Do you accept mediocre?

Today, while demonstrating for lab 102 (plants and microbes), I lost my temper! I raised my voice slightly at the students, and pulled the demostrators aside to tell them off. The students in today's lab were told to do two graphs for their experiment, and write a proper caption for it. Most of these first year students do not know how to write a proper caption, thus all they wrote was "y vs x", which is completely unacceptable. We have been spending lots of time in other labs telling the students to think about writing good captions that describe the experiment, not just y vs x! However, when I asked a student why they think it is acceptable to write y vs x, their answer was "that demostrator told us it's ok"! After that, I noticed, students were avoiding me marking their captions and are asking other demostrators instead. I took a look, and students with lousy captions were given full marks without even knowing they shouldn't be doing that!

It is one thing that students do not know...it is another when we as seniors just accept it and say it's ok! I pulled the demostrators aside and sarcastically asked them -" is this what their postgraduate education has been teaching them? Is this how they write captions in their papers?" I was pissed! and I was even more frustrated when I found out the tutor did not even care about students not putting in effort to write proper captions!

I am not asking the students to write the perfect caption, but it is definitely worth the effort to start learning the right thing now. And even the demostrators and tutors needs to start working on not accepting mediocre work, and these students will live up to the high standards.

It was a disappointing day at work :(

First sign of spring

Today was a nice representation of spring. There was sunshine with occasional rain... morning and evenings were cooling, but not cold, and it felt nice when you are out in the sun.Hoping for better days ahead.

Well, we finally narrow it down to a faulty drain pump in our washing machine. For a while, we have been thinking that it may be a faulty electronic console, until Hannah's dad pointed out to us that we should take a closer look at the pump. We dismantled it the other day, and found a coin stuck in the discharge pipe. The stuck coin might have caused the pump to work harder, and thus causing it to overheat! For the next few days, we will be sourcing out new or used pumps and see if that will fix the problem. We may just add another DIY achievements to our accomplishments in NZ :)

Goal for coming week - bring my running gear to school so that I can go running while taking a break from writing/ work.

Goodbye diving

I have been very depressed these couple of weeks. I knew that we would have to put our diving activities to a stop for the moment given our current living and financial situation. There are a lot more things in our lives right now that needs that money, and going diving just seems to be such a luxury that we cannot afford. However, diving is the only thing I have which I feel good about myself, and now I am losing it as well. I am feeling much bitter than ever.

I have been thinking, pondering and thinking. I am not happy, but I accept it. We will put diving activities off until things gets better. Good diving, see you soon, I hope.

PhD proposal defense

Today I presented my PhD proposal to the committee. I think everything went pretty smooth.There were a couple of small issues that I need to take note of, but in general I think everything went well. There were quite a fair big turnout. Most of the PhD students from my office turn up either to give their support or to check out my research. The department technician, Brendan turned up as well. This is because I was seeking his help in building a new instrument for nutrient elevation manipulation in the field, and he was very excited about it... His words were " Now, we finally get to build some shit for real experiments!"

PhD proposal defense ....done... today is not too bad a birthday after all.

Review of goals 2012

Justine reminded me of my goal to run the Auckland Marathon. I took a quick look at the goals I had set out for myself, and think it is time to update it...

