Ah. Now that the tyranny that is NaNoWriMo is finally done for me for this year, it is time to relieve a little stress from it all by bitching a little bit more about life here.
So, what has happened in November other than NaNoWriMo? Lots of things. I came to several realisations about my own nature, and have come to terms about some of these rather startling properties. Being the curious l'il reader you are, let me fill you in on some of these startling properties.
Many times in the past I had bemoaned the fact that I was a nice guy and that all the girls didn't like me because I was a nice guy and other random crap like that. Man, that was belly-aching, quite nauseating when I looked back upon what I had written. Here's the thing---upon reflection on who I truly am, I realised that I am no nice guy. No way, not by any degree. If anything, I'm quite bad actually, considering the things I have done, the things I have thought about, the things I have thought of doing, well you get the idea. And no, bad does not mean evil; as far as I'm concerned, there's a distinction. One can be bad and good or even nice and evil---I blame such semantic problems upon the overloading of the term ``good'' and ``bad''. But what I mean to say is that I'm a badass, one who does not take shit from others, willing to hold my ground and fight for the end, though usually I eschew the whole violence aspect and go into 後の先 mode, where I will react when something happens. I think this is what it means to find oneself when one is in one's twenties.
I think I value my independence and freedom a lot. It is not that I dislike human company (that is utter bullshit because I have tried going in isolation---I went quite mad), but that I am more comfortable with me running my own life away from distractions that are not effected by me. Living in an apartment alone with only my brain, my computer, the Internet and various books about seems to be enough to keep me happy---that's good enough for me, really. I crave intellectual stimulation, and most times, am a little more happy with taking part in things actively than to sit around in a passive way.
How do all these factor into this whole person that is me? So far, I don't have a complete answer yet, partly because it is late and I am in need of sleep (I've been up all day), and partly because I do not have an answer yet. Some say that going into research is a way of coming up with new ideas that can benefit mankind, I say that going deep into research has been a getting to know myself better exercise as I figure out the optimal way of expending my energy, effort and work habits to improve the overall efficiency in the way I think. That is the objective function I'm trying to optimise, and that will be the major goal of my life. Everything else is just to make sure my body stays fit enough to support my brain which does all the thinking I want to do.
Alright, I'm starting to ramble again. Also, Blogger is starting to act up, with random 503s appearing all over their website. I hope that it is not something completely terrible that will make me lose this writing. If it did make me lose stuff, I would be exceedingly annoyed.
Till next time.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
NaNoWriMo 2011! Official Winner!
65,502 words later, I am done. Had a good momentum doing it this year though personally I think the story line might be a little bland.
As usual, grab the manuscript from my domain. I'll fill in more details here some time in the future when I have a little more time on my hands.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
One Busted Knee, It Was Busted
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I realise that sometimes, it is not about how powerful a device you have, but how you actually use it.
I was thinking about this from several perspectives for a while now. Slide rules were of a different power class than electronic calculators, and lots of good work have come out of those (remember the space race? That was fought with slide rules). In a more modern context, ``older'' GPS receivers that still support all the most important functions of a GPS receiver (good satellite locking, accurate multi-lateral computations, good battery life) are still worth as much as any of the new-fangled versions of the same devices. All that colour mapping, touch screen nonsense, ability to wirelessly communicate with other GPS receivers are just flavourings over the basic functionality.
I had been debating internally for a while whether I should get a new GPS receiver with all the new-fangled stuff---larger memory is always a good thing, and coloured screens mean that I have better access to the additional information that may be conveyed by the colour. After walking through a medium-sized nature park for the Journal, bashing through weird terrain, climbing up steep gradient hills and sliding down others, losing my ear muffs and possibly over straining my right knee, I realise that my current Garmin eTrex Vista H is still as tough and as useful as it was when I first bought it. It kept its pace with the satellites above, it never lost track of where we were, it held its signal faithfully even under dense-ish tree cover. In short, it was a Damn Good Device.
After so many adventures with my eTrex Vista H, I feel kind of bad to even consider finding a replacement for it.
Anyway, yes. I went with a fellow geocacher-turning-fast-into-friend to tackle that 5/5 cache. Man, it was as hellish as doing any of the major jungle-bashing caches in Singapore, but it was a different kind of hell. At least in Singapore, the paths we took through the forest/jungle didn't involve climbing really steep gradient slopes and walking through streams/creeks. But yesterday when I was out doing that cache gethering all the clues (there were many of them... we don't even know how deep the rabbit-hole goes), I ended up climbing really steep hills with a full-pack, combat boots. They were so steep that I was effectively doing some weird mountain climbing movements---of course it didn't really help that I was heavier than my buddy and that I was carrying way more stuff than him. I thank my Jujitsu Sensei for all the Taiso that we have been doing---those crazy conditioning exercises we did built enough core strength for me that when I started slipping down the damn soft-ground slope, I could arrest the descent through pure core muscle. Heheheh... you've probably gotta try it out some time to understand exactly what I mean.
So, we hiked about the region for nearly 6 hours, stopping here and there for a break or two, and having lunch atop a rather odd hill. Lunch was a Big Mac and fries, the only ``fresh food'' that I knew would keep really well and still taste similar to when you first bought it without having to reheat the damn thing---draw your own conclusions there. Yet, in spite of all that crazy walking (covering at least 6 miles based on my GPS receiver's reckoning), we still didn't complete the cache. We're going to head back soon to finish the job; we think we are really close, but the failing light (shortened days of Winter) made the going quite suicidal. Also, since the place is forest-y, it's ideal to do it now as opposed to when the temperature is higher, since low temperatures mean that those pesky insects are knocked out cold, i.e. no ticks and mosquitoes. Oh and no poison ivy, of course, which is a great thing.
If this cache type is considered 5/5, maybe we can build something like that for Singapore. But the permanence of the field puzzles will be a major issue, considering that the façade of Singapore changes ever so often---what was a nice jungle trail now can become a tourist-wimp friendly board walk, and what could have been a cool jungle can become a new condominium. Quite scary actually.
Anyway, enough chit-chat. Time to do some meaningful work before finishing up the story for NaNoWriMo.
I was thinking about this from several perspectives for a while now. Slide rules were of a different power class than electronic calculators, and lots of good work have come out of those (remember the space race? That was fought with slide rules). In a more modern context, ``older'' GPS receivers that still support all the most important functions of a GPS receiver (good satellite locking, accurate multi-lateral computations, good battery life) are still worth as much as any of the new-fangled versions of the same devices. All that colour mapping, touch screen nonsense, ability to wirelessly communicate with other GPS receivers are just flavourings over the basic functionality.
I had been debating internally for a while whether I should get a new GPS receiver with all the new-fangled stuff---larger memory is always a good thing, and coloured screens mean that I have better access to the additional information that may be conveyed by the colour. After walking through a medium-sized nature park for the Journal, bashing through weird terrain, climbing up steep gradient hills and sliding down others, losing my ear muffs and possibly over straining my right knee, I realise that my current Garmin eTrex Vista H is still as tough and as useful as it was when I first bought it. It kept its pace with the satellites above, it never lost track of where we were, it held its signal faithfully even under dense-ish tree cover. In short, it was a Damn Good Device.
