Road Trip (winter 2010)

Salam,

I have been meaning to upload these pictures from our last road trip. Well, most of the time, I have this tiny huge bits of laziness to select and edit pictures, and to wait for the pictures to be uploaded.

Last winter, Imran got a last-minute-notice break from work, for  a week. Weeee!!!  It was a nice treat indeed, since he was never allowed to take any before. The sengal restaurant owner only informed him on Friday, a night before the Christmas celebration. We didn't have any reservation, of course, so that night I packed our clothes and blankets in a big plastic container. Without ample food supply (shops were closed on Christmas day) we drove 6 hours to Dallas to visit Kak Mazifah's family (The family has been migrated here for quite sometimes).

On Saturday morning, after filling nasi lemak and talam ubi breakfast, we started our unplanned journey to St Louis. My plan was to attend the saki baki of Muktamar (Malaysian student group) meeting, with few stops in between. On the first day, we Imran drove from Dallas to Texarkana, Texas to Little Rock, Arkansas and we decided to rest in Memphis, Tennessee (Guess what we did in Memphis, hint: Rock and Roll). Here a map showing our driving from Lubbock across a state to Memphis (Bare in mind, the size of a state in US is not comparable to a state in Malaysia. You need total 14 hours to cross Texas in west-east direction!)

I would say that we covered 1/10 of States (7 states total) during the 8 days road trip?

 I wonder why they like to name their place by combining name of different places? This one derived from Texas + Arkansas

 Yay!! First time driving out east of Texas!!

 See? Arkadelphia (Arkansas + Philadelphia?)

 

 Wonder if the people here are friendly enough?

 Little Rock yg slightly bigger than Lubbock, tade apa pon kat sini!

Dah sampai Tennessee (after 2 days of driving)!!

Hehehe, I'll update this one later :p

Cukup for today, baca paper sana!!

When your research haunts your sleep

Salam,

Last Friday, I had a brief discussion with my advisor on my proposed 3D model. He basically approved the idea, with a condition that I run tests to verify the independency of parameters at each axis. However, I only have 12 data points to test,  and of course, the pertinence of the results can be dubious. Suddenly, I doubted that I could swallow the whole vacillation. Well, it is a preliminary test, hence, regardless the number of data points, I should be able to run the test. BUT (a very intense BUT here) I have to admit that I don't have a strong stomach to run the test, despite that the data, slopes and all values required to run the test are ready. I am very optimist that I will be frantic if the test produces a result against my hypothesis. Well, one may say that is research, but to come out with a genuine idea in research is not a day or a month process. It took me a whole two year to understand the fundamentals of agricultural modeling. So, I decided to postpone the test until later, BUT, by delaying the tests simply means my nights were interrupted!! In my dream,  I heard voices echoed, " test those slopes, test those slopes".  While that dream was a horror one, it didn't occur once. Sometimes I dreamed of SAS codes, not to mention Excel spreadsheet. It never occur to my mind, until recently, that research thing could haunt my life. What kind of trap that I have put myself into?

p.s : sometimes when I became frustrated with myself, it suddenly hit me, why didn't I take the job with the OnG company?

Ubat sakit kepala

 Forget the caliche, irregular borings and ooids. How about the red velvet cupcake from Cheesecake Factory + Strawberry Creme Frappucino? Say bye to the headache.

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