Final presentations

Although I knew this all along, I'm still overwhelmed by the presentations. Partly due to the fact that I didn't do much work in the past two weeks for some personal reasons, and, now, I have to prepare both presentations in one week. One of them is 15 minutes, and another one half an hour long.

Let's leave the longer one aside. For the shorter one, I didn't have any idea what I will be doing until Wednesday the past week. Fortunately I picked a topic, and the one I got looked really simple when I walked through the calculations last evening. Now the only question is that how I could fit that in 12 minutes or so. (The remaining few minutes are for questions and transitions). It shouldn't be too hard. At least it is manageable. Phew. Suddenly I felt like I removed a heavy stone from my backpack. But there is a bigger one.

The other presentation is/will be a killer. In the beginning I picked one topic that looked manageable from the list provided by the professor. But that one was taken already. I then selected a random one. It looks really interesting, though it's hard to gauge how difficult it is from the title. And, as it turned out, I hit the jackpot. It is one of the hard topics on the list.

The professor then spent about an hour explaining to me what the important aspects are. There are some interesting phenomena, for example, thermal noise, which usually destroys order, will actually induce order in this model. I think I got the big picture, though I'm not sure if I'm able to understand everything in one week. "Normally it could take 3 to 4 lectures to explain the model in detail." Wait, then why do you put this one in the list of topics? Even if I managed to understand everything, will I be able to explain everything in 30 minutes? "You probably will only have time to explain XXX, XXX and XXX." I knew it. I guess I still need to learn everything though. "It's a whole new world in this topic." Okay, I'll try.

On goes my quest to learn things in one week and put everything together in a 30-minute presentation. Starting from the two journal articles given to me, I quickly found a few more articles that I will have to read. Most of them are online and I can easily download them and study. Except one. It is online, but our school doesn't have the subscription for the volume. A hard copy of the journal is in the library, luckily. According to the online catalog, it is located in the subbasement. I need to borrow the key to enter. And....


...there ain't no books here! The door over there is locked, and I don't know where it leads to. It's kind of creepy here. Let's get out of this strange room. "Try again tomorrow," the person in the counter says. What? "I'm not sure where the books are, but the library staff should know." Oh, okay. He's only a student working part-time there. And it's in the evening already. So, I tried again the next day. "It should be upstairs, we moved it a while ago." Dude, please update the online catalog. Seriously.

Now as I read the articles, more and more references keep popping up. I really don't know if I can finish everything in time. Maybe it'll be better if I stop writing this blog post and go back to study. Ahaha. Wish me good luck.

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Sad news

It stroke the campus pretty hard.  One undergraduate student left the world, appearing to have committed suicide.  I personally don't know the student, but I know the feeling of people who know him.  In my high school days, the class a year above me suffered loss of more than one classmates (out of 40-ish students) in three years, and that was suffocating.

May him rest in peace.

Let me spread some words.  My friends, if you ever feel depressed and want to attempt suicide, please don't.  Try to talk to somebody, or if there is no one around, I am happy to be the listener.  I at least know how it feels to want to disappear from the world without anyone noticing.  At least I know how it feels to be depressed for a long period of time but were forced to act as if everything were fine.  Maybe I won't be of much help, but at least I think I can understand how you feel.  Please, please don't attempt such desperate things.  People around you will feel sad.  And, even without anything, your heart is pounding.  Put your hands on your chest and listen.  You are alive.

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Birthday

It's a bit late, now, to blog about this, that half a month has passed since my birthday.




But nevertheless I think that it's a good idea to write something. I would like to say thank you to everyone who came. The cake was good, although it's not well cut. The main problem is that there is a layer of mango (?) in the cake, and we only got a soft plastic knife. Unfortunately I wasn't expecting this and didn't have my camera with me, so the above photos are taken by cell phone with lower picture quality. Guu.

My wishes? I sincerely wish that all my friends can be successful and live happily. I wish that I can advance substantially towards my dreams. I wish (*cough*)....this one is supposed to be secret, and I won't say it here.

A lot has happened since then. Something that might turn my life upside down. It has already a huge impact on me, but I don't regret having done so. I am just trying to be true to myself, even though what I did might be terrible to some people. I really don't know. I hope not. But in either case time will clear the fog eventually, and I'm sure things will be fine.

It's such a strange beginning of my new year. Really. I wonder what god has in store for me next.