After amending the code in the morning, I went to Project Symbiose to look for participants. Of course I dropped by at Ravi’s office and emphasized again that I need to finish the exp by next Fri. He said he would ask his neighbours over the weekend. I said I don’t mind doing at night but not on weekends. At least not on these coming 2 weekends. I went to this Vietnamese guy’s office and asked him to do the exp for me. His name is Nguyen Van Hieu I think. Sounds like a Dutch name because of Van. Like Vincent Van Gogh. Anyway, he can speak French because he learnt that in Vietnam before coming. I had a hard time explaining the experiment to him because of his poor English. And I can’t understand French. But with some drawings he finally got the objective and went on with the exp. His results were weird and random. By now I don’t care much of the results. Because this will be the last exp regardless of the results. Anyway, none of my exp has been repeated due to weird results. The reason why I had to do so many exp is because these weird results posed new problems and trend and thus the birth of new exp.
At lunch, I ate with Mr. Giant and Laurent as usual but this time with our team leader, Stephen joining us too. I had only eaten twice with him before. In the office, he always looks so stern. But he is really very friendly. He asked me about my Loire Valley trip and how I am planning to go there. Mr. Giant then said that I might not be able to return on Monday because of the strike. Stephen said that the rail company already declared not to be part of the strike. He is however, going to be affected because he is supposed to fly to LA on Monday. But the pilots were on strike. Stephen then asked me about my departure date and I told him 17th June. He said he would try to arrange a date for me to present my work to the team. I said ok as casually as possible but not sounding over confident of course. Because I feel that every opportunity to present myself should not be missed. In fact, I kind of welcome the idea of presentation because it is another chance for me to impress, provided I don’t flop the task. But really I feel that I have become much more confident now. Mr. Giant then asked about my exp and by now everyone in the team knows that I have been doing exp after exp. He said it isn’t that difficult to get 10 more people. Even after I had got about 50 by now. Well, he really sounded as if it is an easy task. It would be easy I can assure you if I speak French. This new exp was really a burden. An extra burden. When Anatole and I were discussing on the results yesterday, we realised that we need to have one more exp all because of one single difference in pixel of the program. And Anatole was saying, “we had to do this new exp because of one fucking pixel”. That was the first time I heard him swear.
In the afternoon, I passed another participant from Project Symbiose and then went to INSA to pick up another participant who had miraculously read my advertisement and contacted me. I hoped more would come. He was more enthusiastic because he wasn’t “forced” to come. He came willingly because the poster wrote “volunteers”. Those from Project Symbiose are dragged out of their office to do the exp. After he had done the exp, I received an email from Mr. Giant. He told me to go to his tmp folder and download 3 songs by The Corrs. He said he specially handpicked them for me because by now he has a clear idea what kind of Irish music I like. He said he was 1000% sure that I would like them. While downloading, I heard some Celtic music coming from outside the corridor. Mr. Giant must be playing them.
My last participant was another Vietnamese called Dinh Trong something. His English was poorer than the one before him. Halfway through my explanation, he even requested to use the internet to check the meaning of the word I was saying. I was explaining to him meaning of tactile and haptic and it generally means force feedback. But he couldn’t get it. I asked Laurent to speak French with him but still he couldn’t. In the end he went online and used an English-to-Vietnamese dictionary. This definitely would lead to another weird result. True enough his results were as weird as the first Vietnamese. Well since their results were almost identical, I guess it isn’t that weird after all. Anyway I had only done 4 participants.
At the end of the day, I finally had to time to go on msn and chatted with hui. He mentioned that he was super busy and didn’t slack at all. Again I didn’t know what to say to him. Not that I am not compassionate. Just like in hall, when my kian gan toiletmate always complain to me about how stress he was, I would always gan him more. I don’t really know what to say to people who are complaining to me about stress. I am good at comforting people when they are sad or feeling down though. That’s why my dear toiletmate still confide in me even though I always suan him. In the end, I suggested to hui that he cut himself off from all internet connection so that he can fully concentrate on his work. It works all the time for me in hall. When CE work was too much, I just shut down the PC and focus on my work.
Then we were chatting about being pro-active here and getting to know more people. I think the key to survival in living alone in a foreign country is to be open-minded. I suggested that it would be a good idea if OPA can arrange some sort of meet-up for me and the future batch of interested students so that I can tell them what kind of mentality they should have if they really want to come. Before I came, I thought it would be quite easy. Now I realised that if I don’t make a conscious effort to speak up and approach my colleagues pro-actively, no one would talk to me. In the beginning no one asked me for lunch. Until I went knocking on their doors along the corridor asking everyone out for lunch. At a point I felt that I cannot just passively wait for people to talk to me. Hence, I feel that I should warn those students about this mindset before they come. And I think it is better that I do that before they are selected because it would be too late after that. If they think they are not the type who can approach a stranger and intro himself, then he shouldn’t choose this IA. I was told by Dora how bad the situation here would be only when I got selected.
Hui thought it is a waste of time to meet students before they are selected. He thought they should be old enough to think for themselves. I don’t think it is too much of a trouble to meet them in a tutorial room or something like that and share some of my experiences. Anyway, most probably there wouldn’t be many students interested anyway. It is France; great place to travel but not really to live if you dunno the language. Anatole asked me if I would like to stay in France and I said yes but near to the countryside. He said from my description of SG, apparently I dislike the crowd there. Yes I do. The population density is just way too high. Too many high-rise buildings. From the window in my bedroom, I can only see a little tiny piece of the sky. All the stars are blocked by HDB flats.
