Mongolian Barbecue

I know that everyone of us do this. Everyone of us go to the toilet and take a dump. Heck, even the Queen of England does this herself. However, it still is amazing and surprising that people we look up to seem to be unbelievable whenever you witness them do this.

Say, what if you are heading to the restroom to take a leak? And you see one of your esteemed professors go in a few seconds before you? And when you get inside, you don't see him, but then you realize that he is sitting on the porcelain god? Would you be conscious of that, and step out of the restroom until he is done and out of the room, and then you proceed on your business?

I am doing some cold turkey reading today. And tomorrow as well. I have a stack of readings about 3 inches thick, which is for a seminar, and after the first week, I decided to go ahead and just read them all and be done with it. I need time to think of my paper topic for this class, and so I don't want to waste time reading in the middle of the semester figuring out what I want to write about. I would rather read everything now, have an idea what I want to write about, and spend the rest of the semester reading more relevant things so I can write an awesome paper.

I am releasing my inner child this semester. I get to color again. One of the assignments I have for my neurolinguistics class is to complete the Human Brain Coloring Book. Obviously, there are rules to the colors, and so I just cannot select a random lobe or cortex and color it something random.

Social dynamics are bizarre. I don't get them. I suppose I would add this to the list of things I do not get, including sarcasm.

The department is in a state of controlled chaos. People who are supposed to be here are not yet here, and people who were here for quite a long time are not here anymore. To top that, people who weren't here before are here, and they are going to be here for a very long time.

I found a couple of papers online that I need to read. This I suppose is for my side projects. I hope that something good comes out of this, since my other side project seems to be not taking off, since the other people involved in it were rather reluctant to take it up again. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

I am still waiting for my two professors to read my qualifying paper. They told me that they will give it back to me within September. Hopefully that would be the case, so I could file it before the end of October, and file for a master's graduation as well. I figured I would probably have more of an advantage if I file for a master's graduation as well while working on my dissertation; having a degree higher than the bachelor's could get me more credentials suppose I need it while finishing up my doctorate. One example would be that it would allow me to teach in my undergrad university if I need to come back.

I went to the dentist this afternoon, for my semi-annual appointment. My teeth are still ok, they are nice and strong, although my gums seem to be very sensitive, gien the fact that simple flossing would induce weak bleeding.



(Trees and Water, from my Letchworth Park Series)

Bonferroni Corrections

I have to say that this summer is rather weird. It is raining almost every other day. It is not hot at all, and so the patterns are rather bizarre.

Anyway, if this means a cooler summer, then I am all for it.

In other topics, I have been busy in my office, revising my draft. I am more than half-way through, and hopefully I can produce a fourth draft by next week, so I can give it to my second and third readers. Once they give me comments, then I can file it to the department office and be done with this requirement.

Now that I will be done with this requirement, I am thinking of getting an intermediate master's degree with it. I am in the doctoral program, which means that I was admitted with a bachelor's degree, and I will be awarded a doctoral degree once I am done with this program. This also means that I am doing the work of a master's curriculum and a doctoral curriculum at the same time, in one shot. No need to re-apply.

However, I thought that it would be more advisable to get an intermediate master's degree as I finish my coursework and work on my dissertation. The reason for this is that this is an additional credential that I can put in my CV and would possibly aid me in supporting myself during the time in which I don't have a stable job yet. And since I will have fulfilled the requirements for a master's once I finish the qualifying paper, I might as well submit the paperwork and apply for a degree.

In the meantime, I have to revise this qualifying paper. The good thing is that I don't have major revisions, unlike before. I suppose the most major one in this version is adding a Bonferroni correction, due to the fact that my hypotheses-tests were rather plentiful and dealing with the same set of data. Thus, to be on the safe side, I increased the critical value by applying the Bonferroni correction, thus making my judgments more conservative. Still, they all are significant.

