Irregular Musings

I went for a seminar on prime numbers and I met a girl who looked a little too cute to be a postgrad (yes, postgrads have this "look"). Turns out she was doing a PhD in Mathematics, more specifically, Quantum Algebra. Now, that is scary. I've seen those equations and I really don't know how she would make sense of it. :S

Bob's wedding was beautiful affair. To top it off, the best man related the story of how Bob sold his drum kits to fly all the way to the US to convince his now-wife to come back to Melbourne to be with him. She was contemplating staying back in the US to work and live. Well, thanks to his great sacrifice, he got the girl. That was certainly kind of dramatic. I guess sometimes, the heart should triumph over the head once in a while. That's how fairy tale endings are made, I suppose. Most stories from other couples, I suspect, are not as dramatic, though.

Turns out that I am a supervisor to two final year students. Our task is to build a single-pixel digital camera. Sounds crazy? Check out this page. As far as I know, the students seem to be have enough ability for the task. Appearances, as they say, can be deceiving.

Attending Bob's wedding this weekend. It'll be fun.

I probably had the strangest dream last night. I saw two reviewers talking about the paper we submitted to ITW back in January. They were basically giving their comments on the paper, with one saying that it's good, while another saying that it's average. In the end, they decided to accept it.

Lo and behold, I opened my email this morning and was informed that the paper was accepted! And strangely enough, the reviews given were along the lines of what I dreamt. It's really weird.

Anyway, am going for a street Latin social tonight. Fingers crossed I can master those tricky steps in time for Bob's wedding.

So I decided to join the gym on Friday since the equipment I have at home seems to be lacking. I ended up meeting one of my old college mates way back in Malaysia in 2000. She's quite the fitness fanatic, which I knew back from our days at International House. Still looking as radiant as before. Didn't manage to speak to her though, since I have this fitness expert standing next to me making me do all these punishing exercises. :P It's not really that punishing, since I do use the same weight loading at home too.

Then on Saturday, while waiting for the train to Camberwell, I saw this girl who was a volunteer at the recent postgraduate welcome orientation last Thursday. Turns out that she was also volunteering at a tuition center for Asian kids at a Chinese cultural center in Boxhill, if I'm not mistaken. Her job was to collect fees and help out in some minor ways. And then on the train, I sat opposite a guy who came for the graduation of one of the OCF-ers the other time. Turns out that he was volunteering to help out at the Planetshakers church office in Surrey Hills.

Finally, on the way back after dinner with the cell members, we bumped into a former cell member who was hanging out with her two girl friends. We just smiled and said hi. She was probably feeling cold, since she wrapped herself with a shawl.

I suppose, given enough time, chance meetings do happen, sometimes to surprising consequences.

Last weekend, a friend of mine came down from Sydney to meet up with some of his friends and I. Unfortunately, he had to choose the weekend with the hottest day on record... 46.4 C! Basically, the one thing we did best during the weekend was eating all the way.

On Saturday, we traveled around the city. The first thing we did was to have yum cha, then met up with an old Taylor's college classmate we knew way back. For some unknown reason, my friend's friend had a strange obsession with Mekong, so we had to have dinner at Mekong.

On Sunday, we traveled to Glen Waverly for lunch and to see the CNY festivities there. We then headed to Mornington to check out the bay. By the end of the day, we ended up on Chapel St, as our goal was to have some famous mud-cake at Cafe Sienna.

On Monday, we traveled to Mt Dandenong by car. Lunch was at Pie in the Sky, which was reputed to be a 5-gold medalist in the Australian Pie Contest. The pie I had was Beef and Burgundy, which reminded me of the red wine beef stew I made last time. I thought the pie could be better though, and so did the rest of the group. Tough crowd to please. Then, it was basically hanging around the Skypoint, where we could see the bushfires from afar. And of course, we stopped by at Miss Marple's.

Gosh... I can't do bimbo blog entries for nuts.

