Some Lessons Learned

Well I am now a Rescue diver! And I have logged my 30^th and last dive here. I decided to not dive the 2 extra days and give myself a few days to decompress so I don’t get Decompression Sickness on the flight home. They recommend at least 24 hours but I have been doing a lot of deep dives lately and I like to be on the safe side. So I am just touring around seeing some of the sights.

            So after letting all my work and notes from the Singapore project cool off a bit I went back through my notebooks a day or two ago and reviewed what I had learned. I have made a list, I don’t know if anyone who actually reads this cares at all but whatevs…reviewing helps me learn. And who knows…someone else may learn something.

LESSONS LEARNED – Singapore Design Project

·         Fight for an internship – Get real world experience

·         Learn to Sketch and draw – practice perspective, drawing mechanisms, practice is vital. This is HUGE for engineers…and it was something I had not thought about much before. But almost every company we went to the engineers said that the ability to sketch well was critical

·         In school focus on Application – Actually do things – don’t just learn theory, this was one thing I loved about Stanford you were always putting the theory you were learning into practice in everyday life. (personal projects on your own time are great for this – plus they help build your portfolio and look great for grad school)

·         Learn to write functional specs – learn this well and you will ALWAYS have a job

·         Make a design notebook – use it to practice sketching, write ideas, write problems you see and ways things could be improved. Essentially make a record of your thoughts and ideas

·         Observe – Develop a critical eye to products and systems around you

·         Be playful – absolutely essential for creativity

·         Be eager to learn – especially by things around you, don’t be afraid to ask questions

·         Improvise – take initiative, don’t accept the status quo

·         In Design look to the actual user and their needs – (you would be surprised by how many companies don’t do this)

·         The power of small – sometimes it is necessary to focus on the smaller picture rather that getting bogged down by the massive scale of a problem

·         There are patterns among problems and a pattern to solving those problems

·         Understanding the problem is key – go to the users in search of information. Don’t always think on such a macro level – sometimes take care of the micro and it solves the problem at the macro level

·         Try to avoid instantly jumping to solutions – try to understand what is really the problem

·         If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth 10,000

·         Reducing part count is one of the most important things in designing for manufacturing

·         Learn about different manufacturing processes so you can incorporate different processes right from the beginning of the design process

·         Sometimes you will have to make decisions off of limited data

·         You will learn the most about your design when you actually start building your project

·         When prototyping ask yourself – what is the question I need answered? – direct your prototype towards answering that question

·         When working as a group decide how to divide things up monetarily before money gets involved

·         A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow

·         Education is not just preparation for life, but part of life – a continuous part

·         There is safety in small beginnings and there is unlimited capital in the experience gained by growing

·         “The wisdom of life is to keep on planting. Some…never plant after youthful imagination dies, and they reap only the one crop which they planted in youth. Plant every season, and life will be a succession of harvests.” – Henry Ford

·         You need to know and understand your process – you need a good support structure for this process

·         Good designs come from good questions

·         “The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul…creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment.” – Pres Uchtdorf

·         “Great learners: 1 – Welcome Correction, 2 – Make and keep commitments, 3 – Work hard, 4 – help others learn, 5 – Expect opposition and work to overcome it.” – Pres Eyring

BOOKLIST – (I always keep a list in my planner of books professors suggest in their lectures…hopefully one day I will actually have time to read them;)

1.      The innovators DNA – Jeff Dyer

2.      The 5000 year leap

3.      Getting to yes – Negotiating agreement – Robert Fisher, William Ury

4.      Design for a contemporary world – Christian Boucharenc

5.      Future Perfect – Stanley Brown

6.      Books by Tom Kelley and Tim Brown

Thailand = new addiction

           Wow. Well I have been meaning to write this post for awhile…but let’s be honest…I have had other stuff to do. Thailand is amazing. I love it here. But I have found that there are some drawbacks to traveling alone…like pictures for example. I don’t have anyone to take pictures of me at places…so consequently…you probably won’t see too many pictures on here of my time in Thailand. That and some experiences are just so much better when you have a friend(or friends) to share them with. That being said…I have been out on the boats every day since I have got here. I will have logged my 20^th dive here by time this gets posted and that is with being here just over a week. I finished my open water and advanced open water last week. I start my Rescue diver course on Saturday….hmmm where to start. Well the food as you can imagine is nothing short of incredible! I think my favorite thing is panange curry…oh. my. I am in love…I may or may not eat this at least every other day…sometimes multiple times in a day and multiple days in a row…judge me. I really don’t care. Haha.