I have a few remaining stuff that I need to do in the house today. And I am thinking of finishing them all by tonight since I was informed that my new roommate is already on his way. He called me saying that he would be around early tomorrow morning, driving all the way from the middle of the continent to the Northeast.



(Full Palette, from my Letchworth Park Series)

I Survived the Trinity

I have been busy the past few days. I suppose I just had so many things to do, like looking for a new roommate, cleaning the apartment, running experiments in the lab, and so on.

Anyway, I suppose it is time for a rather boring geeky post. Yesterday, I met with my adviser, after not seeing him for the past month. He gave me back my QP, with very small revisions.

Now there's good news. He told me to revise it, and then pass it on to the second and third readers. He doesn't need to see it after revising it. That means that I survived the Trinity of revisions. I suppose it is usual for students to have three drafts approved by their advisers before it goes to the next person. So yeah, my third draft came back, and now, after revising it, it will go to two other professors at the same time. Then I will collect their feedback, revise it one more time, and hopefully that would be it. I would then file it to the department office, and my QP requirement would be fulfilled. I would then be officially a Ph.D. candidate. And when I finish the remaining coursework that I have this year, I would be an ABD.

On other topics, it's been a week that I have been working here in the lab. I have seen people participate in our experiments, and sometimes I cannot help but think that these people do not think. Or at least use their brain. For crying out loud, why do people just assume that they know what they're supposed to do, instead of reading the instructions carefully and thoroughly? That's why the computer doesn't function, because they are doing something wrong! If the computer tells you to hit the Spacebar, then hitting anything else aside from the Spacebar will do nothing!

Anyway, I guess I won't be running experiments until classes start again, since the subject pool would be away. The summer classes end tomorrow, so tomorrow would be the last day people can sign up for experiments. After that, then we would have to wait until Fall 2008 begins, which is in about three weeks.

My adviser is on sabbatical for the fall. That would give me six months of thinking time, because I have to think about my dissertation as well. And there is this requirement that students have to do their dissertation proposal defense by the end of their fourth year, so that means I have to defend my dissertation proposal by May 2009. I already have ideas, and even my adviser thinks that my current research program involving my qualifying paper has the potential to be extended into a dissertation research, so that is good. Some people know that another institute seems to be interested in me; however, as of now, I am not hearing from them, so I am going on my everyday activities as if that is not in the equation. After all, it is better to expect the worst, but hope for the best.

So there. I am showing the apartment to a few people these coming days. Hopefully I find a roommate that isn't like my previous one. Speaking of the apartment, I only have to clean the bathroom; the other parts are already spic-and-span. I already bought a new shower liner, since the old one seems like something Doctor House would disapprove of.



(Middle Falls, from my Letchworth Park Series)

Magnus Is Back

Yes, due to the fact that I woke up yesterday at around 4:30 AM, due to that huge thunderclap, and wasn't able to get back to bed again, I set to work to finish my revision. And guess what? I am done!

Ha!

I thought I would be bringing this paper with me to accompany me on this trip that I would be making, but it turned out that I do not need to do that anymore. I am finished revising the thing, and I hope that I adequately addressed the problems that the previous version had.

Yeah, it is kinda funny to think that whenever you write something, you think that it is the best thing in the world, and then you turn it in, and then it gets back at you, full of comments, and then you realize that you write really bad, and then you try to fix it, turn it in again, and then you get it back with further comments, and you have to fix it again.

Hard work, yes, but I think it is just fair. After all, this is academic writing, and who knows, this might get published as well later. I remember when I first had a paper to be published, the revision process took a while, and the reviewers kept sending me back comments, to which I addressed in my replies.

But I have to say, it is a good feeling to have one's name in print.

So there, my baby is around, once more, in his third generation. Hopefully, this is the last major revision that I would make, and then after this, my adviser would hopefully pass it on to the second reader, who I suppose will just give minor comments for revision, and then to the third, and then after that, voila! It will be filed and then my record would say that I have that requirement fulfilled!

