How to Contact MeHow to Contact MeMy email address is colinp "at" ma "dot" kcom "dot" ne "dot" jp. If you need to contact me by ordinary mail or telephone (i.e. if you are a friend or relative of mine) then email me and I'll send you the information.
I'm interested in lots of things. Here is a selection in no particular order: computer programming, the philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, rock and jazz drumming, drawing, Japanese language and writing, physics, astronomy and cosmology, science fiction and sometimes fantasy novels. I used to play role-playing games quite a bit. I also used to be very interested in Anime, or Japanese animation, but that has sort of waned now. I have only recently discovered Terry Prachett's Discworld novels, but I now buy them whenever I can. While I was in university I spent some time posting on talk.origins, the newsgroup on human origins, but I no longer have time for that.
Interesting Times and Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett: funny fantasy novels.
A Scanner Darkly by Phillip K. Dick: a classic in science fiction. Very depressing, but at the same time one of the few books that made me laugh out loud while reading.
How the Mind Works by Stephen Pinker: thought provoking, if a little too self-assured in his attribution of adaptive reasons for numerous interesting features of the mind and personality. He'd probably have a rip-roaring argument with Stephen Jay Gould.
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch: an attempt to pull a coherent picture of reality out of the best available scientific theories, and along the way explain, philosophically, why science works. Admirable, and I agree with a lot of it, but it does get fuzzy towards the end.
Billions & Billions by Carl Sagan: the last book written by Dr. Sagan. Very entertaining and moving.
The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner: two extraordinary science fiction novels. Very precient, almost cyberpunk despite having been written in the early seventies.
Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins: when I first read it I thought it was the last word in popular writing on evolution. I still think Dawkins has most of the right ideas, but I think he expresses them too militantly for his own good. For some balance, read something by Stephen Jay Gould (but I don't recommend Full House and Questioning the Millennium is off topic).
Idoru by William Gibson: cyberpunk is long dead, but this is a great post-cyberpunk story.
Hot Head by Simon Ings: a fantastic book full of great ideas. Unfortunately the sequel Hot Wired was disappointing.
I was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, in 1971. I went to university at Memorial University of Newfoundland and studied Electrical Engineering there from 1989 until 1995. After I graduated I spent two months travelling in central Asia and China and then came back to St. John's and went to work with a small company specializing in digital communications systems (mainly for the maritime market) called Ultimateast. I hear the company is doing quite well now, although it is now called Stratos. I left the company after only eight months to come to Japan on a government-sponsored scholarship (a Monbusho scholarship).
The Monbusho Scholarship program is set up by the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho means Ministry of Education in Japanese) to let foreigners live and study in Japan and promote cultural exchange. The basic scholarship goes for two years. For six months you study the Japanese language. I studied at Kyushu University in Fukuoka from April 1996 until September 1996. Then you go to a university to become a "kenkyusei" or "research student". This lasts for a year and a half and then you return to your home country. I went to Saga University in Saga city, Saga prefecture (a prefecture is like a province or a state, or perhaps a county). I studied at the Department of Information Science and my academic advisior was Professor Hayashida. (In order to get the Monbusho scholarship it is very helpful to contact a professor in Japan ahead of time who will 'sponsor' you. Professor Hayashida was kind enough to do this for me even though I emailed him out of the blue after searching the Internet for Japanese labs doing interesting work. Please don't email Professor Hayashida asking him to become your sponsor. He already has several foreign students studying under him and a flood of email would probably not be appreciated.)
Instead of following this course I was a kenkyusei for about six months and then I took an entrance examination to become a Master's student. By some miracle I passed the exams and was admitted as a Master's student. By an even greater miracle I graduated two years later in March 1999. With the great assistance of Prof. Hayashida I even managed to find a job with Fujitsu Kyushu Communications Systems (now Fujitsu Nishi-Nihon Communications Systems) in Fukuoka.
There are basically two reasons I did a Master's in Japan and am staying here to work. One reason is that I found I really do like Japan. I like the culture, the language and the people. Another reason, which my friends and family may suspect is the real reason, is that I met and married my wife in Japan. We met in August of 1996, a few months before I decided to extend my stay for a Master's degree (which added a year to the duration of my scholarship). You can draw your own conclusions from the timing.
This page was last modified on June 30, 2001.