Journey to the West

Nashville, Tennesse

2007-05-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

Flew over to Nashville for the IIE research conference over the weekend of 19-22 May...it was a good break from the desert land!
Presented my paper that I worked on in GT. My session was the very first session on the Sunday morning at 8 am! Think I must have bored the attendees to death, as a good half of them left halfway during my talk.
Anyway, Nashville is a nice and relaxed place to hang out.. Music city..home of country music and Elvis the king! You can literally hear music playing 24/7 on the street junctions. Anything beats the desertland.

Random ramblings

2007-05-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

1) Recently, I placed an order with Amazon.com to be shipped to my apartment. However, bcos I am seldom at home in the day, the delivery man did not get me and left without leaving a notice. One day i bumped into him and told him to send my shipment to the leasing office. Which he never did. In the end, my package was returned to Amazon, and I had to bear the shipment costs. Feeling darn frustrated, i wrote to Amazon customer service. I must say Amazon.com has pretty good customer after-sales service. They promptly resonded and apologized, and made arrangments to either refund me in full or have another shipping made. Of coz, this is no fault of theirs, it is the carrier's fault.

Conclusion: i) logistics are the vital link in the supply chain for full customer-satisfaction. No matter how good the supplier is, it takes a lousy logistics-provider to screw things up. ii) DHL delivery sucks, and this impedes order-fulfillment.

2) Screwed up my back recently doing ground techniques during judo practice. Sigh. Really feel the weight disadvantage, me under 150 pounds, trying to bridge 250-300 pound americans. Think i haven't got hold of the proper technique right yet, tt's why using too much back muscle to compensate. Nvm, its a good practice. Aikido practice follows the judo, and its getting tough too. Seemingly simple movements, but just so difficult to do it correctly. Bottomline: intent. Must train the mind to have the correct mental intent and visualization in order to control the body and execute the movt correctly. Basic sequence of all aikido techniques: 1) break initial balance 2) 'fit' the opponent's recovery 3) finishing.

3) My apt window got smashed into bits earlier this month in the middle of the night, when I was not in. Think some idiot tried to screw around with the window frames to break into the apt, but ended up the whole glass pane fell inwards and was smashed. Got a nasty surprise when i got home to see glass shreds all over the carpet... totally not funny trying to clean the mess up. Sucks.

3) Random self-pic in the lab for the sake of posting.

Ponderings of a lab-rat

2007-05-06T15:33:00.000-07:00

Today, while returning to the lab with German PhD student Detlef after we got our lunch, we bumped into one of the assistant prof in the Dept. Both of us were surprised to see him here on a Sunday. Looking at his gloomy face, we agreed tt he wasn't happy to come back on a Sunday. Which is rightly so, since he has a small kid at home, and Sunday is supposed to be family day. I pondered aloud to Detlef wondering what would my life be like on this career path. Do i see myself coming back working to school on research proposals, preparing teaching materials etc on Sundays in the future? At tt, Detlef remarked tt a German professor told him tt in his Dept, ALL the profs were workaholics and are divorced. I mean like wow, that is definitely scary! Dun want to end up like tt for sure. Even now, I find tt sometimes when I'm stuck trying to solve a research problem, I tend to neglect all other aspects of my daily life completely. And this has been so for the past 2-3 weeks.. totally screwed up my sleeping hours (sleeping pills no longer hold any effects for me), becoming increasingly anti-social, haven't taken the trash out for almost two weeks now ... now I'm feeling totally burnt out. Sigh ...

"How long, can any man fight the darkness,
before he finds it in himself?"
--Spiderman 3 Teaser Trailer

My training journey continues...(post for aikidokas mainly)

2007-04-12T22:15:00.000-07:00

After a pretty unsatisfying couple of months of training at the ASU dojo, I decided to search for another dojo to train at. The Jiyushinkai Aiki-budo dojo is located just about 30 min from ASU, so I went to check it out. My first impression of it was 'wow', this is the kind of dojo I wanna train at. Old school, traditional, and good serious aikido training. The Jiyushinkan is a small dojo, with less than ten students on a regular day of practice, one or two beginners, the rest are mostly yudanshas. Chuck Clark Sensei (6th dan judo, 8th dan aikido) runs the dojo, but he doesn't teach much anymore. Fortunately, he has competant assistants to take the classes.

The dojo has rather strict procedures for pple who wants to join. One can't just go in and 'try out'. A person wishing to join as a student has to observe four classes first, regardless of who he is. So that's what i did, sitting in patiently for 4 sessions over two weeks.

The system of aikido that the dojo adopts is the Tomiki aikido curriculum, although they are not affiliated to Shodokan. Clark Sensei himself learned under Kenji Tomiki and also his early deshis, so he has plenty of experience. He was already a dan-grade judoka before he begain aikido, and initially started out in the aikikai style of aikido. However, he shared with me that his experience with Aikikai folks wasn't a good one, where there was a lot of rank-pulling and bullying. According to him, the Aikikai folks he trained with were mostly just interested in using pain compliance to make techniques work, and to him that was not true aiki-budo. Tomiki on the other hand, a PhD in both economics and physical education, was very scientific in his approach. Tomiki was a modern educator, and envisioned Aikido training with a systematic curriculum. Tomiki shared much similarity in his vision of aikido to that of what Jigoro Kano had of judo.

Following this approach, the Jiyushinkan has a model of budo training using modern education methods. They have a strict curriculum of solo and partner katas, that students have to learn at each phase. For example, the tandoku-undo was a set of 12 different solo drills, and the musubi-renshu a set of 8 different drills from katate-dori, Junanahon-undo the 17 techniques from shomen-ate. These katas were designed by Tomiki and his students, so they go back a long time. Randori was reserved for i think, at least 4th kyu and above. But the type of randori practiced is not the 'demo' type of randori that we do; rather, techniques set up can be countered and reversed and so on until someone is able to make something happen. Of course, further on there are aiki-buki waza of jo and ken etc. Again, as I observe, the style of movement etc is so different from what we are familiar with. The intent is very strong, the movements are short, precise and sharp. Pulling, yanking, cranking of your uke's limbs are frowned upon in the dojo. The emphasis is really on kuzushi, which acording to Clark sensei, is not just about breaking balance, its about destroying posture.

In terms of credibility, I would certainly say that this dojo is worth the expenses and time. Most of the senior students here are also judokas so they know whether this is the real deal. They also have a judo training before the aikido class, so I'll probably join in next week. Ironically, the folks here are much friendlier, no airs and very encouraging and patient to newbies (like me). After almost three weeks on the mat, I was pleasantly surprised today that Clark Sensei told me I could wear my black obi here; I guess he could sense that I was sincere in trying to learn.

I guess I'd train at this dojo as well as in campus dojo (despite having a not-so-pleasant rub with some of the folks). It is indeed interesting to experience such different flavors of the same art.

Holy Week Reflections 3

2007-04-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

On Good Friday, the Newman Catholic Center organized a Stations of the Cross round the ASU campus. Stations of the Cross is a meditative procession that commemorates Christ's journey following his arrest, to Mt Calvary where he was crucified. The gospels had that he was crucified and died at 3 PM, thus the processions usually start at 1 and end about 3. There are 13 (or 14) stations, each of which symbolizes some particular event, for example when he fell under the weight of the cross, when he consoled the women, his mother and disciples on the way, and when he was being nailed. For those who had watched Passion of the Christ, we are much akin to the big crowd following behind him.

The students took turns to carry the cross as we went around campus. Hymns were sang on the way and at each station prayers and responses were read.

Almost two hundred over people joined in the procession, causing quite a sight in campus. Even the news anchor was there.

The bridge across University Drive.

The final station was back at the church.

Following that, a group of us headed up the A-mountain (A-hill actually) for a Rosary prayer session lead by the brother (a brother is a 'priest-in-training').

We stopped here to recite the Sorrowful Mysteries.

A view of the vicinty below.

Heading back now...everybody's hot and bushed.

A meaningful day of prayers. It is also a powerful experience, when we see all the pple, regardless of whether you're white, black, asian, hispanic, student or staff, rich or poor, taking time off from our daily schedules and come together for today's events. Although we come from all over the world and all walks of life, inside we are fundamentally the same.

Holy Week Reflections 2

2007-04-06T17:52:00.000-07:00

The eve of Good Friday is Holy Thursday, or the Lord's supper. Contrary to what many think, Holy Thursday is a day of obligation for roman catholics, and not Good Friday itself. The significance of this mass is of course the commemoration of the last supper with the apostles, institution of the Holy Eucharist, the episode in the garden of Gethsemene culimating in the arrest of Christ by the Jewish authorities. The other significant point is the washing of the feet. In the Gospel of John, the author related the story of Christ, who during the last supper, washed the feet of his disciples with a towel and basin. He then instructed his disciples that this is what they are to do for the community. To serve. That, in a nutshell, is the central message Christ had for all before he was to be put to death.

During the Holy Thursday mass the washing of the feet is re-enacted. The priests, with towels and basins, washes the feet of twelve lay ministers, and the twelve, in turn, washes the feet of the community, and so on. In the secular world, this is seemingly absurd, not to mention disgusting. But it is not the feet that is the issue. The message is the extent Christians are expected to go in answering their call to serve. If we claim to serve but only within our convenience and comfort zone, its not enough.