So there, I am moving along. Wow. I cannot believe time flies that fast, eh? This blog is already on its third year, and still going strong. I just renewed my domain ownership the other day, since I do not intend on closing this blog in the near future. So there, I will still be here, writing, traveling, taking pictures, the whole enchilada.

Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.



(Rock and Falling Water, from my Watkins Glen Series)

Revision No. 01

May 2. What a beautiful day. Not so cold, not so hot, and the sun is hiding.

I had an appointment with my adviser earlier today. He gave me part of my draft back. He hasn't finished reading the whole thing, perhaps due to some other obligations or perhaps maybe because my draft was simply long, but so we discussed the first half of my draft and I got it back. And of course, I took my notebook, took notes, and so now I know what are the things I need to fix. And we are meeting again next week Wednesday to discuss the latter half of the draft.

So there, Revision No. 1 is now in session. I wonder how many revisions I need to make, before it moves to the next stage? Although someone told me that it is a trinity, there are three revisions that has to happen with the first reader, before it goes to the second reader.

So, I have the first 25 pages of my paper, sitting on my office desk. I would most probably start working on it within this week, and continue on until next week, before I leave for Peru. Then when I come back, I will work on it again, and submit a second draft.

So there. To change a topic, I finished reading my previous novel. It was a hard read, but enjoyable nonetheless. The author was an Englishman, however, the prose did not look English at all. It seemed more like a Japanese novel translated into English. The reason for that is because it was filled with plenty of Japanese ideophones, and the way of writing closely resembles that of Japanese authors. It was describing typical Japanese conversations, literally, word-for-word, such as using "I apologize. I apologize." This corresponds to the Japanese habit of saying "Sumimasen." In short, I felt like I really was transported back to 1946, post-war in Japan.

There is also an interesting final twist to this detective story. This is not your typical detective story. You will keep guessing what is going on with the sub-plots and all that, up to the end. As the book emphasizes here and there, nobody is who they say they are.

So, I finished that and started on another book, entitled A Thing (Or Two) About Curtis And Camilla, by Nick Fowler. It is set in Manhattan this time, and it is a pleasant read, for a change. I will let you know how this goes later on.



(Stone Entrance, from my Watkins Glen Series)

Crassostrea Gigas

Here I go again, pensive, daydreaming.

Today marks the day in which a year ago, a deranged man shot multiple people to death in a campus in the eastern United States. One year has exactly passed since the shooting incident in Virginia Tech. Life indeed passes by quickly.

Was it John Lennon who said that life is what happens while we are all busy making other plans? That I believe really is true. Nobody can foretell what exactly will occur to oneself a day from now, a week from now, a month from now, year from now, a decade from now. Everything is done by chance, I suppose. No matter how hard we try to plan things, no matter how hard we try to schedule things, sometimes, things deviate, and we have to deal with it.

I had a conversation with my Kuwaiti friend the other night. It felt so fast that one day, he just arrived, the next day, he is leaving. He leaves in a few weeks, heading back to Kuwait, getting married, and going to a different school in a different continent.

Life moves on. People come and people go. I am glad that my path intersected with his path, although I do not know whether we would still intersect in the future. Chances are we won't, since if I look at the patterns of my intersections, virtually, I do not intersect again with people I get to know.

I basically haven't seen my former friends in elementary school. Middle school in Japan is the same, I don't have any more contact with them. I have a few friends from high school in Osaka who still stay in touch via e-mail. And all my college friends are still reachable by e-mail. But due to the fact that I move around, I suppose, the chances of future intersections are low. It doesn't take a sophisticated binary logistic regression model to predict that statistical conclusion.

I guess it can be said that as for me, the world is laid out in front of me like a wonderful living buffet. Yes, the world is indeed my oyster. Who would have known that I would be here in New York ten years ago? Ten years ago, I was still polishing my pianistic skills, wanting to be part of the music business. I never thought back then that I would be conducting experiments and dabbling with statistics.

