over-ambitious

".... because I not necessary know how they do what they do...."

I have been soul searching for a bit past few days about my research, thinking if I am being over-ambitious. I have been reading about few areas of interesting topics, and had intention of "going solo" on those, i.e., working on my own and eventually to develop as single author papers. However, though I may know some of the papers why they do what they do, I not necessary know how they do what they do. That caused some problems for me. Even if I then how they do the stuff they do for their research, I need to be convinced the way they do it, if not, I don't know what my research contribution. Luckily, I am resourceful. I cannot do this certain area, does not mean there is nothing else I can concentrate and focus on. I had a little thought about it and quite quickly get back on track, and knew the way forward, which I am glad. Then I carried on doing the stuff with JR, which is about coming to the end for my first draft. We have a story there, but need some final touch up to make it look more plausible, then it will be up to the reviewer to decide if that is a good story, hopefully it will be. But, as I said before, every new paper sent to a journal is a new beginning, so never overlook anything.

"It's good to come to London"

"Yes it's true.."

"It's good to come to London", I said to AV this afternoon in the company that employed her, in which she was placed to do a 12 month industrial attachment. I didn't find anything "tricky" between her and her manager and thought they went fine and was quite ready to settle it that way. And then she added, "since you come this far from Loughborough to London, you must well, .......", I immediately knew what she was hinting at. Something that I increasingly learnt here is that, never gave out too much, as the more others will expect of you, even students. So I actually prepared stuff ready to tell her and as she pointed out, and so I discussed it further with her, what was expected of her for the dissertation and report, etc.

I finished the placement visit for AV in 30 minutes and then I left for The British Lending library. The library was very modern and wireless and as I took my baby laptop, I was able to go online and surf the web, and checked my emails. As it approached 4 pm, I made my way to "Pret" at St Pancras international in which I made an appointment to meet SG, my former boss. We had long chat about most things, and it looked like she quite like where she is now in Queen Mary's University of London. We also chat about research. SG is one of the few academics that I knew of, that I would consider as open minded.

She told me she is currently working on Japanese Corporate Governance with her PhD student and already there are 3 papers in the pipeline. She also has another research about post-colonial Botswana and as she spoke of this, I told her I am doing a paper about Singapore housing market and it all begins with the post-colonial Singapore, where the government was planning to re-shape the economy. My paper discussed the story of the housing market and its development. SG listened with interest and even asked to have a read about my paper, which I will definitely send her in the email.

One thing I like my job is that I get to travel to the capital for placement visits, workshop, conference, etc. In fact, I might come back again middle of June for another one-day workshop on "mutual funds industry". And then I get to meet up with friends and former colleagues and we catch up and update on latest development. I left London about 6.15 pm, felt that I had spent my time fruitfully in London. Yes, indeed, as I told AV this afternoon, it is good to come to London and it's true, not sure if she gets the irony of that, hehe. :D

While I was waiting, ....

"... this is not the tail of the dog, rather the tail (risk) of hedge funds..."

She came at about 5 pm, and I waited her for about 4 hours in total. The visit was a quick one. She took the pad, asked me few questions, including, "so how long you plan to stay here". I told her, long term I supposed, why you asked, is this because the owner wants to sell the flat. then she said, no, no that is just the routine. Fine! Then she walked round the flat, which was well kept and tidy (as usual) and 15 minutes later, she left. I was like the last flat she visited today and as I heard her singing on the way out, I just hope that she is really happy about the visit, rather than I am the last flat she is visting for the day.

I didn't totally waste my 4 hours while waiting. I was surfing the web mostly, searching for information on statistical test that seems not able to be executed on SPSS. So I called the University's helpdesk and they said perhaps the "mathematics education" department can help. It is interesting that they have an in-house statistical drop-in/consultancy session, so I booked for a time to meet one of the guys on Thursday. I also did some search and find all sorts of story about "tails" which I am sure JL will be very interested. It's quite funny the way they relate the statistical theory to "tail", which make sense. This paper that I read and found quite hilarious, "the tail that wags the hedge fund dogs". I cannot help laughing. This "tail" is about "risk", this is an area of research that I am currently doing. Just that, this is not the tail of the dog, rather the tail (risk) of hedge funds. :D

"Eventful" events (1)

1) Toothpastes - forget to buy one yesterday and forget again today when I walked into Somerfield this morning, guess I must brush my teeth with my finger now , lol

2) Freeview box(es) - I called Morag this morning. The few freeview boxes she sent me aren't working well to update the teletext. UK will be fully digitalised in time to come and it seems reception in some areas are still not working well, sigh!

3) Student meeting! - I met two students today and spent a total of one hour on each, going through stuff they aren't sure. I hope this won't happen too often. It will eat up my research time

4) Surprise email - received an email from YKP, my former math lecturer from uni. I didn't see him for long time, so I should arrange to meet him for lunch in July when I am back to Singapore, not sure how his kid is doing.

5) Subject group strategy meeting - I seemed to find that things are fine at the subject group area in term of research, as far as I am concerned. I actually felt I can engage better with this group of colleagues compared to those I met elsewhere. I even crack jokes and had a laugh. I think I am relatively less shy with this group of colleagues and dare to speak up.