After so many adventures with my eTrex Vista H, I feel kind of bad to even consider finding a replacement for it.
Anyway, yes. I went with a fellow geocacher-turning-fast-into-friend to tackle that 5/5 cache. Man, it was as hellish as doing any of the major jungle-bashing caches in Singapore, but it was a different kind of hell. At least in Singapore, the paths we took through the forest/jungle didn't involve climbing really steep gradient slopes and walking through streams/creeks. But yesterday when I was out doing that cache gethering all the clues (there were many of them... we don't even know how deep the rabbit-hole goes), I ended up climbing really steep hills with a full-pack, combat boots. They were so steep that I was effectively doing some weird mountain climbing movements---of course it didn't really help that I was heavier than my buddy and that I was carrying way more stuff than him. I thank my Jujitsu Sensei for all the Taiso that we have been doing---those crazy conditioning exercises we did built enough core strength for me that when I started slipping down the damn soft-ground slope, I could arrest the descent through pure core muscle. Heheheh... you've probably gotta try it out some time to understand exactly what I mean.
So, we hiked about the region for nearly 6 hours, stopping here and there for a break or two, and having lunch atop a rather odd hill. Lunch was a Big Mac and fries, the only ``fresh food'' that I knew would keep really well and still taste similar to when you first bought it without having to reheat the damn thing---draw your own conclusions there. Yet, in spite of all that crazy walking (covering at least 6 miles based on my GPS receiver's reckoning), we still didn't complete the cache. We're going to head back soon to finish the job; we think we are really close, but the failing light (shortened days of Winter) made the going quite suicidal. Also, since the place is forest-y, it's ideal to do it now as opposed to when the temperature is higher, since low temperatures mean that those pesky insects are knocked out cold, i.e. no ticks and mosquitoes. Oh and no poison ivy, of course, which is a great thing.
If this cache type is considered 5/5, maybe we can build something like that for Singapore. But the permanence of the field puzzles will be a major issue, considering that the façade of Singapore changes ever so often---what was a nice jungle trail now can become a tourist-wimp friendly board walk, and what could have been a cool jungle can become a new condominium. Quite scary actually.
Anyway, enough chit-chat. Time to do some meaningful work before finishing up the story for NaNoWriMo.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Piecewise Functions
Suppose that you are writing a piece-wise function in LaTeX. How do you go about doing it? The trick is to make use of the
\begin{cases} ... \end{cases} environment within Math mode. This particular environment acts like a n-row by 2-column array generating a big `{' on the left side for the grouping of the piece-wise function parts. Since this environment acts like an array, don't forget to separate each column with `&' and end each line with `\\'.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Mumbles
To the few folks who still ardently follow this little blog of mine, I humbly apologise for the general lack of updates in a while. You see, this is the month of November, and traditionally (for the last two to three years at least) it is the time where I go on that suicide mission known as NaNoWriMo. Some of the more astute among you will probably ask the question that I sometimes ask myself: why? Why do I subject myself to such pain that is completely extra-curricular?
I suppose the answer to this question is the same as the one regarding why do I like training in martial arts, be it Aikido or Jujitsu, or even why I like playing my various woodwind instruments, or better yet why I am in graduate school. It all boils down to interest and love I think.
Once you hit the wrong side of twenty-five and realise that if this were the medieval ages, you would be nearly half-way through your life if you were lucky. Under such circumstances then it becomes a little more clear that we are always running a race against time. There're always new things to try, new things to do, and many many things to keep oneself occupied. But then there's always that time budget that one needs to be aware of. But of course, I'm starting to digress from what I was trying to say, namely because time is short, one should do all that one loves to make sure that the short time we have on this Earth is well used.
Time is a strange thing. When you were really young, you just couldn't wait to grow up and be one of those adults. Then once you get out of college/university and face the real world on your own for the first time without the seemingly invincible protection from your parents, you just wish at times that times were like they were before when you were merely a child. Oh and the whole nostalgic feeling about a simpler past---these things are starting to hit me now, considering that very soon I will hit my three-cubed birthday.
On a random note, I stumbled upon a nice list of common English errors, text file available here and the main page can be seen here. Should make an interesting supplemental reading.
Speaking of reading, I'm currently finding time to digest The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard. I might write a review on this later on when I have the chance to digest it; should prove to be useful to those who would want to do Mathematics for fun and/or a living.
Okay, that's all that I can spare for now---need to reserve my word budget for my daily 2k for NaNoWriMo. Till the next update.
I suppose the answer to this question is the same as the one regarding why do I like training in martial arts, be it Aikido or Jujitsu, or even why I like playing my various woodwind instruments, or better yet why I am in graduate school. It all boils down to interest and love I think.
Once you hit the wrong side of twenty-five and realise that if this were the medieval ages, you would be nearly half-way through your life if you were lucky. Under such circumstances then it becomes a little more clear that we are always running a race against time. There're always new things to try, new things to do, and many many things to keep oneself occupied. But then there's always that time budget that one needs to be aware of. But of course, I'm starting to digress from what I was trying to say, namely because time is short, one should do all that one loves to make sure that the short time we have on this Earth is well used.
Time is a strange thing. When you were really young, you just couldn't wait to grow up and be one of those adults. Then once you get out of college/university and face the real world on your own for the first time without the seemingly invincible protection from your parents, you just wish at times that times were like they were before when you were merely a child. Oh and the whole nostalgic feeling about a simpler past---these things are starting to hit me now, considering that very soon I will hit my three-cubed birthday.
On a random note, I stumbled upon a nice list of common English errors, text file available here and the main page can be seen here. Should make an interesting supplemental reading.
Speaking of reading, I'm currently finding time to digest The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard. I might write a review on this later on when I have the chance to digest it; should prove to be useful to those who would want to do Mathematics for fun and/or a living.
Okay, that's all that I can spare for now---need to reserve my word budget for my daily 2k for NaNoWriMo. Till the next update.
Friday, November 11, 2011
EPS-ify Images with ImageMagick
I first talked about ImageMagick some time back here, but I think it is cool to talk about it once more.
So I'm currently using LaTeX as a means of keeping an electronic research journal. I like using LaTeX because of two advantages:
Enter ImageMagick. Assume for the sake of demonstration our scanned file is image.png. Then the following commands will convert it to a [relatively small] EPS file:
That's enough technical talk for now.
So I'm currently using LaTeX as a means of keeping an electronic research journal. I like using LaTeX because of two advantages:
- Everything is text, so I can make use of a version control system to track changes.
- I have the full expression of equations and the what-not in the same manner as I would use to write actual papers, thus saving time.
Enter ImageMagick. Assume for the sake of demonstration our scanned file is image.png. Then the following commands will convert it to a [relatively small] EPS file:
convert -quality 75 image.png image.jpgconvert image.jpg eps3:image.eps
That's enough technical talk for now.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
NaNoWriMo 2011: Modern Office Warrior
Apparently I have a penchant of dealing myself really really hard hands and running with it. This comes from the decision to take part in this year's NaNoWriMo. Due to their site change, you can track my progress here instead. I'll update the widget counter when it is available.