Many believers profess deep loyalty to Christ, but how far do we go when it comes to service? I am in no position to judge, but I see many here who drive cars and dress well here, but when it comes to tithing on Sunday the contribution is null. I too am guilty, always expending the $2 note, whilst spending a disproportionate amount on my personal luxuries.This is something to reflect on for myself.

Thus, correct Christian faith is not about philosophizing about God and life like a wise enlightened person, nor making ourselves feel justified by beating our chests to show how much we believe. Faith without good works is a make-believe faith.

Holy Week Reflections 1

2007-04-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly, Good Friday is not a public holiday here in the U.S. I only found tt out after I asked my host Prof, and he said religious festivities are not declared as state holidays in the U.S. I wonder what that means about Christmas day to the state then.

Since this week is Holy week for those of Christian faith, I shall blog about the events in the Church here. I realise writing abt religious stuff may offend some pple, but since its my blog, I shall write anyway. I'm not a fine example of a Christian, I have no intentions to 'preach' religion using words, and I am never a bible-totting person.

For roman catholics, Easter season begins 40 days before Maundy Thursday with the Lenten season. It is a period of abstinence, reflection and reconcilliation for practicing catholics, in preparation of Good Friday.

Palm Sunday, the weekend before Easter Sunday, commemorates the arrival of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem. When Christ reached Jerusalem the pple welcomed him as the new 'King' who had come to deliver them from poverty and oppression. Christ however, chose to enter the city riding a small donkey, striking a contradiction to the majestic image that the pple expected. Today we know tt the 'kingdom' to come tt the pple expected was not what Christ was talking about. Or do we know better now? In the world today many try to 'sell' the Christian faith in (incorrect?) senses appealing to the masses. Promises of wealth, health and good fortunes if one embraces the faith. Invoking emotional highs and making pple believe that is faith and love. That is 'make-believe' faith literally, and as a result many who are attracted initially falters away when the reality of life hits them hard, and others come away with a disdain of Christianity.

I think as a start faith has to be approached in the context of a relationship. A faithful married couple hangs on to each other, whether they are feeling emotionally high or low, good mood or not. True faith doesn't come and go just because one wakes up on the wrong side of bed. Thus although in the Christian context faith is a divine gift, it requires man's conscious effort to 'hang on' despite of the external hardships. This is called co-operating with the grace of God. When faced with personal trials, when prayers seem to be unanswered, when friends make a mockery of one, the true Christian is called to 'hang tough' to his faith and beliefs, and to ask for strength not of his own but that of the Lord's.

As Christians, we are not called to escape suffering. While we are here on earth, there is no such escape. Christ himself could not escape the pain of cruxifiction despite knowing ahead what is to happen. Instead, we are called to embrace it, rely on Him for strengh, have absolute belief that He always has the upper hand, and that good can eventually come out from suffering. 'Hang tough' is the bottom line.

Thus true Christian faith is never a mindless hippy-happy affair.

More Grand Canyon

2007-03-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

More pictures from the canyon [1].

Living on the edge...

With Dr Mok from Intel..

Attempting to capture a piece of the canyon on camera..

Reference
[1] Mok Ivy, Grand Canyon Trip, 2007.

Grand Canyon

2007-03-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

Its spring time! My coursemate in NUS Dr Mok from Penang Intel came over for a meeting and we went with her Intel colleagues to visit the canyon. It doesn't look like it from here, but the air was below freezing temp!

Great shots courtesy of Rinny... you can catch a bit of the Colorado river in the view..

There was snow still at some of the sites.

What a steep chasm!

Bittercold winds and the blazing sun hitting your face at the same time! We posed for shots quickly and scrammed back to the cars. Hopefully we can return to hike some more when it gets warmer in summer. More pics to be posted...

新年快乐！

2007-02-19T19:54:00.000-08:00

很快，又是新春佳节得来临。长这么大，还是第一次没在家里过年。小弟在此祝大家新年快乐，身体健康，万事如意！

农历年吗，华族传统，所以今天用中文在这里在向大家打个招呼。我的汉字写作非常不熟练，如果拼错字请大家多多原谅。在Arizona, 感觉一点春节的气氛也没有（在这里春节可不是公定假日）。除了中国的学者，这里华族不是很多。而学生吗，大多也忙着学习，不着么庆祝，除了在家里聚一聚吃个饭也没其他活动。对我而言，新年最重要的原素是家人，要珍惜能和他们在一起，把平时不余快的事情抛开。不过所谓在家靠父母，在外靠朋友，这句话我来美国后深深有感。要不是有几个平水相逢的朋友互相帮忙，一个人在外，有时还真不知该如何是好。所以年夜饭时，我就和几个同学一块到一家中餐馆吃饭。我们几个男生，有新加坡人，中国人还有一位老美。那老美可好笑，他非常不习惯我们中餐的菜。比如说我们的全鱼，他看了非常恶（那对鱼眼好像老瞪着他看），结果及乎啥也没吃。我们觉得菜都还好，就是贵了点，不过新年吗，应该的。

年初一初二，没啥活动，我也在家里好好的休一休，接下来的几周有我忙的。。。

Happy Valentine's Day...

2007-02-13T09:03:00.000-08:00

... to all the girls that I loved before. 可惜不是你，陪我到最后。感谢的是你，牵过我的手。

Aikido training reflections

2007-02-12T19:37:00.000-08:00

Been to two trainings so far at the dojo here. Hmm..kinda mixed feelings about this club. Btw, the uni club is affiliated to Kokikai, founder is Shuji Maruyama, one of pioneers sent from Hombu to start aikido in the US. However, when Tohei split from Hombu, Maruyama, who was mainly following Tohei, had to split too. Then later again, he split from Tohei and set up his own school.

That's history and lineage, but those things dun matter tt much in regards to our own training. As in all martial arts, the quality of your direct instructor is more important.

The club seems to be v sparse, only less than ten pple (in fact today there were only 5 students) turned up for training. Obviously this 'gentle art of self-defence' does not command much popularity amongst the vibrant, atheletic and 'happening' student population. There are other arts like some kind of TKD and 'pankration' (american self-defence) which looked rather dubious to me, but again i doubt they are really having a large enrollment either. Seem like the most popular activites in the SRC are gym work...haha yeah..the whole src looks like California Gym, u can see everybody working out on the equipment through the glass walls.

Back to the dojo, first thing tt i noticed was this big chart entitled '4 Principles of Aikido' at the shomen, no O-Sensei potrait. For the training, the sensei was here once a week, and a senior guy (1st kyu) named Chris took the other class. Most of the waza basically looks the same as what i've done in aikikai (so far), but then again the devil is in the details. They use a almost non-existent stance, in contrast to Dale's dojo back in Atlanta, where they advocated a wider parallel feet stance (where i was constantly corrected for having a narrow hanmi). To us aikikai-style folks, the waza of the students from kokikai looks sloppy and slack. Very small movt, small circle tenkan, in contrast to Aikikai style of big flowing movt. To them we would look exaggerated and wasteful.

I wouldn't comment on the standard of the rest of the students coz they are quite junior, but Chris clearly displayed a good understanding of efficient body movt and timing concepts. The idea of leading for e.g., he said, was like teasing a kitten with a string, you wanna pull the string just right to entice it to follow. I very much agree with tt. A powerful skill in aikido (and a difficult one to learn) is to trick your uke's intention, lay a bait for him to want to commit and cannot hold back. From the point of the observer it is almost as if the uke is throwing himself. I haven't been making much progress in that aspect of training though, as I tend to focus more bio-mechanical issues. It may sound esoteric, but certainly isn't unique to aikido.

Similarly for David Nachman Sensei, sometimes his waza really looked as if the uke was just 'giving him charity' as I could hardly see any big strong movement from him. Take for e.g., yokomen uchi irimi-nage (i'm using aikikai nomenclature here) where we normally do an irimi-tenkan response to the yokomen, cut the sword-hand an then continue turning whilst controlling uke for the throw. So basically, we are turning outside the uke, creating a vortex and spinning him inside. Over here, no irimi tenkan is advocated for the technique. The nage simple takes a step backwards, almost let the uke finish his entire strike, take his shoulder and drop him at the 'third vertex' of his base triangle. Being a bit skeptical I did it my way and ignored their method. It was only later when David Sensei asked me to attack him and when i did, i almost lost balance without him touching me. I didn't go in like a raging bull, which would have been easier for techniques to work. I attacked cleanly and firmly, but as he was receding away when I was striking, it made me want to 'get' him more until it was too late for me to 'de-commit'. The rest of the throw was then trivial. It felt as if i was attacking and going past him, rather than being spun round and round in aikikai style. The movt looked simple but the timing is really intricate, and I still cannot do it. In retrospect, I had a similar experience when doing pad drills in karate. When the target is stationary it is easy to give a gyaku-tsuki and maintain a good posture. However, when we practiced 'chasing target', where the person holding the pad ran backwards and we attack forward, its very easy to lose your posture because your mind is telling you 'you can touch it!' and you just want to lunge forward and connect from where you are (the proper way is to keep up with the target and snap into the gyaku-tsuki in an instance, if it hits it hits, if not quickly pull back, and the pulling back must be faster than your attack).