6) House Visit - clean my bathroom and kitchen yesterday and now await for house visit by the agent tomorrow afternoon, so I must vacuum my living room in the morning.

7) Placement Visit - brought the file for placement visit home. Must read them before the visit on Wednesday. I also fixed appointment to meet SG, my former boss, to have coffee at St Pancras International. I really looking forward to see her to catch up with latest gossips in the academia.

8) Weather - Well, yesterday was the hottest day. I heard it will be a bit colder, temperature will be a bit down next few days, so must put on more clothes

The Coolest Summer Breeze

I was pleased the other day for completed 100 posts, YAY! I took a break to slightly reflect and "celebrate" hehe. I found that now, I decided to follow my heart. If my heart say, yes I am still keen with writing the blog, I will go on, if not, I will just stop and reinvent myself somewhere in the cyberway with another identity and finding my new mates again.

Well, today is the hottest day of the year in the UK. It was 27 degrees mostly throughout the day, and at this moment 19 degree. I didn't work too much, only in the morning where I tried some literature search/reviews on certain new areas. Not bad, I had some nice "findings". I went swimming in the afternoon, which was really really nice. The water was so cool, except that I wish the pool could be outdoor. Then in the late afternoon, I was mostly cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom in preparation for the home visit by the agency next Tuesday.

I felt so relaxed after that, finishing the cleaning, doing my laundry, and then watched "Britain Got Talent". Surprisingly, "An Audience with Michael Buble" was up next and I stayed on to watch. I always think Michael Buble is a very talented artist. He sang so gently and charmingly and his performance never disappoint. His sense of humor often impressed me and his effortless style make him forever so unforgettable. He did come across as the coolest summer breeze. I like to finish this blog with one of my favourite tune of his, "You don't know me" originally sang by Ray Charles. Enjoy! :D

Quality times

I worked from home today and this time it felt so different. I was writing a book review and I will be paid for that. I also worked on research with JR. The weather was great. My flat felt so warm and lovely and with the sunshine outside, it really motivated me. As I thought back, I felt I really had some quality times doing those tasks which I was quite pleased.

Research with JR - I finally got down to the issue I needed some attention. This means I must get some additional information from JR and that the final result will be slightly different to that found in JR's dissertation. It also felt a lot easier now that I adopted the note-writing style of tracking my thinking in the research process. As I wrote this, it reminded me of the research tasks I needed for tomorrow. They will be at rather earlier stage and involved lots of searches. Normally, I tend to enjoy a bit more on research at an early stage as it is more like sourcing for concrete ideas and always looking for potential of scope.

Book Reviews - I did two book reviews this week. All of them are on topics of a good familiarity. I even use of the textbook in my course in the past. At one point, I was thinking perhaps one day I could write my own book. that seems like a "good thing", but as WF will tell you, it adds no value to research, as books get outdated and it is only research that is "updated". But if you manage it well, you can do so and still being research active, so book review is a good start to help you see how others write their books since you are the one giving review, this gives you insight into the various challenges facing writing a textbook.

Those "dramatic" characters

Today I attended the School research development meeting, only 18 attended, but it was a very interesting meeting. I am beginning to see some funny sides of my colleagues and there were moments of good laugh and I had enjoyed it. The meeting was productive. We were asked to contribute to some questions about what we think is our strategy, long term vision, values, etc. We discussed about the "non-negotiable". Here's some observation of some interesting characters and their quotes (roughly what they said).

1) The "not my problem" Type - "in my subject group, there is no collegiality at all and it is like you have to be "nasty" in order to do research".

2) The "Calculative" Type - "it is not the amount of the investment (i.e., budget) it is the COST of the investment that decides our way forward in the school".

3) The "Economical" Type - "XX now decides that she is not giving us lunch, but hold on, we turn that around. Just yesterday, we had our little research seminar, where yy discussed about her submitted paper which is now in the R&R (revised and resubmit) stage, our group gives feedback, and you know what, this is a normal "research" meeting, not "staff" meeting, we end up still get our FREE lunch."

4) The "Lost" Type - "So, what do you think is our role model?"

5) The "Lateral Thinker" - "Perhaps we should learn from the BAD model?"

6) The "Pragmatic" Type - "We must assume others near to our ranking are also doing the same thing, if we are not going to do anything, we will sure drop down from our current ranking."

7) The "Visionary" Type - "You seemed to be in some sorts of illusion, thinking there MUST be some perfect saviour existing that will just turn up, no, it is from within about how we think about our research and what we want to do that matters."

8) The "Strategist" - "I think we need to think about our strength, weakness, opportunity and threat."

9) The "knowing what they want" Type - "I think research should be go beyond subject groups and working cross disciplinary research is a condition that is "non-negotiable" because I am not joining an accounting and finance department."

The meeting ended in 2 hours. I kept thinking what happened and what was discussed in the meeting and it made me smile and made my day, perhaps I didn't know some of colleagues too well and I thought I just knew something new today.