It's going to be yet another slice-of-life with a little bit more action than the last two novels. I think I will take this opportunity to point out some uh interesting phenomena that I have observed while being in the work force for the last couple of years. Obviously this is fiction, so take everything that will be written as such.
Oops look at the time. Gotta get some work done here. Till next time.
It's going to be yet another slice-of-life with a little bit more action than the last two novels. I think I will take this opportunity to point out some uh interesting phenomena that I have observed while being in the work force for the last couple of years. Obviously this is fiction, so take everything that will be written as such.
Oops look at the time. Gotta get some work done here. Till next time.
Friday, October 28, 2011
L'il Kids
So let's see. I've been in the US since Aug 13, 2011, and for all practical purposes and intents, I haven't really been mingling with the local Singapore populace. I suppose being a graduate student means that one's priorities are different as compared to when one was still an undergraduate. That and the fact that as a graduate student, I have an office to spend the day in to get some thinking/research done, while as an undergraduate one was ``doomed'' to roaming the corridors and the campus in between classes, which helps in the whole ``socialise with your fellow students bit''.
I think it'll be really funny/awkward the day that I join the SSA's activities. Heheheheh... but I suppose I'm used to that. Must remember that I am geeky and that it is completely normal to treat the undergraduate folks as l'il kids who haven't seen the world. Yes, it is very evil, but fully justified, considering that I am a good 4 years older than most of them?
Anyway, enough of random ranting, back to work I go. I'm starting to love this...
I think it'll be really funny/awkward the day that I join the SSA's activities. Heheheheh... but I suppose I'm used to that. Must remember that I am geeky and that it is completely normal to treat the undergraduate folks as l'il kids who haven't seen the world. Yes, it is very evil, but fully justified, considering that I am a good 4 years older than most of them?
Anyway, enough of random ranting, back to work I go. I'm starting to love this...
Monday, October 24, 2011
NaNoWriMo 2011?
November is coming, and I'm still debating with myself whether I should take part in this year's NaNoWriMo, considering everything. I mean, I have Eiko with me now, and should serve as an incentive to help push things forward, but somehow I am scared that I might just run out of time to get all things that need to be done while doing NaNoWriMo.
Oh choices, choices.
I do have a story to tell for NaNoWriMo, but the caveat is that I have at least 2 to 3 other ``big'' writing assignments that need attention. So putting aside that one hour per day to write my 2000 words to hit the magical 50k words within the month sounds a little... painful. Anyway, I have around 5 to 6 days to make a decision. We'll see how this goes.
Oh choices, choices.
I do have a story to tell for NaNoWriMo, but the caveat is that I have at least 2 to 3 other ``big'' writing assignments that need attention. So putting aside that one hour per day to write my 2000 words to hit the magical 50k words within the month sounds a little... painful. Anyway, I have around 5 to 6 days to make a decision. We'll see how this goes.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Broken symbol.ttf on Ubuntu
Having weird ``infinity'' symbols for bullets when opening some PDF on some flavour of Ubuntu? It turns out it has to do with a bug with the symbol.ttf font. Here's how to rectify it (as gotten from here).
- If you don't have fontforge, install it first with
sudo apt-get install fontforge
- Open up symbol.ttf in fontforge. On my system, it is located at /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-symbol-replacement/symbol-replacement.ttf/symbol.ttf
- In fontforge, apply Encoding->Force Encoding->Symbol, followed by Encoding->Macintosh Latin, and then File->Generate Fonts... (set to Truetype), ignoring warnings and save.
- Remove the old symbol.ttf and copy the new version back into the same location, probably as root.
- Run the following command:
sudo fc-cache -v
Sunday, October 09, 2011
家
在美国的读书生涯中，我几乎从来没有特别想家的感觉。不过在这两个星期内，我不禁回想着家。或许是生活太复杂吧，还是最近的种种错则而导致我出现想家的念头。
家是个很奇怪的一个组织：当你和家人在一起时，有时会出现种种默察，而这会导致你觉得你的家人似乎在整你。不过，一旦你离开了家，不久后你就会产生想家的念头。可能是人生常情吧，每个人都需要有一种归属感，而家就是能产生个人归属感的一个东西。当你最需要人关怀的时候，你就会想起家。
或许在这深造的生活方式太紧张了吧，也可能是因为我最近又受了伤之类的，所以我会想起家。以前的我简直不把家的重要性放在眼里，如今我觉得除了家以外就再也没有设么重要的东西了。有个家的归属感的感觉最好。
好了，我累了，错别字好像有要重出江湖了。我看我因该去休息一下，这么一来我就有精力来挑战未来。
家是个很奇怪的一个组织：当你和家人在一起时，有时会出现种种默察，而这会导致你觉得你的家人似乎在整你。不过，一旦你离开了家，不久后你就会产生想家的念头。可能是人生常情吧，每个人都需要有一种归属感，而家就是能产生个人归属感的一个东西。当你最需要人关怀的时候，你就会想起家。
或许在这深造的生活方式太紧张了吧，也可能是因为我最近又受了伤之类的，所以我会想起家。以前的我简直不把家的重要性放在眼里，如今我觉得除了家以外就再也没有设么重要的东西了。有个家的归属感的感觉最好。
好了，我累了，错别字好像有要重出江湖了。我看我因该去休息一下，这么一来我就有精力来挑战未来。
Funereal #2
Ahem.
I lay there within my half-opened casket, serene as a man can ever be. Right there next to my glass-covered top, my aged but still lovely wife weeps to herself. Oh the sorrow, the pain! Yet she maintains her dignified poise, melancholy notwithstanding. Comforting her with an arm around her shoulders is my eldest daughter, lovely, tall and dressed in the deepest black that one could think of. She has always been my pride and joy, for being first-born meant she was the child I held the longest and watched over the most. Her husband stands quietly near her---it is not his place to be in deep mourning; his role is mostly supportive. My other daughter flanks my wife on the other side, silently sobbing to herself; she's not as tough as my eldest, but still she has her strong moments, but now was not the time. My son stands in front of my portrait, his head bowed, face unsmiling, tearless, serious---I have brought him up well, it seems, for stoicness was one thing I thought every male should have about him, to never look emotional in front of others other than those close by.
The monk finally finishes the prayer that he was chanting to free my soul of my earthly shackles. Already I feel a little lighter. My wife's weeping intensified, and if I weren't already dead I would have leapt up to her and hold her and tell her once more how much I love her and don't really want to go. With a solemn bow, the monk steps away from his position and the pallbearers stepped up. The lead pallbearer gave a final bow to me, before closing the lid of my coffin. With a silent one-two, the pallbearers lift my casket upon their shoulders and walked solemnly into the antechamber behind the curtains. The small cortege behind me filed out of the main area and shuffled up to the viewing room on the second floor.
There, they got to see the funeral home workers lift up my casket and slowly bring it to the conveyor belt that fed into the gaping door of the furnace of the crematorium. My wife, stoically strong thus far, finally wails audibly, dignity be damned, while my daughters try their best to comfort her while stifling their own tears with little effect. Confronted with the final inevitability, even my son's eyes were tearing.