Just got up after a short nap, considering that I didn't sleep for more than 24 hours. All because of a deadline for SIGCOMM. At one point, when I had to generate some figures and name them, I had occasional lapses of concentration. Sometimes, I'd stare at the screen, and suddenly realized that a minute has lapse without me doing anything. Must be microsleeps, which was quite an interesting experience!

Amazingly, we submitted the paper in less than 1 minute before the deadline ends. 44 seconds to be exact. SIGCOMM people are really strict, so the deadline this time closed right on the spot! It surprised the both of us. At times like this, one is really thankful because crazy situations might happen at the last minute... like a sudden loss in connectivity, or worse, a blackout (which did happen a short while yesterday).

It's not something I would like to pull off again. On the other hand, while it was generally a manic state, somehow I feel calmer this time round. There were no big crises like the last paper with the supervisor, so it was, in some respects, a little more smooth sailing this time around. It's crazy, but I'm beginning to think every paper might be work of art, possibly even an entity, because it's the culmination of your mental state at that time, your creativity and the writing certainly conveys your identity.

Here's hoping for the best. If this paper gets accepted, my PhD is over! More importantly, I'm free to do other fun stuff... like running around aimlessly in life. :) Plus, I survived what must be the hottest days I've ever experienced.

On top of the terrible dry heat spell that has hit Melbourne, I'm dealing with another deadline. Once again, I'm going to be in Melb Uni from dusk to dawn. Gotta make sure I got all the necessary supplies ready. Thank God for the great air-conditioning in here.

It's a furnace outside, about 42 degrees. Thankfully, I'm in a fully air conditioned office. Only started writing the paper right now. Still got a long way to go.

Surely, if the best things in life are free, why do people desire something more when there is a price tag attached to it?

Registered another paper. Exactly a week from now, I'll be submitting. Gotta brace myself... gonna be one hell of a week.

Last week, I tried to search for someone on Facebook whom I knew back at International House, during my stint there for a year in 2001. She stayed near my dorm room and I used to fix stuff for her. I must say that I was quite socially awkward at that time, so I didn't really say much to her, but for some unknown reason, she always seemed to invite me along to her room or to hang out. Anyway, back to the point. I couldn't find her, though so I thought I'll let it go.

My surprise this morning was that she added me instead! What a coincidence. Turns out that she's working in KL now in Deloitte. I think life is often surprising, in that sometimes people we think might pass by in our lives suddenly reappear. I guess, the moral of the story is, never burn bridges. You'll never know what might happen in the future, especially if it's a friendship you want to revisit.

Was feeling happy yesterday, because Sook told me that she *does* try to read my work and understand it. So hats off to you, Sook, if you are reading this. Definitely one of the nicest things someone has done for me.

It seems that I have blog fans. They're all hidden behind the facade of anonymity on the Internet.

In one twist of fate, January 2009 has shaped up to be the busiest month I've had. Three deadlines, one met, one tomorrow and one more at the end of this month. Two deadlines were due to personal interest, and only one actually relates to my thesis. Hopefully, at least one gets accepted, so that I'll be able to travel the world once again this year. It'd be amazing if all three get accepted, but I'm not holding my breath.

Looking forward to Saturday where I get to hang out with the guys from cell for some testosterone-laced... bowling. :)

My supervisor laughed his head off as he found a phrase I used in the proof of a result quite amusing. The offending phrase? ... omit the derivation here, but we mention that using the method of Lagrange multipliers, the solution obtained is the result we desire.

Apparently he says that there's a poetic quality to it. I still don't get it. :S

Pigeonholing. At some point of time, each of us has been guilty of doing that to some acquaintance we have met. We desire to structure the people we meet into little categories, putting people into labeled boxes for convenience. Meet a well-dressed person and immediately, one associates great qualities with that person (charming, for example, until the said person opens his/her mouth). See those who absolutely love gadgets and we call them 'geeks'.

