it's been a trying week.... i was frustrated with... all the effort in getting people to listen, with computers, with system administrators, and fundamentally with the way hierarchies work within departments....which for the lack of real understanding (nor any desire to comprehend it) is a pain for the amateur. but perhaps all the noise i have been making might have been worthwhile.... i don't particularly enjoy complaining.... it's not a very nice thing to do.... and it toxifies one's soul to exercise it too much. in any case, perhaps i might get a new machine for the office soon....be it a PC or a Mac i shall be more than delirious if it doesn't hang up on me and that i will be able to run 2 giga bytes and possibly more of data through various analyses, outputing the results and transfer files between servers.
tomorrow i will meet with Dave and Gert-Jan (my newly appointed 2nd supervisor) to go through some difficult bits of how i shall go about with some of the analyses.... this ought to have been arranged a term ago.... i had been asking about lots of things and some answers came only a term later..... if pursuing a PhD is about cultivating patience, i suppose one might become philosophical about time (today we take that dimension for granted....).
the little consolations of the week are: the joy in reading up some relavant research articles, questioning and letting ideas seep into my mind (thinking is always good); setting up a mini-experiment and formulating preparation guidelines for my tutees (work that the tutorial course organiser ought to have prepared but has decided to leave it to us to conjure up something instead of having a standardised set of experiment; obviously not doing the job he is paid to do. and i am 'stupidly' doing the work i am not paid to do -- time to make some more noise?!); and learning about German adjectives even though i missed most of the classes this week having been stressed out with aforementioned frustrations. one needs to feel productive..... it makes everyday more satisfying....
meanwhile i should better get on with writing a script for another bit of an analysis....
Hope next week is better! Don't fret, May!
Posted by: Van Heng on Friday, 30 January, 2004 at 13:55 hrsthanks Vanny! it has gotten loads better.... :C)
Posted by: hrm on Friday, 30 January, 2004 at 18:20 hrs*Note: in case you were thinking of leaving a comment and the option isn't here anymore... it is because the comment section of each entry is closed after sometime to prevent malicious comments... if you are looking for the actual entry, type in the keyword(s) in the little box on the main page http://overacuppa.com where it says "fossicking pebbles & seashells" and press *search*... thank you for popping by and happy browsing!