Research presentation

I am glad today is finally over. In fact, I am happy this week is almost coming to an end. I had few things all come together this week, including the last lecture I gave for my course. And today I also gave a presentation on my housing market research to my departmental colleagues. This research is at its final stage and about to send out to an academic journal. Honestly, I didn't feel quite excited presenting it, mainly because I had spent quite a lot of time doing this research and I find that it is time to "move on", i.e., I am not keen to further innovate my research methodology or incorporate further ideas into my paper. But some colleagues still find the research interesting and had some discussions, which I am glad. GS raise some issues about the methodology, which is totally out of my control since it was MW who is preparing this. But I noted his points and brought it up with MW after the presentation, in which I also highlighted to MW we have to "get on with this paper" as it's being dragged too long.

Perhaps due to the stage of the paper that it is in, I find I am able to "defend" it better, in the sense of explaining it in term of "completion of the story" and "the potential readership of the paper". I am secretly happy with this as our RGC is also in the audience and that he is "watching" and I am not surprise he asked me about which journal I am sending to. I told him "Urban Studies" and he asked if it is listed in ABS (which of course it's listed), and I told him it is rated a 3*. He later said it is fine even if the journal was not listed in ABS, but I kind of find that he mind, and I told him that as my collaborator MW is purely a housing market researcher, we do discuss the journal that suits both of us, with regards to the panel for the REF exercise.

I felt a bit relieve after the research presentation, I then quickly did my exam paper amendment and got them signed off by the end of the day. Tomorrow and the day after, I finally have some times on my own to do research, though there will be a school wide research strategy meeting tomorrow, which I will be attending. Let's see if anything new can be learnt from those lead the sessions. I am eagerly looking forward to that. :D

Good luck, kids!

"... But I don't think I want to see you again..."

Finally, I came to the end of the road with those noisy kids. Today had my last revision lecture with them. Still as noisy, but I only use my laser pointer and hit hard on the table until I get some attention and I carry on. I had today 17 double-sided pages of notes, even have to ask someone from facilities to help me carry over to the lecture theatre.

I gave out all today, a big summary of my 10 weeks of lecture notes, selected exam questions discussion and even provide them exam strategies, tell them technique now to build confidence during exam condition, etc.

After class, I received email from one student about references of one of my lecture. He got the week number of the week wrong so I sent a reply to remind him about it and to be careful about lecture informaion and where it points towards the reference information.

Yesterday, I received an email from one other student who said I made a mistake on one of my slide, I emailed her to tell her the correction were discussed in a subsequent lecture and that if she followed up the lecture, she would have known. She replied to say she attended all lecture, and just going through the notes, and she thought my reply "not appropriate". I replied to her and tell her i meant follow up lecture NOTES regularly! Ah well, should not encourage them to send email if they are in doubt about their revisions. They probably would just ask anything and I think I might just receive thousand of them at one go, probably best meet them face-to-face, sort out problem one and for all, good for both the students and I.

Good luck, kids, that is all I would say for your exam, and even more good luck to you as you go for your placement next year. May you all learn the good lessons out there even it might be going to learning it the HARD way for some, so good good good luck! I don't think I want to see you again, but I should see you around :D

Uninspired

".... I am listening to Adore Jazz on itune radio and enjoying it. Perhaps I will be inspired again...."

I came back home about 6.40 pm. One of those days I finished my work "early". The daylight was on and make it feel even "earlier". I did the same routine, shower, steam/cook my dinner, logon the net, watching online drama. Then I finished shower, finishing streaming the drama, get my steamed veggie and rice ready, watched my drama and have my dinner.

When I finished my dinner, I had my smoothie and kiwi and I switched to watch "come dine with me" online. Had a REAL big belly laugh, and enjoy it. Then I switched the itune radio station on and listen to the Adore jazz channel. I guess this is how it feels like when I am uninspired or put it simply, bored! Not that I didn't do anything for my day. I actually finished JR's paper, perhaps you find that, when it is about reaching the end, there are still things need "investigation" that kind of drained you out a bit. This is what happen to the JR's paper.

But, it could be one of those days where there are too many things going on. I met up with 5 students about their exams and the personal coping with study. I also had to make 230 copies of lecture note of 35 pages each and I am still not sure if I can get help for someone to bring those 4 thick sets of notes to the lecture theatre. How can I feel not bored about today because of all these. Perhaps it's time to re-think spending 2 or 3 times a week working from home, for a change and also get some "peace and quiet" and get inspired. But for now, I am listening to Adore Jazz on itune radio and enjoying it. Perhaps I will be inspired again or maybe I will just have an early night.

Reinvention

"..... I am still zenbreather and I still reflect and lately I realise this is also one main characteristic of Leo, which I am one..."

They said you have to reinvent yourselves once in a way to get new inspirations. This could be a new type of job, a new image, a change of lifestyle, etc. I found another way to reinvent myself. Yes, you are right. I am reinventing myself through the change of the theme of my blog.

