Lazy day (+ help in academic writing)

Did not do anything today. Except window shopping. On the internet.

I have several baskets filled in various shopping website. H&M, Gap and M&S are having sales, it's just too tempting not to click on the 'add to basket' box...But I'm resisting the urge to click Check-out so all is well (for now).

Anywaaaaaaaay...

Sort of finished the first draft of my methods chapter, after so much telling off from my supervisor. It is definitely not perfect. According to dear SV, I just don't have the argumentative flair (yet?). Somehow it is common among South-East Asians students to not be so argumentative, and somehow that doesn't fit well with Western assessors (that's what she said).

So the draft came with many comments attached, as she did it in Word. I somehow missed the red-pen marks; they're so much more convenient :) . She even suggested a website that helps you to write argumentatively (to think that such websites exist is funnily comforting). If you have any problems in producing analytical essays, do visit http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk . There are lots of examples of phrases that can be used in academic writing; they even categorised the phrases according to their function, if you can call it that :) .

I guess I'm going to skim through the comments and then lie down and think on the best strategy to tackle them. Or sleep, whichever comes first.

Good night.

Breakdown

I witnessed a nervous breakdown today. At first I heard someone breathing heavily; I thought it was just someone with a blocked nose. Then the breathing got heavier, and then I saw her closest neighbor went over to calm her down. She cried for a bit, breathed heavily again and the cycle went on for quite some time until her supervisor came and talked to her.

I am thankful to God that I was not being tested that way. I've felt what she felt once upon a time and it was not a nice feeling. I am thankful to God for the strength that I have now, and I pray that He doesn't take it away for me. I am thankful to God for my family and friends, for having someone I can talk to when things go bad or awry. And I am thankful that, if and when I couldn't talk to my family or friends, God is there for me. Alhamdulillah.

Ethics application

...submitted at last!

But I received a conditional registration. Have to make a transfer report; looks like my MSc is a few months too early to get away with the transfer. Hmmm....

University Challenge

Was watching an episode of University Challenge when a thought occured to me, 'How would my students, or even I, fare in this quiz?'. I have never encountered a range of questions so wide, it covers the whole spectra of arts and science. I don't I can survive 5 minutes into the quiz, let alone 30.

But here's a bit of trivia for you, just in case you're selected to be in a team for the University Challenge:

7 Fundamental SI Units:

• metre for length 
• kilogram for mass 
• second for time
• ampere for electric current
• kelvin for temperature
• candela for luminous intensity
• mole for the amount of substance

(Source: Wikipedia)

Fusilli Chicken Tomyam

Perfect when it is chilly outside, you just walked home from class and couldn't be bothered to cook rice & the accompanying dish/dishes.

Ingredients
boneless chunky-diced pieces of chicken
ready diced carrots and swede
potatoes, diced
fusilli
bell peppers
instant tomyam sauce/tomyam paste
oil

Heat oil and fry the paste/sauce till fragrant (or follow the instructions given for the paste/sauce). Add carrots, swede and potatoes. Fry for a minute. Add water, chicken pieces, peppers and fusilli. Let boil till everything is cooked. Season to taste.

It may not be haute cuisine but it may just be the thing you'd want to eat in front of the TV at the end of a busy day.

Cracking my head...

...over Excel.

I discovered that DBP has a corpus of Malay words (yay!), and researchers (e.g. me), or even members of the public, can access it (double yay!).

After several trials and errors, I sort of got hang of the process, and got some important output from the corpus. Thing is, if I wanted to transfer the output to a Word document and check it manually, it would be thousands of pages long. with almost 30,000 words to look over. So I tried to analyse them on Excel, instead.

Now, the last time I properly used Excel, with formulas and all, was 10 years ago. I know that as long as you can think 'logically' and 'mathematically', you'll be able to churn out formulas as fast as David Teo churning out films.

But 10 years ago I was playing with numbers and wave, and now I'm faced with texts. I'm stuck, I just can't figure out any applicable formula for the data that I have and I need. It is trial and error all over again, and my worry is that Excel just don't have the functions that I need :( .

All these thinking make me hungry...

Recruitment form done!

One thing to cross out from my to-do list, yay! Am going to reward myself with a shower, a lather of my newly-bought vanilla & apple body butter, and Xpress Noodles noodles :D :D :D.