Is there a price to pay? They say that it gets lonely at the top. I look back and see my peers, having a family and settling down, while I am here, working my butt off hard. I pulled a LIW again this semester. I am done with my qualifying paper draft, I am finished with my other class paper, and I am done writing the tests and homeworks for my class that I am teaching. The only thing remaining for me for this semester is the final exam for my Statistics class that will be given at the final day of classes. Otherwise, I am good to go.

I am happy, but somehow, sharing the happiness to other people isn't the good thing to do. Doing that only seems to rub the wound, rubbing the fact that I am done and they are not.

Life is complicated, whether I like it or not.



(Glass Bubble, from my Corning Glass Series)

With Pleasure Comes Pain

This weekend, I finished my qualifying paper, had a haircut, and spent some time in a friend's house to have game night.

I already blogged about finishing the draft for the qualifying paper yesterday, so I am going to talk about the other stuff today.

Game night was fun. We played Bananagrams, Kuuduk, and Clue. It was fun.

We also ate some very sweet concoction made by one of our friends. It consisted of apples, dumplings, Dr. Pepper, and a pound of butter. It is mixed somehow in a pan, and baked.

The resulting dessert is sweet, very sweet, and very good.

However, it made my stomach churn three hours later, so I paid the bathroom a visit at 3:00 AM and another one at 6:00 AM.

I guess it flushed the whole system. And it interrupted my sleep as well.

But from a larger perspective, isn't that what reality is? If one wants to enjoy something, in one way or another, one pays for it. If one wants a nice figure, they would have to be in pain, sweating and huffing and puffing, trying to exercise to attain that perfect figure.

If one wants to enjoy a sweet dessert that contains Dr. Pepper and a pound of butter, then one will have diarrhea later on.



(Glass Coral, from my Corning Glass Series)

Magnus is Born

I decided to be unproductive today.

The main reason for that is because I was able to finish writing the first draft of my qualifying paper, yesterday.

Remember that I blogged earlier that I am a father-to-be, writing entries here, here, and here?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as of 5:57 PM yesterday, Magnus is born. He is a healthy, 50-page qualifying paper. I will furnish my adviser a copy this week. Hopefully, the revisions won't be that bad. Then, I will also furnish a copy to the second reader, and then I will repeat the process to the third reader. Once that is done, I will fill up a form that will certify that I am done with the MA phase of my program. I will then advance to the PhD phase.

Yay! I can finally say that I am really a PhD candidate. Once I am done with my qualifying paper, and my course work, then I am going to be an ABD (all but dissertation). The light at the end of the tunnel is getting near, and I am excited.

I also finished the previous novel I was reading. It was a page-turner indeed, but even though it was fiction, I don't think it was literature. It can be a good movie though. It kept me guessing who the murderer was up to the end.

So I returned that to the library, and I started on this new novel entitled Gifted, by Indian-born British author Nikita Lalwani. It is about an Indian immigrant family in Cardiff with a gifted daughter. The reviews aren't so good, so far, but heck, the cover looked fancy, so I picked it up from the library shelf. If I don't like it, I will still finish it, I am not known for leaving books un-read midway.

So there, I for once am not doing anything for a weekend. Relax, read a book, turn the radio full-blast, and stretch. Oh shoot, I forgot, I have to do laundry.



(Upside-down Glass Birds, from my Corning Glass Series)

Magnus

So, I found one of the professors for my class today, and I turned in my paper. I told him that he could treat that as the final draft, and grade it accordingly, or he could treat it as a first draft, and if he finds things that are questionable, and he wants me to revise it, then I would gladly do so, at the end of the semester.

So there. The main motivation for turning my term paper early is to get it out of the way. I have to take care of Magnus, and Magnus needs to grow and be delivered by the end of this semester. And the thing is, as long as I don't turn my term paper (the mini-baby), I find things to add, endlessly, because I don't have a shortage of data for this paper.

Now that I have turned it in, I can therefore focus completely on my qualifying paper. Finally, I will get to spend quality time with Magnus. I have everything I need, including the final results of the regression analysis that I did, and all I need to do is to write it up.