1. Finish and publish the two papers I have been working on for the past 3 months (ON-GOING) .
2. Portions of the PhD research to be done : location recce (ACHIEVED), collaborators negotiation (ACHIEVED), literature review  (ACHIEVED) , experimental design  (ACHIEVED) .
3. Publish at least one paper from my PhD research before end of 2012.
4. Pass our GUE fundamentals (ACHIEVED)and Rec 3 (Trimix)  (ACHIEVED)  .
5. Conduct at least one exploration dive on the Blue Creek resurgence with TechDive NZ. (CHANGE OF PLAN - CANCELLED SINCE THE EXPLORATION IS SET IN FEB 2013, WHICH I WOULD BE CONDUCTING MY RESEARCH IN TAIWAN)
6. Clock a total of at least 40 recreational dives and 10 technical dives  (ON-GOING) . 
7. Teach 2 labs per week (this will help with the monthly finances as well :) )(ACHIEVED)
8. Stick to a exercise regime (RESTARTED ... ON-GOING)
9. Run the Auckland Marathon....
10. Call home (Singapore) at least once every fortnight  (ON-GOING) .
11. Go home (Singapore) at least one time in year 2012 (not counting the wedding date!) (ACHIEVED).
12. Go back to Iron Mountain.  (CHANGE OF PLAN - CANCELLED SINCE GRACE IS COMING END OF YEAR)

I thought I should add a few more goals to this... 

13. Training Jet at least 2 times a week.... so that he is more obedient,and I can keep my sanity. 

14. Runs at least 3 times a week, so I can at least survive the Auckland Marathon.

15. Published my personal/ work website 

Spring is coming II

I pulled out the camera (SONY a55) which Alfred gave us as our wedding gift and took some pics with different settings of the aperture. Perhaps I was trying to find a good excuse for my procrastination but hey, the pics turned out pretty good. 

"Yippee-ki-yay ....!"

Sneak preview... :P

Where is the silver lining?

Knocking them down.... one obstacle at a time

Came back from Tribunal Court this afternoon. As what the judge said, it was a case of unfortunate events. He was empathetic with my situation but it is a hard case to fully dismiss it. In the end, we negotiate the lowest monthly payment. If I can pay a lump case, the client is willing to cut $1000 off the original sum.... I do not really want to talk about what happened anymore...but it definitely SUCKS!

There is a something I always say - overnight rain always fall on a broken roof. Wonder how many things can go wrong now besides the court case:

1. window broke - cold air keeps coming through in winter
2. washing machine broke - clothes smells
3. scholarship being pull out last minute after spending hours hours on it 
4. laptop is breaking down, slowly but surely - hanging on to a thread
5. supervisor not around to help with proposal presentation... never really have much help from anyone in this university 
6. too poor to get ferry tickets to the city, get dogs register, go to the vet, and have PBJ for lunch since before I can remember, IDD card no credit to call home
7. looking at other students with scholarship while I run in and out of the office everyday teaching, working in the media department, and on my thesis at the same time

I think I would stop complaining now, and hope writing it out would let me rant enough and get it over with... My godfather in Taiwan would say this is God's (if he is there) way of making sure I am good enough to handle the pressure when He gives me a bigger task. So, in the meantime, I will kicked myself, hold my head up high and carry on.... Frak it... at least we still have each other.... the sun will come out someday.

Being more efficient

This is the second day I started the whole "Do not check my emails every 2 mins" routine. I should say it turn out pretty well. The first thing I do every morning is no longer checking emails, or surfing the internet. Each night, I left out a piece of work to be done the next day on my table - it may be writing a paragraph in my paper, organizing my notes, reading, or even exercising etc. That IS the first thing I do the next morning. I finished it, and then, I go to my Inbox, read, check and clear everything in the Inbox... then on to some internet entertainment.... and I am never back on the web again until at least about 4 hours later.... Doesn't sound like much, but it is a start for me. This is the product I am using now to notify me of any urgent emails so that I do not worry about missing out on important stuffs. However, let's face it, how many emails are so urgent that they require IMMEDIATE respond? Check it out if you are interested ....

Awayfind.com


On a side note, I am back on an exercise regime again. This time I have no excuses because I picked up (actually Hannah torrented it) a ten-minutes-training DVD. Each exercise is only 10mins - but it is an INTENSE 10 mins! I saw a post on my friend's (Hi ! Justine) blog and she just finished her half-marathon race. I feel that I need to follow through on my exercise goals as well...well, I cannot let her have all the glory :P

I get more work done. And I love it.