I'm back (to my blog) :)

It's been a while since my last post :P

(sorry, folks, for not being updated)

The reasons why I disappeared from my blog are:

1. While I was in Thailand, I really had no time updating my blog. 

2. I was preparing for Mathematics (Numerical Analysis + Partial Differential Equations) and Computer Science qualifying exams. Preparing for three of them at once was quite a pain in the ass, taking almost all of my available time.

3. After the qualifying exams, I was busying with the research. Both coordinating with Monn and doing mine (trying to make some good progress).

However, here I am .... WOO HOO!!!

I finally managed sometime for my blog again.

Here are some of my updates:

I. I just received an e-mail stating that I passed both Math and CS qualifying exams :)

(Warning: too details contents. If you don't want to pay attention to the details, please skip)

I'm glad I passed both of them, since I really don't want to waste a lot of my time memorizing Numerical Analysis formulas and methods, practicing PDE and memorizing almost all of the well-known algorithms ever again!!! That's so harsh to me forcing my brain to record all these stuffs. In my opinion, even all PhD students need to be an expert (or something similar) in their fields, they need not to memorize a lot of stuffs. In reality, what they use are their aptitude, and their skills (analysis skills, creativity skills, etc.). So, qualifying exams should aim for evaluating those kind of stuffs. Oral qualifying exams would be a great option, as I think students will have more chances to communicate with the committee, convincing them that they really do know their stuffs. Open-book test would be another good choice, too, as students won't have to put much efforts in "memorizing" but "braining" stuffs. 

The tests I took were not so hard. First of all, the PDE, most of the problems were quite straight-forwarded. If I know, and understand, the method of solving various forms of PDEs, I can solve it :) Luckily, I knew them (credited to Monn, who show the light of understanding to me, while the freaking teacher cannot). The hardest part of the PDEs would be the integral. Imagine that you have to do integrate something like ∫x^2 sin(nπx) dx or ∫ cos(x) sin(nπx) dx in almost all of the problems, you may (or may not) go crazy. Lucky for me (again) that advance calculators are allowed in the exams in Louisiana Tech University. Students just have to show the proctor that the calculator memory was cleared. I used TI-89 titanium for this PDE exam, and I can easily passed :D One of my committee told me that I got 90+ from the PDEs. :D

The Numerical Analysis was not hard, too. Memorization is the most hardest part in this exams. What funny about this exam of mine is that I did not use the "programmable" capability of this calculator for solving numerical methods in the test :)

For Computer Science exam, it was too easy, so that I could easily do a lot of stupid mistakes. For example, one of the problems was "What is the notion of stack overflow and stack underflow". The problem before this one was something about programming language stuffs. So I was thinking too much in this problem, and then tried to describe the stack overflow error in programming. :P How dump I am!!! Luckily, in overall, I passed the test.

II. I was accepted as a student volunteer in Super Computing 2008 conference at Austin :D This time I will bring more free stuffs home.

III. One of the new professor offer the Parallel Algorithm class next quarter. Yeeee ha!!!! I am really glad to participate in this class.

IV. I am so sleepy right now -_- 

I will be busy as usual. Hopefully, I'll be able to update my blog more often.

Fug 

I'm home

After almost-30-hour traveling, MLU (Monroe, LA) -> ATL (Atlanta, GA) -> ICN (Seoul, Korean0) -> BKK (Suvarnabhumi, Thailand), I felt tired, but happy. When I saw dad, mom and my sisters , waiting for me at the airport, I felt like I was home--even the Suvarnabhumi airport was not mine :P

The trip hour look tiring, but the tiring process was actually started before the tirp. Our departure time was 6.00 am (approximately) from MLU to ATL, so we had to depart our apartment at 4.20 am--driving from Ruston to Monroe. Talking about the wake-up time, if we slept, we had to wake up pretty much super early. Our regular sleeping time is 2 AM. Mon and I didn't sleep, as we were afraid that we might wake up late and miss the flight. We watched 10,000 B.C. (a movie) to keep waking us up, but Mon told me that the movie was so boring, and then she took a little nap.

July 12th, around 4.00 am CDT (Central Daylight Time), I called Dr. Box to remind him about our flight as he promised to take us to the MLU airport. He picked up the phone and thanked me for the reminder--he forgot!!! (he confess to us later during the way to the airport).

4.20 am CDT (approximately) Dr. Box came to our apartment, and took us to MLU.

5.00 am CDT (approximately) We arrived at MLU, checked in, and waited for almost an hour to board. Here, we checked in only two luggages (one is mine, another one is mon's). The rest--my backpack, Mon's backpack, 21" luggage (packed with Wii, and other electronic stuffs--we don't want to load this luggage under the plane because of the fragile items in it), and a business/computer case (loaded with books)--were took onboard. They're pretty heavy -_-.

6.00 am CDT (app.) The plane depart from MLU.

Approximately 8.30 am EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) The plate arrived ATL. The flight took around 1.30 Hr.

9-10 am EDT, I was hungry and find something to put into my stomach. The panda express was my choice.

