My Life at October 2007
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October 31, 2007(Wednesday)
After the meeting with professor yesterday, I spent most of today working on the dissertation.
I also took a golf class today. After practicing the "abbreviated swing" for the last couple of times, I tried the full swing today. Apparently I am better at this and feel more natural. Even though I am not able to hit the ball consistently, this is at least a good start.
October 30, 2007(Tuesday)
I had a meeting with my professor about my dissertation. My topic is about outsourcing. He is usually very picky and detail. Every time after meeting I felt so defeated. However, today he said that I did a pretty good job in this paper and I improved (in terms of my writing) a lot. I am very happy to hear this because it is not easy to please him.
Then I brought the car to some mechanic shop for inspection because we will go to a road trip (Toronto) later and want to make sure that everything is ok.
At night we went to Zach's house for dinner. Then we have some meeting for our group. Since we will have baby soon, we will not play the front role position. It is good to see a new generation of leader coming up in our fellowship. However we hope that they will have close relationship with God too.
October 29, 2007(Monday)
Our classmates celebrate my (belated) birthday lunch. That is good to meet up with them. And then I went to do some exercise and the day is as smooth and relax as before. I am not working on any project because I am waiting for professor to deliver their part.
October 28, 2007(Sunday)
This morning when we go to Sunday School, we are supposed to drive one of the members. He is late and I am impatient and was a bit rude to him. I feel bad about myself. Anyway, I am in general a person with limited love and caring. I need to learn how not to be too rude.
Carmen and I went out for a one-hour walk. The weather is pretty nice outside and we enjoy the environment. Then we have hot pot with the two of us.
October 27, 2007(Saturday)
We went to check the pregnancy doctor in the morning and then I assembled the baby crib (baby bed) for two hours in the afternoon. People says that it usually takes the expected father a longer time to realize that he really has a baby, and this certainly is quite true in my case. Today I actually spent two hours assembling the baby bed, and that is the first huge realization I have, that I will be a dad soon! I certainly feel a bit weird and trying to get used to this feeling. Expected mother, on the other hand, always prepared to be a mother because the baby is with her.
At night we went to our church friend Peter and Linda's house for dinner. Then we made our first Halloween pumpkin scriptures! Carmen is creative but I am bad at craft. I only did something but not really enjoy the process.
October 26, 2007(Friday)
There is not much school work that I can do now because I am waiting for professors to give feedbacks to my projects. I went to do some exercise and played badminton. At night, Carmen led Bible Study, and then we went to practice music and dance because our group would have a song offering next next Friday night. We have some funny move and I am making it even funnier. I always like to joke and make fun of thing.
October 25, 2007(Thursday)
I had midterm on the game theory class in the morning. Basically the mid term is just the same as last year's midterm, except with different numbers. It is not challenging at all and I only takes 30 mins (out of 75 mins) to finish the exam.
I have my second year presentation today. I have prepared this for a while and I am always confident with my presentation skill. However, I think that I did not do as good as I hope to be. I am too energetic and get carried away. I get excited on the stage, and sometimes speaking too fast, even faster than my fast mind. I do repeat what I say and not clear. Obviously there is up side on my energetic and enthusiasm as well. People are entertained with my talk. Therefore professors suggest that I should tune down my energy level and speak slowly (even though I consciously tried to speak slow already). One of the professors asked some questions and made some negative comments and make me feel a bit sad. PhD students enjoy my talk though.
October 24, 2007(Wednesday)
I had another rehearsal for presentation today. This time the professor is pleased with what I have, and we are confident that tomorrow I will do a good job. I did not play golf today because of bad weather. Instead I just did some work out and stayed home for the rest of the day.
October 23, 2007(Tuesday)
I had meeting with professors about a rehearsal for the second year presentation. I find that this is quite a stupid idea because I am pretty confident at my presentation skill, and it is extremely odd to presents to them as if they know nothing, but actually they know a lot about my project. Nevertheless they still give a lot of criticism and makes me feel worthless again. Every time after meeting, I have this "being beaten" feeling.