I have now written about 100 posts. I do find myself getting more drawn down to writing stuff related to my work. As you can probably see, the "Career and development" section has a lot more entries than others. Therefore, after some thoughts, I began to realise perhaps I should have a blog theme that suits the situation I am in and "Ivory Tower" appears to be the best fit. I like the new blog skins. It is quite academic, the font, the mixture of information on the layout, a bit like those we read from the "Economist" magazine. The only thing I need to do, is to add in more "labels" so that the future posts for "Career and development" can be further broken down into other categories.

However, I am still zenbreather and I still reflect and lately I realise this is also one main characteristic of Leo, which I am one. Being reflective is a characteristics for Leo because Leos are competitive and actually they are being competitive with themselves. They reflect so that they know what else they can do to continue to be better. Sometimes, they believe if they can be better than their current selves there is also likely chance, they will be better than others, though their intentions of competition does not begin with "winning others".

Yes, I am not aiming at winning others, other than myself. As I wrote this, I began to think what I had done today. Well, I finished preparing the Wednesday presentation slides and though I didn't write enough of the book review for XYX publisher, there should be enough time do do that later. I have some meetings with students tomorrow and I am relaxed about them, the more I think I only left with my last lecture to do, so I should be able to do the JR's paper, while waiting for them. And yes, I have to call SMH tomorrow, not chat with her for a long time, not sure what happen to North East Scotland now. I am feeling relaxed and reinvented (i.e., inspired) as I get ready to face tomorrow and the rest of next week, and I hope you too!

relaxation, enjoyment and productivity

"...Just like training your muscle, it is not always advisable to work on the same part of your muscle, because it may "get tired" and stop "reacting" so you end up not getting the desired effects..."

I have been asking myself this question past few days, i.e., what relaxes me? It's not secret that 2/3 of my life now at the moment is spent in front of a computer. I was thinking along the line of having to work with computer for long hours each day, so what are the things that I do on the computer that relaxes me? Besides, where do I work (on my computer) that relaxes me most? is it at home or in the office?

I find myself the most "happy" when I am typing things that I can give an opinion or "telling a story" of some sorts. Therefore, you can imgaine typing lecture notes could be quite a boring task. And of course, productivity can also be affected when switching from one task to another, simply because you need to get adapted to the different forms of tasks undertaken.

I was doing quite long hours on the paper with JR today. Now, I can say the first draft is 80% completed. It's hard work, but I pay attention and find all of them worth the while, because I was "investigating" the issues involved in the research. I am surely not relaxing, because I was concentrating. But I had enjoyed it as I did find "light" at the end. I did find, however, that if I can feel relax beginning of the task and keep it going, I could enjoy more. Perhaps when some concentration and focuses are needed in the process, relaxation could not happen, even if it does it should come in later, like during a break.

As I thought back, I think I might have "relaxed" too much. I should say, I was near to being procrastinated. Perhaps this paper with JR has past the difficult stage of sourcing for literature reviews and one task down for now, which is good. I must not forget there are other tasks need doing, and tomorrow should see me doing them. Just like training your muscle, it is not always advisable to work on the same part of your muscle, because it may "get tired" and stop "reacting" so you end up not getting the desired effects. The same theory applies here, have a change with a different type of work and then when you come back to do the JR's paper, new ideas and inspirations could emerge. And let's hope new ideas emerged for my other tasks that are to be accompolished tomorrow. :D

Research Agenda

It's the weekend and it just felt time flies so fast. I was packing things to the bag in the office when I was about to go home and I realised this. I was trying to bring home few papers to read and JR's dissertations to help me draft the research paper. This week has got some huge dramas. We have Mr Smoothie, LF's indebtedness, two revision lectures, the health checks and a couple of book reviews jobs.

I am just trying to think what's instored next week. Well, I already have a couple of students' meeting lined up and a research presentation to give to our group about the Singapore Housing Market. I am also likely to have students come knocking on my door to ask about exams.

As for research, what's the happening? Well, the followings are on the agenda this weekend and beyond. In fact, it relaxes my mind a bit sometimes when I am "doing research". I am still trying
to figure the exact explanation of this strange reaction.

1) JR research - I think after finishing the first two paragraphs, it felt like I am getting into the main theme of the topic, so the going should get smoother, as I gathered more material together

2) Potential MT's collaboration - I had not told MT yet. Though MT can be quite over-reacting to student's noises and at times made me nervous the way he explained the "bad" situation, I actually think he is quite a good communicator, coming to research. We had a brief 5 minutes chat the other day, all because he asked me whether I had read his paper he showed me, and then he start talking about the "probability distribution" in his context and how the "Eigenvalues" play a role. Immediately, I sense some research that can use his idea.

3) Modelling discontinuous series - I want to explore to see how this can be possible using a different non-linear time series techniques.

4) Risk issues in portfolios allocation - this is an extended areas from my published paper, but now using different type of data like other investment funds and see if similar conclusion can be drawn.

The above, apart from 1) are the more recent inspirations, which I hope are here to stay, and able to improvise upon. I am hoping that, after next Wednesday I could have more time doing research, as I should have finished all my lecture by next Tuesday and that from Wednesday, after 2 pm, my research presentation would also have finished. In between that time and the first week of June, I have two weeks of free time for research work. Let's hope the ideas are well supported and good research can be produced from them, :D

Look leaner and think sharper!