Yesterday, I have been talking with a friend, as to whether she has been to a certain part of the United States. The reason was because I was contemplating of planning a small escape (similar to the one I did last December to Washington DC) next winter. I know, winter has just ended and I am already planning for the next one.

So the conversation took a turn, and it looks like I will be doing a road trip! Where? Of course, I am not saying where, at this moment. You all know me by now, I like putting the element of surprise and suspense to my readers. But the main point of this trip is to escape the winter for a while, so that can give a clue as to which general area we are heading. And the more people that goes, the cheaper, so I am planning this with two other people.

Anyway, enough of that for the moment. Time to spend some quality time with Magnus.



(Green Swirls, from my Corning Glass Series)

My Infant Grows, and So Is My Wall

I hate the fact that my breaks are spread along multiple sections of the day. I find it hard to work that way.

Anyway, yesterday, I was working on my infant. Magnus grew a little bit yesterday, and it is moving along. I have a few pages of single-spaced text for a draft. I have the goal to finish the draft by the end of this semester, so that I can submit it to my adviser and have it read by a few other people in the department as well.

I also have my postcard collection grow significantly this week. I added five new postcards to the collection. One was from Raleigh, North Carolina; another is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and another is from Cincinnati, Ohio. These three postcards were procured by myself, when I was in those places, either simply by connecting through the airport or actually in the city itself. The other two were from Wertheim, Germany (courtesy of a friend who is actually there at the moment); and from Florida, when a friend of mine went down there for Spring Break.

So there, if I look up, there would be plenty of different windows to the different places around the world for me to look at.

I already uploaded my pictures from Chapel Hill, and those who are knowledgeable of my professional website knows where my picture links are. They can visit it there. Otherwise, one should wait until it appears here in my photo series. I should warn you though that there is a considerable wait.

This morning, I had the Advanced Statistical Methods class. I really love that class, that I can anticipate what the professor is going to say next. It feels good to be one step ahead of that, and I actually see the rationale of the stuff that he is talking about. I guess the fact that I get the lecture shows, because a couple of other grad students from the class approached me and asked whether I would be willing to tutor them about the lectures. I didn't say a definite answer, because I don't know if I have time for that, but I left the opportunity open. I gave them my e-mail address, and told them that nobody usually comes to my office hours, so if they are free during that time, then I can help them with the lecture.

It is indeed empowering to know these experimental and statistical techniques. I know, I am being a geek, but the fact that I know what F-tests, T-tests, ANOVAs, and other statistical tools, and the fact that I know how to use them, is surprisingly amazing. I never thought that as a linguistics major back in undergrad, I would encounter math. Now, sigma-squared epsilon and other of those Greek terms just flow freely, with no brain processing penalty due to not being able to comprehend it.



(Dark arches and illuminated spaces, from my New York City Series)

Magnus and Mean Squares

Week 6 is explosive. It makes my head swirl, to the point of explosion.

First of all, there is the issue of the upcoming Open House. Next week is the Open House Weekend in which prospective graduate students are coming to town to see what is going on in Buffalo, and whether they would want to spend a few years here for their graduate career. And since I happen to be the student that is responsible for the logistics of this event, then I seem to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off, arranging the airport pick-ups and accommodations of the prospective students, by contacting them, and the student hosts as well.

Good thing there is a concept of delegation, so I am delegating some of the burden to my assistant, which will plan the Saturday activities, because I will be out of town that day. I will be in Rochester to attend an assembly, and that takes the whole day. I'd be shutting my phone off, and ignoring the rest of the world, while I take a day-long repose.

So that is one thing.

Another thing concerns Magnus. Sometimes it seems that I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. At this point, my adviser and I are deliberating on what the proper experimental design is for the English data, to which we are trying to contrast the Tagalog data that I have gotten last summer. And all our trial runs seem to be failing, in the sense that it is not tapping what we want to tap.

