Hi! My name is Robert Liu (if you haven’t guessed). I’m a twentysomething guy who likes to blog about whatever life throws at me. Being British by birth, Chinese by blood and having travelled a lot since my student days I don’t see the relevance of land borders but identify myself as another insignificant human on this delicate planet. I take life as it comes and hope to beam happy thoughts where I can!
I love travelling and love to learn simple phrases from the local language. Given time and sufficient exposure, I can understand what people are saying (be warned!). I also love food, oh so delicious food! That’s eating out at cheap greasy joints or top notch restaurants. I do enjoy cooking but I’m no Michelin starred chef.
Here’s me jumping off a 220m high dam in Switzerland. Crazy!
Flickr
If you’ve read my blog you would have noticed that I’m a keen amateur photographer. I’ve taken hundreds of thousands of photos over my lifetime and now host all my photos on Flickr. I like to take scenes as they are or capture people in the moment. It keeps my memories real.
I almost always use compact cameras but have recently treated myself to a Sony NEX-5 ultra compact DSLR type camera. I use this when quality matters but tend to carry my Sony DSC-T90 in my pocket for those precious moments.
Don’t think that I only buy Sony. In the past, I have owned a Canon IXY 910IS, Canon IXY 800IS, Canon IXUS 50, Canon IXUS 400 and a Canon PowerShot 40. So actually, I only buy Sony AND Canon. That works out as a new camera every year. Imagine how much money I spent on all that and the accessories?! Yikes!!
The next Einstein
When I was in school I used to be the smartest kid (well one of) and got straight A’s (mostly). I had dreams with big accomplishments and being famous. However, soon after joining a world class university, I soon realised there were a lot more smarter people out there with a lot more motivation. Not to say that I’m thick or a slacker but just life’s way of telling me to get real. I can now proudly say that I have an MSci Physics degree from Imperial College London.
Despite all the physics, I’ve embarked on, by chance, a career in the financial IT industry. I was never really trained on computers but I was always one of those nerds who liked gadgets and fiddling with electronics. My mum always tells the story of how I would try to put lego in the VCR when I was a baby. I still remember when I used to mess with QBASIC on my brother’s computer and the amount of time and money I spent trying to overclock my range of AMD K6-2′s. Those were the days. Now technology has advanced and everything is all virtualised into fluffy clouds like this website.
IAESTE
With no disrespect to my parents, I spent my first summer at university helping out at their Chinese take away. Sitting behind a counter all day, taking orders over the phone and packing egg friend rice is not something I would call fun. I needed to get a life. It was my mission to do something new the following summer.
I applied for an internship through IAESTE (International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience) and was placed with a Swiss company called EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research). This changed my view of the world and opened up so many doors and opportunities AND I had SO MUCH FUN!
I was located in a nice little town called Dübendorf, about 15 minutes by train from Zürich, in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Dübendorf and the kebab stand down the road from where I lived was my home for the 3+ months I was there in 2004 but my memories are of the people I met and the places I visited in the short time I had.
The work was interesting but I realised research was not really my cup of tea. The real challenge was living in a different country, getting used to different cultures and meeting new people. It was the moment I realised I enjoyed travelling and that I loved photography.
If you’re thinking about IAESTE – go for it! Search my blog to see what I wrote about or check out my thousands of photos on Flickr.
If you have any questions then feel free to ask me or your local IAESTE committee.
Blogging
I started robertliu.com back in 2004 just before I went on my internship to Switzerland. I just wanted to keep a diary of my travels, mainly for my personal fulfilment but also to share what I see with my family and friends. Now, I blog quite randomly and I try to include lots of photos because I like to share the nice things I see.
The original incarnation was in plain html, then I moved onto my own php/mySql customised pages. I found it was pointless to write my own and migrated to Mambo/Joomla CMS fairly quickly. However, Mambo/Joomla was too much effort to maintain and full of bugs so I switched to the much cleaner WordPress which I am still using to date.
Of course, these days you can find me on various social networks.