Enough of technicalities...i think the instructor is good and certainly have much valuable stuff to learn from. However, I still have some reservations abt the students here..as in most aikido schools, 'rank talks', and me wearing a white belt, is interesting to analyze human behavior in such a setting. I could almost sense a condescending kind of attitude from some of the color belts. Well, as a friend once said, brown belt is the time where the aikido student's ego is the largest. It is a transition phase from 'junior' rank to 'senior rank'. Junior ranks are too shy usually to assert any ego, and black belts usually 'should' be humbled (some never do, unfortunately) by their own exposure to different pple in the art and realising that there is always a 'mountain taller than where they are'. It is often the 'half-baked potatoes' that are the most dangerous. As the old saying goes you either walk on the left or the right of the road, walking in the middle will get u knocked down.

Haha, another thing i find weird is, suddenly, we are all addressed as Adam-san, Chris-san, Steve-san in the dojo. Sigh. More Japanese than Japanese.

Busy and dizzy week

2007-02-09T21:55:00.000-08:00

Finally settled with the housing issues. Darn ridiculous. Moved in on Saturday, and the couple decided not to stay there the following day. We went to the leasing office first thing in the morning on Monday and boy was the leasing manager mad. She gave us till 5 pm to get everything out of the house if we were to get the rent back. Of coz, all the other fees like holding, re-deco, and application fees were sunk. the immediate question was: where are we going to MOVE to? Thus we frantically ran along the neighbourhood to ask for apts that were immediately available. For me, I quickly went back to my old apt and asked if I could move back in...it was darn embarrassing and the ladies in the leasing office laughed their heads off. But fortunately my studio was still available and they were v nice to quickly set up the lease for me to sign and waived all the additonal fees. The chinese couple found another 1b1b a few blocks away, and borrowed a truck and a few friends to help them evacuate out from the place. Goodness, just imagine they just got a U-haul two days ago and all the same friends were helping them move their load in. I gave them a hand for the rest of the day as they had SO much stuff.
In the evening i headed back to the lab to work on my presentation tt was due nxt thing in the morning. The next day, after the presentation, which i think i did badly, cos i saw Fowler nodding off in the midst of it. Fowler later dished me with more papers to review and edit; asking me to do something like what the chinese say 'treating the dead horse as a life horse'. i shall not elaborate on the details. Moreover, me and my big mouth suggested tt i had some idea to work on with his phD student, and thus now i have two big projects hanging above me waiting to crash any time.
On Wed I finally found time to try out the aikido at ASU, which is in their SRC. And do they have tight security at the SRC. They had staff at the front desk and u had to scan ur matric card before u could get in. Upstairs, outside the MPSH, again u had to scan ur card, to ensure that u had paid the SRC dues. The aikido room was almost empty except for a few guys there. I introduced myself and they asked me if i wanted to 'play with them'. I said sure and got changed. Its a Kokikai dojo. Hmm. More on that next time.

Housing Headache

2007-02-04T17:18:00.000-08:00

Arggghhh....After staying in the original apt for a month, i moved out yesterday and signed the lease for the new apartment with the chinese couple yesterday. Spent the whole of ytd cleaning and shifting stuff. But guess what happened...today the chinese couple told me they would not like to stay there anymore as they feel the apt had a smell and are worried abt the health etc ..WHAT??!! Am i going to shift again!!?? I can't believe it...

Hello Phoenix

2007-01-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

Almost a month since i posted here..gosh. Once again the law of inertia prevails. Have been that long too I've been here in Tempe, Phoenix Arizona.

This was what i wrote 2 weeks ago.
"Almost two weeks since I have got here to Tempe now. Have not found the mood and proper time to sit down and write; but I guess I'll just note a brief outline of things so far. Got here at the airport, picked up by Qinghai and his wife Lijun, a chinese couple i got to know on the students forum while room-hunting. After i dumped my luggage in the inn we went off to view the varios apartments in the vicinity of the campus."

Yup. the conclusion was tt after 5 days of room-hunting, i was to take a studio apt for a month first, and then move into a 2b2b with them in Feb (to cut costs). the apt is only 15 min walk to campus; which is good. i'll post some pics of it soon.

The valley is quite a sight..the land is so flat and the roads so straight u can virtually see no end to it beyond the horizon. Tt being said, the weather is rather formidable too. only a few days here and i felt the symptoms of dehydration...yeah despite this being winter, the sun is blazing and glaring mercilessly and the cruel dry air threatens to suck all life out of ur skin. I looked at my hands and found a pair of hands a 100 years old, wrinkled, peeling, knuckles bleeding.

ASU is a nice campus, looks laid-back but also rather vibrant in the student population (its a party school by reputation). Many students zip to lectures on their skateboards; but mind you these are not the ordinary skate boards they are ski boards retrofitted on the wheels. There are many restaurants and eateries surrounding the campus vicinity, mostly pizza, mexican, but also japanese and asian food too. A little walk down University drive brings us to Mill Ave., the supposed 'happening' part of campus town...cafeterias, grills and bars, theaters, fashion boutiques, bookshops etc. If you like nature u can take a gentle hike up the 'A-mountain', right in the backyard of the Tempe campus overlooking Tempe town lake. I did tt a few times in a week an even ran up there. Pics to come later.

Anyway, things had been quite in a rush; found myself reporting to school on the 2nd day after new year's day. Did all the admin and registration, met my host prof on the 4th, and he seemed enthusiastic to get me going on some big stuffs this sem...the stress is on...The stress about being in my position is largely tt there's basically no guide...i set my own direction, my own project and take the lead. Nobody actually cares or will really push you to do something or anything (of coz, at the end of it all when i return to singapore; i HAVE to show something). So, it was more like i had to look super enthusiastic and fully charged with ideas when i spoke to him about what i 'intended to achieve' while here. During the weekend, i rushed to finish up a journal paper tt i worked on while in atlanta, and submitted it following the next few days. After tt, had to rush another conference paper tt was due later this month; so i had tt completed also. No time for good R&R so far; cause classes started and i decided to audit a number of them like how i did in GT. Little did i expect tt the policy here does not allow 'free' auditing of classes, which ended up me being barred from a couple of classes. Nevertheless, 2 of the lecturers were nice enough to let me sit in; which was good.

Think some how all the stress, anticipation and weather finally got to me and i fell sick over the past few days..almost a week now. Oh well, come to think of it i haven't been sick since i came to the states; but tt's always the 'rule-of-thumb' isn't it, i always get sick once i'm aware of how long i haven't been sick.

It can be miserable to be sick all alone in a foreign land, especially when u're staying alone; and u still got to get the chores done etc. On the other hand there are friends here too. I met up with Winston and TzeWei, formerly from NUS now working and studying here. They were really nice to drive all the way down from downtown Phoenix to fetch me and go for dinner or shopping. There are some helpful classmates in IE too. I am considered much blessed.

Goodbye Atlanta

2006-12-26T10:46:00.000-08:00

Captain's log 26th Dec 2006. Time flies..! 5 months have gone by since I came to Atlanta and tomorrow I'm off the Arizona Tempe. Things seem to be in such a rush for the past few weeks I haven't found much time to go around visiting or writing. It just always happens like that; work has been lacklustre for me almost the whole semester and suddenly became crazy when the deadlines drew near. And then had to start worrying and planning everything again for the next phase of my visit in ASU. Getting flight, sourcing for hotel, apartments etc.
Nevertheless did find some time to meet up with some friends here over the christmas holiday weekend..went for christmas eve mass with Paul and Eric, and then had a good dinner of korean fare (and korean beer is pretty nice) at a korean restaurant on buford highway. Christmas day had dinner with my two roommates Chen Guo and Arti at the Nan Thai restaurant in downtown. Very nice place, upscale and the food is great.
During the Christmas weekend holidays when most pple are thinking about where to party and what to eat, the tv news covered US troops who were due to be flown to Iraq on Christmas day at the Atlanta airport. Most of them in their field slacks with expressionless faces sitting at the airport with their family and loved ones. Some folks organised a group of carollers singing for them as soem kin of a mini-christmas celebration-cum-sending-off. Kinda hear-wrenching to see. Let us always appreciate our loved ones and be thankful. Peace!
Though its only been a short stint here I've learnt and experienced a bit of the story of Georgia. When you become aware of the history of the place you get a deeper appreciation of how things are today .. White pple, black pple, asians, latin-americans today co-exist with equal opportunities here; of coz not everything is perfect but much progress has been made in the past decades. it certainly wasn't so a 100 years ago and this would not have been the case now if not for the spirit of truth and freedom in the USA; becos M.L. King Jr. had a dream and pple believed in that dream and fought hard for the truth. And it all started here in Georgia.

A mini campus tour of Georgia Tech. Always wanted to do a campus tour but procastination gets the better of me until the last day when i handed over my office keys.

IsyE building. there are 3 buildings in fact. This is the Groseclose building.

The Tech Trolley...students' means of communing within campus and to the MARTA station.

Pavement walkway to the Students Center.

Monument of the Dean sitting around...

Historical monument of a train engine that was developed in the early days here in GT. It was used in rails here one of the key which enabler of transportation and commerce in Atlanta.

Outside the 'Tech Tower'; one of the original campus buildings.

Thai fine-dining at Nan's on Chrismas day...

Me and my roommates at Tempo Continental

That's it for now! Farewell Atlanta. We now make our journey to the West... Arizona!

