It is a crazy hectic short trimester !!

At last I get to blog after a hectic month!!

Trimester II (which is a short and compressed trimester) in MMU is always a hectic one. It is almost impossible to get much of anything else done other than teaching and teaching and all the thing associated with it (preparation of materials etc.). Before you know it, the trimester is almost over! It's CRAZY time for everyone, lecturers, tutors and students!

The Trimester II this year which starts on Nov 6,2006 is an extra busy one for me. Busy sorted out classes problems in Week#1, attended (only for one day) M2USIC conference (nope, nothing to do with music) in Week#2, then attended a two-days short course on image processing in Week#3, attended three-days GRAPHITE2006 conference (MDeC sponsored us) in Week#4, Week#4 and Week#5 happened to be my turn to prepare the many course materials for the following weeks (I also need to prepare lots of other stuff in other weeks as I am the coordinator of the course), This week (Week#5), Ooi Yongson (who is my now-graduated former master student from USM, who is lecturing in KDU now) is visiting me for a week to discuss on some possible research collaboration, but the poor guy have to sit in front of my TV or in my office, or read his own thing most of the time while I was busy with so many teaching- and admin-related work.

This morning (Friday Dec 15, 2006), i just managed to complete the last teaching material for this trimester, what a relieve! ...that is why i am blogging now..... but the trimester is ending in another two weeks which means many other stuff are coming soon, such as FYPs presentation, test and exams marking etc.

With so many conferences and events, I have been over-eating quite a lot of good food during those events and I hardly cook anything in the last one month except simple macaroni ... too busy to even open my fridge except for getting some drinks and I think I smelled lots of rotten stuff inside... :(( So, too bad, no blog about own-cooked food in this blog entry... :((

I even forgot to pay many of my bills (those not yet in auto-pay for certain reason) including my Streamyx (internet broadband) bill until my account get suspended yesterday, luckily I can borrow my sister's account to use.

Streamyx sent the payment last reminder and warning letter to me but it was delivered to the mailbox of the right floor, right unit number but the wrong block! And here is the really weird coincident ... my niece's friend who is the neighbor of that unit accidentally open the mailbox of that unit (due to the stupid Cyberia mailbox keys of which your key is likely be able to unlock 30% of the mailboxes of your neighbor!) and saw Steamyx letter to me!! Unfortunately, he saw the letter just the same day after my internet line got suspended!

I just realized I gained 2 or 3 Kgs (that is really really bad!) in the last one month due to the many food tasting experience in the venues of those events. M2USIC was in PJ Hilton Hotel, the image processing short course was in Royale Bintang Hotel and GRAPHITE2006 was in KL Convention Centre at KLCC.

Nevertheless, it has been fun in the last one month, learning many things from those events and meeting really famous researchers too!

The image processing short course (got to pay RM1990, thank goodness MMU was paying for it) was conducted by Prof. Maria Petrou of Imperial College London. Here is the photo:












Prof. Maria Petrou is on the right and the guy on the left is my friend Dr. (Gideon) Ong Hong Choon from USM who was also attending the short course.

During GRAPHITE2006, we met the very very very famous Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann of MIRALab (Switzerland) and her husband Prof. Daniel Thalmann, nobody can be teaching/researching Computer Graphics and Virtual Reality without knowing who she is. Here is the photo:












(From left: Prof. Nadia Thalmann, Prof. Daniel Thalmann, myself, Ah Beh, Mr. CYPee)

After the first day of the image processing short course, I brought my friend Dr. Ong for a food tasting sprey at the famous Jalan Alur which is just in front of the Royale Bintang Hotel, just look at how amazed he was seeing that Penang is not the only place with lots of really good food:












Btw, here is him again with our food-tour-guide at my place:












Dr. Ong full name: Ong Hong Choon

Our food-tour-guide's name: Ong Hong Wai

They are not brothers nor related..... :)

The GRAPHITE2006 conference was held at KL Convention Centre at KLCC, I went there with some of my students, here is the photo with some of them with the Petronas Twin Tower:















(From left: myself, Jillian, Min Bee, Kuan)

Oh ya... the PC Fair was held at the different floor of the same venue, so after the conference, me and Mr. Pee went there to shop and I bought an Lexmark X7350 All-In-One printer (with standalone fax, scanner and photocopier), here it is:
















Since yesterday (Dec 14, 2006), I am on leave until end of the year but yet I still got a lot of works to do and conduct classes (can't just go away)... :(( .... I took the leaves just to clear them and to have reasons not to attend some of those boring and useless meetings, I still got 12 days leaves to be carried to next year (12 days is the maximum that can be carried to next year) !!

Now, I really need to catch back some much-deprived sleep...and also the much needed exercises......!!

...and catch up with research work and studies, and also my hopefully-healthy cooking !! :))