A few weeks ago, I took part in the salonabout20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall andit was held by "Lung Yin-Tai Cultural Foundation". The word "salon" is actually associated with French literary and philosophical salons of the 17th century and 18th century. Elites gathered together and exchanged their thinking, and therefore gained more knowledge through conversation.
The lecturer of this salon is Mr. Jörn Mothes. Actually, he is not only a theologist but also a champion of the human rights for former east Germans. Before his lecture, we saw a documentary film named "Jeder schweigt von etwas anderem (Last to know)". The film depicts three families who had been imprisoned by former government of east Germany for political accusations. The director interviewed these sufferers and tells us their still alive memories. Most of them refused to recall the past because it would be very suffering for them. They can only keep it in their deep mind as if a secret which is always last to know...
I've studied the master program in Taiwan for around three months so far, and I think the studies at NCTU is totally different from the master program at Chalmers in Sweden. Let's talk about how the education systems differ first. In Sweden, there are four "quarters" in one academic year which means one semester is split into two quarters. Then, it only takes two months to finish courses, so you can image how intensive the courses are...(there are 8 to 10 hours lecture per week for one course) But I think that it not really that bad, I can concentrate more on the courses because I only take two courses per quarter and there is only a final exam (no midterm exam) in the end of quarter.
Second, compared with the interaction between professors and students in lectures in Sweden, it is also quite different from what we get used to in Taiwan. It's very common to see many students there ask questions or express their opinion in lecture, and students are very welcomed to argue professors' point of view because professors are not always right.
I took three courses this semester, Queueing Theory, Computer Networks, WiMAX.
Queueing Theory is a very interesting subject. It discusses about the situations that customers have to wait in the queue until receiving service. It is actually very common in our daily life. For example, when we go to a supermarket, there are many counters, but sometimes there is no available counter and therefore we have to wait. In our point of view, we may think the counters should be as more as possible, but the operator of supermarket may don’t think so because it will increase the cost. So, Queueing Theory can be therefore used to find out the optimal number of clerks should be hired so that the cost can be reduced and the customers’ waiting time is acceptable. It sounds like it’s really an interesting subject and I like the ideas in it indeed, but the fact is that there are so many complicated formulas in it…too much mathematical computations… :(
Last year, I took the exchange program to Chamlers in Sweden and stayed in Europe around one year. Although many universities in the U.S. may outperform than the ones in Europe in my study field, I still decided to apply the exchange program to Europe because the European culture is much attractive to me.
In Europe, there are so many countries with different culture, history, and languages. People from different countries have their own distinguishing characteristics and this is always an interesting topic whenever I talk with them. They really made different impressions on me, for example, Swedish are actually very shy and not easy to be closed friends, French don’t like long working hours and usually have much leisure time, Italian guys like to wink at beauties and sing to them, Spanish start their dinner after 8pm and have parties all week and can’t live without alcohol, German work very hard during the day and drink beer “very hard” during the night as well…haha
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