This is an archive from the previous blog.
I can't believe more a month has already past, which means my journey in Canada is at halfway point.
To be honest, I didn't have any specific (academic) goals of this stay, and I don't rally feel I've achieved something. Only vague goal I had is to experience totally new things. Partly because I thought two months is too short to achieve something valuable in my research and mainly because I was too busy to spare much time on finding laboratory to stay, my mindset was to explore a new world, both in terms of research and life. This doesn't mean my laboratory here is totally irrelevant to my research, neither does it mean I'm indifferent to the current research here. I like the research here and love the people. While I feel sometimes that I have to do something to proceed and that as if I was wasting time, I'm really glad to have two month “off.” I know two months do account for not small term out of 24 months of master program, especially taking it into account that job hunting starts soon.
However, I believe this two month “off” is worth taking, just as I feel about my one year exchange in München. First, experiencing a new world gives you more options to take and helps you thing what to do in the future. Of course more options don't always lead to more content result, but at least it gives you more freedom. Second, you have more free time to contemplate. If you keep staying in the same environment and keep doing something, you'll get used to it and get not to think carefully anymore, which often ends up with choosing majorities' options (at least for me). Finally, most importantly, you can literally see and experience this world. In another world, you can travel around! Yep, I went to Niagara Falls!
Overwhelming scale and the amount of water falling took away my breath and kept me pushing camera shutter, although any of the photos doesn't express completely how it is actually.