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| I should post something to commemorate my Masters defense date, that was Nov 29, 2007, thirty years after my supervisor had earned his Master degree. I thought it would be a semi-formal event, but it turns out that the committee dressed casually and even ate their lunch during the presentation. I could hear the crispiness of your apple, professor. Apparently the defense is a public event, but nobody else attended other than the research lab. Not that I invited anyone else, I don't think people would want to hear me babble about something they don't care about.
So the presentation was 20 minutes long, which may have been too short. The strange thing was, during my practise, the talk took 30 minutes. I don't recall skipping anything or changing the material, but I must have sped up due to panic and rushed. I believe this cost me some marks (1-2%?), as my prof told me I could have covered more material. Yes, the quality of presentation matters, and time management is one factor. Anyways, about an hour of questions followed. This was the part that I was worried about; I prepared myself for this by making a list of potential questions and that came in extremely handy. A few questions I had not anticipated, and I answered them well apparently. Several of the questions were spinoffs from the list of anticipated questions, so that was relatively easy. I simply rephrased their question to exactly what I had prepared for, and when they confirmed that was the essence of their inquiry, I was in business. The worst question was actually a very simple and basic dB conversion question that, for some reason, I couldn't calculate properly under stress. I knew these were the kind of questions that would I'd stumble on the most, so I had made a note of it in my preparation to review this, that's what frustrated me even more. I wanted to think in factors of 2, but the asker wanted me to think in factors of 10 (the more natural scale). So he kept refining the question into "easier" math but it just confused me more. Looking back of course, I can get the answer in both ways, but at the moment I was completely flustered. I think this cost me at least 2-3%.
Luckily I only had one round of questions. The second round was mostly comments. So be sure to get the examiners into a good mood. Well fed after lunch, the last of four defenses that he needs to attend, Christmas parties right around the corner, etc. In the end they gave me a 87%, which is such a neutral mark in my opinion. My first reaction was, meh, like they hadn't even put any thought into picking that number. It seems that for projects like this, the range of marks is only between 80-95%, and they picked the number in the middle. (I even felt some direct studies projects were marked in this way.) If you do a superb job, you won't get 100%; they'd give you something in the mid to upper 90's. If you blundered your way through the project but still managed to complete it, you won't get 70%. Something about being a grad student implicitly states that your average mark is at least an A, ie at least 80%. A score between 80-85% would discourage me, saying I put the least amount of effort into my work. A score between 90-95% would have me beaming from ear to ear. But when they told me I earned the average value, I simply responded in a monotone, "oh, ok." A rather anti-climatic end to 2+ years of work.
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| Should really get back to making these posts... just because Facebook tells the whole story of what's happening in my life right now, it doesn't do justice to the daily thoughts and wonders that wander through the mind... things that aren't worth making a big post and notifying the whole community that you've thought of something, but things that still deserve to be written down.
In writing my thesis, I noticed my language and choice of words is getting repressed. In the arts, you can use fancy terminology and colourful descriptions for describing a story; in the sciences, wording has to be technical or else you will be criticized for being vague or unclear. I've been accused of using academic slang to bury long-winded, wordy descriptions of details under one or two words. Scholarly jargon such as things not being "intuitive," or things being tested for "significance" were marked by the editor as being unclear. I thought that was the proper way to state things, rather than saying "we don't know" or "to see what happens, and how much..."
I'm not too irated from those comments though, the ones that get me are my use of synonyms. Apparently, if I use two different words that have the same meaning to describe the same thing, the reader can't figure out what I'm saying anymore. Instead, I should reuse the same word repeatedly, and bore the reader with limited vocabulary. So if I say the "next section" or the "following chapter" will do such and such, all is fine, but as soon as say the "ensuing chapter" will do something, my language becomes casual and not technical enough. Oscillations vs fluctuations, elongating vs lengthening, modeling vs simulating vs predicting, decrease vs diminish.... the list goes on and on. Some you really have to be careful about, like error vs inaccuracy vs imprecision vs uncertainty, but at some point you should be allowed to use wall and surface interchangeably (in the context of the work of course). I guess this is the difference between academic writing and creative writing.
On the subject of words.... I just noticed that words ending in -ough can sound completely different from each other; they need not rhyme. For example:
Bough / Plough sounds like bow / plow
Cough / Trough sounds like coff / troff
Rough / Tough / Enough sounds like ruff / tuff / enuff
Dough / Though / Although sounds like doe / tho / alltho
Through sounds like thru
Lough sounds like lock [from Irish Loch meaning a lake - I had to dig that one up  ]
The reason this came up was when I read a new word - sough, meaning a sigh or murmur like the wind, pronounced both as sow or suff. Neat stuff!