This week is the University's "health awareness" week. There is a health check for blood pressure, height, weight and many more. As I was curious about what might be checked and an eagerness to know how my "health" status, I went for the "check up". I was quite pleased with the result, particularly my body fat is only 13.4%. I remember about 6 years ago, a similar test about my body fat was done and I was 20% at that time, so my lifestyle and dietary habit did helped me to gain a change in my body fat weightings. What, however, more interesting is the muscle mass, which is 46.9 Kg. Given that I weighed only 57.1 Kg. The muscle represents more than 80% of my body content. That feels great!

I surfed the website to find a bit more about how to build up the muscle mass. The following are few points I gathered from a website, that are related to those heavy weight trainers, but I do see some relevance to my case of "building small muscle".

1. Weight Train - I didn't do that, of course. However, since I bought a abs crunches equipment for £3 from my local charity shop, I quit the Gym. I mean, I went there to use their machine to do the crunches anyway. They said men accumulated fats round the abdominal regions and that is how I get to do crunches a lot more 2 years ago. I just do that every morning.

2. Eat More Protein - Don't get me wrong, I am not an Atkin's diet advocate, I do have calorie in my diet. The percentage of protein, however, then to be higher. This includes brown bread, Greek yogurt (it is thicker and better quality), tuna sandwich, peanut butter, etc. These are good in building body muscle

3. Eat More Often - have snacks in between meals. I normally have brown biscuits in the afternoon or throughout the day whenever I felt the need to eat them, just one or two at a time,.

4. Eat More Fat - well, this means unsaturated fats. The body needs fat to maintain a balance diet anyway. I had olive oil, walnuts in my evening meals most days. non-saturated fats also have the benefits to help reduce cholesterol.

5. Rest More Often - You don't need to exercise everyday. While I went swimming 2 - 3 times a week, I don't go consecutively two days in a row. I let my muscle some "rests". It "trained itself" better after a "rest", so is my crunches exercise in the morning. Sometimes, I just gave myself a day break.

I am sure if I want to look a lot like "Mr Muscular", I need to train up a lot more, which I am reluctant to do so. I am just happy to do my crunches, firm up my lower abdominal muscle, which is a lot harder to reach if you don't have the right position and equipments to support the crunches on that part of the body. Luckily I have those equipment and I am able to do so, and it seems it has the desired effect I wanted as well. As long as I look leaner and sharper on my exterior, I am pleased, but all of that starts from the intention to live and stay healthily.

The impact factor

"... what an "impact" does "firing" have? Ask the academics..."

Today's meeting is one of the main event in the school. According to our record, there are 64 members of staff in the business school. I like the way big meeting like this conducted over here. Points are always so clearly listed and quickly bit by bit it went through quickly, with the least interruptions.

One issue normally being discussed is in relation to research. JMA who is the research director, is quite impartial, still not lacking in encouragement in his words when he tries to "push" research activities. I guess research is one of the hardest to measure performance, because the benchmark is usually quite hard to be chosen. One aspect of benchmark is what we call the impact factor. This is something which generally is known to be "research being applicable and utilized outside the academia". This is important, apart from publishing in good quality journals. I had a look at the research topics of a impact value and find the following areas to be quite interesting.

1) Girls' awareness of scientific careers

2) Sex workers in London, Soho (not sure if my colleagues really interview the prostitutes, cool, huh?)

3) Soccer clubs' hiring and firing of managers

4) Information systems for the Beijing and London Olympics

The above topics are some areas from some of my even more ambitious colleagues. Academics do have a vision. Anyway, the meeting also mentioned about potential funding to come alone in the near future, rising hope of the possibility for a PhD applicant in which BB and I were interested in pursuing. The meeting ended in under two hours. I felt well informed and then I get back to my work as usual.

The last laugh!

"...it goes, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!....!

I had a meeting with LF today, who is my boss (or head of the group) about WF's exam paper, after I checked that all errors were corrected by him. I did the explanation of the errors and my corrections so well to LF that I heard the nicest thing anyone would have said to me, "Thanks godness for you. K, I am indebted to you". That is what LF said.

Well. and I didn't let Mr smoothie get by so easily. So I told LF at one point in our meeting that, "I am not sure why XX (i.e., Mr smoothie) didnt pick that error up, it is so obvious, just comparing the question and the answers, the numbers were incorrect." Of course, I didn't drag on and on with that, I told her instead that, "Well, LF I get on with it, and then I find more errors and I just call WF, tell him to change it and he sent me updated files and whenever I found new errors, I asked him to change again and he sent me another updated file, until he got all of them right and correct."

I also didn't miss an opportunity to show how good am I in doing my job, and I add to LF that, "Not that this is the way I do because of WF, I would check the errors and do the same for all other colleauges who asked me to check their exam questions and answers, because it is only fair to the students that we get the answers right."

I guess at the end of it, I made my point, kill two birds with one stone, made LF said she is "indebted" to me (never mind that is true or not true, at least she said it), so I must thank Mr Smoothie, :D

Here comes Mr Smoothie!!

".. and also a bit of a Mr Slippery..."