At lunch, I ate with Mr. Giant and Laurent as usual but this time with our team leader, Stephen joining us too. I had only eaten twice with him before. In the office, he always looks so stern. But he is really very friendly. He asked me about my Loire Valley trip and how I am planning to go there. Mr. Giant then said that I might not be able to return on Monday because of the strike. Stephen said that the rail company already declared not to be part of the strike. He is however, going to be affected because he is supposed to fly to LA on Monday. But the pilots were on strike. Stephen then asked me about my departure date and I told him 17th June. He said he would try to arrange a date for me to present my work to the team. I said ok as casually as possible but not sounding over confident of course. Because I feel that every opportunity to present myself should not be missed. In fact, I kind of welcome the idea of presentation because it is another chance for me to impress, provided I don’t flop the task. But really I feel that I have become much more confident now. Mr. Giant then asked about my exp and by now everyone in the team knows that I have been doing exp after exp. He said it isn’t that difficult to get 10 more people. Even after I had got about 50 by now. Well, he really sounded as if it is an easy task. It would be easy I can assure you if I speak French. This new exp was really a burden. An extra burden. When Anatole and I were discussing on the results yesterday, we realised that we need to have one more exp all because of one single difference in pixel of the program. And Anatole was saying, “we had to do this new exp because of one fucking pixel”. That was the first time I heard him swear.
In the afternoon, I passed another participant from Project Symbiose and then went to INSA to pick up another participant who had miraculously read my advertisement and contacted me. I hoped more would come. He was more enthusiastic because he wasn’t “forced” to come. He came willingly because the poster wrote “volunteers”. Those from Project Symbiose are dragged out of their office to do the exp. After he had done the exp, I received an email from Mr. Giant. He told me to go to his tmp folder and download 3 songs by The Corrs. He said he specially handpicked them for me because by now he has a clear idea what kind of Irish music I like. He said he was 1000% sure that I would like them. While downloading, I heard some Celtic music coming from outside the corridor. Mr. Giant must be playing them.
My last participant was another Vietnamese called Dinh Trong something. His English was poorer than the one before him. Halfway through my explanation, he even requested to use the internet to check the meaning of the word I was saying. I was explaining to him meaning of tactile and haptic and it generally means force feedback. But he couldn’t get it. I asked Laurent to speak French with him but still he couldn’t. In the end he went online and used an English-to-Vietnamese dictionary. This definitely would lead to another weird result. True enough his results were as weird as the first Vietnamese. Well since their results were almost identical, I guess it isn’t that weird after all. Anyway I had only done 4 participants.
At the end of the day, I finally had to time to go on msn and chatted with hui. He mentioned that he was super busy and didn’t slack at all. Again I didn’t know what to say to him. Not that I am not compassionate. Just like in hall, when my kian gan toiletmate always complain to me about how stress he was, I would always gan him more. I don’t really know what to say to people who are complaining to me about stress. I am good at comforting people when they are sad or feeling down though. That’s why my dear toiletmate still confide in me even though I always suan him. In the end, I suggested to hui that he cut himself off from all internet connection so that he can fully concentrate on his work. It works all the time for me in hall. When CE work was too much, I just shut down the PC and focus on my work.
Then we were chatting about being pro-active here and getting to know more people. I think the key to survival in living alone in a foreign country is to be open-minded. I suggested that it would be a good idea if OPA can arrange some sort of meet-up for me and the future batch of interested students so that I can tell them what kind of mentality they should have if they really want to come. Before I came, I thought it would be quite easy. Now I realised that if I don’t make a conscious effort to speak up and approach my colleagues pro-actively, no one would talk to me. In the beginning no one asked me for lunch. Until I went knocking on their doors along the corridor asking everyone out for lunch. At a point I felt that I cannot just passively wait for people to talk to me. Hence, I feel that I should warn those students about this mindset before they come. And I think it is better that I do that before they are selected because it would be too late after that. If they think they are not the type who can approach a stranger and intro himself, then he shouldn’t choose this IA. I was told by Dora how bad the situation here would be only when I got selected.
Hui thought it is a waste of time to meet students before they are selected. He thought they should be old enough to think for themselves. I don’t think it is too much of a trouble to meet them in a tutorial room or something like that and share some of my experiences. Anyway, most probably there wouldn’t be many students interested anyway. It is France; great place to travel but not really to live if you dunno the language. Anatole asked me if I would like to stay in France and I said yes but near to the countryside. He said from my description of SG, apparently I dislike the crowd there. Yes I do. The population density is just way too high. Too many high-rise buildings. From the window in my bedroom, I can only see a little tiny piece of the sky. All the stars are blocked by HDB flats.
I just finished watching Titanic. This is the first time I have watched this show. Wat!!! WTF! What have I been doing? Freak or what? Haha. Yes I have missed a great show. The Show in our teenage times. In the past I thought why the big fuss about this movie? Leonardo di Caprio is boyish, Kate is fat, cinematic is fake and yet girls watch it 5 to 10 times. After watching the movie, I think it would be a romantic night if I can watch it with someone special out in the field with those big screen projector. And there are some Irish music too in the movie! I guess I am a bit out-dated and too late to discuss about Titanic when I should have done that 6 or 7 years ago.
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