Encounters in the week

2006-12-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

The US is a place where you never know whom you will get to know on the streets. People could just chat you up while waiting for the bus, the subway or in the restaurants etc. Most folks are friendly and harmless, just wanting to kill some time on the road. Of coz, coming from a remotely distant asian culture, one feels a bit uncomfortable initially, but then pretty soon gets used to it.
While waiting for the train one day a pale-looking man in his forties called Rob asked me about which train to board. After directing him he then proceeded to tell me about his heart by-pass surgeries and showed me the scars then ran across his chest and stomach. He then proceeded to descibe his near-death experiences and how the doctors had to mount a battery pack in his chest to jolt him up. Description turns to lamenting as he spoke about how money talks in the country and asked me where i was from. He knew how strict our laws are in the land-of-no-gum and he said he'd never mess around with pot in Singapore. Well to us that of coz is pretty obvious but to others outside the jurisdiction it takes a while to accept that. I suppose to many of them a death sentence is something arcane and frighteningly brutal. Just like how we may feel towards 'stoning to death' and severing of limbs in certain religious states. Anyway in a very typical fashion he seem surprised that my english is quite good, and of coz at my age; i explained tt singapore uses english as the medium of education in school. He remarked tt that was good... coz it gave u options to run away from singapore, coz "i know how bad it can get there". Anyway, his destination was up and we shook hands before going on our ways again.
***
After returning from Mass last sunday I decided to try out the chinese restaurant near where i stayed...have always been wanting to check it out as it looked quite cool. Of coz i was aware that this was one of those 'americanised-chinese' places, but still, when u're hungry and a craving for rice anything goes. Well, i must say tt i was less than pleased at the door when the the chinese lady usher at the entrance saw me and looked at me like what the heck am i doing here? "Yes can i help you?" Duh! what do i look like? your new kitchen-hand? No "Hello" "Welcome" "How r u?", i mean i'm a customer too. After i was being seated, i got the same eyeball reaction from the waiters. Well you see, all the waiters there were chinese men, and all the customers were non-chinese, expect for urs truly. After checking out the menu, the waiter came up to me, and just looked at me with the "So what do u want?" gesture. Not a single word? I made my order, and finally, he couldn't resist and asked me if i was a student. i said yeah i'm a visiting scholar from singapore. Well, guess what. the treatment got different therafter. Two things: the place dun serve students; the place dun serve chinese. I know why...coz they're worried they got their cover blown by whipping up pseudo-chinese food for their american friends who go "ooh wow, exotic kung pao chicken spring rolls!". But i dun care. I just stuffed myself and went home.
***
The last incident is the most unforgettable yet. I was walkng back to the subway station from aikido training one night along Piedmont road..now this road is lined with liquor shops, an adult toy store, an adult video store, a strip club. but usually it is just pretty quiet less a few homeless stragglers. So i was walking and walking when a voice behind called out to me. I ignored it at first but soon after the person came up next to me. it was a young black girl and she started rambling stuff and questions tt i couldn't catch. I tried to just say hi ok yeah and when along my way but she kept going on and said tt she lives in lindbergh and going the same way as i was. then she said tt she worked around here as a painter, and she was not a prostitute and was on the way back and saw me and thot tt we could walk together but if i want to "i could walk by myself" in a 'so-be-it' manner jokingly. Seeing tt she was harmless i said ok since we were heading the same direction. After a few pleasantries like where i was from and what my name was, she started to get cranky and asked me if i drink, and said tt she was an alcoholic and rambled on and on and asked me something about wanting pot, if i was gay etc. Then she 'popped the question' and asked if i had condoms with me, and if i wanted to go her place. I was taken aback and exclaimed aloud "EXCUSE ME???" and she cracked up laughing on the ground, apparently amused at my reaction. We finally reached the junction where i had to make my way to the subway station and she had to go off the other way to her place. Again she tried to persuade me to go up to her place and give her a number to call. I kindly declined and therafter we shook hands and parted ways. What an incident.

Cat-and-mouse game

2006-11-29T19:48:00.000-08:00

I hate rats man. These big, brown, black, filthy, strong, sneaky, high-reproductive, disgusting, disease-carrying, furry rodents. And there's a freakin big one lurking some where in our apartment. My two other roommates have seen its tail on one occasion each scuttling across the corridor and behind the stove. On more than two occasions we found the trash bags being ripped and dragged across the kitchen when we got back from school.
And this morning, i had the most unpleasant experience of bumping into this darn rodent live. I was awaken from my sleep by loud noises in my bathroom. Thinking it maybe my neighbour upstairs ripping the floor i went into the bathroom groggily and looked at the ceiling, when all of a sudden that furball scrammed across my feet. I was so shocked i yelled, jumped and bolted out of the bathrrom and slammed the door shut. A few seconds later i armed myself with a can of spray and broomstick and opened the door cautiously to have a confrontation with the sneaky one. But alas, it has disappeared into thin air! How could that be?? There were no exits from the bathroom except the door i was standing in front of, and the air vent hand a grill with slits less than 5mm in width. It just cannot defy the law of physics. After some investigation, indeed there was a small crack on the wall where the water pipe came through to the seated toilet. It was smaller than the circle you can make with your thumb and index finger. That was the only possibility. That darn thing must have super flexible joints to be able to squeeze through it, but that has to be the only way.
I hate the cat-and-mouse game man...we're in the open, while it is concealed. It was really disgusting to see it, even for less than a second, and that has made my legs jello the whole morning. Sometimes you can hear some noises that seem to come from behind the walls, but you just can't pin it down. YEah its that darn SOB alright...but you just can't reach behind the cracks of the darn wall to get to it. Now i know how frustrated Tom feels when Jerry goes behind that mouse hole and do the 'you-cannot-catch-me' routine. Never thought that it would be so apt, literally!
Anyway we've got ourselves a big cage rat trap, and some packs of rat poison. I just hope i dun see it again.

Random updates

2006-11-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

This week thursday is a Thanksgiving holiday...never knew that it thanksgiving was in fact native american in origin. For me, i'm just glad to have a break from the lectures haha. I decided to go for evening mass at Sacred Heart, and after mass, they served a spaghhetti dinner for everybody. Met up with Rich and Oh in the church. Oh is a korean guy who's been working in Atlanta for 3 years now. Nice folks, (nice food and wine and chocolate also).
On the other hand, Dale has announced that he has decided to take some of his aikido sessions to teach tai chi. Being a long time practitioner of tai chi himself (way back before he started aikido; and he trained in china) he said that he was craving to focus his practice on tai chi again and hence this. Went for his lesson on Monday, and he started teaching a bit of the Yang style form during the warm-up. It was quite a sight to see everybody wearing gi and hakama etc doing the slow motion exercise looking like fish out of water. I guess almost everybody was scratching their heads about it but nonetheless were very obliging. Dunno if it will go down well with the class, but i personally think its a great idea and a good complement. Well, too bad i'll be gone when he officially kicks it in next year.
Today, my roommate knocked on my door suddenly and said she spotted the tail of a rat in the kitchen behind the stove, before disappearing behind the stove somewhere. Think she kind of freaked out. I always feel queasy when i see a rat too; so far i've been the only housemate in the apartment who hasn't seen it yet. Darn...i hate this 'cat-and-mouse' game; hate rats man. Hopefully i dun get to see it.

Aikido seminar with Yamada shihan (4-5 Nov)

2006-11-11T21:21:00.000-08:00

This time round i didn't take pictures as the mat was darn crowded. Suffice to say that it was a good training. Yamada is a charismatic guy with a good sense of humour. When class started, while we yelled Onegaishimas he just went Good Morning! Yamada's style is close to what we do at home, big circular motions, super deep stance. He took 3 sessions into the afternoon, and the last session was taken by Peter Bernath shihan, chief instructor Aikikai Florida. I must say he is really good..darn fast with his hands, very sharp, very powerful. He did variations of tenchi-nage tt none of us saw before and was so fast nobody (except his own students of coz) really caught what he did.
Rather than talking too much about the training per se, i'd like to mention that the folks at Dogwood had really put much effort into making the seminar a success. The members are really cohesive when it came to taking on the extra responsibilites to come down everyday to clean the carpets, repair and mend some old spots, buying the food, washing the toilets etc. The instructors never throw their weights around or coerce pple into doing stuff..all was done in the spirit of volunteerism; and everybody are working adults here, so its not easy to take the extra commitment for such things. Training is serious, yet the spirit is light. Different instructors here have different styles and preferences, but are at the same time united as a dojo.
Well, i think there are certainly more than one aspects our home association can learn from them.

With Yamada sensei. I mentioned that I trained under Harry sensei in Singapore and he remembers.

Georgia Stone Mountain!

2006-10-29T18:40:00.000-08:00

We made a trip on the 28th Oct (Sat) to the Stone Mountain State park of Georgia.

Stone Mountain is a granite dome located in Stone Mountain, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. It is one of the world's largest exposed pieces of granite.

Near the foot of the trail up Stone Mt.

Somewhere midway along the way up..

At the peak..! At its summit, the elevation is 1683 feet. Stone mountain was also the site of the founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915...

Some guy doing tai chi at the peak...it was real windy and cold!

A view of the Stone Mountain Lake from the summit...in a while we'll be there..

The Antebellum Plantation and Farmyard is comprised of original buildings, built between 1790 and 1845, which have been re-erected here to represent a pre-Civil War Georgia plantation.

The enormous bas-relief on its north face, the largest bas-relief in the world. Three figures of the Confederate States of America are carved there: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.

The Riverboat offers a scenic cruise aboard a reproduction Mississippi riverboat on 363-acre Stone Mountain Lake

The Scenic Railroad, a standard gauge railroad that circles the entire circumference of the mountain in a loop, giving views of the mountain en route.