The funereal home workers gently pushed my casket onto the conveyer belt and stepped back, their heads bowed in respect. My casket rolls gently down the conveyer into the furnace, where I get consumed by the flames for the last time. While I know that I am dead, I leave knowing that my son and daughters will carry on with life, and that they will take care of my lover till the day comes that she joins me for true eternal bliss.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
It's Saturday Already?
It's yet another Saturday morning, and again I'm sitting at my study desk next to the window, the only time that I can get decent illumination from this desk. That corneal abrasion episode took away a good chunk of my time as I shuttled to and fro doctors, instilled eyedrops like clockwork, worrying about how scary the final bill will be, worrying about how all these down time is affecting my already burgeoning workload.
It's not easy living life without support, especially a life where everything needs to be pre-planned and time-managed from start to end. In the bid to obtain a life where I have a slightly less mundane existence, I find myself in a life that requires inordinate amounts of self-discipline just to pull things off. Such is the irony of life. And just when I thought I could put all those years of self-discipline behind me too.
I think at this point, the one big thing I can say about the PhD programme is that it is one long struggle between doing things and finding enough time to deal with the whole life aspect of things. Life has a strange way of creeping up on you when you are not really noticing, and what happens after that is usually quite complicated, since in life, you have to deal with more than just yourself; there's always someone or something else in the equation that you need to look out for.
Okay, no real mood to wax lyrical. Need to get some stuff done so that I can... work on other stuff. Till next time.
It's not easy living life without support, especially a life where everything needs to be pre-planned and time-managed from start to end. In the bid to obtain a life where I have a slightly less mundane existence, I find myself in a life that requires inordinate amounts of self-discipline just to pull things off. Such is the irony of life. And just when I thought I could put all those years of self-discipline behind me too.
I think at this point, the one big thing I can say about the PhD programme is that it is one long struggle between doing things and finding enough time to deal with the whole life aspect of things. Life has a strange way of creeping up on you when you are not really noticing, and what happens after that is usually quite complicated, since in life, you have to deal with more than just yourself; there's always someone or something else in the equation that you need to look out for.
Okay, no real mood to wax lyrical. Need to get some stuff done so that I can... work on other stuff. Till next time.
Friday, October 07, 2011
Clean Bill of Health?
The nightmare of 2+ weeks is just reaching the end, and none too soon I might add.
A day-long travel out to Bloomington, Illinois is nothing to scoff at, considering that it is a 60-mile journey one-way from Champaign-Urbana. Factoring in the fear of the unknown meant that I added a generous buffer to the overall time that I was willing to spend out here in Bloomington before hopping on the long-haul bus back home.
That last 1%---finally there is some closure. The expert has spoken; there is no medical risk of the epithelial ingrowth colonising the entirety of my cornea, and that any procedure that would be done will be done so under my own comfort level. The gist of it is that the corneal flap has folded back slightly, and it is under the ophthamologist's opinion that it wouldn't post a problem unless I feel discomfort from it, i.e. things like having ridiculously dry eyes for extended periods of times, sudden change in astigmatism, or random feelings of foreign bodies within the eye itself. In short, that 1% isn't going to matter unless it is actually affecting me, then I can always go back to her to have her lift the flap and scrape of those epithelial cells, all under local anaesthesia of course.
Probably the best bit of news I have heard in a while.
Right now, I'm in no rush to get back into Jujitsu training---still need to alter my gi a little (damn thing is still too damn long in spite my ``best fit'' sizing). Also, while that 1% is declared medically insignificant, I want to give it just a little more time to recuperate, and until I can get hold of some of those protective goggles. Calling those things protective goggles is kind of strange, when in reality there are really spectacles with particularly sturdy frames. Might as well, considering that I have been thinking of updating my prescription for a while now for long-range work like driving. I asked the doctor if it were normal of me to not use my glasses when working on the computer, and her reply was that my eyes were lazy; since I was already myopic to begin with, the eye just refuses to use the eye muscles to accomodate for the nearer vision given the correction. This happens only because the level of myopia that I have now is sufficiently low that objects placed just at arm's length distance away just happens to be sitting within the comfort zone of my eyes' focal length. Well I suppose I'm going to keep doing this as I don't really see a need to fix anything---worst case I'll see if I can get a greatly reduced power for close range work, mostly to fight the astigmatism that can distort things.
I was feeling quite listless over the past fortnight, considering that I couldn't really do any of the physical activities stuff that I liked doing due to my corneal abrasion (Jujitsu and geocaching). But today, I think I had my share of venting out these frustrated energies through the long walk to and fro the ophthamologist's office from the long haul bus stop. The Google Maps' estimated distance for the route along the main roads was estimated to be around 2.4 miles, and I walked both directions, plus a mile here and there when I slipped off to pick up some geocaches along the way. All in all, I think I walked about 10 kilometres today, not counting the daily 7 kilometres of cycling I do to get to office and back. I bet I don't even get to clock such mileage back in Singapore heheheheh... yet I find myself willing to take walking as a valid mode of transport here. For fun, I used my GPSr to track how fast I was walking, and it turned out to be, on average, 3.7 miles per hour, which is roughly 5.9 kilometres per hour. Not super fast, but fast enough to make the time quoted for walking on Google Maps irrelevant.
And so, my Thursday is almost done, spent in a different town getting expert advice on my eyes because the town that I am based in had no such experts. Such is the strangeness of life. Now the only thing left to do for this episode is to wait for the medical bill and see just how much 20% of it really is, and then figure out how to pay for it without using up all of my allowances. I am hoping that the cost isn't too drastic, but I can't be sure only because no one seems to publish the consultation rate. According to Mangesh, my colleague/labmate, those rates are hardly published because they change according to the health insurance provider. Talk about stratified sampling for sales. I just hope that the part I need to pay is reasonable enough.
Alright, enough of ranting. I should probably start to walk towards the pick up point and wait for the bus. Hanging out in another university's student centre is a little weird and disconcerting, particularly when it's evening and there's no one about. I must be missing something here I suppose.
Till the next update.
A day-long travel out to Bloomington, Illinois is nothing to scoff at, considering that it is a 60-mile journey one-way from Champaign-Urbana. Factoring in the fear of the unknown meant that I added a generous buffer to the overall time that I was willing to spend out here in Bloomington before hopping on the long-haul bus back home.
That last 1%---finally there is some closure. The expert has spoken; there is no medical risk of the epithelial ingrowth colonising the entirety of my cornea, and that any procedure that would be done will be done so under my own comfort level. The gist of it is that the corneal flap has folded back slightly, and it is under the ophthamologist's opinion that it wouldn't post a problem unless I feel discomfort from it, i.e. things like having ridiculously dry eyes for extended periods of times, sudden change in astigmatism, or random feelings of foreign bodies within the eye itself. In short, that 1% isn't going to matter unless it is actually affecting me, then I can always go back to her to have her lift the flap and scrape of those epithelial cells, all under local anaesthesia of course.
Probably the best bit of news I have heard in a while.
