My class at Xiamen University

It is a big class - 30 plus computer science junior and senior students in the School of Information Science and Technology at Xiamen University. The course is entitled An Introduction to Trusted Computing. This topic is certainly a favorite of mine and, for the first time, I will be using my own published textbook for the course I am teaching! I am certainly thankful to see more fruits of my labors from last summer's writing of this chapter on an important area of computer security.

The lab has about 60 desktops, mostly Dell Optiplex 486 and Pentium-based desktops running Windows 2000 Professional . Internet connectivity is good.

Picture taken during break - these studious students stayed to work on their assignment.

Another first in my eighteen plus years of teaching: I was supplementing my teaching in Mandarin! I am not naturally inclined to teach/speak in Mandarin - my mother language is English but because of my upbringing in Singapore, I do know some Mandarin, Teochew, and Hokkien and they do come in handy as I try to narrow the communication gap for some of my Chinese students. They are extremely bright, with many expressing strong interest in improving their command of English. So, I see this as a Win-Win situation: we both get to improve on our non-native language.

Future leaders of China.

Another future leader.

Background: Department of Computer Science. While I could walk to work (my Dean, who lives on the eighth floor in our building does), I prefer to take the bus - it is only 4 stops from where we live.