            So…I came here to dive and that is what I have been doing. Every. Day. I have found that I am addicted to wreck diving. Pretty much every dive except the ones I had to do for courses has been on wrecks. The weather has limited the dives sites we can get to. It is monsoon season down south so it has messed with the wind and the currents, giving less than ideal conditions up here for diving. But GREAT conditions for training and learning to dive. It is actually the main reason I chose to come dive here instead of down south where the diving in much better. Low visibility and strong currents have made my training much better. I feel pretty confident in diving in just about any conditions…so when I come back and get down south to 30+ meter visibility and slack currents…it is going to be a piece of cake.

            So what this post boils down to is this. I am addicted. So for those of you reading this back home…this means I need some dive buddies when I get back…any volunteers? Trip to Mexico or Catalina in the near future? I am thinking this should happen. Man I really need to find some hobbies that are less equipment intensive…between mountain biking, rock climbing, skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, shooting, motorcycles, ATV’s, cars, and diving I am going to need to find a job that pays really well so I can do them all…that and my garage/shop will need to be quite large…well every shop should be large, but mine especially so. I think flying is the only thing not on my list of really expensive hobbies…and I may or may not have plans to get my pilots license… oh boy. Haha. One of my Singaporean friends said it so well he said, “Man I don’t want as much money as possible…you can always find things to spend it on… what I need is to have no more desires.” I could not have said it better. Well life is going great. I am having the most epic summer ever. Next stop? Jump school. That’s right. Jumping out of airplanes. Oh yes please.

All alone in the airport

It is 0400 in the morning.(What an ungodly hour) And here I am sitting at my terminal gate completely alone. You might ask, Why Bryan is there nobody else in the airport with you? To which I would reply with something witty like the early bird gets the worm and about how I like to get to places early to avoid lines and the rush. But truth be told it is because I have this problem with being late…like OCD problem. I can’t handle being late. Unfortunately this means that I usually show up to places like work, the airport, meetings, important events, etc. very early. It is ridiculous to the point that I will plan for traffic and other variances (even when there is like a 99.9% chance that there will be absolutely no problems with the commute) and put those factors into my leave time( I plan for these even if it is 0300 in the morning.) I have found on average I tend to leave about two to three times as early as I need to…like now for instance…my gate does not even open for another 2 ½ hours so I am sitting outside locked doors typing up this post. I have issues.

            Anyways… I fly out of Singapore today. It has been such an amazing experience being here and working with the students from the National University of Singapore. This last week has been absolutely crazy trying to get our project prototypes completed and prepare for our final presentation. Which we killed in case you were wondering. We definitely had one of the best projects there. So with a few near all nighters and many Cokes I am done. Finally. It was a very intense few weeks. But now it is on to THAILAND!!!! Time to go Scuba diving for 3 ½ weeks.  So a quick recap on last weekend and this week. Friday I went to Little India and walked around, ate some amazing fish head curry, and took in the sights and sounds. It definitely felt like a completely different country than the rest of Singapore and I found myself having flashbacks of my mission to Cape Verde. After that we went and just chilled on some steps by the bayside for hours until returning home. Super chill and the perfect way to end a crazy week. Saturday I got up early and went for a swim out at Sentosa before everyone showed up at the beach. We were the only ones there and it was amazing. This weekend the Singapore Army held an open house which I got pretty excited about and so after swimming we went over there. It was pretty cool. They had some shoot houses set up that I was able to run through and they had several examples of their current weapons systems. It was cool to see what they use. This week we have not really had much of a chance to do anything other than finish up our project. But after many long hours it finally is completely done…leaving all of us in sore need of sleep. (I am going on 24+ hours being awake at the moment) Well I am going to end here and hopefully get up another post in a couple days about the first few days of Thailand. Out.

List of Likes

Well time is as usual going much too quickly. It seems like the weekend was just yesterday and it is already Thursday evening. Our project is consuming our lives but we are making some really good progress. For those of my friends who think I am just vacationing…and not studying…haha… yeah…right… I would say it averages 1 hour seeing things to every 15-20 hours class and group work on our design project. And that is probably being conservative in the estimation.

            So I have narrowed down the direction I want to go in my education (finally…I know right?) I love the design process and after visiting the labs at Stanford I am thinking I want to go there to get my masters in mechanical engineering with an emphasis in design. The project we are working on now is the problem of urban farming in Singapore. The government housing is very small and population density is one of the highest in the world so space is a major issue. We have decided on a modular hydroponic system inspired by these…

Thanks go to the parental for actually giving us educational toys (for those who don’t know, they were/are teachers). We are making amazing progress. It is amazing how random bits of inspiration come at just the right time. I will post more pics/info as we get into the prototyping phase and get things ready to present.

