Day 8: Friday in Xi'An

Today’s a fully booked day at XU. The itinerary starts at 8:30am and ends around 8:30pm.  JD and I arranged to have breakfast at the hotel around 7am and will be picked up around 7:50.  The breakfast buffet was pretty good. They spoon for coffee is very special: it has a very long handle while a turn in the middle of the handle allows it to be hung on the side of the coffee mug. Unfortunately it didn’t work for me. The long handle sticking out became a problem while I was trying to refill the coffee.  The coffee bottle hit the handle and in turn knocked out the coffee mug.  Half cup of coffee spilled on the table and on the carpet.

Maybe I’m biased, it’s an example of how a designer didn’t really use it. 

Our host YQ arranged JD to give two talks of 1.5hr each and mine is 1.5hr immediately following that. JD’s talks were excellent as usual. He spent quite some effort asking the initially reluctant audience to ask questions. Eventually they opened up with some quite nice questions.

One of the questions is what JD thinks of using artificial organs. Would we become just a robot?  JD’s answer was perfect: “this is a question to be left for the individual to deal with at that moment. Some people would rather die than relying on a machine to keep them alive, while someone else may be perfectly fine with it.  People will also change their opinions over time. Someone may have a strong feeling not using life support earlier may change their mind when they wanted to live a few more years to see their grandchildren growing up.”

Although I have high regards to JD, he never stops impressing me.

Mine was in Chinese. It didn’t go as well for a number of reasons. Most likely it’s a lack of preparation. Of course I can blame JD used up my time that I had to compress it to 1hr. I also ran out of time for questions.

The talks were in a small classroom sitting about 30-40 people.

We went out to lunch in a nearby restaurant with YQ’s group. On the way there, I saw posters of both talks on the entrance of the university.

The lunch is in fact in a Cantonese restaurant. Only thing worth mentioning is the Chinese ice wine.  It is not so sweet as the Canadian ones, which works for me.

After lunch, YQ took us for a walk on campus and two of their huge clean rooms. At 30 degrees Celsius, it is pretty hot walking around with dress shirt.  The cleanroom jump suit did help. I was all soaked.  On the other side, the cleanrooms are very impressive. They are huge as the other ones I’ve seen in China and well organized. A lot of people are working inside, including a few faculty members.

After the tour, we had a meeting with YQ’s group to discuss their current work and potential collaboration. I realized that their RFID technology may have a simple solution to a problem JD raised in his e-health talk. We discussed that in details during this meeting.  In the end, I would write a one-page proposal and YQ’s RFID group will take a look.

The next item on the itinerary is dinner with the XU’s Office of International studies. Since JD was pretty tired, it was a quick meal. One thing worth mentioning is that the director attended the same middle school as me. Of course, he was a few years ahead.

Even it’s a short dinner, we came back to the hotel around 9pm. JD originally proposed ping-pong in the gym but ended up not going. I was kind of ready so went for a 20 minutes run on the treadmill then used the hot tube.  It’s a very nice big stone hot tub with clean water and powerful jets.  However, it’s in the men’s changing room, which means people will use it naked.  When I was using it, I wore my running shorts but while I was leaving, a complete naked guy went in.

Had a glass of wine and watched some badminton before passing out.

It’s a very full day.