Friday, May 20, 2005
I am officially in the 20th day of my second year into my PhD program. If I were in the old system, I would have to complete a Mid-term Review when I have finished one and a half year of my PhD. However, with the new system, I would need to complete a Thesis Proposal Review at the end of my first year, which I did. The new review is less work but it gives the school an earlier indication of whether a PhD candidate is able to produce a thesis of sufficient quality. With the new program, a PhD student needs to submit a thesis at the end of 3 full years, with the possibility of extending up to one year. This gives the student a possible 4-year period to complete his/her thesis but the scholarships usually can only be extended up to half a year. This means that students, like myself, are under more unconscious pressure to wrap up our PhDs in a certain period of time.
As for me, I am currently completing my new test bed design. There will be a lot of components to purchase and machining to do. Hopefully the entire test bed could be up and running at the end of August. That would leave me with about one year to conduct experiments and test my control systems, and then to start writing up my main thesis.
On a different note, I look forward to my Sydney trip this weekend. It would be our 4th Anniversary together and I'd really like to have a great time there. Can't believe there've been so much we've been through. I think since Aya's moved up to Sydney, our bond has been stronger although we're both more independent. Used to be that we see each other practically everyday, but the distance has actually made us more appreciative of our times together. I'd imagine this situation to continue for a little while because I have my PhD and work in Canberra and she has a better job prospect in Sydney. At the end of that, I hope I can wrap things up in Canberra, apply for an industrial or university research position in Sydney and just have a less tiring lifestyle than I currently have now.
The other day while I was walking into the Woden shopping mall, I saw an old friend from far. I backed up and walked along a different path to avoid directly meeting him. Somehow, somewhere in time, we've sort of lost touch. He used to be a good friend of ours but an incident led into a point of no return where we never contacted each other since then. I cannot say I know what really happened but it's ironic that these things do happen to close friends. It's just sad.
My new nokia 7710 still hasn't arrived after 3 weeks. Apparently they have the phone package in stock but not the MMC card that comes with the purchase. So they're waiting for a new batch of Nokia 7710s to come in before they can send one over to me, which is really frustrating because i've been looking forward to getting it for so long now. Let's hope they might give me something as a show of apology for my long wait.
