Diverse Ramblings

A little encouragement

I just want to give a shout out to Lena, Kenneth, Twanny and anyone else who is currently in the throes of O-Levels or A-Levels...

Hang in there! You can do this!!!

No trophy, but I do have some bacteria.

Yesterday was the Presentation Dinner for the Manoel Island Race 2005 (the canoe marathon). We had this dinner because the shop that was supposed to make the new trophies and engrave them hadn't finished them by the day of race, so we couldn't have the presentation on that day. Hence the need for a gathering for the presentation.

Anyway, guess what, they are such a rubbish shop that even EIGHT WEEKS later, they STILL didn't have it done. *sigh*. We definitely won't be using them again.

This is why I don't have a nice shiny trophy here to take photos of and post, but we did OK last night because the kayaker who went to the shop THREE TIMES yesterday to see about the trophies got fed up and brought them all to the dinner as they were (unengraved) so that we could actually have a presentation at the Presentation Dinner, lol. Then afterwards the trophies were gathered up again and will be engraved next week (we hope), and then passed on to us.

I finally found out what place I was awarded - instead of having two catagories like last year (Elite for athletes and Open for amateurs), they just had one, so I placed second :-)

I'm rather pleased, and I told one of the kayakers' wives that I want her to paddle in the race next year and rig it so that she will come in second behind the really good female kayaker, so that I can come in third and have a complete set of trophies, for gold, silver and bronze. heheheheh.

One of the kayakers has done us really proud - he was chosen by the Malta Olympic Committee out of ALL the young atheletes in ALL the disciplines in Malta, to represent Malta at an international youth camp/conference. He will also be competing in the World Championships... wow... he deserves it, he's really dedicated (trains every day in the early morning, eats like an athlete should, etc).

He keeps trying to persuade me to start training properly, and I keep resisting the suggestion, lol. Too much like hard work :-) He did however interest me in a marathon that will be held on the 27th of Novemeber.

Well, I was interested right up to the point when he said it would be twenty kilometres.

Sheesh.

I can manage 10k, that's how long the Manoel Island race is, but double that?

*gulp*

Oh well, we'll see :-) If I can do 10k without training, maybe if I started training in the summer then I will make it :-D Sounds like lots of opportunity for blog fodder, muahahahahaha...

Oh, and the other thing was that there's going to be a canoe polo league in the summer - w00t!!! That will be SO much fun!

One of the guys organising it wanted to make a positive discrimination rule and say that every team must have at least one female player, but I tried to persuade him not to do that. Some of the guys are so aggressive (and behave so badly during competition) that I wouldn't want to play on their team... I think it's better to just let teams form naturally, and then if a female gets to the point where she is really good and can hold her own in that environment, then the guys will ask her to join their team if they think she will help them win :-)

In other news, yesterday I thought I had bad hayfever all day, used loads of tissues, and by nightfall my throat was killing me and swallowing was very painful. I woke up in the middle of the night, took my temperature, and found out that I was sick. The doctor confirmed that this morning - I have a throat infection, complete with pus. Ick. He's put me on antibiotics.

Typical bad timing, on the weekend when I have such a lot of work to do.

I tell you, it's a conspiracy...

A little decompression time required, I think...

Aaaaaaaaaah... it's the weekend... :-) (i.e. hopefully no demands on my time for lectures/meetings for two straight days)

This last week has just been crazy - between the synopsis, the abstract (1-page summary of thesis) that was due today, and the big assignment due on Tuesday, I've been working flat out for most of the time.

Last night, at a little past 11pm, my abstract was just about ready, and I was very pleased with it. I just needed to print it. But something went wrong with the spooler (the program thingy that sends the pages to the printer) and it in turn crashed Microsoft Word... and i had neglected to save my abstract...

*meep*

Oh well, I knew I could recover the text, so it was more annoying than anything else, but my annoyance turned to frustration and was just one step from desparation, because the problem with the spooler remained through multple restarts and shutdowns.

It was being stubborn, and wouldn't let me access it to fix the problem. And in the meantime, it crashed Word and Wordpad withing 4 seconds of me opening them. And there's me with the abstract due today.

Grrrrr...

After wasting about two hours on it last night and three hours this morning, I managed to get Word working again by setting the spooler's priority to "low", but as a result of all the messing with the printer properties, I can't print any more. *sob*.

I printed the abstract here at Uni after spending 1.5 hours in my tutor's office going through biomedical books and journals for references to use in my synopsis. Well now the abstract is out of the way, and I hope that Dad manages to fix the problem with the spooler.

My weekend will be devoted to (1) the synopsis (due on Wednesday) and (2) the assignment (due at noon on Tuesday *snigger*).

I am fearing for my sanity... it funny how my perspectives and sense of time/space changes when I'm living like this. Supper is no longer means the end of the day, instead it is a break between my evening work and my night work. Midnight isn't "late", it just means that I have about an hour or so of productive time left. And if I have coffee, midnight is reduced to just being the time when the little clock on my taskbar rolls over to "00.00".

Other time markers lose their meaning too. "Monday" is no longer the commencement of work after a break, and "Sunday" doesn't mean a day of rest. All that matters is the day that the next deadline happens to be on.

After the 20th (or it might be 23rd) of July than I can say "it is finished" (pending final exam results to know if I will get to graduate or if I have to repeat this year) but until then I am looking at 52 days (or possibly 55) where every hour that is not spent on my thesis or studying is a wasted hour.

