Commencement and Convocation: The Tradition of the Lee's Family

The concluding highlight of an academic pursuit is the commencement ceremony (convocation in Malaysia) during which graduates take their turn to march up the stage to receive their well-earned scrolls among pomp and pageantry. It marks the official end to the toil, to burning the midnight oil, to the frequent visits to the snake temples (a less than savory allusion to university libraries often used in Malaysia, snakes being the metaphor for cunning in this case, and the libraries being places where students sneak away to do some serious mugging while maintaining the illusion of outwardly cool dudes who look askance at poring over the books with disdain, vanity at its purest, at least during my time) and bestows a veritable stamp on one’s learning prowess. The latter perception may have been diluted somewhat by the present-day sprouting of degree mills that purportedly cater to the hectic schedules of working professionals.

At the school level, the same is often called a graduation ceremony, and here it’s one that we have attended, that of our younger daughter. But here I’m going to blog about my own experience, at the college level since those days we did not have elaborate graduation ceremonies at the school level save for the achievement award ceremonies conducted on the last day of schools during which only the top achievers got to parade their prizes for all to see. And I did make a few laps of those on my own. But back to the universities.

I got my bachelor degree in 1978, and attended my first ever convocation on June 17, 1978, if memory serves me right. Little did I know that this would also be my last, for now, as I shall relate later in the blog.

I remember we drove to KL in my (then future) father-in-law’s car from my home town, my late Mom, my younger sister, and my soon-to-be-officially wedded wife included in the entourage. The exact proceeding has become a blur, but I must have sat among the graduates, in regalia (gown, mortar board and sash, the latter being a shining orange color). Then I must have walked primly up on the stage, smilingly receiving the scroll from the VC (I have a photo as testimony but it was left back home. Increasingly this lapse in my pre-departure preparation afew years back has come back to haunt me, especially since I started my second life, one of blogging).

There must be tons of speeches before then, knowing the penchant of my countrymen for public address, but their details escape me. The entire ceremony was staged in what I still feel as the most stately building in the entire campus of University of Malaysia (UM), the Dewan Tunku Chanselor (DTC for short), with its granite block walls all around, vertically slitted with grass panes that enable one to peek inside (I think). The entrance is graced by several inter-connected koi ponds while the Experiment Theatre (where many drama performances were featured) abuts its back. It’s no small wonder that after close to 30 years, I still remember vividly that image.

I also remember taking photos in the campus, with all members of my entourage. We actually intended to put up a night in Petaling Jaya (PJ) (the UM campus straddles the border of KL/PJ). I remember driving to the PJ Hilton, but apparently the hotel rate must have put my off, considering then I was only a fresh government engineer of a few month’s tenure, drawing a monthly attachment pay of a couple of hundreds ringgit (Malaysian dollars). So it turned out to be a day’s trip, as we had originally planned for.

Subsequently, I have two more opportunities to partake of the solemn ceremony here in US. The first followed from my Masters degree study at UCB, in May 1987. But the traveling bug caught us just in time, that being my last opportunity to take in the natural setting of the Western US. So instead of making a beeline to the open air Greek theatre and be part of the proud history of Cal Bears, we began our two-week trek, in a rented car that is, swinging by Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and back to Albany, California. Sites visited included Salt Lake City, Dinosaur Crater, Yellow Stone Park (The Old Faithful geysers), Jackson Hole (elk country) where we witnessed a horse parade by the local Native Americans and an arch (or portal) made of Elk antlers, a meadow reminiscent of the Little House in the Prairie TV series, a picture of verdant grasslands and fragrant flowers, CSU at Fort Collins (when we visited the late Dr. Hiew who would complete his Ph.D. at the end of the same year, which is no mean feat, flying through the doctoral course in 3 years), Grand Teton Dam, The Hoover Dam, Las Vegas.

I remember we lost about half a day when the front disc brake of our rented car gave up on us, emitting a jarring noise that made me cringe. And we had to languish at a tire shop somewhere in Albuquerque for the brake replacement.

But all in all, I did not regret missing the commencement for the two-week road trip, seeing more places perhaps more than a lifetime of some people. It was both an educational and inspiring experience that could not be substituted by a half-day attendance at a human-filled setting, perhaps a case of you never know what you're missing until you are there.

Then there was the commencement at the end of my Ph.D. study, at UF. This time, it was kind of beyond my control. I had planned to finish the requirements by the end of 1994, after a 4-year free-rein roaming across the academic arena, with some double-backs to add to the drama. But it was not to be. I could not make the deadline to graduate by the end of that fall semester. I was only able to submit my dissertation by January the following spring and had to register for another 3 credits to maintain my student status. So we returned to Malaysia in early February, 1995, not able to attend the Spring 1995 commencement slated for May 1995.

