Spring Break

Which part of a break that you like best?
Normally people will say the beginning, when they are hopping on a short trip or getaway, etc.

But for me, it's the end!! Well, only for this Spring Break may be.

As mentioned in the previous post, I had to be away from school for one week. So, after coming back from Jakarta, I had barely enough time to balance out. In other words, almost all my time was used up for studying, doing assignments, doing research, attending seminar, meetings, etc. Almost no time for myself, to rest, to relax, to have a normal sleep.

Within the last one month before Spring Break, I felt very pressurized. I've mentioned before about the notorious 16.930 course so I won't repeat telling the same here. Hmm, not that I don't like the course though. The course is amazing, the professors are great. This course is my best education experience that I've ever had so far. But remembering the days I ran my simulations and debugged the code... hmm no thanks.

Not only I had no enough sleep, normally my sleep was disturbed and not deep so I feel tired almost the whole time. Until...

On Friday before the Spring Break (23 March) in a research meeting I realized that I have lost focus and did discourse. I know what the goal to be achieved but somehow I drifted along the way (luckily not much and not very severe). On that Friday afternoon, I felt like being awaken after a long sleep. Suddenly I could open my eyes and see the flaws in my research work. I felt bad to my advisor (though she can understand me), I was at a mess, I was tired but I don't know what to do. My mind was clouded more with PDE (16.930) rather than my own research which supposedly bear more importance.

I stared at the data, my code, the numbers but couldn't find anything. I simply couldn't think at all.

Then, I did what my mom has suggested few times in the last month: go shopping, get a nice meal and go back and study again. So I walked to Newbury Street, Prudential Center and Copley Square. Not a long getaway as I know what to see/buy and I didn't wander elsewhere. Among the things I bought was Melatonin from GNC. I did need help to get a good night sleep, OK... =D

I went back home and still suffered from a brain dysfunction =( I still forced myself to work though. On Saturday, I worked nonstop until 4 am. On Sunday, I went to morning mass at MIT Chapel but couldn't concentrate well either. I continued working until around 6 pm when I got myself ready to go to Harvard Square. My friend has a free concert ticket (chamber music orchestra) at Sanders Theatre, Harvard Memorial Hall. All my friends urged me to go: to refresh, they said. So off I went.

The concert was marvelous. The concert hall are all in wood! Nonetheless, as it was only instrumental, after some time my mind did wander again. After coming back, I did work a bit but still went to sleep =D as I need to go to Davis Square on Monday morning. Monday was the day I slept only for two hours and remained at a zombie state the next day... =D

On Thursday 2 am I sent a writeup to my advisor. Actually I promised her to submit by end of this week or next week but I was too afraid that I did another blunder that I submit as soon as possible. And... my nerve only loosen when on Thursday night, she replied and said that my work and proposed next steps are good. At that moment, I told my roommate: "I can now officially go out this weekend"

At noon on Friday I officially finished my PDE report so I went to Pepper Sky to have the best Shrimp Pad Thai I've ever tried. I don't usually fancy Thai food but my friend (who is trusted in gourmet related stuffs) recommended this place and I like it! On Friday night, I have finished what I wanted to finish in Spring Break.

So I have two more days for Spring Break that will be (relatively) free. But I had with me:
1. body aches
2. shoulder strain (my roommate told me it must be from typing too much -- I have a bad posture in typing because I tend to look at the monitor as closely as possible)
3. pain and tiredness in my eyes... yesterday my right eye felt almost like exploding

And today... is my REAL SPRING BREAK!!!
I had a wonderful day today... I want to tell you know but I guess it's late and I want to SLEEP!! Tomorrow I have to wake up early for morning mass.

My roommate is asleep now, when she switched off the mainlight she reminded me to sleep and asked "Why do you not like sleeping, not like me?"
Haha I guess she wondered because last week I always slept after she did and already left the room before she woke up.

OK. So I'll sleep now, wait 'til tomorrow for the story, OK?

Splendor in the Grass

February 19 2007 is a day to remember for us.

That is the day when my beloved father went up to heaven,
five minutes to midnight,
on the second day of Chinese New Year,
at 57 years old.

He drew his last breathe, peacefully, in his sleep. On his own bed, by his beloved wife's side, witnessed by his wife and his only son. Painless, as best as it could be.