I talked about "be very careful" and about being helpful to be ABOUT YOU and today I experienced an incident in the office, just reminded me of someone among my colleagues who could be much the same as the way I describe it. He is very smooth and well mannered, and just charmed you into discussing anything he brought up, though you might find it weird. Like he would say he doesn't like to go conference, because it is spending taxpayer's money, but I thought we can claim back the money we spend during the conference attendance period. So, I don't quite get him.

He was recently asked to check colleagues' exam paper, which happened to have massive errors. He did asked me to take a look, which I did, and which surprised me a lot because he seemed to know those errors himself and seemed not doing anything about it, except sending emails to the colleagues concerned who in-charged of the exam papers, and not quite directing to him what errors he had committed. In the end, LF (i.e., our group leader) had to contact me and asked me to help out. It seemed the "smooth colleauge" had too much of this colleauge who commit the errors. I simply contacted the colleagues who set the exam paper and told him directly of the errors he made and he changed it, just as simple as that.

I don't quite understand why the "smooth" colleague want to waste so much time doing those "unnecessary thing". This actually ate into a bit of my planned research time today, though by time my day ended for work, I did had some considerable amount of work done with JR. How should I deal with the "smooth" colleague. He is the type of person that I had described yesterday and that is, being helpful to him is ABOUT HIM, i.e., he might want some help in the end and he is doing so to be helpful so he can get a little more from you than you to him. I cannot let someone like this filled in too much of my thought, though I also have to be careful with him from now on.

Here come "Kick Ass" the superhero

"... and only if being nice and helpful can be that straighforward"

I cannot understand the joy of comic book because I don't get it. I cannot see how the world of comic book characters lived their life, yet I had just watched "kick Ass" and I am enjoying it. "Kick Ass" is adapted from a comic book story and it seemed the copyright was sold even before the actual comic book was published.

I had heard good review of the movie and that prompted me to watch it. Interestingly, the main lead character of the movie was not the superhero, "Kick Ass", it was the purple-haired hit girl. I think there is a deeper meaning for putting "Kick Ass" as the main superhero role. Like some superheros in the past we knew of, such as batman, "Kick Ass" can be seen as a "reluctant superhero", whose intention of wanting to be a superhero was partly motivated by the fact that he was being bullied by friends surrounding him. That comes quite natural in a person from that age, and perhaps to some extent similar to spiderman.

Thanks to the excellent editing, I enjoyed the gun fights and violent scenes in the movie, which are brutal but also clean-cut, neat and tidy. I also like "Kick Ass" self-promoting on facebook and myspace, like most of us wanted to get the shortest route to fame, this is so true! :D Still, back in my mind I was asking myself what is it in the superheros that appeals to comic readers, is there anything in the world they want to change and cannot change, and they use superhero as a messenger to convey the ideas? at least what I can see from "Kick Ass", his motive seems to be like that.

"Kick Ass" himself, however, also knew his shortcoming and weakness, so has he chosen to be a superhero too fast too soon? And here comes the next question, forget about being superhero, are you a helpful person? if you are, have you overestimated your ability? is helping people all about YOU? Obviously not and that perhaps it led to interesting issues to be addressed as we seen in "Kick Ass".

In the movie when it ended, "Kick Ass" finally fulfilled his ambition to be "superhero" and did a "brave act". In the real life, perhaps it is not that straightforward, "being helpful" can sometimes lie in the "grey area", and it could become tricky, if you put your interest in the hand of others. Be very careful.

When reality TV "gets it right"

"Is it worth the while to get humilated and then walked away with your head held high?"

Tonight "Britian got talent" is interesting. This guy called James Boyle who is dying to "break the record", used "that" as a "talent" to enter the program. Last year he attempted "eating the Ferreo Rochers" as a mean to break the world record of 8 in a minute, but he didn't beat that record. This year he came to "Britian got talent" again and wanted to break world record of "eating 9 "After 8" chocolates" in a minute and he failed again. I thought his persisence was charming, but used wrongly. The clip below show his "performance" in the show.



For some, the so called hidden talent ones are really good and if done properly inspired others In tonight "Britian Got Talent", there is this 80 year old great-grandmother gave an amazingly good performance. Watch this, she is truly an inspiration. I can smell another "Susan Boyle" in the making no :D



In the 21st century, if there is anything that you can do to show you have the courage, is to go to the reality TV show, get humiliated (maybe) and still walk away with your head held high. Sometimes, however, reality TV does "get it right", and then it went the wrong way making people over estimating their capabilities and then ended up going for programs like "Britian Got Talent" and then they failed, not sure if that is worth the while, but they are certainly of high entertainment values and brought laughs to people, :D.

PhD supervision

"I am seeing this as an opportunity to build up skill on supervising, and to seek opportunities for publication like the way I handled JR dissertation in the past"

It's been a rather crazy week, apart from meeting that deals with modules that needs modifications because they are too similar and reading exam papers that prove a PAIN, I also dealt with some PhD applications. I now learnt this is going to be a common thing in my job here. So, having a PhD student, though it might be important that the student must be of good quality, it is also an experience that helped you gain merit points for career progression.