Sometimes around 10 am EDT, while we're using a free WiFi at the food court, we found a pianist and a saxophonist playing a Jazz music (together). I saw them exchanged their business cards, so I think one of them would be a tourist. By appearance, I guessed that the black guy should be a US, and the chinese-looking guy might be a tourist. It was like they were having a live and improvising show.

These artists were so cool

1.15 pm CDT, the plane depart from ATL to ICN (Korea). In summary we were at ATL, waiting for the connection flight--for approximately 5 Hrs.

The flight from ATL to ICN took approximately 15 hours, we virtually "lived" on that plane. The food was tasting great!!!

The air hostesses were cute and very polite. I did not sleep much on this flight (maybe only a few hours) as there were so many movies I'd like to watch available in this flight!!! There was a touch screen LCD monitor in front of every seat (actually, at the back of every seat) and you can interact with it!!! Movie, music, information, games all on your demand. There, I watched "August rush", "Spiderwick Chronicle's", "Vantage Point" and a documentary about the earth. This was quite an entertainment, and I was so happy to fly with Korean Air.

By the way, their English was terrible and horrible. I have to focus all of my hearing sense and guess almost every terms they said when they try to report me something via the central speaker. To choose a meal, I picked whatever I understand the terms in its name. For example, I had two choice in my first meal "Korean ... (I could not pick the rest)" and "...(something) bi bob". Oh shoot!!! The politeness and cuteness did not do anything in the English speaking ability. My intuition told me to say "the Korean". That's it :) Lucky me, this Korean something tasted very nice.

The Korean something I had as the first meal

Approximately 15 hours later, around 5 pm KST (Korean Standard Time), we arrived ICN. Here, we had to pass security checkpoint again (the first time we were checked at MLU). My carry-on luggage was suspected, as I expected (becuase there were a lot of electornic devices in it). A staff opened my bag and seemed to be surprised. She picked my wireless router (Mon want to use this one at her house) and ask me, "What is it?". "Wireless Router", I answered. She got confused, like she didn't understand what I was saying. I repeat agian, "It is a wireless router". "wireless ruuter?", it was like she didn't understand the word "router", or maybe my toung was suck so that she couldn't comprehend what I said. However, she didn't have any problem with me, and I can safely passed the security checkpoint.

My hunger and desire for Korean food drag me and Mon to find something to eat. Food in ICN airport was expensive. This meal cost around $20+ (or 20,000+ won).

My dish

Monn's dish

PEPSI in Korean

In addition, we were too clever about the currency. In ICN, we expected that they would only use Korean currency (won), so we sought for currency exchange. We bought 38,xxx won (didn't remember the exact number) for $40. Then, we went to the food court (it's time to eat hahaha). Near the cashier counter, we realized that they accept USD, with the same conversion rate at the currency exchange. SHOOT!!! If we buy USD back with the leftover (from our meal), we had to pay 1,0xx won for a dollar!!! Holy cow, that was expensive. So, mon had to carry the leftover to Thailand and change them to Thai Baht later.

Approximately 8.30 pm KST, after spend most of the time waiting for boarding (around 3 hrs), we depart KST to BKK. I was so happy to see Thai air hostesses in Korean Airline (they were just Thai--by nationaligty, or speaking language--not Thai Airway hostesses). I spent most of the time sleeping in this flight. And then, after approximately 5 more hours in flying, we arrived Suvarnabhumi around 11.50 pm ICT (Indo-China time, or Thai time).

All the custom processes were quickly proceed, and then we waited for the bags. We got our bags, then went home.

I'd heard from Nimon that Tee+ were also there at Suvarnabhumi airport. I was so sorry for you, Tee+, my friend, I didn't see you (I dunno where were you waiting). However, many thanks for your big heart to be there.

Ironically, I will have to depart from BKK to Egypt tonight (July 15th) T_T

See you all again after July 20.

Trip to National Laboratory - Day 3 (Our free day)

After our presentation day, this day (May 9th, 2008) was our free day--meaning that we could go anywhere we wanted to (woo hoo).

The plan was driving to the forbidden cavern in the morning (James looks really want to go there) and to Rocky Mountain National Park in the afternoon. So, as the schedule was pretty tight, we started off early.

The drive was pretty long (we took like an hour), long enough to disturb us and question us if this place was really exist? Even we got a Global Positioning System (GPS)--branded Garmin--we were just not sure if the way we drove was the right way. The streets were so ... local .. or, in fact, so rural to us. We were just surrounded by trees, fields and barnyards!!!

We were becoming more and more anxious ... and suddenly, after making a turn (I didn't rememer left or right) over a hill (or something else), we found a HUGE factory!!! (in a middle of nowhere!!!). This was a moment which I called a "HOLY SHOOT" moment. It was a mixing of anxiety with sudden surprise.

After a while, we arrived the forbidden cavern. A lot of children were there and it was so chaotic!!! Children (I believe, all over the world) never stop playing and being naughty!!! However, they were going back, so we were not worried much about them.

After they'd been all gone (I didn't mean dead here), I looked around and found a weird stuffed animal.

This cavern has an interesting entrance.
There's nothing much inside the cavern ... actually, it is boring :P

Next, we went to Smocky's Montain National Park. I was too lazy to post the pictures here, please see my Picasa album instead.

Fugu Man