Those Were the School Days
VT logo
After two years working at the Hong Kong Royal Jockey Club (now Hong Kong Jockey Club), a choice was made to try out the terminal degree back at Virginia Tech as an opportunity was opened along with financial aids. In 1987, got my Ph.D. in CSA, using terminals connected to the big IBM to type in the SGML that pretty printed my dissertation titled Fault Diagnosis with TDA!
Worked in the Planning Research Corporation (gobbled up by now Computer Science Corporation) for two years, stationed at the Fort Lee office in Virginia. COBOL programming with punch cards was no fun and going nowhere - each day had to wait for the 'job' (an IBM mainframe batch job that is) turnaround (a courier took the punched cards up to Richmond and returned next morning with a printout!). Applied for graduate study in CSA and received my M.S. in 1981. Using punched cards to complete all of my compiler projects: No wonder my compiler does not care about line numbers; completed my thesis on A Parallel Processing Systems Simulator.
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USU logo
Failed to get into any tertiary schools in Hong Kong because I did not get 'enough' points in the entrance examination. Luckily, applied to two schools in the States and got accepted. The one in California was too expensive, and Utah State University was reasonably affordable. So, finished my B.S. in CS in 1977 after three years. Using teletype to complete my 'thesis' on How to Maintain Sanity Without Sleeping.


More to come: Tak Yan School for my 'High School' education, and primary school at First God of Assembly in Mongkok, Hong Kong.

What Companies Did I Work For Before?

  • Visiting Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech, 1987
  • Systems Programmer, Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club in Hong Kong, 1981-1983
  • Analyst/Team Leader, Planning Research Corporation in VA, 1977-1979

Questions & Answers

Favorite Class you like to teach?
Chinese Cooking; or any class that does not require students to take tests
Research you have done or been doing?
  • In the old days, it was PVM/MPI
  • In the recent days, it is all WWW (anything starts with 'Web...' )
  • In the near future days, it is an eplatform with RFID enabled
  • In my dreams, it is 'How do you design parallel algorithms and fault-tolerant parallel algorithms?'
Other Career/Research Interest?
Parallel Systems; Fault-Tolerant Computing
Personal Interests
Sports, gardening, cooking & loud Rock & Roll music.