The other day I received a good PhD application and thought BB and I would be very suitable to supervise, and I took it to BB for a look and we both agree the student has good potential and we are keen to take on him, also because his area of research has got some that BB and I can guide, so it is a a good match. But the student also apply for studentship, and BB was quick to ask me check with TP to see if the allocation of funding has been approved, if so, then the student will not be getting any, no matter how potential he might be. As expected, the funding allocations have been finalised. That means, the students would have to be self-funded. Perhaps it will be unrealistic to expect THE BEST student, because you also need some experience in this area to build up your skill as well, and also for career advancement as said before, which is rather important.

I am therefore seeing my collaboration with JR a good entry point for me to learn skill on working with more junior people, such as my student, on research. In any case, I have indicated interest to supervise a PhD student who is confirmed coming to Loughborough and who also being funded by his country's government. I am seeing this as an opportunity for me to build up skill on supervising, as much as seeking opportunity for publication like the way I handled JR dissertation in the past, hope this turns out well.

Oh! Disruptions! :(

"I think each day should start afresh, and disruptions should be dealt with one at a time,..."

How does disruption feel like? It happened when things don't get right for a start in the morning. All that you had planned for the day gets disrupted. This happened today and I felt a little "let down". Here are the unexpected.

1) Students' visit about exam - MS called in unexpectedly about topic xx I discussed in class not mentioned in the textbook and asked if that is important. This then led me to think perhaps it times to organise my revision lecture material.

2) WF and his exam papers - well, AA told me that he needed someone to read WF's exam paper, given that AA had read that 6 or 7 times and some problems still not resolved by WF. I had a look, well just some editorial problems. I really not sure what make WF not see that, despite AA's numerous attempts to remind him about. WF didn't have the problem with me when I last discussed a similar issue raised with another course we taught together

3) TRAC diary - the deadline to submit one and I quickly drafted up one, did took me sometimes to think about how i had spent my past few days in retrospect.

4) MW didn't think our housing paper is adequate - This housing paper I did with MW had been on for AGES, did some changes last time and thought it told a nice story, but MW thought it was insufficient. I could not argue anymore on this as he is more of a specialist on the housing research front. Anyway, I found out how to sort out the structural VAR from MW and knew from him that EView can work this out, so JL should be please as I should get on with this next few days.

5) Evaluation forms - Next week most of the colleagues will hand out evaluation forms to students and so am I. Well, I have two sets to send out, the white form and the blue form. Thinking that I had 230 students and need to collect from each of them did keep me thinking a bit how I should deal with it. It seems a bit tedious here and need some additional helpers, :(

Today my normal routine should be to prepare my last lecture for next week. I did had something done by the end of the day, but this could have done a lot earlier in the day which I expected, as I was hoping for some times with my research.

I think each day should start afresh, and we should be reminded what we needed to do each day, and deal with disruptions one at a time, that way, getting back to routines and getting productive should happen quite soon. I am missing the trill of doing research on JR's topic and I am looking forward to "play" with EView to get the structural VAR sorted out and hopefully to give JL soon.

Free lunch?

Something I like about my institution is that since I joined last August, I have had attended quite a number of "dos". The lunches, dinners celebrating colleagues' retirements, mostly (this however does not mean we are an old folk home, haha!) Of course, I also went out with colleagues for meals, so I do have "get togethers" and a "social life" and today, we have a thank you lunches for a colleague who stepped down recently as an acting position. So, we have free lunch today. Of course, who won't like a free lunch, but when they start to serve red wine, white wine during lunch, it gets a bit strange, perhaps this is to raise to the occasions, but having wine in the afternoon, are we promoting alcoholism here?

I remembered the last time we had an afternoon lunch event, I drank some white wine, forgetting that I had to meet students after that and this made me feel really strange in front of my student.

Furthermore, such free lunch comes only once in a while and when this happens you tend to spoil yourselves and ate a bit more than normal, which then made you sleepy afterward, and which is even worst when you have to attend meeting afterward. And this happened today. I was sleepy and tired, and the meeting, fair enough, was productive and quick in resolving issues, but I was still tired and sleepy.

When the meeting finished, and I got back to my office, it took me so long to pick myself up from where I stopped before the lunch event, to carry on what I was doing. At the end of the day, it looks as if the lunch is FREE, but there is really a price to pay here.

You decide what is best for YOU!

"... if it affects me, it affects you MORE!"

So I told them off today, yes I did. "I know you all getting nervous, exam drawing near and you are all attending the lecture, but you are too noisy. This affects me, but you know what? it affects you MORE! I cannot tell you a lot more than I wanted to, and I am not here to get angry, I am here to teach and give a lecture. So, if I got affected, then there is only so much you would get from me. You got to help me to help, if it affects me, it affects you MORE! so it up to you, you decide what is best for you to do."

At that instance, everyone remains silent, and even the late comer to the lecture sense something wrong and seemingly apologise. I thought it costs me so little just to get the simple message across. I am an old hand after all, but they are just 18 19 yo kids. D said just have to deal with them the kids' way, but they need to grow up.