Acceptance. This is especially difficult if the said person has a radically different viewpoint from ours. As human beings, we tend to gravitate to what is familiar, what is comfortable and we tend to fear what we don't know, rather than taking the time to understand it. We prefer to follow conventional norms on what is acceptable, hip et cetera and what is not, rather than evaluating for ourselves. Oddly enough, while at present we have more information than ever, placed in the largest repository we call the Internet, our viewpoints are narrower. As a generation, we're probably the least self-assured and likely the most confused.

Globalization, for example, has resulted in the disappearance of certain values that once made a culture unique. It has resulted in our viewpoints being more uniform, dictate what we should look for in a mate and how we should dress ourselves. Stroll along the streets of any major metropolitan city in the world and you'd see people dressed in similar garbs, say jeans and a t-shirt. We listen to the same music, most probably from the same Ipod. It's probably save to say a number of people in the world are wearing the same shirt or blouse the very moment you are reading this.

The realities of life also lead to both pigeonholing and acceptance of the norm. It becomes a single path of getting a degree, procuring a 9-to-5 job, falling in love and getting married, owning a home, raising the children and retiring, hopefully healthy enough to enjoy it. All because we allow ourselves to fit into a box, in order to be perceive that way and to be accepted. It crushes our aspirations, it forces us to conform to the mainstream and it causes us to lead someone else's life. Anyone who sees things from a different angle automatically becomes a deviant. Someone who doesn't conform to what society expects of them becomes a loser.

As such, we fail to see the bigger picture, that each of us should express our uniqueness. That our character, our motivations and goals should be ours to own, not dictated by those at the top. That the 9-to-5 job, while it pays the bills, is not the only path to lead a fulfilling life. We need to break out of the mold and embrace diversity and openness. That the singular viewpoint proposed by a popular figure is not the only viewpoint to take.

We're all too unique to be contained in a box or to put others into boxes. We all march to different beats and that's the way it is. Accept that and you'll find how amazing people can be.

I was chatting with my now graduated friend from France and I asked her about her plans for postdocs and stuff. Postdocs are just like job applications: send out enough and you're bound to get one. However, she was complaining about the lack of response from CAIDA (the acronym's quite a mouthful), so she's planning to just work in France Telecom. To me, I thought CAIDA would be a dream come true for her, since she specializes in traffic modeling, but I suppose one's best laid plans don't always come to fruition.

As for the non-response, I think that it's always better that when denied a position, you're informed about it and given some feedback. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen all the time. Not that it has happened to me, but I would absolutely hate it when that happens because (1) I've been denied the chance to understand where exactly I went wrong, (2) it would drive me crazy with trying to figure out what really did go wrong. But I guess sometimes it's just better to leave things hanging in the air like that, since the bottomline is obvious. Something to learn for the year, I guess.

Anyway, by the end of this year, it's my turn to apply for a postdoc. Heaven knows where I'll go, really.

Nothing much over Christmas and the New Year holidays, aside from dinners, checking out the fireworks from a friend's apartment's balcony and generally consuming more than, uh, well. :) Somehow, I'm not particularly excited about the new year... always seem to be the same old. Anyway, today's the deadline for ITW and I still have yet to receive the updated version of the paper I wrote with a bunch of colleagues. ITW's in Greece this year, and if it gets accepted, it may be my second time there.

Barcelona's more interesting, so I'd have to start working more on the SIGCOMM one before the end of this month.

Had lunch with Sook and Jit Jing at Qube (that's how it's spelt!) today after fixing up their Internet connection. Sigh, I missed the good old student days... particularly, since I'm still a student while the others aren't anymore. Fairfield seems like quite a peaceful place to stay and I wouldn't mind actually. Kinda reminds me of the Newtown area in Sydney.

Got two papers to write and a progress report due. Will update as soon as I have the time. In the meantime, Merry (very early) Christmas to all!

The events of Genesis unfurled on Facebook.