            Another topic. Things I love about Singapore/Singaporeans. 1 – The whole country is spotlessly clean…no litter anywhere. 2 – It is one of the safest places I have ever been. No joke. 3 – The have very harsh penalties for breaking the laws…some may remember the American teenager getting caned for vandalizing some building…yeah they don’t mess around. On the immigration entrance form in large red letters it politely informs all entering Singapore that the penalty for drug trafficking is death. And this is not like the U.S where you sit on death row for 30 years…nope they off you ricky tick. That is just how it is here. I am pretty sure that the most common penalties are caning or death. But you know what? I don’t think harsh penalties are the reason why people obey the law here. For example I have not seen more than one police car while I have been here, yet everyone goes the speed limit and obeys the traffic laws…no it is something more. They have something sadly many in America and other places do not possess. Respect. You can see it in the way they carry themselves and the way they treat others. Which brings me to number 4 – They are unfailingly polite. They almost go out of their way to help. I love working in a group with students from NUS because when they are given an assignment or say they are going to do something – they do it. You never have to worry about whether or not it will get done. It is refreshing. 5 – They dress very well. It is not uncommon at all to see a fair percent of the students dress in business casual and I would say about 50% of girls I see are wearing dresses or skirts. I like it. It brings a different attitude towards what they are doing. 6 – Their clothes fit. This is more a stab at American clothing sizing. Why is it that I cannot buy dress clothes that fit well in America without getting them custom made? Have our waste sizes really gotten so large for the average population that our dress shirts can fit 3 or 4 of me around the waist? So. Frustrating. Granted I know not everyone has a 28 inch waist and a size 40 shoulder but I am not alone with this…as evidenced by the enormous parachute blob of extra shirt around the waist of most people I see in dress clothes. Fold and tuck away as you might…it does not look good…nor will it ever. I just want shirts I tuck in without any folding and extra material. Is it too much to ask not to have to buy so called “fitted” shirts…and then pay to have them tailored again to bring in the waist to a normal (I assume) size? America would be much classier if people’s clothes actually fit them. 7 – The food here is amazing. It is a mix from all over Asia as Singapore is a melting pot. So. Friggin. Good.  8 - Public Transport. They have it figured out. Granted they have a very small space they are working with, I know this would not work as well in America...but hey it IS really nice to not have to drive everywhere.

             Well I think that is quite enough for today. More to come this weekend. Out.

                                         This is a Hydroponics farm we visited in our research.

Singapore

Well here we go. I have decided to finally enter the blogosphere! I figure I waste enough time on the interwebs, maybe it would be a good idea to put that time to something semi-productive. Plus I have a lot of family and friends that want updates on what is going on in my life and travels…and let’s be honest…this is probably the easiest way.

            So I am currently in Singapore on a study exchange program through BYU and NUS (National University of Singapore.) We are working on a product design project. Let’s see…well the flight here took forever. I am so over long flights, like the ones where by time I get off I have a good growth of facial scruff. Neither my rear end nor the airplane seats have enough cushion for 20+ hour flights. We have been kept pretty busy with school. On the first day we divided into groups and I am going to have to say I definitely got into the best one. We decided after class that we would go into the main part of the city and have some team get to know you time. One of the guys from NUS – Hitesh got us onto the observation deck of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

 

AMAZING. This place was legit and a perfect way to end our first day in Singapore. I am not going to lie, I was half expecting to run into George Clooney the whole night…it is that classy of a place. Google it. You will see for yourself. Well the weekend finally came and we decided to go to Sentosa Island, which is also the southernmost point of continental Asia.

 They have a little resort park there. It was so pretty and the water was the perfect temp. After we finished up there the student from NUS we were with took us to china town (he is Chinese – so a legit guide to the area) and showed us around…he took us to this sweet restaurant. It was tucked away and you could tell that it was definitely not a tourist place at all. It was entirely filled with just Chinese people…with us three BYU students tossed into the mix. Love being the minority. Food – SO GOOD. For those who know me, you know how much I love to eat, and this did not disappoint…unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures…it didn’t seem like the type of place you just pull out a camera and start snapping away. Well I figure this is a good place to stop for my first post. I will try to keep up on this fairly regularly. Until next time, out.