I have another presentation in the afternoon, which is for the Academic writing class. I did not as good as I was in the morning, but they are really impressed with my presentation. After all presentation is my strength and I also have worked on this project for over 100 hours, probably more than double or even triple most other students has worked on. Therefore this is not surprising that they are impressed with my presentation.
At night we invited some people in our group to have dinner and then talked about our group. People in our fellowship come and go and now this is like the third generation of leaders that we are talking to. We talks about splitting our group (about 15 to 20 people) into three or four cell groups. Let's see whether these potential group leaders would be committed to help out.
October 22, 2007(Monday)
Yesterday was quite warm. However today is raining and quite cold. The weather changes so fast! I love summer and hate the light-rainy winter (e.g. Vancouver style), especially at night. I would rather snow (then the whole place is brighter because of reflection) or large rain (it usually lasts for a shorter time).
I went for some exercise today and at night we went to visit a church friend, who just gave birth to a boy about 10 days ago. We had 6 or 7 babies born this year and this will be the last one this year. The next birth in our church will be our girl!
October 21, 2007(Sunday)
I went to Sunday school and church today. And then Carmen and I went out to have a walk because the weather is so nice. At night she helped me to cut hair and we watched a movie "Blood Diamond" DVD at home. This is a very educational movie because it talks about smuggling diamond from Africa and also internal war and revolution in Africa. People in the western world and really living in a good place and there are so many difficult political and corruption in third world country.
October 20, 2007(Saturday)
I woke up at 4:45, and arrived to the airport at 6:30. Then I took 5.5 hours flight to Houston and then 2 hours back to Indiana. I slept, read magazine, comic, studied a bit on the flight. However remember that I have to take an hour taxi to the airport and an hour shuttle bus from the Indianapolis airport to Bloomington. I finally arrived home at 10pm and it seems like a forever journey. The good think about living in a small city is that the crime is lower, environment is nicer, price is cheaper, traffic is better. However, the bad thing is that it is not convenience. We don't have any nice restaurant and it is far away from the airport!
October 19, 2007(Friday)
There is some slight problem again with the lab. The configuration of Pod 1 and Pod 2's routers are not totally erased in the beginning of the class. Therefore these two pods already have some CME files in the flash. It does not cause any problems to Pod 1, but then for Pod 2 when the students are performing the installation, the router (Unity express) complains that there isn't sufficient memory to do the installation. Therefore we have to do some other way to make that works. The Pod 1 is working out ok, but for Pod 2 the get around solution does not work because I am not able to find the username and password of the last class's user. I spend more than an hour to troubleshoot but I am not able to do anything.
However the evaluation for me is pretty good. They usually complain about the lab, but my evaluation is ok.
We ended class early at around 2:30pm. And then I went to the downtown to walk around. Walking at the downtown reminds me about the life in Venezuela. The same level of crowdiness, safety problem, environment. The only difference is that they speak in English, which I can understand (but the Trinidad people have very strange Spanish-like accent and I sometimes can't understand). I am glad that I am safe and no accident happens. I also found that there is a lot of Cantonese speaking Chinese (likely not from HK) coming here to open "variety store" (store that sales many different things, such as food, clothes, stationary, toys etc) and restaurant. Of course these are the Venezuelan type old-style Chinese place and there is no way to compare it with the US (and not even the Canada) Chinese store. I walked for about 2 hours in the downtown. Finally, as a tradition of Friday dinner at Trinidad, I ate dinner at the Crown's plaza hotel. The food is cheaper (rather than almost $50 in my hotel, it costs only about $30) and a bit tastier. I returned to hotel at around 7:40 and did some exercise at night.
I have left home for 10 days and I surely looking forward to go home to meet Carmen and also our baby tomorrow morning!