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| The last couple weeks have been great! Lots of social outtings and seeing friends and eating good food. A lot had to do with the fireworks being in town, but probably a lot more was due to my prof being out of town. We had a department barbeque at Locarno beach two weeks ago. Lots of home made food, which is always the best. Salads, cookies were home made. Even the beer was home brewed by someone in the building. Someone also made sausages for the hotdogs - he bought raw pork, added some ingredients and compressed it through a tube himself. Also had a salmon burger which beats beef patties by far! It was a good thing that four of my lab mates went, otherwise I wouldn't have anyone to socialize with because I'm not that close with the other people in the building.
Fireworks... went to the first two and the last one with various people. Thanks to my sister for driving us home, even though she doesn't get to appreciate the fireworks and has to endure the wrath of the traffic! Spain had a good start and finish, snoozed in the middle. Canada had a good middle part, good up/down left/right themes, but lacked the explosive coda that Spain had. China... heard it was the best. I heard the music and it was boooorrrrring, but the show apparaently was not. Canada won in the end.
Played lots of table tennis last two weeks as well. My friend brought her hyper energetic friend to play too, which made tennis a lot more fun. Reminds me of those pet dogs that you tell to fetch, and she'll go running off hehe. I'm going to miss this, since my friend is going back to hong kong to work, won't be able to find a replacement for her. I think we saw one of the top 4 female players in BC playing, her serve reminds me of how her mom serves which is eerie in a way.
Family friend came up from Seattle to visit. We have the same great-great-grandfather; our mothers were very close in their youth. We took him to the fireworks last Saturday, lots of shopping on Sunday (he moved into Seattle three months ago so lots to buy), and he left Monday morning after Dim sum. He says the food here is far better than in Seattle, or back home in Montreal. I'm happy that I found another guy that I could talk to about anything. It's pretty hard to find friends that you can talk about anything with freely, so I hope we don't lose touch. Career-wise, I can see some of my engineering friends and myself turning into him in the next five years.
Oh yeah, I also watched the Eng Phys robotics competition where robots were programmed to play Operation. Okay, it's more like go around a track and lift things out. My co-worker is in charge of making the video to be uploaded on the course webpage, interestingly enough.
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| The weather has been so nice. A bit TOO nice, such that my research space is overheating and stuffing up. There's not much you can do about it; you can't have windows and such leaking noise into your experiment. Also there's standard electrical equipment that heats up, and the work involves minor physical activity like crouching, lifting things and moving things around. So I had to put up with this hot and ventilation-free area for three straight hours to get some work done. I was sweating from head to toe in no time. I thought I better do my best to avoid getting too hot. Well, since I am alone and the entry door DOES have a lock on it, the clothes have got to go. So there I am, stripped down to my shorts (and ear muffs - got to protect my hearing still!), carrying on with measurements. It wasn't much reprieve from the temperature, but it's better than having a t-shirt sticking onto you.
When you think of research attire, you think lab coat, protective gloves, eye protection. All very neat and clean, as if part of a detailed procedure. But I can't help think that here I am on the other extreme, being totally exposed and maybe not so clean. (I hope my lab mates don't see this, it'd be too embarassing.)
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| Trip experiences cont.Graffiti and vandalism could be so creative. It can be very destructive and abasing too, but sometimes it is very amusing. One of the McDonalds we stopped by at lunch had the funniest thing. You know how in the washroom stall, there's usually an area that lets parents change their babies diapers and such? This one was no different, it had what they call a "Baby changing station," with an identifying label on it. The slight difference this time was that the letter c got scratched out. Then the straps inside were yanked out, and tied into a noose. To cap it off, there was a big McDonald's logo complete with their "I'm lovin' it!" slogan written underneath! It was truly a gem; I wish I took a picture of it, but our batteries keep running out even though we didn't use the camera yet... so pissed.
On our way back to Canada, we stopped by one of these. I'm sure Carl knows what this is, right?
I guess the only other thing I took away from this trip was the idea to start a memory bank. Spending so many hours in narrow quarters (confines? haha) with your family will usually spring discussions about our childhood memories (and tension but that's another story). So I figured, since these people are probably not going to be in my life forever, I better extract all they remember about me before either of us go away. That way, I will have stories of my own childhood to tell, since I was too young to recall them for myself.
From what I have so far, raising me has brought loads of happiness and funny incidents to the family. Much more so than my sister, who was watched like a hawk so couldn't do anything mischievous.
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