Right now, I'm in no rush to get back into Jujitsu training---still need to alter my gi a little (damn thing is still too damn long in spite my ``best fit'' sizing). Also, while that 1% is declared medically insignificant, I want to give it just a little more time to recuperate, and until I can get hold of some of those protective goggles. Calling those things protective goggles is kind of strange, when in reality there are really spectacles with particularly sturdy frames. Might as well, considering that I have been thinking of updating my prescription for a while now for long-range work like driving. I asked the doctor if it were normal of me to not use my glasses when working on the computer, and her reply was that my eyes were lazy; since I was already myopic to begin with, the eye just refuses to use the eye muscles to accomodate for the nearer vision given the correction. This happens only because the level of myopia that I have now is sufficiently low that objects placed just at arm's length distance away just happens to be sitting within the comfort zone of my eyes' focal length. Well I suppose I'm going to keep doing this as I don't really see a need to fix anything---worst case I'll see if I can get a greatly reduced power for close range work, mostly to fight the astigmatism that can distort things.
I was feeling quite listless over the past fortnight, considering that I couldn't really do any of the physical activities stuff that I liked doing due to my corneal abrasion (Jujitsu and geocaching). But today, I think I had my share of venting out these frustrated energies through the long walk to and fro the ophthamologist's office from the long haul bus stop. The Google Maps' estimated distance for the route along the main roads was estimated to be around 2.4 miles, and I walked both directions, plus a mile here and there when I slipped off to pick up some geocaches along the way. All in all, I think I walked about 10 kilometres today, not counting the daily 7 kilometres of cycling I do to get to office and back. I bet I don't even get to clock such mileage back in Singapore heheheheh... yet I find myself willing to take walking as a valid mode of transport here. For fun, I used my GPSr to track how fast I was walking, and it turned out to be, on average, 3.7 miles per hour, which is roughly 5.9 kilometres per hour. Not super fast, but fast enough to make the time quoted for walking on Google Maps irrelevant.
And so, my Thursday is almost done, spent in a different town getting expert advice on my eyes because the town that I am based in had no such experts. Such is the strangeness of life. Now the only thing left to do for this episode is to wait for the medical bill and see just how much 20% of it really is, and then figure out how to pay for it without using up all of my allowances. I am hoping that the cost isn't too drastic, but I can't be sure only because no one seems to publish the consultation rate. According to Mangesh, my colleague/labmate, those rates are hardly published because they change according to the health insurance provider. Talk about stratified sampling for sales. I just hope that the part I need to pay is reasonable enough.
Alright, enough of ranting. I should probably start to walk towards the pick up point and wait for the bus. Hanging out in another university's student centre is a little weird and disconcerting, particularly when it's evening and there's no one about. I must be missing something here I suppose.
Till the next update.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
But I'm Only a Student...
There are some days in my life that I wish I were dead or non-existent, and it seems that today is the day.
I went back to the optometrist today expecting good news. Well in some senses, I did, as the wound is healed at 99%. Except that 1%, that lousy last 1%. Something wrong with that 1%---it wasn't healing fast enough; that 1% was at the periphery of my corneal flap. Maybe some epithelial cells have made their way past the flap from the initial injury, causing it to possibly be the start of an ingrowth. Possibly. Prognosis is good though, but it means I have to go elsewhere to get this checked out by someone more qualified than what we are having at the local hospital/clinic.
Except this somewhere is a good hour's drive away. In the US, this means at least 60 miles, or around 97 kilometres. 97 kilometres. Bye bye busy day.
And of course, I have tons of things that are due this week. Thankfully, I've gotten enough of them done, so I'm left with one major item to clear, not counting this cross-country doctor's visit. And now I have to coordinate with a kind soul who will take half the day off to drive me all the way out there and back.
This is starting to be a really costly (opportunity cost) incident...
I went back to the optometrist today expecting good news. Well in some senses, I did, as the wound is healed at 99%. Except that 1%, that lousy last 1%. Something wrong with that 1%---it wasn't healing fast enough; that 1% was at the periphery of my corneal flap. Maybe some epithelial cells have made their way past the flap from the initial injury, causing it to possibly be the start of an ingrowth. Possibly. Prognosis is good though, but it means I have to go elsewhere to get this checked out by someone more qualified than what we are having at the local hospital/clinic.
Except this somewhere is a good hour's drive away. In the US, this means at least 60 miles, or around 97 kilometres. 97 kilometres. Bye bye busy day.
And of course, I have tons of things that are due this week. Thankfully, I've gotten enough of them done, so I'm left with one major item to clear, not counting this cross-country doctor's visit. And now I have to coordinate with a kind soul who will take half the day off to drive me all the way out there and back.
This is starting to be a really costly (opportunity cost) incident...
Monday, October 03, 2011
Corneal Conundrum
Break my arm and I can still work with the other one, albeit slowly.
Break my leg and I just limp about, working mostly unimpaired, though I probably need to watch my weight from lack of activity.
But bust my eye and my spirit is broken, having neither the will nor the ability to actually see what I'm doing and thus get things done in a smooth fashion.
That last statement is basically how I have been feeling for the last fortnight---the inability to see clearly is always annoying and makes it really difficult to concentrate. Indeed, calling humans visual creatures is a most apt description.
It is not that my right corneal abrasion isn't healing; it is doing better each day compared to the last. It is the fact that it is healing too slowly relative to the norm that is making my attending optometrist worried. Such is the complication that comes with a general predisposition towards inflammation, and the fact that my cornea itself has undergone some structural changes via LASIK.
Do I regret having LASIK done then? No, I don't. It just isn't safe to be traipsing all around the world with an effective eyesight that required -15.00 dioptres of correction. I think the expensive take-home lesson here is that I should be careful with what kinds of sports that I am doing. A year of Aikido didn't increase the risk of anything happening to my eye---most of the stuff we do involves mostly the hands and twisting the body into interesting positions so as to throw someone. But Jujitsu, it's different; the take downs are many and highly varied. I should be more careful with this sport than I did with Aikido, since the integrity of my cornea has been breached twice by now, and we all know that structural integrity takes a long time to recover, particularly for something that begins as fragile as the cornea.
Anyway, that's all the time I have for random ranting. Maybe another post will be up on Friday or something... I don't know. Currently having to juggle too many things at once means that I have little to no time to myself to do reflections and other ``personal development'' things like writing journal entries or even stories or poems.
Break my leg and I just limp about, working mostly unimpaired, though I probably need to watch my weight from lack of activity.
But bust my eye and my spirit is broken, having neither the will nor the ability to actually see what I'm doing and thus get things done in a smooth fashion.
That last statement is basically how I have been feeling for the last fortnight---the inability to see clearly is always annoying and makes it really difficult to concentrate. Indeed, calling humans visual creatures is a most apt description.
It is not that my right corneal abrasion isn't healing; it is doing better each day compared to the last. It is the fact that it is healing too slowly relative to the norm that is making my attending optometrist worried. Such is the complication that comes with a general predisposition towards inflammation, and the fact that my cornea itself has undergone some structural changes via LASIK.
Do I regret having LASIK done then? No, I don't. It just isn't safe to be traipsing all around the world with an effective eyesight that required -15.00 dioptres of correction. I think the expensive take-home lesson here is that I should be careful with what kinds of sports that I am doing. A year of Aikido didn't increase the risk of anything happening to my eye---most of the stuff we do involves mostly the hands and twisting the body into interesting positions so as to throw someone. But Jujitsu, it's different; the take downs are many and highly varied. I should be more careful with this sport than I did with Aikido, since the integrity of my cornea has been breached twice by now, and we all know that structural integrity takes a long time to recover, particularly for something that begins as fragile as the cornea.
Anyway, that's all the time I have for random ranting. Maybe another post will be up on Friday or something... I don't know. Currently having to juggle too many things at once means that I have little to no time to myself to do reflections and other ``personal development'' things like writing journal entries or even stories or poems.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Musings on a Saturday
In the office/lab on a Saturday morning---not my kind of weekend morning, but it suffices given the situation that I'm in. I'm kind of delayed by a few days of work this week because I had to deal with the pressing issue of a right corneal abrasion that I think I sustained from a rather vigorous training session on Monday evening.
It's funny how one doesn't really care about something before anything bad happens, and then when some strange occurrence happens, one is suddenly made aware of body parts, medical histories and physiologies that we never really paid much attention to.
Suffice to say, this condition is currently under medical supervision, and all that I can do is really to wait it out and let my body do its thing about healing the abrasion over. The medication provided is mostly prophylactic in nature, and in some senses to improve the conditions in which the wound has to encourage healing. This of course includes the properties of the reduction of the inflammatory response (via steroid eyedrops), and a general relaxation of the ``twitch'' muscles (via mydriasis and cycloplegia inducing eyedrops). Of course this leaves my right eye in a somewhat ``zombified'' state where I cannot really use it to focus on anything of importance, and this includes reading as well as other important near vision work like looking at the computer screen. Thankfully, my left eye is still doing a superb job in keeping my overall eyesight serviceable, and I am really grateful for the general adaptability of my body in general.
So, what's new in my world? Well, for some reason I find myself thinking about how life would be like to have a couple of sons or daughters about, living with them, growing up with them, and generally experiencing the joys and pains of fatherhood. It's a funny type of warm and fuzzy feeling---I have no idea how to explain this, maybe real-life fathers will know what I'm trying to convey here. Anyway, this bout of emotions and wishful thinking came about when I read this article by Regina Brett (same person who wrote the 45/50 life lessons column). It does seem like one is missing out on a lot of things in life when one does not settle down with a child or two (or more!). Some time back, my parents did mention how they never regretted having us children, even though it meant that my mum had to stop work and take care of us full-time---they never regretted it even though we were trying at times, me particularly due to my general abnormality of having skin that reacted to everything with inflammations. They never regretted it. They never regretted it.
It makes me cry when I think about what they said.
I suppose as I get older, my perspective shifts away from what I can do to improve my personal self towards something a little more... humanising, if there's a term for that. Like the random team-building events that I had gone through with various people from different stages of life, they placed family above everything else, while silly l'il me was still thinking big thoughts about meeting great people and being great in general.
When I was young, I knew about mortality, but didn't really care much about it, since when one was fourteen for instance, dying was among the last things that would come to mind. But as I grow older and reaching my one-third mark of my expected natural lifespan, the reality of mortality is starting to hit me very soon. It is hard to accept that my parents are growing old---in my eyes, they never seemed to have aged since twenty odd years ago when I was first sentient. Yet now as each day passes, I fear for their eventual infirmity, I fear for their eventual mortality. And then it makes me sad to realise that I'm probably not spending much time with them now that I'm ``all grown up'' and have a life to lead on my own. Yet when I am with them, it is hard to say anything else other than what we might usually say each day; too macho or too repressed as a culture, perhaps?
I suppose it's becoming easier and easier to understand what pains our parents went through the older we get, and it is only after some time of being away and pondering about the past and the future that makes one realise how important it is to love them now when they are still here with us.
It's funny how one doesn't really care about something before anything bad happens, and then when some strange occurrence happens, one is suddenly made aware of body parts, medical histories and physiologies that we never really paid much attention to.
Suffice to say, this condition is currently under medical supervision, and all that I can do is really to wait it out and let my body do its thing about healing the abrasion over. The medication provided is mostly prophylactic in nature, and in some senses to improve the conditions in which the wound has to encourage healing. This of course includes the properties of the reduction of the inflammatory response (via steroid eyedrops), and a general relaxation of the ``twitch'' muscles (via mydriasis and cycloplegia inducing eyedrops). Of course this leaves my right eye in a somewhat ``zombified'' state where I cannot really use it to focus on anything of importance, and this includes reading as well as other important near vision work like looking at the computer screen. Thankfully, my left eye is still doing a superb job in keeping my overall eyesight serviceable, and I am really grateful for the general adaptability of my body in general.
So, what's new in my world? Well, for some reason I find myself thinking about how life would be like to have a couple of sons or daughters about, living with them, growing up with them, and generally experiencing the joys and pains of fatherhood. It's a funny type of warm and fuzzy feeling---I have no idea how to explain this, maybe real-life fathers will know what I'm trying to convey here. Anyway, this bout of emotions and wishful thinking came about when I read this article by Regina Brett (same person who wrote the 45/50 life lessons column). It does seem like one is missing out on a lot of things in life when one does not settle down with a child or two (or more!). Some time back, my parents did mention how they never regretted having us children, even though it meant that my mum had to stop work and take care of us full-time---they never regretted it even though we were trying at times, me particularly due to my general abnormality of having skin that reacted to everything with inflammations. They never regretted it. They never regretted it.
It makes me cry when I think about what they said.
I suppose as I get older, my perspective shifts away from what I can do to improve my personal self towards something a little more... humanising, if there's a term for that. Like the random team-building events that I had gone through with various people from different stages of life, they placed family above everything else, while silly l'il me was still thinking big thoughts about meeting great people and being great in general.
When I was young, I knew about mortality, but didn't really care much about it, since when one was fourteen for instance, dying was among the last things that would come to mind. But as I grow older and reaching my one-third mark of my expected natural lifespan, the reality of mortality is starting to hit me very soon. It is hard to accept that my parents are growing old---in my eyes, they never seemed to have aged since twenty odd years ago when I was first sentient. Yet now as each day passes, I fear for their eventual infirmity, I fear for their eventual mortality. And then it makes me sad to realise that I'm probably not spending much time with them now that I'm ``all grown up'' and have a life to lead on my own. Yet when I am with them, it is hard to say anything else other than what we might usually say each day; too macho or too repressed as a culture, perhaps?
I suppose it's becoming easier and easier to understand what pains our parents went through the older we get, and it is only after some time of being away and pondering about the past and the future that makes one realise how important it is to love them now when they are still here with us.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
A Bicycle Built for... Me
While on the one hand I'm really glad to have gotten my driver's licence in Singapore, I'm still tardying a little with regards to getting the state licence in Illinois. Well, I technically still have around 60 days to get it, but that's not a major problem---it's not a problem at all. Driving is of course a most useful skill, but the maintenance and usage of the car is something that needs to be taken into consideration. Considering that Champaign-Urbana is very friendly to cycling in general, I have taken up cycling as my primary mode of transport.