And to complicate matters, my current IRB approval (this is paperwork that I have to complete in order to ensure that my experiments (which use human subjects) are not detrimental to my subjects) expires next month. I needed to renew it pretty soon (the administrator told me that I should do that by tomorrow) or else they might have to close it. The problem is, since I do not have a good experimental design at this point for the probing tests that we want to conduct, I cannot write a revised protocol, therefore I cannot submit a renewal application. I made correspondence with the IRB administrator telling him my concerns, and he replied that I would be better off by closing the current protocol, and once the experimental design for the probing tests were finalized, then it would be better for me to open a "new" protocol, even if the new protocol is related to the former one.

Now that would be all good, if not for the fact that we (my adviser and I) want to run the experiment before we head down to North Carolina in the middle of March. I fear that the time it would take the reviewers to review the new protocol (even if it is expedited, which it will be, since it isn't one of those experiments that they do in the medical field; I won't be injecting my human subjects with an unknown serum or something else) would be too long for me to run it in time for the conference.

If only that one reviewer did not raise that question...

Anyway, that's the life of a researcher. I guess Magnus is taking its time in order to gestate properly.

But, even if there are times that I want to clone myself, there are also times which make me smile. Like this morning. In my advanced statistics class, we were discussing how to make the F-tests in 3-Factor Factorial Designs. And if the three factors are all random factors, then it would be impossible to construct an F-test for the simple effects of A, B, and C. One thus have to do something called a quasi-F-test, and I somehow found the way how to do it, even before he pointed it out to us. If one wants a quasi-F-test on A, one should take the Mean Square (MS) of AB, and add to that MS(AC), and from the result, subtract MS(ABC). That should give the proper denominator to form the quasi-F-test.

Somehow, raising my hand and saying that before the professor told the whole class made my day today. The professor was happy that someone was getting the material and thus was able to think before him. I love it when that happens, and the professor gets excited.

So there, I get moments like that. And I guess, to cap off the impending great busy week of the Open House, I bought a ticket to see Baby, which is a musical that will be produced by the university's theatre department. Somehow, I find myself being a fan of the aspiring student artists. I've seen quite some productions that they have made for the past two years.



(Amazing ceiling, from my Wall Street Series)

Yeah Baby Yeah!

Oh yeah, bring it on!

If I was suffering a bit low yesterday, today is the total opposite of that. I feel like I want to jump the way rock concert attendees do when they hear those guitar riffs in the song.

Well, the reason is that I got word about the abstract that I submitted for a conference this coming March. It was accepted as a poster presentation. That means that I will be heading down to North Carolina this March.

Ha!

I feel alive again, having gotten confirmation that my brain is indeed live and kicking. That means I have to write this paper soon in time for that.

Speaking of that paper that I am personifying as a baby, I met with my adviser today, and I got concrete ideas how to proceed. I guess my problem for the past few days was that I did not have direction in writing the paper. I have the stuff to write, but I didn't know how to arrange them in a coherent order. It's the first time I am writing a paper that relies heavily on experimental work. So, speaking of the baby, it grew quite a lot this week, and it will continue to do so for the rest of the week.

Listening to metal on Internet radio sometimes can help while doing this; it makes my adrenaline pump faster and harder.

So there, I'm on a high for today.

Oh, speaking of the mystery car I blogged about the other day, it belonged to a person who apparently had an arrangement with one of the people living downstairs, that he would park in our driveway and the person living downstairs would park somewhere else. It's just that nobody else downstairs knew of the arrangement, so we all thought that it was a mystery car. Good thing the police didn't come on time, or else it would have been towed away.

Anyway, so I have this conference to attend. The goal for the next few weeks then is to try to rehash my research agenda, so that I can produce another abstract for another conference in the late summer, whose deadline to submit abstracts is on March. I guess I can produce two different papers from my current research agenda, since this first abstract is more of an experimental one, focusing on the experimental bent in the research, while the second one can be more theoretical, focusing on the theoretical implications that can be gleaned from the experimental results. If I submit an abstract for that, and get accepted, then I might find myself in Texas for a part of the summer. But I still have time to prepare for that.