I like the lecture today because I had used some real life cases like the Greek's bonds downgrade and effects on the financial markets as example. I learnt that as lecturers we must at least convince ourselves what we are teaching, and then we can deliver it well. I had enjoyed today's session, despite my "speech" and I later began to feel a little sorry to some of the students, because I truly believed some among them are hard workers, they probably understand where I come from.

Before the end of the lecture, noise gets a bit much, but I just can't be bothered. Next week will be my last lecture, I just felt so relaxed. Well, next week they are going to give me their evaluations, it will be interesting to see how they viewed me, but I got a lot to think about for next year, now that I know what to expect from these students.

Best movie moms

"Moms also made mistakes, and they are also learning all the time, not an easy job, just like those who are their children.."

A lot of Hollywood movies have interesting and moving mother's characters. Strong mother, weak mother, happy mother, sad mother, etc. I came across this interesting site, best movie moms, that put together 9 movies about moms and put in one sentence, what make those moms so great in the movies they are being played. Here's three of the interesting and/or thought-provoking ones:

1) Forrest Gump—You can redefine your kid’s limitations
Forrest's mom insisted that Forrest Gump should be schooled and treated like a “regular” kid despite his learning disability. This mother helped foster the perception that Forrest Gump was just as capable as anyone else. No wonder, beginning of the movie, we heard Forrest Gump saying, "my mama said life is a box of chocolate".

2) Stepmom—Letting others be there for your children is part of really loving them
Stepmom is a real heartbreak and tear jerking movie. Susan Sarandon not only finds out she is dying of cancer, but her husband was divorcing her, and she has to come to terms with her anger at her kids’ stepmom. I think in this movie, it tells you that, GREAT moms need to learn to "let go" too.

3) The Blind Side—You can be a mother to anyone you open your heart to
I have not watched this movie. But the statement already made me feel so over-the-top, as fi to say, I am a supermom, I choose who I want to open my heart to. Sandra Bullock who played the main lead in the movie won an Oscar for her performance.

Moms are just human, it is their characters that made them. Moms also made mistakes, and they are also learning all the time, not an easy job, just like those who are their children. The movies showed moms to be close-to-perfect, sometimes it does give you ideas how to become a great mom, if you know what you want and which models to follow. Good luck to you! :D

The quest continues..

"I am still doing the same thing, but for different reason now"

Today I carried on my quest to "position myself" and was surfing the web most of my day. I found who my potential competitors were and also looked at some similar research papers in my area. The search process reminded me of my early days while doing my PhD, when I was doing my PhD literature searches. At this stage, doing these searches are entirely different experience. I am still doing the same thing, but for different reason now. Doing the search and reading the papers are good training to the mind, it helps you remains perceptive and sharp.

I also quite keen looking at some early work produced in my research area of interest. Latest work in the same area obviously are more invaluable, but earlier work pointed out good research areas and potential gaps overlooked by much later researches. Earlier papers are also good because they tend to be "more organic", and brings out main idea and argument clearer, that way it helps you build up the knowledge, by going back to early and alternative sources.

As I am not doing my PhD now, the main intended outcome of using these material and resource is to produce academic research paper, the time and effort invested are no longer expected to be as massive as those in my PhD day, and the more one must be aware of one's weaknesses and strength in pursuing work like this, which explain why collaborations are very important. However, I am still keen to look into few areas that I find "within reach" from where I stopped and believe that given times, I should be able to sort them out. Perhaps I should be more flexible about this, a read on other areas of similar areas should help me decide how I want to do this in the end.

We must know where we stand

".... if not we would be in the loser's end...."

It's a jungle out there, even WF said so. In the world of academia, where others seen as "Ivory Tower", it has a ecosystem of its own, there are "food chains", "food webs", we MUST know where we stand, if not we would be in the loser's end. There are competitors, there are "old hands", there are "new birds".

One of my hobbies in my leisure time is to surf the web and look up other Universities websites for people doing similar research as mine. Sometimes, they post their CVs, and you can trace that to see if they made any progress over the past few years, and whether they change their areas of interest too. And if you see someone with a list of publications you wish to have you papers published in and if they are of similar research as you, they might be a good role model to follow.

One can also look for "new birds", the new academics who are in the same stage as you, and you can see what they published in. More importantly, you can judge their "potential" by how they published their work, whether they do joint research or single authored their research. One would tend not to be so sure about joint work as the reason for inclusion of the names on the journal article can be mixed.

The best judge of potential is looking at the single authored journal article, one would then be sure that the whole of the research is done by the single person alone, so what reflected on the paper will be 100% the level of knowledge of the single author one can assume. One strategy I learnt is to have a portfolio of them, so that you can assure of your own expertise being utilised (as in the case of single authored paper) or never lack of new ideas (as in the case of joint work).

Interestingly, today I have had good findings about my search on the web of my "competitors". I had managed to find some academics embarking on similar areas and I see possible "positioning" of my areas I like to pursue for future research, that way, one can better justify one's contribution if it materialise in the end. We all worked hard, but we want this to get paid off, and therefore, the more we have to know our "positions" as we don't want to be in the losers' ends.