Friday, May 28, 2004
How are you all?
Yes, I have been quite busy these past few weeks. Sorry I didn't get to sent you guys regards or a few words. The restaurant has been going well actually. We opened last Tuesday and the first week was very busy. We were a bit disorganised, especially in the kitchen but this week, we're a whole lot better.
Our restaurant is called Mamak Corner as you know and our logo is a mortar and pestle. We've got a neon sign up on the roof so it's bright and clear especially at night. Got our own coffee making machine. It costs us about 3000 bucks just for one with one outlet. Most cafes use machines with two or more outlets. Chairs and Tables are basically the same, until we have made some profit to make more changes. The kitchen's all good. New paints, scrap off most of the grease and stains accummulated all those years, cleaned the carpets... It's all good!
Used to be that I work at the dining area serving customers and taking care of the cash register, but because I'm fast and more experienced, I have to work in the kitchen preparing the meat or vegetables in small plastic bowls for the chef to cook and packing the take-away meals. No one currently is more 'qualified' than me right now, unless we can afford to pay someone to do that. Chinese chefs and kitchen hands are very rare and expensive these days in Canberra. I guess no one wants to be in this profession due to the hardwork and long hours spent in the kitchen. I do a bit of microwaving of beef rendang, curry chicken, nasi lemak, etc. Some of the malaysian dishes are pre-made and kept in the fridge. We can't have beef rendang or the curries prepared on order, you know.
Into our second week of business and maybe the euphoria has quieted down. This has given us the chance to train and get used to the arrangements. Business is still good and we hope that things will pick up as we become faster and more experienced. Haven't even putting brochures or distributing them all around the suburbs yet 'cause we don't want a huge influx of customers if we can't handle them. That would be bad for business if it takes a long time to get a take-away ready or our customer service is unsatisfactory. We've only put our take-away menus at our restaurant and looking at things, this business will be going well.
Of course I still need to study. I only work at night at the restaurant so I have the day for my PhD. Don't worry about me, I will take care of myself. Will keep you guys updated as things go.
Yes, I have been quite busy these past few weeks. Sorry I didn't get to sent you guys regards or a few words. The restaurant has been going well actually. We opened last Tuesday and the first week was very busy. We were a bit disorganised, especially in the kitchen but this week, we're a whole lot better.
Our restaurant is called Mamak Corner as you know and our logo is a mortar and pestle. We've got a neon sign up on the roof so it's bright and clear especially at night. Got our own coffee making machine. It costs us about 3000 bucks just for one with one outlet. Most cafes use machines with two or more outlets. Chairs and Tables are basically the same, until we have made some profit to make more changes. The kitchen's all good. New paints, scrap off most of the grease and stains accummulated all those years, cleaned the carpets... It's all good!
Used to be that I work at the dining area serving customers and taking care of the cash register, but because I'm fast and more experienced, I have to work in the kitchen preparing the meat or vegetables in small plastic bowls for the chef to cook and packing the take-away meals. No one currently is more 'qualified' than me right now, unless we can afford to pay someone to do that. Chinese chefs and kitchen hands are very rare and expensive these days in Canberra. I guess no one wants to be in this profession due to the hardwork and long hours spent in the kitchen. I do a bit of microwaving of beef rendang, curry chicken, nasi lemak, etc. Some of the malaysian dishes are pre-made and kept in the fridge. We can't have beef rendang or the curries prepared on order, you know.
Into our second week of business and maybe the euphoria has quieted down. This has given us the chance to train and get used to the arrangements. Business is still good and we hope that things will pick up as we become faster and more experienced. Haven't even putting brochures or distributing them all around the suburbs yet 'cause we don't want a huge influx of customers if we can't handle them. That would be bad for business if it takes a long time to get a take-away ready or our customer service is unsatisfactory. We've only put our take-away menus at our restaurant and looking at things, this business will be going well.
Of course I still need to study. I only work at night at the restaurant so I have the day for my PhD. Don't worry about me, I will take care of myself. Will keep you guys updated as things go.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Friday, May 14, 2004
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. "In English," he said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Let us all learn something from this...
Eleven people were hanging on a rope under a helicopter, ten men and one woman. The rope was not strong enough to carry them all, so they decided that one had to leave, because otherwise they were all going to fall. They weren't able to name that person, until the woman gave a very touching speech. She said that she would voluntarily let go of the rope, because,as a woman, she was used to giving up everything for her husband and kids,or for men in general, and was used to always making sacrifices with little in return.
As soon as she finished her speech, all the men started clapping their
hands...
Eleven people were hanging on a rope under a helicopter, ten men and one woman. The rope was not strong enough to carry them all, so they decided that one had to leave, because otherwise they were all going to fall. They weren't able to name that person, until the woman gave a very touching speech. She said that she would voluntarily let go of the rope, because,as a woman, she was used to giving up everything for her husband and kids,or for men in general, and was used to always making sacrifices with little in return.
As soon as she finished her speech, all the men started clapping their
hands...
Saturday, May 08, 2004
Almost finished!
Yes.. we've finally managed to reduce the limit cycles of the actuators to an acceptable level for recording for a conference. It just seemed miraculous that we've achieved this in just a few days. Though a lot of the thinking came from my supervisor. You know, we've got an honours student working under Roy to improve my control system from my honours year. Basically what he aims is what we did in the last couple of days. Hmm... won't let him know too much about our results. Let him sweat a little bit more. It won't be fun if he knows it could be done :).
Besides, he's still in the process of understanding the physical system and the softwares. I think just learning about my complicated control system is killing him... So yeah... he still has more before he can implement any improvement.
As for the movie clip, we've recorded enough information to make it. Will probably put it on my website, but that will have to wait until i've updated my website with more about my research.