(Flags on display, from my United Nations Series)

Father-To-Be

Yesterday, I became a father-to-be.

I didn't realize until yesterday that I am expecting a child. My first child. So yesterday, I went online and decided on baby names. I decided on the name Magnus. It is Latin-based, and it means great.

So, from now on, I am watching my baby grow, slowly. Hopefully, he will be due by the end of the Spring 2008 semester.

I guess this just shows how crazy I can be. Yesterday, I sat down with the intent of writing my qualifying paper. But nothing would come out of my head and my fingers. I kept looking at this blank slate of a computer monitor, and I cannot formulate the words to write it down.

It was a bizarre experience. I have done the research, I have done the experimentation, I have done the statistical analysis, and all I need to do is sit down and write about it, but I had a hard time formulating my words, and so my imagination was drifting away and therefore I found myself a few minutes later checking Internet sites for baby names.

So I decided to personify my qualifying paper into a baby. And when I finally turn the thing in, then the baby will be born. I chose the name Magnus because it is short for magnum opus. I thought that if I personify my qualifying paper, then I would move forward somehow.

So, speaking of my baby, he grew two pages today.



(Albert Gallatin's tomb, from my Trinity Church Series)

It's Alive!

After the supposed low-point yesterday, I decided to fully exercise mind control, and convince myself that I have the energy to work and finish my research. Yesterday, I was a bit down, due to the fact that I have these sheets and sheets of Excel files, containing the results of my experiments. It's not that my experiments turned sour, but it's just that there seem to be too many numbers, too much than I can handle. I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of data that I had to play with.

Anyway, seeing those high-energy new graduate students set me in motion again. I don't need to slack off. Discipline it the key word.

So, here I am, printing my Excel sheets, and setting up an appointment with my adviser. I will show him what I have, and we will discuss what will be done as a next possible step.

I was looking at some of my pictures from my travels. It made me feel alive again. If I want to see more of the world, then I have to do well in my studies. That is the motivation.

Mind over matter, mind over matter.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. People will flock into the campus again. I don't have a class tomorrow, but I have a teaching assistantship class to attend to. All my classes are in Tuesdays and Thursdays.

We'll see how things go. In the meantime, enjoy another photo from my Ecuadorian Flora Series. I promise you that there won't be much more photos from this series.

The Crunch

Here we go with the last week. The final week of this semester. And yes, it is torture.

First off, I attended the final lecture of one of my classes. So for this class, all I need to do is to write the paper. Then submit it online. Because my professor is flying to Dusseldorf tomorrow and is never coming back until August. So online is the way to go for the paper submission.

For this one, I already have the data. All I need to do is to sit down and fix my butt to the chair and write the paper.

For my other class, I have a homework to do, which is due next Monday. I also have a final take-home exam for this one, which I haven't received yet. Fortunately, there is no paper for this class.

Finally, for my third phantom class (which is basically qualifying paper guidance), I need to crunch numbers for this one. I actually bought a scientific calculator to aid me in this one. I never realized that in my linguistics career, I should be needing a calculator. But apparently I do. I am going to compute means and standard deviations for my data. So I got myself the kit. Besides, since I'll be taking the Statistical Methods class for next year, then I might as well.

So that is the academic side of things. There are also some other sides, but I'd rather tell them here when they are solved. Hopefully, it runs smoothly.

But yes, it is the time of the semester when one wants to disappear, and forget about everything, but cannot. So I disappear for a little while, here into the blogosphere, and release some tension, then continue on tomorrow.

So here is another photo from my Niagara Falls in the Winter Series. This is upstream, but the water is indeed very strong.

So I'll let you go while I watch the latest episode of The Amazing Race. Woohoo!

Two More Weeks

I seem to be counting days a lot recently. I still have about 5 weeks till Quito, 7 weeks till Manila, and plenty of other things that I count. And one more thing that stands out nowadays is that I still have 2 weeks till the end of the semester.