He is bright, brilliant, kind, funny, humorous, loving, hardworking, and all the superlative words you can attach to a father figure.

I am happy for him, though. At last, he will again meet his beloved mother whom he had lost at a very young age. I know he missed her all his life. I dreamt about her once, long time ago, a dream so vivid that I can't forget.

I flew half the globe to pay him my last respect. I took another long flight in the same week to catch up with my studies. I know he does not like me to take a time off from school. I had HEAPS to catch up so I ignored my blog =)

I attach here a passage from the movie "Splendor in the Grass" (1961). A passage I so love for years, but whose meaning becomes so clear just recently...

What though the radiance
Which was once so bright
Is now forever taken from my sight
Though nothing can bring back the hour,
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find,
Strength in what remains behind...

If this can be considered as a small tribute, click this, but with ammendments =) :

1. change the February to January (find from the text)

2. I have no chance at all to watch American Idol now...

On a lighter note, I am now officially the shortest member of the family...

Final picture: when we had a sauna in our front yard... Haha =D Be prosperous in heaven, Pa.. I think we have burnt enough money for you to build few companies... one for each child, OK? Deal!

I can fall asleep anytime now...

Sumprit gua ngantuk banget.

Pardon my rough start =). I only had two hours of sleep last night, so please harap maklum. Haha jadi inget Buku Penghubung jaman SD dulu. Terkadang isinya sebagai berikut: "Tono/Tini/Tuti sakit dan tidak bisa mengikuti pelajaran. Harap maklum." Masi kepake gak ni bahasa sampe sekarang?

Anyway, after struggling for weeks in coding the Discontinuous Galerkin in MATLAB (refer to my previous post), I've finally come to the less strenuous but still brain-wrenching: report writing. And the length of report is limited to 12 pages! Not a good thing, as you are expected to explain about the codes for higher order time-integration, higher order discretization, higher-order geometry representation AMONG OTHER THINGS. I typed all the matrix and lengthy equations (like, two lines of integral equation?) in small fonts.

To complete the agony, only LaTeX is the acceptable 'standard' in report writing here. The coding (or typesetting, as they put it) is quite OK and you'll become intuitive very soon, BUT... when you missed out one '$', or one '{' or one '}', you'll get error and you have to DEBUG!! Oh please, I think we've got enough DEBUGGING already? This morning I missed one '}' and I got 47 errors at an instant. Depressing. This morning, at 5.30 am, I had to stop working when I had to type the two lines of integral equation. I started enjoying LaTeX-ing though, and started to see its comparative advantages over Microsoft Words.

OK, enough story for now. I wanted to take a nap today but I guess that idea will go to thin air... No wonder my mom insisted me to get some eye cream.

More stories later... hopefully

crazy course

Almost everybody in our lab (Aerospace Computational Design Laboratory) has been the victim of this crazy course called 16.930 (Advanced Topic in Numerical Method for Partial Differential Equation).

Now is my turn.

Its first assignment is extremely EXHAUSTIVE and INTENSIVE.
I've been spending much more time on it than my own research project.

In the problem set given, there is no formulation at all. It's also an open ended question where there may be many approach and even the professors don't know exactly what the result will be like. As my seniors put it, it's like a research of its own. And it has to be done in one month. Tell me about that.

This assignment has successfully robbed me from all weekends and all spare time that I may have or deserve.

The worst part of it is how time consuming it is. To know whether your code is right or not, you need to wait for at least 3 hours. One time I let it run overnight, and I woke up at almost 5 am just to find that my result has blown up to millions from the supposedly 3 and 2.4 in values. Tell me about that.

I am at the Student Center now, because I just had discussion with one of my classmate. I want to wait until 500 iterations before I go back. It is already 1 am here so I guess I'll be back by 2 am. My friend has left as he has morning classes tomorrow.

I did all my coding alone, but you definitely need someone to cross-check your modification with. They are just too much and it will take even longer time if you want to do it alone. Last saturday, I spent hours to debug and right after midnight I just found that I put multiplication (*) instead of division (/) in my MATLAB code. Tell me about that.

And the least you need is a MORAL SUPPORT.

At least if you know that there's another PDE fighter is also working, you'll feel better.

OK, I guess that's all for now. I am extremely worried with my simulation now...