So I got myself outfitted for a bicycle, a hybrid one specifically. A hybrid bicycle is a cross between the gripping power of the rugged mountain bicycle and the light-weighted speed of the road bicycle; a nice mix of the rough and the smooth, the kind of bicycle that is well suited for urban travel. The one thing that feels different riding in the US is that I need to signal with my left hand. That is a little unnerving and disorienting because I'm too used to steering with my left hand and signalling with my right---this switch of hands just takes a little getting used to. And I have now grown to love the fact that my bicycle has a mirror attached to it to look behind without having to turn all the way around, though I still look over my shoulder to check my blind spots should I have to filter left to turn left.
I'm going to build up my stamina and power to make my bicycle a most useful mode of transport, building up to the point that I can easily cover 50+km in a single day (roughly 25km out, and 25km back). I think that will help my overall goal of being stronger when I return.
Okay, enough of the cycling talk---sleeping time.
So I got myself outfitted for a bicycle, a hybrid one specifically. A hybrid bicycle is a cross between the gripping power of the rugged mountain bicycle and the light-weighted speed of the road bicycle; a nice mix of the rough and the smooth, the kind of bicycle that is well suited for urban travel. The one thing that feels different riding in the US is that I need to signal with my left hand. That is a little unnerving and disorienting because I'm too used to steering with my left hand and signalling with my right---this switch of hands just takes a little getting used to. And I have now grown to love the fact that my bicycle has a mirror attached to it to look behind without having to turn all the way around, though I still look over my shoulder to check my blind spots should I have to filter left to turn left.
I'm going to build up my stamina and power to make my bicycle a most useful mode of transport, building up to the point that I can easily cover 50+km in a single day (roughly 25km out, and 25km back). I think that will help my overall goal of being stronger when I return.
Okay, enough of the cycling talk---sleeping time.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Undoing Font Hiding in Windows
If you are on Windows 7, and after performing some update, suddenly realise that you cannot see any of your non-Latin characters in your applications when you once could, try this out. Use Win+F2 and type "C:\Windows\Fonts" and press enter. Under "Font settings", make sure that the option "Hide fonts based on language settings" is unchecked. Then, reboot. Things should work okay after that, if not well, erm, you're on your own.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Quick Evaluation
Phew, the first week of classes are finally done. I really wanted to write this entry a couple of days back, but somehow things always cropped up and I find myself having to abandon the various attempts on writing a decent entry here. Of course, I have Q10 handy for the ``just write'' type of writing that I seek, so this entry gets done that way.
The first thing that one notices when one is in graduate school is the notion that no one really gives a damn about what you do. No one gives a damn about what you do, be it your advisor, your fellow colleagues, or any one else. No one except yourself, of course. The curriculum is tailor-made for you, and you have to take charge (with the assistance of a committee of course) of what you want to/need to take in order to fulfill your academic course requirements. And then there is the whole issue of intellectual discovery---it is up to you and you alone to decide how you might want to run your research. Of course if you have a slightly more caring advisor, he/she will actually attempt to make sure that you do something along the way, but other than that, you are on your own. I sort of knew this was going to be the case prior to entering graduate school, but having witnessed it first hand makes the stories that I have heard more concrete and real.
Of course, this being the first week of the semester, things are progressing a little on the slow side, but things are not as slow as it seems. Okay, compared to CMU, things are sort of slow now (usually we would have the first round of homework assigned by the end of the week), but it is really hard to tell if this is going to be the pace that things will be running at; for all I know, this is merely the first week syndrome where things are deliberately released at a reduced pace just to ensure that any last-minute class enrolment won't lose out too much, though to be fair, it doesn't seem to be the culture here to have ``last-minute enrolments''---there doesn't seem to exist a wait list from which people can queue on while waiting to be enrolled into a class.
Living conditions-wise it has been pretty peaceful. My dorm space is really a one-room apartment on the southern outskirts of the main campus, so it tends to be much more tranquil here than say the residence halls where the undergraduates might be living in. There are of course pros and cons of this set up---it means that when I finally get myself completely at ease with this place, I will have an excellent distraction-free environment to get cracking, and not have to get into my office just to get work done. The main disadvantage is that because I live on the southern outskirts of the main campus, the daily commute to my office up in the computer science department building (Siebel Centre) can be pretty brutal. I have to take a bus up north every morning; the bus comes in 12-minute intervals between 0700hrs to 0800hrs, subsequently it runs on 20-minute intervals instead. It takes the bus around 13 to 17 minutes to arrive at the bus stop nearest to Siebel Centre, and from there, a 750-feet walk awaits me. For now, things are quite dandy because the weather is still conducive for walking, but I'm really not very sure how this is going to work out once winter sets in. And yes, I have switched to the imperial system (at least for distances) for now because the dimension of ``500 feet'' is a natural length for all the block distances that dot the landscape of the campus grounds.
The ``500 feet'' comment comes from the manner in which I have been navigating around the campus with---throughout the last fortnight or so I have been walking around with my Garmin eTrex GPS receiver in tow. It is pretty nifty the moment I got the Champaign-Urbana base map loaded into the device; by knowing which road intersections I have passed, and having a working memory of the local map made walking around campus relatively fuss-free. Considering the fact that I'm a graduate student who doesn't have the benefit of living in close quarters with other like-minded individuals, it is a really fast way to get the lay of the land on the back of my hand. I think I have geocaching to thank for this though---the months spent walking all over Singapore armed with nothing more than a GPS receiver and some local maps have indeed honed my geospatial reasoning skills, making navigation a much easier exercise than thought possible.
Anyway, not sure if I had said this in an earlier post (not checking only because I'm using Q10 to write up this entry), but the campus here feels very different. For one, since the department buildings are fairly far from each other, one is more likely to run into people in the same programme than anything else. This is different from CMU because, well, CMU's campus is so small that it is hard to not run into people from different schools. For two, because I keep running into the engineering/computer science folks, I do end up running into a lot of PRC students. It feels a little weird when one is in the US and end up hearing more mandarin spoken than english, but it is not something to be worried about I suppose; it is only when they start gathering in groups and being generally obnoxious that things start to get annoying, and even then that action is not limited to the PRC students alone. So far I've not managed to break into that little cocoon that many of them are stuck in, so I suppose I will have to take a little effort to make friends with some of them and see what things we can share and learn along the way.
Food here is still manageable---I have a full kitchen to work with. Well, almost full, since I have a refrigerator/freezer, an electric stove and oven, a saucepan and two different types of spatula. I just don't have enough of the other amenities required for cooking, like knives, cutting boards, flat plans, condiments and the like. And of course a microwave, the single most useful electrical appliance that one can have within an apartment, since it makes heating and reheating food stuffs that much easier. But all these things will have to come eventually when I start to see the need to actually cook, and when my allowance comes in; money is starting to get a little tight as I deal with the price of the text books that are needed for class and the overall need for survival through sustenance.
The bus system here is very good---there's at least one bus that will take one to anywhere that one might want to go on and off campus. More importantly, the bus system is quite efficient; there are different routes for the week day day time, week day evening and weekend. The routes are colour coded by the general service locations, and the numbers identify the route directly, with the weekend and evening versions having numbers ten times that of the usual week day day time ones. The general direction of the bus route is also encoded, so one can unambiguously state which bus it is they want to take, like the 120W Teal route or the 50E Green route. The buses also have an integrated system that tracks their movement, and the provided expected time of arrival at each bus stop is accurate to within five minutes, which is really useful. The buses are also handicap friendly since they can all ``kneel''---hydraulically lower the front of the bus so that the ramp can be deployed for those in need of them. All buses also have attached bicycle racks in front of them that can take up to two bicycles, which is a great thing to support cycling within the city. A pity that the Singapore transport system, in all its glory, don't even have such useful facilities without involving a lot of bureaucratic wrangling to get working. The bus schedule guide is also freely available on all buses, and that makes looking out for the various bus timings and locations that much easier for folks who don't have the Android phone application that polls the mass transit department's web site for such information.
So far I'm not really homesick yet, so I would think that things are going pretty smooth on my end. Many of my friends who live on the US east coast are terrified at the prospect of having to deal with Hurricane Irene that I do feel for their safely. Anyway, that's all I have for now, so till next time.
The first thing that one notices when one is in graduate school is the notion that no one really gives a damn about what you do. No one gives a damn about what you do, be it your advisor, your fellow colleagues, or any one else. No one except yourself, of course. The curriculum is tailor-made for you, and you have to take charge (with the assistance of a committee of course) of what you want to/need to take in order to fulfill your academic course requirements. And then there is the whole issue of intellectual discovery---it is up to you and you alone to decide how you might want to run your research. Of course if you have a slightly more caring advisor, he/she will actually attempt to make sure that you do something along the way, but other than that, you are on your own. I sort of knew this was going to be the case prior to entering graduate school, but having witnessed it first hand makes the stories that I have heard more concrete and real.
Of course, this being the first week of the semester, things are progressing a little on the slow side, but things are not as slow as it seems. Okay, compared to CMU, things are sort of slow now (usually we would have the first round of homework assigned by the end of the week), but it is really hard to tell if this is going to be the pace that things will be running at; for all I know, this is merely the first week syndrome where things are deliberately released at a reduced pace just to ensure that any last-minute class enrolment won't lose out too much, though to be fair, it doesn't seem to be the culture here to have ``last-minute enrolments''---there doesn't seem to exist a wait list from which people can queue on while waiting to be enrolled into a class.
Living conditions-wise it has been pretty peaceful. My dorm space is really a one-room apartment on the southern outskirts of the main campus, so it tends to be much more tranquil here than say the residence halls where the undergraduates might be living in. There are of course pros and cons of this set up---it means that when I finally get myself completely at ease with this place, I will have an excellent distraction-free environment to get cracking, and not have to get into my office just to get work done. The main disadvantage is that because I live on the southern outskirts of the main campus, the daily commute to my office up in the computer science department building (Siebel Centre) can be pretty brutal. I have to take a bus up north every morning; the bus comes in 12-minute intervals between 0700hrs to 0800hrs, subsequently it runs on 20-minute intervals instead. It takes the bus around 13 to 17 minutes to arrive at the bus stop nearest to Siebel Centre, and from there, a 750-feet walk awaits me. For now, things are quite dandy because the weather is still conducive for walking, but I'm really not very sure how this is going to work out once winter sets in. And yes, I have switched to the imperial system (at least for distances) for now because the dimension of ``500 feet'' is a natural length for all the block distances that dot the landscape of the campus grounds.
The ``500 feet'' comment comes from the manner in which I have been navigating around the campus with---throughout the last fortnight or so I have been walking around with my Garmin eTrex GPS receiver in tow. It is pretty nifty the moment I got the Champaign-Urbana base map loaded into the device; by knowing which road intersections I have passed, and having a working memory of the local map made walking around campus relatively fuss-free. Considering the fact that I'm a graduate student who doesn't have the benefit of living in close quarters with other like-minded individuals, it is a really fast way to get the lay of the land on the back of my hand. I think I have geocaching to thank for this though---the months spent walking all over Singapore armed with nothing more than a GPS receiver and some local maps have indeed honed my geospatial reasoning skills, making navigation a much easier exercise than thought possible.
Anyway, not sure if I had said this in an earlier post (not checking only because I'm using Q10 to write up this entry), but the campus here feels very different. For one, since the department buildings are fairly far from each other, one is more likely to run into people in the same programme than anything else. This is different from CMU because, well, CMU's campus is so small that it is hard to not run into people from different schools. For two, because I keep running into the engineering/computer science folks, I do end up running into a lot of PRC students. It feels a little weird when one is in the US and end up hearing more mandarin spoken than english, but it is not something to be worried about I suppose; it is only when they start gathering in groups and being generally obnoxious that things start to get annoying, and even then that action is not limited to the PRC students alone. So far I've not managed to break into that little cocoon that many of them are stuck in, so I suppose I will have to take a little effort to make friends with some of them and see what things we can share and learn along the way.
Food here is still manageable---I have a full kitchen to work with. Well, almost full, since I have a refrigerator/freezer, an electric stove and oven, a saucepan and two different types of spatula. I just don't have enough of the other amenities required for cooking, like knives, cutting boards, flat plans, condiments and the like. And of course a microwave, the single most useful electrical appliance that one can have within an apartment, since it makes heating and reheating food stuffs that much easier. But all these things will have to come eventually when I start to see the need to actually cook, and when my allowance comes in; money is starting to get a little tight as I deal with the price of the text books that are needed for class and the overall need for survival through sustenance.
The bus system here is very good---there's at least one bus that will take one to anywhere that one might want to go on and off campus. More importantly, the bus system is quite efficient; there are different routes for the week day day time, week day evening and weekend. The routes are colour coded by the general service locations, and the numbers identify the route directly, with the weekend and evening versions having numbers ten times that of the usual week day day time ones. The general direction of the bus route is also encoded, so one can unambiguously state which bus it is they want to take, like the 120W Teal route or the 50E Green route. The buses also have an integrated system that tracks their movement, and the provided expected time of arrival at each bus stop is accurate to within five minutes, which is really useful. The buses are also handicap friendly since they can all ``kneel''---hydraulically lower the front of the bus so that the ramp can be deployed for those in need of them. All buses also have attached bicycle racks in front of them that can take up to two bicycles, which is a great thing to support cycling within the city. A pity that the Singapore transport system, in all its glory, don't even have such useful facilities without involving a lot of bureaucratic wrangling to get working. The bus schedule guide is also freely available on all buses, and that makes looking out for the various bus timings and locations that much easier for folks who don't have the Android phone application that polls the mass transit department's web site for such information.
So far I'm not really homesick yet, so I would think that things are going pretty smooth on my end. Many of my friends who live on the US east coast are terrified at the prospect of having to deal with Hurricane Irene that I do feel for their safely. Anyway, that's all I have for now, so till next time.
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