Day trip to Chattanooga, Tennesse

2006-10-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

On 21st October Saturday morning, we woke up and got ready to leave at 7.30 AM in the cold and misty morning. Today we join Uncle Bob's group for a day trip to see the mountains in Chatannooga, TN. As before HongLiang drove us to Briarlake church, the pick-up point where the coach was, and then the coach went over to Intown community church to pick up more pple.

Unexpectedly, the coach for this trip was full, and there were more than three families bringing their kids, and some senior citizens with us. After about 2-3 hrs drive, we arrived at the state park called Cloudland Canyon. Located on the western edge of Lookout Mountain, this is one of the most scenic parks in the state, offering rugged geology and beautiful vistas. The park straddles a deep gorge cut into the mountain by Sitton Gulch Creek, and elevation differs from 800 to 1,980 feet.

Our first hike was to the bottom of the gorge where there are two waterfalls cascading over layers of sandstone and shale into pools below.

Getting ready to go...gathering at a plateau of the canyon before setting off...

Pictures on the way down ...

One of the two waterfalls that we saw...

Lookout Mountain is also a hot-spot for hang gliders. Unfortunately due to the weather on the day there were hardly any gliding taking place..

That's 'living-on-the-edge' Marge..

Our last stop was the Fort Mountain State Park...Fort Mountain derives its name from an ancient 855-foot-long rock wall which stands on the highest point of the mountain. The mysterious wall is thought to have been built by Indians as fortification against other more hostile Indians or for ancient ceremonies.

Bus pics...

That's Shelly...teaching us a card game on the journey...all of us got carsick playing cards except her (she's over 75)!

Chen Guo, Hong Liang, KK.

A certain type of friends

2006-10-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a friend, who likes to talk a lot, but very much about finding out about yourself and what you do, and tells you what you should do, what you should not do etc, but says very little about what himself or herself is doing especially currently? I happened to have crossed paths with at least 2 in my life, back at home and here, and i never realised that maybe there are more similar pple who are like tt out there. Trying to psycho-analyse why this is so... They would ask you almost anything about what you do etc, and offers you plenty of 'advice' even when you did not ask. In short, they become a bit overbearing. And when asked about things like what are they currently doing, what are their plans it is almost always brushed aside; topics are changed or they become defensive. Oh yeah they have a lot to talk about themselves but only their past 'achievements'. Not trying to be judgemental here...in general they do not have bad intentions. Just wonder what makes them tick.

Six Flags Over Georgia

2006-10-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

On 15th Oct Sunday morning as usual i went for mass at sacred heart. After tt met up with Eric for lunch at his place before we set off for Six Flags, the well-renowned and largest amusement theme park in Georgia. Eric adviced tt we fill ourselves well before going for the rides there coz the last time he was there with an empty stomach he almost threw up haha.

Well amusement parks are not really my favourite things but the thrill of a rollercoaster ride is enough to motivate me to bring my ass down to the West of georgia which is darn far away from where we were...took the marta train all the way to the west end and took the shuttle bus.

Arrival at entrance of Six Flags.

The park was big...first thing tt caught my sky-hig rollercoasters that rose beyond the walls of the park, beckoning us to take up the challenges. There were more than eight rollercoaster rides of varying scariness... The first we rushed to was the Goliath, the latest ride which stood over 200 ft tall and approaching spd of 70 mph. It has no loops but lots of 'airtime' and travels outside the park and back!

My legs were a bit jello after the ride..guess its been too long since i took rollercoasters and was not mentally prepared for the free-falling. So after tt we decided to visit The Monster Plantation, a boat journey thru a land of animated monsters... one word...LAME.

Long queue at the Monster plantation...pple getting on the boat when its their turn.

Some pictures during the boat ride...the monsters are to cartoony...this is for kids man...They should have told us before we joined the queue.

Unsatisfied with the unexciting boat ride, i decided to take on the Ninja: the Black-belt of Roller-coasters! This steel coaster turns upside down five times with upward spirals and corkscrew dives.!

After the Ninja..i was feeling a bit dizzy already, and we decided to lay off rollercoasters for a while now. There was not much free-fall acceleration but the twisting and turning made the head swim.

Ok so we decided to take it easy now...think i'm getting too old for this. But nonetheless, we took a break at the good old bumper car.

Well, what could i say...the ride was darn short, and most pple taking the bumper was so civil and preferred to go round and round, unlike Ah Bengs at amusement parks back in S'pore where they'd take delight in ramming you (esp if u're a girl). Found myself having to go around to knock myself into other pple here.

Next up, we visited Metropolis City, the home of Superman!

The Superman Ultimate Flight rollercoaster: Defy the laws of gravity as you dive HEAD FIRST through high banked curves, spirals and a first ever pretzel shaped inverted loop at speeds up to 60 mph!

Ok i confess i didn't take tt...haha. There's too many rides that i can cover here...there was a 100 feet bungee jump, a super-boomerang coaster etc etc etc

This is not a wrongly inserted picture.. its Halloween and Fright Fest at Six Flags!

There were mock-up graveyards and skeleton at various places in the park. Not to mention 'living dead ' roaming around giving the teens a good scare...they were really good in setting up the halloween theme..down to the make-up and acting...well, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details, no pun intended!

A Johnny Depp look-alike vampire..

I think tt's supposed to be Sadako...

Some random zombies...

She stopped in front of me to pose for a shot so i obliged..

Mr and Mrs Frankenstein

My favourite...Freddy Krueger! The american teens were really quite petrified and at the same time excited to see him..well, me too... i like Freddy but from a minimum safety distance. Poor kid below was persuaded to take one by his parents.

Next to was Gotham City..more rollercoaster rides and stuff here...

To the Batmobile!

To the Fright Fest.!

Random self-shots.

Training aftermath

2006-10-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

That's it. I finally wrenched my elbow fom being thrown off a shihonage during training tonight. Was working with Josh this darn strong guy and in one of the shihonages i think he yanked my arm so hard one time that both of us heard a ripping noise...and tt was not from the gi. You know, the way the elbow is arm is cranked outwards rather than backwards like we practice usually. Fortunately nothing broken but it feels kinda limp and sore now. Think some ligaments may be injured. Dun worry folks i'll (make sure I) recover fast..but i'm gonna lay off shihonage on the left arm for a while now. Jacky if u're reading this dun go and announce it to ur folks. Injuries are part and parcel of training and I had worse ones than this.

On the other hand, Dale can be quite a 'hellish' instructor sometimes, but of coz he is just kidding. He's a real nice guy actually. Tonight he got one of the guy Jeff who was gonna go for grading do 4 on 1 randoori for like forever. I think Dale noticed tt Jeff always pursed his lips while he was doing techniques, and that caused him to tense up somewat. So Dale told him to open his mouth while doing the practice, otherwise "I'm gonna stuff a shoe in ur mouth to make it open." Then he made him say stuff like " I will open my mouth." "I love aikido" etc haha. Dale went "ok, the shoe's coming" whenever Jeff closed his mouth. Anyway Dale kept the randoori going on and on like forever, until the poor guy was so shacked he was belching and belching like he's going to throw up anytime. I was one of the ukes and was so worried tt he might just throw up on me when i attacked him. But tt was when the quality of Jeff's technique started to change, and it became less and less muscling and more and more relaxed, well he couldn't use stiff muscular strength anymore coz there's none left. I guess Dale did that to really push him to the limit so tt the more efficient movements came out from him eventually. The four of us ukes were like super duper darn shack too!

Trip to savannah

2006-10-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

On Sept 29th Fri evening, Chen Guo, Hongliang and me set off for a one day sightseeing trip to the historical coastal town of Savannah. Hongliang drove us to the Briarlake Baptist Church, where the gathering point and the coach was. I only got to know about the trip a day before, and wasn't really keen initially to go as i wanted to get some work done over the weekend... It was only on Fri morning when Guo told me there were still vacancies available and i thot, what the heck, face it, i'm not going to be productive anyway, and better to go see some places. So i quickly met up with Eric in the afternoon to buy groceries at BFM, had lunch and then came back to meet them.
Bob and Lynn Culver were the organisers. Bob's the president of the Interface (International Friendship Activities and Cultural Exchange) Ministries. They own this sleeper coach which we would take and sleep in for the night. I've never seen such a coach before. Instead of reclining seats they had cushioned decks than ran along the length of the coach, which were to be set up as beds for sleeping. There was a maximum of three dacks stacking on top of each other!

Bob drove the coach, and . Lynn had us get to now each others by calling out our names and repeating everybody else's names on the coach...haha couldn't even see some of the faces that were sitting right at the other end of the coach. Anyway, there were twenty over participants, most of them chinese, and were either graduate students or research workers from Emory U, some married, and some even brought their kids along. Oh and i was happy to know tt there was a fellow singaporean in the group.. Frankly speaking i have not met any singaporeans thus far in atlanta, in particular GT (Prof Chew doesn't count for obvious reasons). Unlike the PRCs i think we are really a minority group here..I dunno if Mervyn (dogwood aikikai) was originally from Singapore or Boston, i gotta ask him nxt time.
We traveled east for slightly over 4 hours and set up to rest for the night. I wasn't really able to sleep well though. Kept tossing and turning and wondering why i couldn't sleep (isn't it frustrating??). I dun think i have lost sleep since i reached atlanta. Usually i would be concussed and sleep well into the next day. I suffered a lot of insomia back in Singapore though...especially the months preceding my departure. I found two common reasons why i couldn't sleep is firstly, when the mind keeps consciously telling myself to try to sleep, and second, when the mind is actively imagining events in the future... this would make me more and more stressed rather than sleepy. So one trick i found useful (sometimes) is to focus on events of the past, parts of ur life which have long past, be it happy or sad, but you run them thru like a movie in your mind. This tends to soothe the mind and slowly i'll drift into semi-consciousness. Maybe that is why dreams are based on images of our past in the subconscious (at least i think so).
Anyway that didn't work on Fri night, and before i could begin counting sheep, it was daybreak and we got up washed up for breakfast. The air was darn chilling! Bob toasted pancakes for us (so nice!) and the hot coffee was a relief from the cold.

