SCOR is compulsory!

We have been summoned by our dean to register for Student Conference in OR (SCOR) and guess what, we have to submit our abstracts too, meaning we have to present during the conference. I thought I could escape as I have presented at conference before :-)

The deadline for the submission is on Feb 13, 2009 and they want it in Latex. I have never used Latex before and at this point of time I'm installing one. It's a good opportunity to practise using Latex; luckily the abstract is only 250 words. Otherwise, it's going to take ages!

Enjoying the snow?

The peak of snowing so far, is today, forcing the kids' school to close. The kids were so excited this morning playing with snow, built lots of snowman, took pictures, snowball fights...Well, here I'm, in the office, struggling to submit an abstract to a conference. It is almost ready and hopefully it will get accepted.

Following revisions after revisions, my supervisor thought that I should start writing my LR. I'm now holding tightly the book on How to write a thesis by Rowena Murray. Chapter 8 reads, it is never too late to start. So here I am, on step 1 of the chapter - take stock. I actually have written a few pages of the thesis but they are all jumpy. As a start, I'm going to list whatever I already have and proceed from there. My supervisor is a perfectionist; I'm sure once I start submitting the draft, there will be series of corrections as he reads everything as fresh; even if we have corrected the sentence earlier, he will change it to perfection. Is it good? Yes it sure is, but it's a hell of a tedious job!

So now, I would have to carefully plan and divide my time to handle programming, write papers, and start writing my LR. No more course for me except NATCOR...

Invigilating Exam

This week and next week are exam weeks for the undergraduates; I'm taking the opportunity to invigilate exams as I certainly need the money to pay for the increased utility bills during winter. I don't know whether I'd receive the allowance in GBP for the next three months. I hope I would. If not, I might pack my bags and leave when the kids are done with their school this summer. With the kids' treatment being put off because of the recession (I guess), there is no reason to stay. Besides, Aina is in Malaysia preparing for her SPM.

As at now, I'm quite busy to meet the deadlines of the conferences; there are papers to write, as well as experiments to perform. Well, I guess I need to take it one at a time yea...

Celebrating 2009 in Eskisehir

Since the guest house was closed during new year, I stayed with Mujgan & her parents for two days. Initially, we were not planning to go out as it was really cold but when the clock turned midnight which was the beginning of 2009, we decided to go out to look around. The intention was to just drive around and stay in the car, but we managed to go out and snap some pictures. Here are some of the photos during night time in Eskisehir. Pictures below were taken during the day. We went out by tram to the city center and managed to get some souvenirs from Eskisehir. It was really cold; this morning the temperature went down to minus 10 C! I've never experience this cold condition before; the nose became red, the fingers almost numb. I managed to get a pair of leather socks (khuf) which is really comfortable.
At the point of writing, it's snowing outside. It was blacked out a while ago; luckily the notebook is on! The road lights also went off for a while. Just to keep safe, I'd let the notebook on tonight in case it blacks out again...