Patrick's Diary - 9/29/2015

It's the second morning I was about to get onto the new toll lane on I-405 southbound. While I was waiting on ramp for getting into the freeway, I wondered if the carpool lane could also be open for me to go through the ramp. Since there was no new instruction on any sign, I was afraid to violate the traffic rule. However, it makes sense to have the drivers who plan to use toll lanes after driving onto freeway allowed to use carpool lane on the ramp as well. Random video checks can ensure people would take chance not to use the toll lane after going through the carpool lane. I eventually arrived at the office at 7:30 am. Sweet!

Again, I drove on the regular lane on I-405 Northbound after I came back home in the afternoon. It's not bad because I left the office a little bit earlier before the true rush hours arrived, in addition, the use of the toll lanes may really ease the heavy congestions. 

An alumnus from the college I first ever enrolled at age of 18 set up a group chat on Webchat and sent me a scan code through e-mail 3 days ago in order to have me joining it. So far, it has grown to 70 members. We were requested to put our name, major, freshmen year and current location as alias in this group. So mine is: Patrick He-Civil Engineering 84-Seattle, of course, in Chinese: "何峰 工民建八四二班 美国西雅图“. Students like us moving to other countries generally have studied at several other universities to advance our careers, however, our first college is always our alma mater. By the way, it was named China Institute of Mining and Technology when I enrolled. 

After watching this 15 minutes beautiful clip, I recall that I had been impressed by our campus as soon as I arrived there in the last week of August in 1984. At that time, the institute was relocated from Szuchuan to Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province not very long ago. The initial investment for the new campus was RMB 400M. We had modern buildings, beautiful man-made lakes and upscale sports facilities. Because my English score of China Universal College Entrance Exam in 1984 was great, I was selected into Honor English Class the first evening, yes, it's an evening class, when our freshmen years began. In addition to our primary English teacher who was a 20 years old Chinese girl just graduating from college herself, yes, she went to college at age of 16, we were lucky to have an American lady coaching us practicing oral English. I remember I was her most favorite student in that class. She was a professional educator and came from Albion, Michigan with her husband and a 15 years old son. In one of the evenings, she told us a story of how she learned German when she studied abroad in Germany: one night after she had intensively learned German for quite a while, she suddenly dreamed in German. After a couple of years when I lived in English environment in Bahamas, I started dreaming in English occasionally, then I could sense what she taught us. Our primary English teacher was a very lovely Chinese girl, I could have dated her. I just checked a pretty recognizable Chinese University Ranking List, it's a shame that our alma mater drops to 75th, I remember that it was ranked one of the top 30 several years ago when I checked. I guess Coal Mining is becoming a sunset industry, so the popularity and importance of our alma mater have been going down gradually. However, with the helps of alumni like us, I think we can get its ranking back. 

Oh, after posting my original diary, I checked out another authentic Chinese University Ranking List: The Best 2015 Professional Ranking List of Chinese Universities

Our Alma Mater ranks 36th, this makes more sense.