With that in mind, what are the developments in my horizon?

I've finished the norming experiment that I have been conducting for the past two weeks. From now on, I'll be designing the main experiment to be held in Manila based on the results of my norming experiment here. I already have data that have sufficient statistical power (oh I love that phrase, sufficient statistical power, it sounds so mind-boggling) and so this fact will then be incorporated in the experimental design for my main experiment.

I still have one paper to write, not counting my qualifying paper. I changed the topic from my original intended one, due to several reasons, one mainly being that it would be easier to do a paper that is not meta-theoretical and rather data-driven, due to the fact that the other types of data that I would be needing for the theory-driven paper is not so accessible, and I am pressed for time at the moment.

I have set up a medical appointment in ten days; I am meeting the doctor in the Travel Clinic, and he will see whether I will need to get a yellow fever shot for my travels this summer.

Earlier today, while I was in the shower, I noticed something in my body. I have two unaccounted bruises, one on my right arm, another on my right leg. I really cannot remember how I got them.

So that's what's happening in the life of the lifeform intended for nocturnal gratification, ultimate infiltration, and scientific troubleshooting. Oh hey, I have a new photo series for you, Niagara Falls in the Winter Series. This is a series of photos I took while visiting the famous Niagara Falls during Spring Break. As you can see, parts of the falls are frozen solid. Awesome.

Another Assortment of Sorts

I finally finished the autobiographical book of a North Korean defector yesterday. I have to say it was very moving. It was a superb book, about a person who overcame all the odds to gain one's freedom. I definitely recommend it to everyone.

So there, I picked another book. This time, it is fiction, as usual. Remember Trainspotting? Well, the author of this book is the same author as that one. I wonder how this would be like.

I started analyzing the data that I am collecting from my experiments. It seems that the results are promising, which is good. I have already made an Excel sheet containing all the variances of the test stimuli.

I had one weird email which was sent to me by a professor here in the department. This professor works on a Mesoamerican language. Apparently, he is presenting at an incoming conference, and he will be presenting a paper on the temporal anaphora and tenselessness of this Mesoamerican language. If some of you may recall, these are some theoretical topics that I am interested in. So I get this email from him, saying that he would want to present a dry-run of his talk in the lab that my adviser conducts (and I am a member of). He asks me whether I would be free on either of two dates, because, he wants my input. I found that weird, and flattering. Here is a professor, working on a certain topic to which I am also interested in, and he wants my input to it, me being just a student. Is that acknowledgment of my work? In any case, I am delighted to offer "input", whatever that means.

Oh, one last thing, today was a surreal Thursday. It is April 5, and spring should be here. But guess what? We have snow today! And the temperature is just around freezing. Totally uncool.

Tired Eyes

My eyes are tired. But my body is not. Yes, my eyes are tired. I feel it, I feel it warm, as if ready to pop out. Maybe it is because of too much reading. Or too much time facing the computer screen. Maybe a combination of both.

Vacation as it may be, it is not for me. Writing a qualifying paper can be tough. I am reading previous works on the topic I am working on, and it just drives me nuts. Tons of people are saying tons of different stuff about a single topic. But then, who am I to rant, when I am at the moment, attempting to do the same thing, say something about the topic?

I have about 12 more days to go until school starts again. I am excited. It brings me closer to my goal.

I have already ordered my books for the next semester. Good thing there is this tracking thing for UPS, I know where exactly my books are at the moment, since I ordered them online at Amazon, they left Lexington, KY at the morning of January 3, and as of 6:05 PM today, they left Middleburg Heights, OH. They are scheduled to arrive here tomorrow.

Tonight, I saw her again. She revealed her hair again, for the world to see, after hiding it for three weeks. Beautiful.

But immediately, my head kicks in.

I feel like having two personae in this one body.

Freud was right. But Pascal was right too.

I guess for tonight, Pascal wins.

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas.