The first thing I did in the morning was to go and see the project leader regarding my assessment forms. He said he heard nothing from my sup telling him that he has to assess me when my sup is away. What a joke! Luckily, he was a very nice guy and was willing to help. He said he would call my sup and do the assessment by phone. I would be annoyed if I were to be disturbed by work during my vacation. After this, my first customer for the day came and did the experiment. The results again contradicted to what my sup and I expected. But we can’t say that the experiment is a failure. It meant that the technique was a failure. So still we cannot discard the results. Sensing that I wouldn’t be able to have enough people to do my experiment, I went upstairs to catch some PhD students. One of them rejected me saying that he is busy this week. Actually I still got time slots for next week but he really didn’t seem interested and so I dared not ask. Another guy looked unwilling to do but too bad his will wasn’t strong enough to say no and reluctantly wrote down his name for a time slot tomorrow. I couldn’t care much about other’s feeling now. I needed people and I am going all out after them.
Still feeling that I wouldn’t get much response, I sent out an email to colleagues in my project team asking them to spread the word for me. Then I went online and vent my frustration on hui since he knew a bit about my work. But the more I talked about it, the more vexed I got and in the end I went for lunch, feeling grumpy, angry, desperate. Once these experiments are cleared, I would be able to move on in my work at an unstoppable speed. I already had some ideas on how to do those works that I am supposed to do after the experiments. However, nothing can be done until I have cleared everything. And it was really disappointing to see that all my time slots for next week are empty. There are 3 reasons which I can think of for the poor response. 4 in fact.
My email is in English, although the people speak English here, they would prefer doing an experiment conducted in French. Even those who are daring enough to come forward to do the exp speak little English only.
Not everyone subscribes to the newsgroup esp. those newcomers like the PhD students. And it is them that would be more willing to do exp.
The people are not actually keen to do exp, so what Anatole said is wrong.
My project team might have a bad reputation in IRISA.
After lunch, I had nothing to do until 430pm because the time slot at 2pm was shifted to tomorrow. This is another troublesome part of conducting experiment. People suddenly couldn’t make it and disrupts your schedule. 2nd difficulty of doing experiment is that this is a serious research experiment and is unlike those that I have done in NTU. Last time, I can easily fake the results for those experiments (but I must proudly say that I always tried my best to produce the most genuine result even though it meant going back to the lab and re-do again and again), now there is no way I can fake. 26 people means 26 people, no more no less. Then a good news came. One of my colleagues said that he is working with University of Rennes 2 which is the other uni and had just forwarded my email to his students and colleagues. He said that potentially there would be more than 10 people. I hope this reinforcement is for real and also hope that it will come sooner so that I can plan the timing. Another colleague replied and asked if there are monetary rewards for doing the exp. I told him no because the exp is very short only 20 min (Anatole said that there was once an exp lasted for 5 hrs but the participant was paid of course). I remembered that when I was in Hall2, I did do a survey for a master student in CS and each participant would be paid $10. But I didn’t get the money of course because it was for Hall2 OMC. I replied to my colleague saying that hopefully people are motivated by the fact that they would be helping in the advancement of haptic science and also out of goodwill.
I was really bored waiting for the next customer to come and so decided to do some work. As I can’t write my codes, I wrote the ideas and algo on paper. Then I wrote them into my program files but commented them out so that they won’t affect my current simulation. At least I won’t be slacking and idling. At 430pm, my customer arrived. After doing the exp, he was noticeably tired. In the questionnaire, he mentioned that the exp was too long and tiring. Basket, he was doing the easy one with just 180 tests! And it was only 22 min! Should have let him done the 285 tests. My project leader came in and asked for the number to fax to my tutor. Yes! Finally I have been assessed and this issue won’t be bugging me anymore. Although from day one till now I think I have been producing good work, I was still quite worried about the assessment. There will be one in mid-March and another in mid-April. The one in mid-March would most probably be on these experiments that I have been doing. Even though my sup had no complains about me (neither was he very impressed with what I had done so far. I think he felt my performance was alright), I was still a bit worried. I mean, although he wasn’t around most of the time, he might have eyes at every corner of the building. Sometimes I would be surfing the net, most of the time checking the train schedules for my weekend trips. I hope he can understand that I have no internet access in my room and thus needed to do all these during office hours. Once he caught me reading the online newspapers in the afternoon and asked any great news happening around the world. He might have a joking light-hearted nature, but maybe in his heart he had condemned me as a “slacker” when he caught me that time. Despite this, I still have to say that I have not failed him in anyway. All tasks set out to me were cleared, so far.
Hui then introduced me to this website www.easyjet.com which is something like those budget airlines we had in Singapore, only difference is that it is for traveling around Europe. The price was indeed very cheap (even cheaper than by train) but there is a problem. Not all cities are able to travel to all other cities. Confusing? Say City A can travel to B, C and D only. And D can travel to E and F. So if you plan to travel to city A, D, and E, then you will choose A to D, then D to E. Logical. But you will find that for E, the only destination it goes to is to Mars. So either you are stuck at E or go to Mars and come back to Earth next time. In the end, I spent an hour to come out with a sketchy plan which combines both train and plane. I have to make sure that I wouldn’t get stuck in any city during the tour. But this is just a rough plan and is too early now to disclose here in the blog though it is on a post-it in my office. With that airline, the places that I planned to visit drifted further and further away from France, as far as to Praque and Athen. By the end of the day, my frustration was almost gone because firstly, the assessment forms are done. Secondly, I might be getting reinforcement for my exp soon. Thirdly, planning the tour is really kind of shiok. Just before I turned off the PC, someone emailed me and said that he is interested in the exp. Yeah, one more customer. He asked what the exp is about because from my email, using people to do exp sounds scary. Maybe that explains the poor response because I didn’t describe the exp (I was trying to keep it short because they don’t like to read ENGLISH emails). So perhaps I would send out another request again stressing that the exp is very simple, just by using the mouse. Hope there will be more good news tomorrow.
Still feeling that I wouldn’t get much response, I sent out an email to colleagues in my project team asking them to spread the word for me. Then I went online and vent my frustration on hui since he knew a bit about my work. But the more I talked about it, the more vexed I got and in the end I went for lunch, feeling grumpy, angry, desperate. Once these experiments are cleared, I would be able to move on in my work at an unstoppable speed. I already had some ideas on how to do those works that I am supposed to do after the experiments. However, nothing can be done until I have cleared everything. And it was really disappointing to see that all my time slots for next week are empty. There are 3 reasons which I can think of for the poor response. 4 in fact.
My email is in English, although the people speak English here, they would prefer doing an experiment conducted in French. Even those who are daring enough to come forward to do the exp speak little English only.
Not everyone subscribes to the newsgroup esp. those newcomers like the PhD students. And it is them that would be more willing to do exp.
The people are not actually keen to do exp, so what Anatole said is wrong.
My project team might have a bad reputation in IRISA.
After lunch, I had nothing to do until 430pm because the time slot at 2pm was shifted to tomorrow. This is another troublesome part of conducting experiment. People suddenly couldn’t make it and disrupts your schedule. 2nd difficulty of doing experiment is that this is a serious research experiment and is unlike those that I have done in NTU. Last time, I can easily fake the results for those experiments (but I must proudly say that I always tried my best to produce the most genuine result even though it meant going back to the lab and re-do again and again), now there is no way I can fake. 26 people means 26 people, no more no less. Then a good news came. One of my colleagues said that he is working with University of Rennes 2 which is the other uni and had just forwarded my email to his students and colleagues. He said that potentially there would be more than 10 people. I hope this reinforcement is for real and also hope that it will come sooner so that I can plan the timing. Another colleague replied and asked if there are monetary rewards for doing the exp. I told him no because the exp is very short only 20 min (Anatole said that there was once an exp lasted for 5 hrs but the participant was paid of course). I remembered that when I was in Hall2, I did do a survey for a master student in CS and each participant would be paid $10. But I didn’t get the money of course because it was for Hall2 OMC. I replied to my colleague saying that hopefully people are motivated by the fact that they would be helping in the advancement of haptic science and also out of goodwill.
I was really bored waiting for the next customer to come and so decided to do some work. As I can’t write my codes, I wrote the ideas and algo on paper. Then I wrote them into my program files but commented them out so that they won’t affect my current simulation. At least I won’t be slacking and idling. At 430pm, my customer arrived. After doing the exp, he was noticeably tired. In the questionnaire, he mentioned that the exp was too long and tiring. Basket, he was doing the easy one with just 180 tests! And it was only 22 min! Should have let him done the 285 tests. My project leader came in and asked for the number to fax to my tutor. Yes! Finally I have been assessed and this issue won’t be bugging me anymore. Although from day one till now I think I have been producing good work, I was still quite worried about the assessment. There will be one in mid-March and another in mid-April. The one in mid-March would most probably be on these experiments that I have been doing. Even though my sup had no complains about me (neither was he very impressed with what I had done so far. I think he felt my performance was alright), I was still a bit worried. I mean, although he wasn’t around most of the time, he might have eyes at every corner of the building. Sometimes I would be surfing the net, most of the time checking the train schedules for my weekend trips. I hope he can understand that I have no internet access in my room and thus needed to do all these during office hours. Once he caught me reading the online newspapers in the afternoon and asked any great news happening around the world. He might have a joking light-hearted nature, but maybe in his heart he had condemned me as a “slacker” when he caught me that time. Despite this, I still have to say that I have not failed him in anyway. All tasks set out to me were cleared, so far.
Hui then introduced me to this website www.easyjet.com which is something like those budget airlines we had in Singapore, only difference is that it is for traveling around Europe. The price was indeed very cheap (even cheaper than by train) but there is a problem. Not all cities are able to travel to all other cities. Confusing? Say City A can travel to B, C and D only. And D can travel to E and F. So if you plan to travel to city A, D, and E, then you will choose A to D, then D to E. Logical. But you will find that for E, the only destination it goes to is to Mars. So either you are stuck at E or go to Mars and come back to Earth next time. In the end, I spent an hour to come out with a sketchy plan which combines both train and plane. I have to make sure that I wouldn’t get stuck in any city during the tour. But this is just a rough plan and is too early now to disclose here in the blog though it is on a post-it in my office. With that airline, the places that I planned to visit drifted further and further away from France, as far as to Praque and Athen. By the end of the day, my frustration was almost gone because firstly, the assessment forms are done. Secondly, I might be getting reinforcement for my exp soon. Thirdly, planning the tour is really kind of shiok. Just before I turned off the PC, someone emailed me and said that he is interested in the exp. Yeah, one more customer. He asked what the exp is about because from my email, using people to do exp sounds scary. Maybe that explains the poor response because I didn’t describe the exp (I was trying to keep it short because they don’t like to read ENGLISH emails). So perhaps I would send out another request again stressing that the exp is very simple, just by using the mouse. Hope there will be more good news tomorrow.
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