October 18, 2007(Thursday)
I had a terrible experience last time in Trinidad, not only the airport but also the hotel. For instance, the hotel never do morning call even though I asked for that every day (just to test whether they are doing their job or not). However this time I have a much better experience. I did not get stuck in the immigration when I arrive. And the hotel is doing morning every morning on time. The people in the training center are nice too. I was looking for some free chocolate drink but I am not sure whether or not there is. And then the worker there actively asks me what I want. They ask greet me every morning too. It makes me feel that they are very friendly. Therefore, so far my experience in Trinidad is much better than last time.
The class is going fine and the lab is working fine. Therefore I don't have much to do when they are working on the lab. I check how they are doing every now and then. Other times, I am studying for my mid-term next Tuesday on the Game Theory class, and also work on some of the papers.
October 17, 2007(Wednesday)
The course that I am teaching is about making telephone call using internet. The equipment that we use are Cisco's router (from remote lab) and also IP Phone (we have that here). For yesterday, I verify that the Cisco router are working fine. However, for some reason 7 of the 9 IP Phones are not clicking with the routers. Therefore I spent 2 hours troubleshooting, but have no luck. This morning the customers brought 2 more phones and that works fine. Therefore today each group (out of 4 groups) has 1 one. I am glad that this issue is settled. Whenever the lab is not working, I would be very busy and stressful troubleshooting. On the other hand, whenever the lab is working, then I am much more relaxed and even bored to some point too!
I also got some news about the possibility of teaching another Cisco course early November. In that case, I may have problem with the English class that I am taking. This is the only class in my university life (as far as I can remember) that I cannot skip too many classes (including emergency/sickness). I am allowed to skip 3 classes, but afterward the instructor will take 10% off every class that I skip and I would automatically fail the class if I skip 7 or more classes. I have already skipped two classes this week because I am not in USA. I have to do a second year presentation in my department and I will skip one more. If I also teach the Cisco course early November, I will miss 3 more classes too. We also planned to have a road trip to Toronto and I originally planned to skip two more classes. So even without taking the Miami's Cisco class, I will skip 5 classes. And if I take the Miami classes (without the Toronto trip) I would miss 6 classes. In that case 30% would be deducted and at most I can have C or C+ for this class. This would really stand out in my transcript because usually PhD students are expected to have straight A in their transcript (because instructors always give out "A" to PhD class, unless you did something wrong then you would have a B+ and no one would have a C). Therefore I am thinking of withdrawing the class. That may have a "W" in my transcript, but that is better than an "F" and is not that much worse than a "C" in my transcript.
In fact, I looked through over 200 job posting for faculty job during the last week and only a very small percentage of those (may be only 10%) requires us to send the transcript. Being a PhD student the most important thing is the ability to do research; the class work is a given (given that you are able to master the class work; otherwise you shouldn't be here in the first place). All the posting asks for research experience or send them paper about what I write. So hopefully my "W" in my transcript would not be a huge impact.
At night, I continue to do some homework and do exercise.
October 16, 2007(Tuesday)
I am back to teaching today. The teaching was ok, except that I used my throat too much and my throat is a bit soar. In the afternoon we are supposed to do the lab. For some really strange reason, only 2 of the 9 IP phone registers with the Call Manager Express router. We are using the online lab and I don't know why most of the phones never registers. I spent more that two hours trying to fix it, but I still can't fix it. I don't know why and I hope that it would either magically be fixed, or the new IP phones that the customers will bring tomorrow will fix the problem. If not, then I am in a really bad shape.