Ajma.

It's not all doom and gloom, mind you - all this work is kinda fun in its own way :-) and like wwwitchie said, when you finish you have this tremendous feeling of pride and satisfaction that makes it all worthwhile. I get to hear the birdies sing at the end of all-nighters, heheheh, and my parents are extra-nice to me :-D And I also get to impress people with my colourful vertebra screenshots, which boosts my ego no end, muahahahahaha.

For extra motivation I can picture myself wearing a toga trimmed in green and white at the graduation ceremony in November, and practice writing B.Eng (Hons) after my name...

See? It's not so bad, for all that I enjoy moaning about it so much! Also, distracts me from feelings of dread! And sheer terror! Especially around 2am! Wheeee!

I need to get me one of those countdown timers :-)

Refusal often offends

I was in a shop the other day and I saw a sign which someone had obviously done in a word processor, and it amused me greatly...

Absolutely no credit!

Credit given only to those

over the age of 85

and accompanied by both parents.

Just give me a book, please.

It seems that the fashion in the last couple of years among my lecturers has been that of "giving us notes" instead of having us use books.

On the one hand it's good to have all the examinable material in one place, but there are some downfalls, for instance when the notes are handwritten in a nearly-illegible scrawl...

And right now I am in the throes of another problem, which is when the lecturer's notes are bad notes.

I'm not just talking about the numerous spelling and grammar mistakes, because hey, it's the maths that really counts, but my problem is that even the maths isn't properly explained - there's symbols and abbreviations with no definitions, and I can't tell whether the formulae are derived or just quoted, (and therefore whether I'm supposed to know how to derive them or if I can just memorise them) and I can't even follow the so-called worked examples! AAAGGRRRHHHHH!!!!!!

The Library was no help at all because the books are too old to feature this new technology (by new I mean, within the last 20 years), and the only new textbook (published in 1993) is out on loan, so now I'm surfing the good old Net to piece together the explanations, keyword by keyword...

*bangs head against wall*

I wonder what students did before the Internet?

Quietly despaired, I suppose...

Silence? I should be so lucky!

I have a monster assignment due on Tuesday (the day before the final deadline for the snopsis, ajma) and today the lecturer took great pains to make sure that we all knew that the dealine was noon on Tuesday (sounds like a Western, heheheh) and not 12:01 or, heaven forbid, 1pm. He has left strict instructions with the secretary to reject any submissions after noon strikes.

Lol.

The assignment is to work out three tutorial sheets, only, obviously, to work the sheets one must first study. the. entire. syllabus.

*sigh*

So after my lecture I had lunch in the canteen and went to the Library to start working on this subject. I went up to the Science floor to the six secluded seats in the magazines section, only all of the seats were taken. So I went to the quietest desk, in the corner by the archives section, but I was annoyed by people talking, mobiles beeping, etc...

So I went down to the Arts floor, because there's two more secluded desks, but, no dice, both were taken. I tried sitting in the main area but again, too noisy. I hate being distracted when I'm trying to actually study.

I ended up going to the most remote spot I could find, sat down in the corner, and spent about an hour studying on the floor and ignoring the strange looks from random students. Heheheheh...

I hate the way that people "bag" those remote desks and then go off for a while. Last year I cottoned on to that trick of leaving books open and old pencils on the desk to 'reserve' the desk while going off for lunch, and would unceremoniously clear the desk and dump the rubbish on the windowsill and use the desk (and ignore the annoyed student on his return, lol)... but today they are covered with personal possessions like pencilcases and spectacles.

Oh well.

I'm going to miss this Library once my time here is up.

I won't miss the students in the Library, but I'll miss the books :-)

It's a beautiful daaaaaaaaaay...

Ah, I had a great start to my day for a change... I actually had a good night's sleep (because of being so exhausted, lol), then I had breakfast for a change (a doughnut that I froze on Sunday), got to my first lecture on time (wow), and it was on Occupational Health and Safety and finished early.

Then I got the great news that there is no Refrigeration lecture today, which along with the cancellation by one of my pupils for this evening's maths tutoring means that my day suddenly got a lot lighter. Instead of 6 hours of lectures and two hours of tutoring, I'm down to 3.25 hours of lectures (of which 1.25 is already done) and an hour of tutoring.

Aaaaaaah...

More time for my thesis/synopsis, heheheheh.

She sure showed ME.

My tutor wanted a hard copy of the synopsis, I couldn't just email it to her, so I traipsed off to Uni and gave her a copy.

She flipped through it, and she had just two comments for me: "You don't have much to show for a year's work" and "Your colleague has done a lot more than this".

*sigh*

Pulling an all-nighter

I stayed up aaaaaaaall niiiiiiiiiiiight working, and I finally finished the synopsis :-)

It's all nice and pretty, with some really cool graphics (of my vertebra, of course).

I had my mug of coffee at about 11.30pm (one level teaspoon of nescafe, two heaped teaspoons sugar) and that was enough to keep me going. I started to flag at around 4am, especially when I had to wade through thirty pages on the finite element analysis of bone... but I made it!

I thought it was cute when the birds started singing at 5:55am, and even cuter when they stopped not long afterwards, heh.

Now I'm trying to get the document to print (over a network, sigh) and then I'm off to hand it in... I hope it doesn't come back TOO disfigured with red ink...

Muahahahahaha...