilion, the two boys urged to play sands on the beach. The two brothers, each holding a bucket of toy spades and shovels, were digging the sands under a tree’s shadow on the beach, while my sister put the windmill on the sand. The winds from the ocean had spun the windmill to a speed that we had not seen before. My wife then walked into the water to have a feel of the cold. I picked up my sketchbook in my pocket and used a ballpoint pen to capture what I was seeing on the paper. I drew the line of pine trees along the shore, the lazily floating clouds in the sky, the calm ocean waves that were pushing to the beach, the people who were swimming and playing in the water, a couple of surfers far away in the ocean, as well as a few sea birds, some of which were flying over the sea while others were standing on the sands under the warm sunshine.

Long, long ago, when I was still a student at Queensland University of Technology, I had a few classmates from Sri Lanka who were devout to Buddhism. One day I asked them why some of them were vegetarians but others were not, and why some of them only ate chicken as the meat.

“In fact, chicken and beefs shouldn’t be considered as to be different!” Ahilan said. “People just copied the convention from Sri Lanka, whereas they don’t understand the reason. In Sri Lanka, some people only eat chicken because chicken were all imported, which means those chicken had been killed elsewhere and those who eat them do not involve in the process of killing them.”

He finally concluded, “In Australia, the beefs and chicken from supermarkets are generally the same in this perspective.”

“What will happen to me if I go to a Chinese restaurant to order a fish, and then the boss lead me to a glass container where a few fish are swimming, to select one for the dish?” I asked, and said that this was the normal procedure in a Chinese restaurant.

They were startled. Kanes said, “Then you will have to be an animal in the next reincarnation.”

“But no worries. Sometimes animals have a life better than human beings,” Ahilan said.

“Yes,” I said, imagining I were a cattle eating grass on a range with endless green covers and great mountain views.

“I mean you can be a puppy of a rich man,” Ahilan said. “In western countries, puppies are darlings to their masters.”

“No!” I shook my head firmly, thinking that a puppy would first be castrated when they were bought, and with a rope leashed on the neck while walking outside.

“I want to be a wild animal! In Australia, wildlife is protected by the law. They don't need to work or study. There are no life burdens like those of a human being. I want to be a possum climbing on the power lines with no anxiety or pressure.” Then I thought for a while and said, 'I think a wild bird is the best, as it can fly.”…

Then I walked to the group of seagulls on the beach while recalling the past. I tried to wave to them, as if to ask, “Would you mind accepting me as your peer?” 

However, they all flew away before I could approach any closer, leaving a fine row of footprints on the sand.

Mid-Autumn Festival

 I wish I were still a child who was interested in everything. I remember that I often longed for the Mid-Autumn Festival in my childhood. However, I’m not sure from which year on I’ve lost the interest. Like this year, I was only  aware of it a couple of days before the day, when I found Mum was busy buying mooncakes.

The two boys in the family are still at the ages that they could easily be curious about anything. They were giggling in the garden while holding the little lanterns, and chased each other merrily.

Mum had prepared some pastries as snacks for us to admire the moon in the garden.

Mid-Autumn Festival is the second most important traditional festival in Chinese culture, only after the Spring Festival. The moon at this night is usually considered as the brightest and most beautiful all over the year. It is a day for people to gather together and miss those whom they love and live far away. Despite people are living in different locations, we share the same moon. Thus, people are connected to each other at this night, while they raise their heads to admire the same moon.

The food Mum prepared for us was much simpler than what was usually eaten on this day in China. In China, we often have taros and fried river snails.

Besides China, many other places in Asia celebrate this festival, despite the forms and traditional meaning might be different. In Korea, it is often considered as the Korean Thanksgiving Day.

Autumn Moon Over a Calm Lake is a well-known piece of music. This is the music I play on xiao flute almost every year. This year, however, I tried to sing!

My International Friends

 Life is always full of uncertainties! I have heard many times that I might be able to go to Australia since I was a toddler. Who could have known that I would actually be able to live with my grandma in Australia more than 20 years after she migrated here? I arrived in Brisbane before Christmas in 2008, and in 2009, I started a master's degree course at QUT. Despite the pressure from almost all aspects of life, I really enjoyed making new friends from different cultures. Throughout the course, I had very few Chinese friends, as most of my friends were from countries other than China and Australia. I think this was because I was tired of Chinese culture and was eager to understand something different, and my English was still not fluent enough to freely discuss many topics with native speakers.

The most challenging subject I took in my first semester was called "Software Development", which covered a lot of software engineering in Java programming. I had never learned Java before, nor had I ever done graphical user interface programming. Therefore, I found it very hard to catch up and got a very poor mark on my first assignment. The second assignment was a group project, and fortunately, I found a student from Thailand to work with me. He was very good at Java. "QUT's courses are always too simple!" he said. "Too simple? I find it hard enough!" I was surprised by what he said.

Later, I understood that he only felt that way because he thought the tuition fees were too expensive. He had graduated with a bachelor's degree in computer science from a university in Thailand. Because the tuition fees in Australia were very expensive for his parents, he had very high expectations, and QUT's resources and the depth of the course could not satisfy him. We worked together and got almost full marks. He was probably the best student I met in my master's degree course, and the only one I felt I couldn't compete with.

I had a number of friends from India, though I have forgotten all of their names. For some unknown reason, I felt more comfortable chatting with them than with my Chinese peers. They spoke English much more fluently than me, despite their accents. The most interesting part about them was their view on marriage. Arranged marriage was still the dominant approach. Unlike in China, where arranged marriages are typically for young people who haven't had the opportunity to find a suitable partner by themselves, in India, it was more dominant among the upper class of society. Since my classmates were all from the upper class, they all got married to someone they didn't know back in India after finishing their degrees in Australia.

One of my best friends was an undergraduate student from Vietnam, whom I met because lectures were shared by both undergraduate and postgraduate students. "People in Vietnam don't like China, as we feel the threat!" he said.

"I understand your feelings," I said. The culture in Vietnam was very similar to that of China, but he liked to highlight the differences. "We have the year of the cat rather than the year of the rabbit," he said proudly.

We grouped together for an assignment in C++. Afterward, we went to the teacher's office to discuss adjusting our marks. "Do either of you want to do a research degree?" Dr. Maolin Tang asked. "You both are suitable for a PhD." After the meeting, my Vietnamese friend said, "How stupid it would be to do a PhD degree!" He added, "You have to spend a few years doing something boring, and then you get a job with a salary much lower than those working at tech giants like Microsoft and Google." I asked him why he felt research was boring. He said he had done a project with Dr. Moe Wynn.

Another of my best friends was a student from Malaysia. He said his grandparents were from China, but he had never been to China himself. Later, I learned his grandparents were from Guangdong Province. However, he couldn't speak Cantonese; instead, he was fluent in Mandarin. Similar to me, he liked to watch Japanese cartoons and animations. Crayon Shin-chan was his favorite. He felt very upset when the author died. "Do you like to watch Crayon Shin-chan?" he asked me. "When I was a child..." I said. "Then you didn't really like it!" he said. "If you like it, you will watch it again and again, even when you've grown up." Unlike others, he was optimistic about his future. That is why I liked to spend time with him.

I also had a couple of Muslim friends, one from Iran and the other from Saudi Arabia. We often have stereotypes about people from certain parts of the world, but if you really make friends with them, you will find that we share more than we differ!