That's where we were in the morning...our coach along with many other road trippers.

We had breakfast at this hut...my butt froze when i tried to sit on the stone cold benches and thus i had no choice but to stand.

Our first stop was the Wormsloe Historical site. Located on the Isle of Hope near Savannah, it is near a number of coastal islands such as Skidaway, surrounded by saltwater marsh and lies along the intracoastal waterway that provides sheltered sea travel along the coast of Georgia. It is this location, for travel and communication, fishing and hunting, which gives intrinsic value to the place that would become Wormsloe(source:http://www.wormsloe.org/content/georgia/parks/wormsloe/).

Wormsloe...we didn't really tour this place..just got off the bus and snap some pics.

Next, we set off to the Tybee Island Beach. The day is bright and sunny...not a cloud in the sky. Tybee means "salt" to Native Americans, but the name of this low-key seaside resort now brings to mind words such as "sun", "surf" and "fun". Located 18 miles east of Savannah, this small barrier island boasts a wide, 3-mile long beach that's backed by sea oat-covered sand dunes and is perfect for sunbathing, people-watching and frolicking in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. The island's south-end pier and pavilion is a splendid venue for strolling above the ocean and listening to the music of the live bands (source: http://www.tybeeisland.com/).

Such a long time since i've been to the beach...Atlanta is way too much inland..

The sun, the sand, the sea..and some pretty girls...what a lucky guy.

Anyway, i was really tempted to take a dip in the water. we even spotted two dolphins that came very close to the shore.. unfortunately i didn't bring any beach shorts or bath stuff, and the tick bite scars on my back, torso and shoulder thanks to 486 Calhoun made me rather self-conscious. My feet are horrendously scarred... the bite marks are 'countably infinite'. Wonder when will these heal..darn.. We spent the rest of the morning hanging around the beach and had a quick lunch there. Bob gave us a history lesson on the early anglican evangalists in Georgia..well, now we know, the Methodist is founded right here.

After the beach pinic, the coach took us to the riverfront along the Savannah River for the walking tour.

The Savannah River

The Waving Girl of Savannah...

Streets of the Savannah coastal town...

I lost the group after a while but fortunately met Joy and Mark with their kids so we headed to the museum together. Mark is from PRC while Joy is from ROC. Later during the trip Mark shared with a few of the pple about his story in the US and of his conversion experiences...he had a rather amazing testimony about how he struggled with his livelihood, ultimately realising how important it is always to trust God and haf faith no matter how bad a situation may seem to get. Then one can find the inner joy tt is not influenced by external circumstance. According to him there were many miracles tt happened along the way in his life, but the greatest miracle is his change of heart.

Back to the Telfair Museum of the Art. This museum traces its history from 1886 when the Telfair family home opened to the public as an art museum and school. It now boasts three diverse sites -- the original building, the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, a National Historic Landmark building; the Owens-Thomas House, also a National Historic Landmark; and the recently completed Jepson Center for the Arts, a contemporary building which houses 20th- and 21st-century art (source: http://www.telfair.org/about/default.asp).

The entrance of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. Photography was not allowed inside the premise.

The art gallery was a litle too arty-farty for me...but i do like the depiction of the english-french battles..the level of detail on the canvas is amazing. One of the works was by an engineer-turned painter. Haha inspiring isn't it? maybe some day i will do tt too..

We visited the Owens-Thomas house next. Again photography was not allowed inside.

The Owens-Thomas House is considered the finest example of English Regency architecture in America by architectural historians. The elegant residence was built for cotton merchant and banker Richard Richardson and his wife Francis Bolton. Mr. Richardson's brother-in-law was married to Ann Jay, the architect's sister. Three years after the house's completion, Richardson suffered financial reverses and lost his splendid home to the Bank of the United States. For eight years, Mrs. Mary Maxwell ran an elegant lodging house in the structure. Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette was a guest of the city in 1825 and stayed at the home.

Inside the garden of the Owens-Thomas mansion.

Frankly speaking, I was feeling zoned out when we visited Owens-Thomas due t the lack of sleep on the previous night. So I didn't really catch much of what the guide was explaining...i thot she looked a bit grouchy too. But one could certainly see the stark contrast of the slave quarters in the house, the kitchen etc versus the living area and bedrooms of the aristocrats. Such extravagnance, there's a hall for formal dinner/meetings, a room for informal tea sessions, a music room, a study room (or games room), several bedrooms, a nanny's room, an elaborate bridge across the hallway, 'dummy' doors etc.

Finally we visited the St john the Baptist Cathedral, possibly the earliest Catholic church established in Georgia...it was huge!

With very little time left for dinner, we settled for some food at a Thai-style restaurant...well, as expected it wasn't really so authentic and the waitress's attitude leaves much to be desired.

So we got back to the coach and hit the road back to Atlanta.

On the coach... with Hongliang and Chen Guo.

That's Su Fen, she's a medicine post-doc with Emory. Fellow singaporean on the trip!

Ok we were all bushed by the time we got back. But it was all good.

Cast Away

2006-09-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

I've lost my favourite water bottle...its orange in color and looks like a nalgene..sigh..so sad. The bottle was a gift and really means something special to me. Why was I not more careful... My long-time buddy whom i carry everyday, my companion from home with me in the foreign land. I'm sorry!! I'm sorry!! Goodbye...!

Bitter medicine

2006-09-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

Some has mentioned tt my blog is boring, all facts and no feelings. So how am I feeling right now at this point? I'm feeling rotten to the core. But does anybody care actually. With respect to the events tt have occured this year, I was never given a choice, but left with stark facts, cold outcomes that I had to accept just before I left for the US. I cannot reconcile, much as I try, till today, that's its over. Still cannot accept tt people can change so fast, just like tt. Much as I try to see things have moved on, tt I'm enjoying myself here, I cannot help feeling rotten inside. And I can't pretend tt I'm already cool and grown wiser about it coz i'm not and haf not. At least not for now. Sorry. I know there's nothing tt can be done. Faith tells me its the bitter medicine tt I have to take to help me grow, and someday I'll understand. But on today feelings speak otherwise.

Tempo Continental

2006-09-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

Saturdays tend to be lazy for me..wake up late, do some cleaning in the house, have brunch, and slack. Took a few pics of my new room here at Tempo Continental.

Corridor from the dining hall to the bedrooms.

Kitchen area.

That's the block...

The immediate surrounding outside.

Publish or perish

2006-09-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

So i've now moved over to BrookHaven for more than a week now. In a sense, its a relief to leave the old house in Homepark..no more bedbugs! Yah...my previous bugbites also seem to be healing better now. At least, they dun itch so much. The apartments here are much cleaner and nicer too. And there are convenience stores all around...Krogers, Macdonalds, Dunkin donuts, a bank, etc...all near the subway, which is about 0.6 miles away from the Tempo apartment wher i am now.
Haha but guess what, no place is perfect...no bedbugs here but there are roaches! These are the small ones and there seem to be plenty of these in the kitchen sink..esp at night when everybody's asleep...sigh... there's roach baits everywhere but i really doubt their effectiveness. According to my roommate this summer there seem to be an especially large number of them. Well, when one switches on the light they all scram and hde..so they're not active in the day...anyway, we keep all our cutlary and stuff in plastic containers. I hope they go away soon....
Haven't been taking pictures lately...hope i can find the time when i'm not feeling so stressed to take some pics of my new place. Yeah..stress level is high! I guess the lectures have been keeping me on the sedge coz they're getting tougher and tougher to follow, esp stochastic optimization... at least for me. Really lack the proper mathematical analysis fundamentals...it just makes me feel rather demoralised about my own phD training. Over here the training for grad students is really rigourous, with a year a more of heavy coursework to build their technical base. For us (in NUS) its really just go, and produce some research output. In the end the learning process is not proper... Having a tough time trying to do catch-up on the one hand, and on the other i can feeling the stress to publish. Just can't seem to focus. My sup always said tt i lack the confidence..well, here's why, coz i know my own training wasn't up to par, so its just v difficult for me to break into this. Sometimes i really wonder how i got my degree. On many days i doubt whether i am picking the right path...just dun feel correct sometimes. Do i really want to lead a life of perpectual stress in this publish or perish culture, when you know ur base is lacking, and u do not have the luxury of building it properly? Oh yeah i can publish a lot of junk, and i've been doing tt (i feel) but its just not correct. Or you can go the other way and bochap the pressure the uni puts on you, but that means you gonna get axed from the community.
Have I bitten more than I can chew this time.?

Aikido Seminar: Penny Bernath Sensei

2006-09-05T20:34:00.000-07:00

On 27th Aug Sunday I attended the 1-day seminar organized by Dogwood. The guest instructor is Penny Bernath, 6th dan Shidoin, instructor of Florida Aikikai. Penny is a long time student of Yoshimitsu Yamada, and togethe rwith her husband Peter, they operate the dojo in Florida.