Yes.. we've finally managed to reduce the limit cycles of the actuators to an acceptable level for recording for a conference. It just seemed miraculous that we've achieved this in just a few days. Though a lot of the thinking came from my supervisor. You know, we've got an honours student working under Roy to improve my control system from my honours year. Basically what he aims is what we did in the last couple of days. Hmm... won't let him know too much about our results. Let him sweat a little bit more. It won't be fun if he knows it could be done :).
Besides, he's still in the process of understanding the physical system and the softwares. I think just learning about my complicated control system is killing him... So yeah... he still has more before he can implement any improvement.
As for the movie clip, we've recorded enough information to make it. Will probably put it on my website, but that will have to wait until i've updated my website with more about my research.
Monday, May 03, 2004
Updates
Okay, I know I haven't been updating my blogsite for a long while. Don't complain 'cause my other more important things have also been neglected as well. My websites, PhD technical journal, Yuka research and development, etc. Well, at least I'm gonna take this opportunity to think about what I need to do in the coming weeks and set a few priorities straight.
Well, first of all, ISER 2004 conference paper is almost finished. Setting up the experiment to be recorded as a movie to be submitted with the conference paper. Gotta read and finish off the literature review part. Once that's done, Roy and I are gonna discuss about the new experimental set-up. Got Jason to purchase more SMA wires as well.
In the mean time, I've got a few things to try out on the current set-up and control system. Might be helping or working with the honours student who is continuing on my project.
PhD coursework shouldn't be a problem. Just finished one and will be having the oral exam this week. Wonder how we're going to proceed with it.
I should also commit myself to collecting more papers or journals on SMAs and really start reading and summarising them. This year will basically be filled with a lot of small projects, papers and courses so it feels very chaotic. My feeling is that i'm quite disorganised at this stage although i'm still keeping up with things. But in terms of scientific research and experimentation, i' still lacking that.
ProjectYUKA, in case people are unfamiliar with that, is a joint venture i'm currently involved in as its research engineer. Basically it's related to human-computer/human-environment interface technologies. Will probably have a link to it once we're prepared to lodge the provisional application and published some stuffs.
I've basically moved the development process to my own house. I found it quite distracting to have Yuka things in my RSISE office. It's hard to get work done if I keep worrying about a lot of things. But back to Yuka, I'm also quite flat out with the ISER paper that I haven't been able to get much work done on it. So that's something I need to do when i'm at home.
It's just a distribution of tasks according to the location. RSISE = PhD... home = YUKA ... Restaurant = Restaurant work ... hopefully that's going to be the case...
I've also been pondering the possibility of suspending my PhD for a semester or a few months to work on my other projects. But that will have to happen when I've become a permanent residency 'cause I need to be enrolled full-time while holding a student visa. Suspending the program will mean no scholarship during that period.
I wasn't thinking of ending my PhD career , mind you.. but I hope to slow down the process and give myself more time to really catch up with everything. I still plan to work on my PhD project during that period, just without scholarship and school support. I can still meet with supervisor and have access to RSISE. It only means that I can work on it without deadlines or submissions. At the same time, I can do more work on other projects.
Well, that's still a long way to go and I need to think more about it and talk to my supervisor and the people who're giving me the scholarships. We'll see.
Okay, I know I haven't been updating my blogsite for a long while. Don't complain 'cause my other more important things have also been neglected as well. My websites, PhD technical journal, Yuka research and development, etc. Well, at least I'm gonna take this opportunity to think about what I need to do in the coming weeks and set a few priorities straight.
Well, first of all, ISER 2004 conference paper is almost finished. Setting up the experiment to be recorded as a movie to be submitted with the conference paper. Gotta read and finish off the literature review part. Once that's done, Roy and I are gonna discuss about the new experimental set-up. Got Jason to purchase more SMA wires as well.
In the mean time, I've got a few things to try out on the current set-up and control system. Might be helping or working with the honours student who is continuing on my project.
PhD coursework shouldn't be a problem. Just finished one and will be having the oral exam this week. Wonder how we're going to proceed with it.
I should also commit myself to collecting more papers or journals on SMAs and really start reading and summarising them. This year will basically be filled with a lot of small projects, papers and courses so it feels very chaotic. My feeling is that i'm quite disorganised at this stage although i'm still keeping up with things. But in terms of scientific research and experimentation, i' still lacking that.
ProjectYUKA, in case people are unfamiliar with that, is a joint venture i'm currently involved in as its research engineer. Basically it's related to human-computer/human-environment interface technologies. Will probably have a link to it once we're prepared to lodge the provisional application and published some stuffs.
I've basically moved the development process to my own house. I found it quite distracting to have Yuka things in my RSISE office. It's hard to get work done if I keep worrying about a lot of things. But back to Yuka, I'm also quite flat out with the ISER paper that I haven't been able to get much work done on it. So that's something I need to do when i'm at home.
It's just a distribution of tasks according to the location. RSISE = PhD... home = YUKA ... Restaurant = Restaurant work ... hopefully that's going to be the case...
I've also been pondering the possibility of suspending my PhD for a semester or a few months to work on my other projects. But that will have to happen when I've become a permanent residency 'cause I need to be enrolled full-time while holding a student visa. Suspending the program will mean no scholarship during that period.
I wasn't thinking of ending my PhD career , mind you.. but I hope to slow down the process and give myself more time to really catch up with everything. I still plan to work on my PhD project during that period, just without scholarship and school support. I can still meet with supervisor and have access to RSISE. It only means that I can work on it without deadlines or submissions. At the same time, I can do more work on other projects.
Well, that's still a long way to go and I need to think more about it and talk to my supervisor and the people who're giving me the scholarships. We'll see.