I will have a second year paper presentation next Thursday, and I am supposed to hand in my paper this Thursday so that the professors can review it before coming to see my presentation. I worked on this paper since I had meeting with professors last week, and then there are some new numerical results that I found. I added all these to the paper. However I received the comment today, saying that I did some sloppy job. He did not mention the interesting result. Instead he said that I did not make all the changes that he asks for, or did not pay attention to the surrounding of the change (for example, if we change from plural to singular in one place, we need to check the grammar on the surrounding too). I admit that I missed some of that. However I am quite upset that he did not mention any good thing about the insight, but focus on the "bone inside egg". I agree that this would push me even further and make it an even better paper. However, without encouragement it just gives me too much stress. So I am quite upset when I see the response today. I doubt anyone can match his expectation. Therefore, at night I was working on the feedback for nearly 3 hours.
October 15, 2007(Monday)
I was at the training center at 8:20. The class is supposed to start at 9 but the training company asked me to be here about 8:15 so that I can do the set up. However, I waited until 8:40 but no one is here. Then the receptionist called and I found out that they scheduled the training at the other building. However I do not really mind because this is not my fault at all. I took that time to work on the slides for the second year presentation that will be held 10 days from now.
The coordinator finally came at 10am and he told me that everyone is located at a place that is far away and takes almost 2 hours traffic (because raining). Therefore the class will be starting tomorrow instead. Today we will only do the set up but then the class will be prolonged for the next few days.
We are using remote lab this week. The remote lab provider is supposed to be good, and the equipment here are supposed to be set up because other instructors used the same set equipment last week. However, when I check the configuration of the routers, it looks like that it is used for something else. Moreover, the IOS software image does not support IPSec tunneling. Since I don't expect to do so much work in setting up the lab, I did not bring with me the TFTP server software. I don't have a Cisco's login account either and it is hard for me to download the IOS Software. I haven't done this kind of thing for more than a year, so I am a bit worried. I am glad that I have the whole day to do it and students are not here. However, by the end of the day, I got most set up but I have some questions outstanding waiting for the lab provider. they never answered any of my questions and I am quite frustrated. I cc my employer so that they know that the lab provider did not answer my question.
There is nothing much I can do and I went back to the hotel at 2pm. I had a not-so-good afternoon nap. It is because I expected today to be a full day of intense teaching and lab set up. And since the location provides free coffee and chocolate milk, I drank a cup of coffee (plus 4 cups of chocolate milk). Therefore I am not tired, yet I force myself to go to sleep because I did not sleep a lot for the last few days (may be only 8 hours per day only). I also did some homework and exercise as well.
October 14, 2007(Sunday)
I am so glad that I wake up on time today. I used various different methods: alarm clock from cell phone, hotel's alarm clock, hotel's morning call, alarm from watch and pray that I can wake up on time. I am so glad that I woke up on time and able to catch the flight without problem. I flew from Indianapolis to Houston, and then to Trinidad. I slept on the flight most of the time, and also read some books too.
I recalled what happened last summer when I traveled to Trinidad. It was full of problem and I don't enjoy that at all. For example, I got stuck at the airport, lost luggage, etc. This time everything is smooth. I did not have any luggage checked in, so I am able to go to the hotel very fast, even though it still takes an hour for the transportation. At night, I did some exercise and sweat a lot. It makes me feel good.
October 13, 2007(Saturday)
The conference today is full of workshop about empirical study (collect and use statistic tools to analyze the data and see whether it supports the hypothesis or not). That is too much and I am not interested in that at all. This is also not related to my research interest, even though I would like to work on empirical study when I get tenured 8 years from now. Also, since I was working on the healthcare project last night, and I don't have enough sleep, therefore it is inevitable that I fall asleep in class.
We left at 4pm and I went to a hotel near the Indianapolis airport. Since I will go to Trinidad tomorrow morning, CTT booked me a hotel there and let me stayed overnight. I did some exercise and also worked on my healthcare project again.
October 12, 2007(Friday)
I worked on my healthcare project last night and only got about 6.5 hours of sleep. This is way below my average requirement of 8.5 hours, and some of the speakers in the morning are quite boring, so I fall asleep during the conference. I felt a bit embarrass because there are only 22 participants. I already strategically chose the corner seat at the bottom right, but still I felt a bit embarrass.
