As there was a notice saying that the residents were not supposed to use the hot water today, I didn’t dare to turn on the hot water tap in case I got electrocuted. Neither could I take a morning bath because the door knob to the bathroom was removed. Probably by the repairman. This inconvenience would last only from 8am to 12noon so it was not too bad. It has been 3 full months since I arrived in France and today was rental payment day again. I decided to go back to INSA after lunch and pay up my rent. The admin office opens at 1330hrs in the afternoon. At the same time I could take my bath.
A final look at the tour plan and we decided to do the booking. I made all the booking because my France bank card has the VISA function. It was a relief that finally we got all the hostels booked. No more worries about beds being taken up anymore. I got all the hostels that I wanted now. But I was careless in not checking the arrival time that I put. It was the same webpage for most of the hostels and I just changed the destination, number of nights and date of arrival. I forgot to change the time of arrival and hence I had to email all the hostels again telling them the actual time. But it wasn’t really much of a problem I feel because as long as date of arrival is correct, inaccuracy in the time isn’t that important. But still to play safe, I emailed all of them and some replied saying that it isn’t a problem.
At lunch, the team wanted to drive out to eat. They were going to a place outside the campus where we could use our INRIA tickets to buy sandwiches. I didn’t join them of course because I couldn’t tahan with just sandwiches for lunch. Moreover, I needed to go back to INSA to pay my rent and bathe. Actually I don’t understand why the guys do not like the food in the other restaurant. I find that the main dishes are the same. Fries taste the same. The cooks, the aunties, all is “yuan ban ren ma”. No change. In fact, I like this STAR restaurant (as it is shaped like a star) because I like the side dish. Just that I can’t take as many desserts as I want. Well I guess the guys didn’t like this restaurant because of the difference in the side dishes. Today’s weather forecast said that there would be a thunderstorm in the afternoon. I have yet to see one here because normally thunderstorm happens in tropical countries like SG. True enough after lunch, the sky was overcast and it started to rain. But just as I was hoping for some thunder and lightning, the clouds broke up and it was raining lightly again. That kind of sissy rain.
I was back in INSA at 1pm and wanted to take a bath. But the door knob was still missing. The repairman must have been “jia zua”. He was supposed to put it back at 12 noon. I listened to some music and at 1330hrs, went to the admin office. It was still closed. So I waited for 15 min and it was still closed. I guess because of the holidays, the admin office was closed or the staff self extended their lunch time. I should have pay up last week when I knew the holidays were coming. Hope it would be open tomorrow. Don’t like the feeling of owing money. Just when I was leaving the building, the repairman came to put back the door knob. And he was the guy who caught me in the multimedia centre the last time. He greeted me with a smile again. I think there are 2 security personnel staying in INSA. One was this guy with a moustache. Another was a balding man with long hair at the end. The balding man saw me cooking in the kitchen before during weekdays and greeted me too. Guess they are not so “niao” people.
Back in the office, I got Vincent to try out my simulation and thereafter I analysed the results. Tomorrow I would get one more colleague to try out and do a full compilation to find out if there are any patterns. I also received an email from Michel telling me to highlight the parts of the work which are my contributions and those that are from my sup. He also advised me to make more suggestions and take initiatives to give ideas from now on. He said the supervisor would welcome student to give his opinions esp. at this point of time when the student should be very familiar with his work. But frankly speaking, the idea of the experiment all came from my sup. How could I come up with such concepts? What pseudo-haptic lah, Point of Subjective Equality lah, psycho-physical parameters, etc. I was afraid that maybe that was what my sup feedback to Michel in my 2nd assessment. Maybe he felt that I wasn’t participating much when he was discussing the experiments with me. Quite true. Everything was from his brain. I was just a tool to implement the codes. But still I feel I should defend myself a bit and hence replied to Michel telling him the minute contributions that I had made but using words to blow them up a little. Tomorrow I would give a detail analysis of the results and sit down and think hard. Think real hard. Because on Thursday I would have to discuss with my sup and I have not come up with a really brilliant idea before. Although he kept saying that I am doing fine and producing good work, I feel that it only meant that I was a good worker. Nothing more. Following instructions and performing the tasks. With his calibre, maybe my sup expects me to introduce new ideas, perhaps even challenging his concepts. But all is not lost yet. From now on I would not just sit and think how to code the algo he wanted. I would sit and think how to improve the entire exp on the whole. Maybe come out with new exp. And I actually have a good chance of doing that because the bonus technique on the frequency which he gave me, was for me to do my own exploration and investigation.
After that hui and I were deciding on the flights because I wanted to book them then. It was then that we met some problems for the part from London to Amsterdam. We spent nearly 2 hrs on it. There were a few possibilities to get to Amsterdam from London. At one point, I felt that it a waste of time and pointless to do research on one of the possibilities; flying into Amsterdam by RyanAir. I was quite sure it would end up having us leaving our hostel at 3am to catch the plane. And I was really frustrated because we could only discuss through msn and it wasn’t instantaneous communication. Sometimes I just wanted to shout into the computer to get my idea across. The other alternative was by rail but it was too expensive. So finally I decided on another budget airline “easyjet” which was much more expensive than “ryanair” but is cheaper than the rail. Its timing is a lot better than “ryanair” but not as good as the rail. Still after weighing all the factors, I felt that was the solution; not the best of course. The best would be to have something like RyanAir’s price and timing of the rail. But when I told hui of my decision, and when he said “ok so you win”, it nearly blew my mind off. Was he thinking that I was being unreasonable and trying to make all the decisions myself? I was real hot but told myself that all these were because of communication breakdown. Typing through msn isn’t the best way to communicate, esp. for discussion. When one is typing, he rarely reads what was output on the screen from the other party. Hence he might miss info and kept on typing. MSN communication isn’t duplex. But after awhile I was ok again and wasn’t fed up anymore because we all agreed on an answer. But I thought we should wait till tomorrow for the booking because we really shouldn’t rush for this kind of thing. For hostels we should act fast and I thought we were actually a bit slow to start booking today. For airlines, we could wait awhile, but just a little while longer. Tomorrow I should spend more time on work than on personal stuffs. Have to come up with a brilliant idea to impress my boss on Thursday.
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