I arrived early at the dojo and took some pics of the place before the people came in. That's the common area that leads to the shower rooms.

That's the shower room..they got racks to let you hang your gi and stuff.

The dojo...white canvas on tatami mats...i must say the mat space is quite big!

Everybody relaxing after lunch before the training starts for the afternoon.

Stretching and warming up a bit before the session starts...

Suwari-waza kata-dori nikkyo. Bernath sensei always does the kneeling, hanmi-handachi and standing versions of the same techniques, though not necessarily in the same sequence.

No fun doing suwari-waza after a heavy lunch of Papa Joe's pizza!

Standing version of nikkyo. Its always good to stand on your own two feet (esp after standing on your knees for some time)

They favor lots of atemi with the ura-ken (backfist). I realise most of my atemi uses palm strike (or slap).

By the way most of these guys wearing white obis are not fresh beginners..los of them are 1st / 2nd kyus with years of intensive practice. Bernath sensei shows the classical nikkyo wrist hold and pin here, but after that she took the nikkyo into a projection throw, which was something we don't do much (at least not me). Its like you got the nikkyo hold but you don't crank it. Instead, you'd project it straight back into his center causing him to fall backwards.

Less talk and more practice! That's the secret of martial arts. Me practicing ryote-dori kokyu-nage randoori on hanmi-handachi against multiple ukes. By this time we were darn shack! The guy was being nice to take a good ukemi.

Brian Potter, one of the instructors at Dogwood, taking ukemi for another yudansha.

Many other guys came from other dojos, some from Chattanoga, some from City of Atlanta Aikido.

Penny Bernath Sensei and yours truly.

Penny Bernath, me, Peter Bernath (Penny's husband; he's the chief instructor of Aikikai Florida)

With Dale Nodenberg, chief instructor of Dogwood Aikikai.

By the time the training ended, I could hardly carry myself back home! Totally drained...these guys are tough!

Mass @ Sacred Heart, Atlanta UnderGround, and Coca Cola!

2006-08-31T21:23:00.000-07:00

Sunday Aug 13th. On this morning we headed down to Sacred Heart Catholic Church on Peachtreee Street. This was 5 min walk from the Civic Center MARTA station.

Very nice architectural style...French Romanesque..with a twin-octoganl tower structure 167 feet high. This Sacred Heart Parish was founded in 1880. This church was commisioned-to-build in 1897.

A pic of the interior aisles...

Stained glass..

The altar..

After mass, we took the MARTA again, a couple of stops and reached Five Points station, this is where Undergound Alanta is; one of the oldest parts of the city. Underground is basically a shopping mall, most of the shops are catered to the young african-americans...

We had lunch at the food court. We ate at a so-called japanese food stall, but alas, its just chinese food. The lady at the stall was an indonesian, she asked me where i was from haha. This guy was singing at the food court. He sings really well! People would tip him if they enjoyed his songs..

From there we had lunch and walked across to the coca-cola museum. Atlanta is the home of coca-cola, and the museum is a very interesting tour of the history and evolution of this commodity. The inventor of coca-cola was actually a druggist who patented several cough syrups etc. He created coca cola by 'accident' when he mixed cola syrup with soda water.

The museum building from across the street.

The first exhibit: a bottle-filling and capping conveyer production line.

Many photo exhibits detail the history and evolution of this world wide commodity. These are some old poster ads (dates back all the way to the 1900s) which had opera singers or other celebrities endorsing the product.

Another piece of old machinery: 1920 Baltimore semi-automatic filling and crowning machine.

The favourite part of the tour...free flow coke (all sorts, diet coke, cherry coke etc) and many other soft drinks! Drink till you drop.

After that we took a shuttle bus to Turner Field: the baseball stadium where the Atlanta Braves played.

We didn't watch the game..just took some pictures outside, where they had several monuments of past superstar players.

Warren Spahn: winningest left-hander in major league history.

After that we took the shuttle bus back to Atlanta Undeground to take some pictures.

We then headed back to Five Points and crossed over to look at another church, that is the Immaculate Conception Catholic Shrine. Adjacent to the shrine were the city hall buildings.From there we crossed opposite the street to the City Hall buildings.

Again there were several monuments outside the building, mostly depicting the history of the civil war, when Atlanta was attacked and conquered by the Northern Alliance.

A Statue of Liberty.

Joseph Emerson Brown, a war governor of atlanta during the civil war, and his wife Elizabeth Grisham Brown.

Audit classes; the people i meet

2006-08-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

On the Aug 24, Thurs. I audited three classes today. The first was in the morning, Optimization 1, instructed by Prof Craig Tovey. This class is meant for phD students, so it was heavy on math for sure. Tovey taught by writing on the whiteboard, and there were no course notes, so it can get quite difficult to follow at times. Today he covered LP formulation, which fortunately i was still familiar with. Not sure if i'll be able to follow as the course gets more technical... Spoke to him after the class, quite a nice guy. He was patient and very approachable.
After lunch i sat in the Manufacturing systems class. I'm auditing this module as I've been doing manufacturing planning models for my phD, but have never took one of such courses before, other than Inventory systems taught by Chew, but tt was quite long ago. The lecture was informative, though the accent of the lecturer was sometimes a bit hard to understand.
The last class i attended was Prof Anton's Stochastic programming. Today he was just talking about the newsvendor model, but was really thick into derivations and stuff and I could barely follow even though i've done newsvendor before. I think this is going to be a really tough module.
Three lectures in a row, 1.5 hrs each really drained me at the end of the day. I went back early to take a nap. Before I came back, I met Chris. He was the guy who contacted me regarding my mattress that I was going to sell away before I shift. But later on his friend found a mattress already, so I was going to meet him to return him his deposit. He gave me a lift back to Homepark, and I was going to ask him if he would be able to help me move the mattress to my new place next week. Turns out that he asked me whether i needed help in the first place! Wow. Really nice chap...he said he was pleased to meet someone from Singapore as his girlfriend studied a for long time in singapore, Nanyang girls high and then hwa chong jc. Anyway i'm really glad tt i met him. Come to think of it, I've been quited blessed so far for my trip here, considering i have not done much things. In particular the pple tt i meet, they seem to appear at the right place and time to help me when i need it. Eric helped me orientate around the place when i first arrived. Then when i was really having a hard time house-hunting and after a few failures, Guo Chen let me take the room in her apartment at Tempo out of empathy, despite the fact tt i was a guy and would only be here for short term. Then when I was vexed over how to move my stuff over, Chris appeared. These pple are like the angels that the Lord send to help me when i'm feeling desperate and lost. He is indeed with me each step of the way.

Day tour (2) : CNN and Olympics Centennial Park

2006-08-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

On 12th Aug Sat, after we visited the Georgia aquarium, we headed over to the CNN Broadcasting headquaters for the Studio Tour. It was approximaely 45 mins of guided tour to the various newsrooms and broadcasting operations of CNN. We also saw how the anchormen read from the screen; and the got one volunteer to try it out. We also learned some techniques on how weather pple do their forecast reports in front of an empty backdrop. Unfortunately no photography was allowed in the tour.

Near the entrance of CNN building.

Inside the building itself. The middle is hollow...ground floor is a food court; while the office spaces are studios are all around. That escalator is supposedly the longest / highest in the world! That's where we go up during the start of our tour.

A CNN billboard outside on the street..

A CNN "Hummer" is displayed near the foodcourt. This Hummer has been actually deployed in Iraq during Op Desert Storm to provide transport and coverage for CNN journalists in the field.

Outside the CNN building some folks were protesting about the Middle East situation...convenient place to get coverage on the CNN news instantly...

Now just across CNN is where the Olympics Centennial park is located. We've been here last Monday night, but in the day there's a whole lot more pple hanging around and just chilling out. The pictures turned out better in the day too.

Kids having fun in the fountain...the sprinkling is a good relief from the heat of the summer.

There are several monuments in the park...Pierre de Coubertin; the founder of the modern Olympics Games..

CNN building from across the Centennial park

From there we boarded the Marta and headed north all the way to Chamblee. A ten mins walk brought us to Chinatown!

We quickly looked for dinner...there was a foodcourt, and of coz, all run by PRCs..at last, nice and hot authentic chinese food!

In the night Eric told me that the house which he was temporarily putting up at had been broken into. Three notebook computers were stolen.

Aikido class @ Dogwood aikikai

2006-08-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

So on Thurs (Aug 17) I packed my gi and went down for their class. There was a kids class going on when i arrived, and a couple of others hanging around waiting for the adult class to start. I introduced myself and went to make my payment to this guy Stan. Later on i went to the changing room and met Steven, whom i met the day before. i changed into my gi and i realised that my feet were hideously covered with the bug bites..esp against the white colored gi it looked as if i have some kind of measles...i think Steven kept looking at my feet but dare not make any comments about it.
The session started with some light warm-ups, a tall guy Tom took the class, although the instructor tonight was supposedly Dale, who had not arrived yet. Soon it began and we did some kaiten-nages..different variations of it. Soon i think Tom noticed tt i'm not a fresh beginner from my movt, but nonetheless came over to correct me. Guess its not right or wrong, just tt some movt or the way to take ukemi etc were slightly different.
Later on in the session Dale turned up and took over class, and he was quite nice in the sense that he asked Tom to help me out coz he undersands tt i dun get what their nomenclature of the techniques are, though most of the techniques are pretty much what i've done b4. Then after a while he asked me if i could do breakfalls. I gave him a blur look and he asked Tom to throw him and he took a slam. I said yah I could, and so he segragated me with Brian, another yudansha who is an assistant instructor, and Tom to practice. We did randoori from various attacks, shomen, ryo-kata, ushiro etc from handmi-handachi, and then standing. well, i didn't get to be nage, but had a good time being the uke. haha soon i think Tom realises that i'm small and light and he dished out a lot of koshinages and otoshis. Actually they were really good and smooth. They have quite a knack for changing almost any techinque into otoshis and koshi-nages. i think their koshinages are very smooth and fluid, v little muscling. Gotta learn how to do tt!
Class ended and we exchanged some pleasantries. Dale asked me how i'm going to go back and i said i gotta go catch the marta. He then asked who could give me a ride and a couple of them volunteered. In the end Stan drove me all the way back to GT. nice guys.