Then my elder D graduated at the end of 2005, from U. Oregon. But we did not make it to her commencement either. Neither did she, come to think of it. So the legacy of not attending one’s commencement in our family, at least at the college level, continues. Two more opportunities beckon in the horizon, our younger son (class of 2010), and younger daughter (class of 2011). Let’s plan for them, shall we?

A Trip Down Memory Lane, the Academic One (Part I)

I had just finished reading the article “Memories of Feynman” by Theodore A. Welton that appears in the Feb 2007 issue of Physics Today (p. 46-52). Feynman is of course Richard Feynman who was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. The article, which is actually a memoir written in 1983, anecdotally reveals the creative side of Feynman that is now legendary: insatiable curiosity, wit, brilliant mind and playful temperament, and more. For example, he loved to pick locks and had become very proficient at it.

Throughout the memoir, the author cited many instances of awe-struck moments when his friend just blew him away. Yet the author felt none of the acrimony, the envy, and the feeling of dejection engendered by the realization that a peer is so far ahead in ingenuity. Instead, the author was “amazed at having been given the privilege of knowing so interesting a character.”

Not everyone is as lucky as Theodore Welton. But certainly we have had our fair share of inspiration, mentor, role model, guiding light, whatever you would like to call it, who helps mold us into becoming what we are today professionally. So the article got me started on scouring the deep and not so deep recesses of my memory bank to identify such characters who fit the bill.

Here I’m going beyond my immediate family (parents, siblings, close relatives, spouse, and even children) who obviously have had a direct and profound influence on the evolution of my moral fiber to focus on those who have spurred me on in my academic pursuit.

At the primary/elementary school, a Chinese vernacular school that is, I especially remember my Standard Five class teacher, a man who was kind with his words and yet was a disciplinarian who tolerated no slackers nor horse-play from his class. I recall that our class had one of the more well-stocked class libraries in the school and I must have read every one of the books. Needless to say I excelled under his tutelage.

In my lower secondary school/middle school, an English school, I must credit Mr. Tan Lian Hoe for setting my foundation in math, which put me in good stead to handle the increasing complexity of higher math that would come in later years with relative ease. Then there was Mr. Lim Kok Seng, whose sometimes sarcastic critiques of my “verbose, circumlocutory, and bombastic” (those are his exact words that had graced the pages of my painstaking works of creation) style of writing had led to many hours of rewriting on my part, but not always succeeding in meeting his notion of elegant and concise writing. But he certainly had helped me hone my English writing to be good enough to earn a distinction in my LCE (as was known then) examination.

In my upper secondary/junior high school, located 24 miles away from my hometown (that was the first time that I had ever stayed in a rented room, home away from home, which marked the start of my many years of wandering life in search of academic goals), my English writing continued to receive excellent guidance from Ms. Wang and Mrs. Rose Easaw, whose (both) literary skills were an inspiration to those of us who dare to aspire to write. Mr. Yong, our elementary math teacher, gave us so much homework that solving math problems became an assignment to be eagerly awaited. And I had a string of distinctions to show for the MCE (as was known then) examination that marked the end of my upper secondary school days.

Then it was across the causeway to Singapore for my high school (A-level), at National Junior College. Well, things got a bit out of hand there as I was not studying as much as I should. I was so preoccupied with setting up weekly rendezvous with my girl friend (who would become my wife later on) on the other side of the causeway, leaving our foot prints behind at the Lido Beach area, that I hardly noticed the brilliance of the array of teachers that the school had lined up, as noted with nostalgia by my good friend, Pang Chin, not too long ago.

Two years of A-level went by like a flash, but I did just enough, thanks to my elephantine memory capacity, to graduate with a full certificate.

Continuing my college education, I enrolled in University of Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur, and started my four-year sojourn in the Pantai Valley High School, a less than complimentary moniker bestowed on UM following the (in)famous varsity student demonstration that occurred in my first year and that led to the full-scale enforcement of the draconian, as some would call it, Universities and University Colleges Act of 1971. A particularly symbolic act, as I recall, by the then powers-that-be was the chopping down of the big tree that marked the speakers’ corner right in front of the main library. A fellow U-mate of mine kept a spent tear gas canister on the wall of his dorm room (we were staying in the 3rd College), a bounty of sort from the street standoff with the Federal Reserve Unit (FRU), the red head squad, at the height of the varsity student demonstration.

That watershed event has had a telling/chilling effect on the campus mood: from a cubicle of future thinkers and conscience bearers of the society exemplified by academic freedom to a degree mill of the meekly subjugated whose raison deter is wholesale gobbling and regurgitation of sanitized knowledge, a revelation in hind sight. The ramifications did not hit me then, which was just as well as otherwise I would not have had the opportunity to have my interests in the water side of engineering kindled through such subjects as fluid mechanics and hydraulics ably delivered by Dr. Ong Boo Goh, which paved the way for my graduate works in hydraulic and coastal engineering.

And that shall be the part II of this trip down the memory lane of mine, while the door to my memory bank is still accessible, albeit creaking in protest.