The talk in the afternoon is much better. It talks about how to plan my future research plan and what mistake to avoid. Also there is another talk about the importance of empirical research. I am not opposing to empirical research, but I think that this kind of researcher needs to be good writer and I think that my strength in this moment is mathematical modeling, so I will continue to do Math.
I had talks with various students during lunch and dinner. It is nice to know other people and do some networking. Also, the weather here is quite cold (about 10 to 15 degree Celsius). Indoor is quite cold as well. Therefore, a good way to avoid flu is to go to gym to do some exercise. Therefore after dinner tonight I went to the gym and ran for 28 mins and I felt much better.
Having cell phone is quite convenience. I can call Carmen and let her know how I am doing.
October 11, 2007(Thursday)
I am working for a long time about the second year presentation. There is some calculation that I need to do, using Matlab. That is a pain and I do not really enjoy these numerical processes. In fact, I do not like what I did for my first year paper either because the Mathematical expression is long and ugly or need lots of numerical analysis. I hope that I would have a better model for future project.
I traveled with classmates Greg, Wenbin and John to Purdue university at night. There is a Doctoral Consortium (whatever it means) that our professors ask us to join. The conference pays for our hotel and food and we are staying at the Hilton. It sounds pretty good. We arrived there at 8pm. There is supposed reception at 6 and dinner 7-8:30. We were a bit late and they don't even have any food for us. That really suck! We ended up buying food from the Student Union building. Also I have to share room with others and that really discount my image to this conference as well!
I talked to two students, who are also late, from University Texas at Dallas. They shared about the situation as a PhD student over there. They have to teach a lot of classes! I feel good about IU because my teaching load is minimum.
October 10, 2007(Wednesday)
It is always tough and lots of work after meeting with professors. And today is not an exception. I had meeting with profs about my second year project. Because I will be out of town for the next 10 days and I have to submit my second year paper next Wednesday and I have my presentation the Thursday afterward, I am overwhelmed with a lot of work. It is tough. I was quite idle for the last few days before meeting with profs but now it is like the end of the world. I am glad that going to workout really help to calm myself down. I also went to play golf too, because I scheduled the lesson already.
At night, we had deacon board meeting at my home. We talked about some improvement (i.e. criticism) of each other. This is a very difficult thing to share but I think that this helps to improve the trust and communication of each other, if we take this sharing seriously and not personally. They think that I am good at organization and has lots of energy and is the power behind those programs of the church. However sometimes I have too many ideas, makes other feel tired and must slow down. These are the same type of comments that I have all the way, that means I am not changing much.
October 09, 2007(Tuesday)
Today is my first "30-several" birthday. Next year I will have the daughter to celebrate with us.
At night we went to watch an Opera called "Annie". This is about an orphan girl got adopted by rich person and the road to find parents. It is a bit exaggerating and the plot is a bit unreasonable but nevertheless this is a good time with Carmen.
When we drove home at night, we saw a police shortly after we left the parking lot. Since we just drive for about 3 mins to go home, I don't plan to put the seat belt on. Then we saw a police and he is driving behind us. We immediately put the seat belt on, and then he saw us doing this and we were pull over. He gave us a warning, and say that today is my birthday. Carmen is very positive about this because this is a good lesson to me to alert me to drive carefully. Most of the time I only break the no-stop-at-stop sign and speeding traffic rule. I put on seat belt very often. So this is a very weird coincident.
I will go to Trinidad to teach Cisco class next week. Here is our iternary.
Oct. 14, 07 (Sun)
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CO 2192 IND - Houston
09:10 - 10:35
CO 418 Houston - Port of Spain (Trinidad)
12:45 - 19:29
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Oct. 20, 07 (Sat)
|
CO 419 Port of Spain - Houston
08:30 - 13:23
CO 2298 Houston - IND
16:15 - 19:45
|
October 08, 2007(Monday)
I had a good exercise workout time today. This is a good present for myself, before my first "thirty-several" birthday. I also had discipleship training with Jacky too. I also entered various faculty opening to my own database and tried to see what trend it will follow next year.
October 07, 2007(Sunday)
We talked about the idea of Evangelical church. There are various interesting idea, such as Christian Wrestling, Christian comedians, the idea that Christian are being oppressed in US, creationism, etc. I think that this is a very interesting topic. This class is taught by Daniel Cheung, who is from HK and is studying Philosophy PhD. He wrote some books before and wrote in some HK Christian forum.
After worship, we discussed with Xinlei and Xiaohu about the young-parents cell group. There are lots of babies born in our church within this year and it is good to have some peer support.
At night we went to bookstore to read comic and also purchased grocery.
October 06, 2007(Saturday)
I went with Carmen to go to deep water exercising today. It looks easy but actually it is very tired. When running, it uses a lot of "air". When weight lifting, it uses a lot of force. However for deep water exercise (And swimming as well) it uses a little of both, so it is a different kind of tired.
We also went with Nicky and Joyce to Babies R Us (at a city called Greenwood, about 45 mins drive) to check the baby stuff. There is a lot to buy! Such as various kind of car seats, beds, strollers! Everything sounds like very important and I cannot imagine how people (including myself) survived when life is so much simpler! For example, now we need a special kind of container for bathing the baby. However when I was young, parents just used a normal container! Babies become more luxury than ever!
At night we went to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. It looks like a family-ran business and the speed is very slow! There is also one waitress. It took about 40 mins. I immediately think that we should not give any service charge or they should lower the price. And then they told me that I should be more considerate because this may be a family run restaurant and tonight may be a bit busier. I am talking from a business's perspective and not getting any personal (i.e. not considering the family background of the restaurant owners). I think that if they do not deliver the required service, they shouldn't be paid well. I think that throughout the last two years of training in the business field, I really get impersonal and always try to take advantage of something. It is because the whole idea of the game theory and/or business assume that people take advantage of one another and if you don't do that, you are doing bad thing for myself. I think that this really impact the way I think. This is self-center and I must repent!
October 05, 2007(Friday)
Today I played tennis for two hours. I rarely played tennis. I feel very frustrating because when I hit the ball hard, it usually hit it to either very far or hit the net. I just can't release my energy and that is too frustrating. On the other hand, I am much better with badminton because I can hit as hard as I like without hitting somewhere else.
I also spent sometimes to clean up the house and also rearrange the table of my room. And I worked on a paper that I will coauthor with classmate Greg too. He is an American and is good at writing but bad at Math. On the other hand I am much stronger on Math but need help in writing. So let's see with our combined force would that generate a better paper.
October 04, 2007(Thursday)
Somehow I am not too productive lately. However for some reason for the last several months I am getting more "mum" (the need for hurry). I strongly dislike to be the first car to stop at the red light, and always calculate which line is the shortest (taking the age and gender of the customer and the number of item that was purchased) when going for shopping. I need to slow down a bit more.
October 03, 2007(Wednesday)
I worked on the project today for several hours. I also borrow the vacuum cleaner from the apartment office, however it is very crappy. It has some smoke smell and the air is very weak. Nevertheless I did some house cleaning too. At night we went to dinner with our group to celebrate the October birthday. We also played the Nintendo game Wii. That is not difficult to learn and is a fun game. All of us really enjoy it!
October 02, 2007(Tuesday)
I am working on my previous project on health care again. I wrote a Matlab program but then there is always some bugs. Mainly I am trying to divide a very large number (10^150) with a very large number (10^150). The result is supposed to be small, but Matlab just can't handle these two large numbers. I am trying to solve it. I am still in the middle of figuring thing out.
October 01, 2007(Monday)
After spending so many hours on my second dissertation paper, I think that I need a break. I worked on it for a while but I don't know what else I should do. Probably this is a good idea to get back to do some other researches.