Aikido in Atlanta

2006-08-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

After a couple of weeks of routinely going to campus and then back in homepark for dinner, i was getting a bit zoned out, and dun seem to be productive in my work. So today i finally got myself to go and check out an aikido dojo: Dogwood aikikai (
http://www.dogwoodaikikai.com/), is a hombu-style club, the dojo was 0.7 miles south of Lindberg Marta station, along the Piedmont road. I foun the place and went to observe the class. They have classes like every day, in the morning and evenings. They have like about four to five instructors taking turns to teach. When i reached the dojo was not open. Only this guy Steven was sitting at the door waiting. So i talked to him a bit. He just grad from GT last year. Anyway, the dojo building looked rather nice. Later on, some asian guy came and open the door and i went in, introduced myself and said tt i would like to observe class. The had quite a big dojo space, and white tatami, not gym mats like we have back in singapore. The instructor Jeff came and i introduced myself. He was arather soft-spoken guy, but nonetheless rather friendly. Soon afew more guys started streaming in. there was also this old lady, whom later i found out was 60 and a judo san-dan. Jeff asked me how long i've practiced and i said about ten yrs, and he was like, oh wow, tt's good. But frankly i rather he didn't ask. The class soon started with warm-ups. This being a general class, i suspect most of them were at least 2nd kyu, though all of them wore white, other than the asian guy who wore a hakama. Indeed, their ukemi exercise was the side-roll, and a foward roll using the rear hand instead of the leading hand..hmm..
After tt, Jeff told the class that he wanted them to work on how to unbalance the uke, and asked them to practice finding various points where you can upset the balance of a static uke. Pretty interesting. The class was centered mostly on concepts rather than precise form like in aikikai dojos. to me that is quite cool also, and is beneficial especially to more senior ranks. They did some tsuki-iriminage, some otoshi throws etc..may of the variations i haf not done before myself. but emphasis again is on unbalancing the opponent. Soon, a guy in streetwear came in and set beside me and introduced himself as Dale. I thot that he was also observing class, but turns out tt he's the chief instructor running this dojo! ha. Nice guy. anyway he's a doctor by profession. he asked me whether i had any questions etc. i didn't really have questions so just asked a few for the sake of asking. anyway, again he asked me how long i've practiced, and this time i said a couple of years. then later he asked me what rank i'm holding right now, and tt i couldn't get away so i told himi just got my shodan. Then he asked me again how long i've practiced, and i said on and off abt 10 yrs. That's more than a couple of years, he said. oh no..the stress is on man.
Overall, i felt that actually the instruction and student quality were surprising good. i was really impressed by the 60 yr old! she had a good understanding of how to unbalance pple. overall the discipline, the ukemi was good, and i'm afraid tt has to put some of our singapore practitioners to shame who take things for granted. I guess i'll step on the mat to try it out tmlo.
Anyway, Mr CK emailed me today...i think he's really pissed and wants me to mail him immediately. he said i can't stay at his place and not pay rent, and tt if he dun hear from me then he will assume i'm moving out end of month. well, t's just my intention as i've now got a much better place in Sept. and no way am i going to pay him rent for this month. he can take my security deposit and tt's tt. i won't bust another 500 bucks for this old shitty place and this business minded kid. he said in business everybody takes risk. well, let him take his risk than as i have nothing signed with him on black and white. Anyway i dun want to entertain anymore of his emails. at most he fly back from bolivia now and chase me out.

Day tour: Georgia Aquarium!

2006-08-12T19:27:00.000-07:00

Sat 12th Aug. In the morning we hopped down to Midtown Marta at headed south to Five Points Station. Then we went westwards and exited at downtown area. Our first visit was to be the Georgia Aquarium. Today's weather was distinctively different from the hot weather experience so far i had in Atlanta..it was foggy and cold! Is that a mark of the change in season? hmm... anyway the aquaurium was rather packed; at the entrance of visitors were subject to security check.

Georgia Aquarium: this building houses an incredibly huge variety of marine life from all over the world...from jellyfish to whales and whale sharks!!

Security checks has become norms in US since the Sept 11 and of coz recent terror threats. Check out the queue in the morning...and this is only from the outside. Inside is the queue for tickets. And we thot we were early.!

But once inside humans were quickly outnumbered by fishes (and various marine life).!

There were four main sections in the aquarium:

That's the cold waters...i.e. showcases marine life in the arctic..

The tropical waters..tt's what we see in dive trips in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand...feels like home isn't it?

Georgian Adventure...featuring some native marine life in the region..

River Scout...the name says it... freshwater marine life in rivers..

Everybody wants a piece of stingray...

Some starfish, or according to the person explaining, Sea-stars (Seeing stars??), as they are technically not fish.

The Robust Redhorse Suckerfish were thought to be extinct in Georgia until they were rediscovered in 1991.

Marine life in tropical waters has the trademark of a vibrancy of colors.

Some jellyfish...

The fish tanks packs an amazing view! these photos dun do justice to it...

That's the 'tunnel'...amazing view, and that's where you can see the whalesharks..the largest size species in this aquarium.

Trying to capture the whaleshark in picture is not easy...

A walk to downtown

2006-08-11T20:49:00.000-07:00

In the evening after dinner at home, Eric brought me to the downtown area, which was south of campus. So we walked all the way there..it was certainly quite a walk .. almost two marta stations away.! Along the way we crossed paths with a 70 yr old Polish old man to ask for directions. I dun know how the conversation ended up he toking about Christianity and then Germans and then Jews...this guy was obviously a v strong anti-semnatic, and he kept going on and on. We quickly excused ourselves in order not to get 'brainwashed' and continue to walk on.
After some more walking we reached the Olympics Centennial Park. This park was built to commemerate of coz the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Its has nice and large flat fields for pple to chill out with their families on the weekends or after work. Sometimes free performances are also held here, e.g. Alanis Morissette gave a live performance here last year. There were also some human sculptures and a fountain with display lights (like the one in Bugis junction) where kids (and adults alike) have fun playing with the sprinkling water inside.
Across the park, was the CNN broadcasting center. This is THE place where all the newscasters deliver the latest current affairs to all over the world. As we were there already quie late in the night, the studio tour was already closed We will visit this again on the weekend; so more details later.
Oh yes and also Philips Arena is there.. tt's the spectator hall where the NBA matches (Atlanta Hawks!) and WWE tours are held... Its v nice hopefully can get to watch an NBA match here sometime. There was this restaurant at the ground floor of the spectator hall..some kind of high-class pseudo-oriental chinese/thai restaurant called something something Buddha again. Hmm they seem to like to name their restaurants after Buddhas; and to complete the package there was indeed a large bronze buddha statue in lotus position meditating at the entrance of the restaurant. Because the crime-rate in downtown is well-known to be not v low, they also had a glass cage with steel frames built around the Buddha statue and lock him up. Anyway according to Eric the food here sucks and costs a bomb.
As it was getting rather late we started make our way back home. There were at least two Hiltons, Holiday Inns, and a Westin hotel in midtown and downtown areas. We quick marched back and tried not to stop, as there were a few stragglers hanging around on the pavements. A couple of them approached us either asking for $ or dunno what they toking, but we tried to ignore them and just went about our own business. Its not just the passerbys we have to be wary of, according to Eric sometimes the cars travelling alongside us, we must also be careful. There was a GT student some time earlier in the year who was walking when a car drove next to him and stop him to ask for directions. As the student peered over the driver's window a gun was pointed point blank at his head; he handed over all his bag and valuables and the car sped off. So, NEVER stop walking and NEVER get near the car when the try to get attention.
I guess, in this part of town, one has to haf some sense of what u call tt...street-wisdom?

First day of work

2006-08-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

Ok haven't been writing for a few days now...now trying to recollect some things for this week. Well, on Monday I made it a point to wake up earlier (7, not THAT early haha) coz i've been rising rather late for the past few days. Went to campus, supposedly my 'first' day of work. Was feeling quite nervous about meeting Prof EJ, who was my host for my visit to GT. Now, Prof EJ was of coz one of the most prolific academics now in the area of IE/OR, and he and his colleagues and students are really at the frontline of optimization techniques R&D. I went up to his room and introduced myself to him, and he welcomed me. He mentioned tt I could perhaps work on some atlanta airport project..but it was only a very brief meeting as he seemed quite busy. For the rest of the day i ws rather fidgety, and tried to start off some of my own work in my room...only did some Java coding.

Some pics

2006-08-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

Okay these are some snapshots of my room at 486 Calhoun. Its a master room, i.e. with attached bath.

Queen size bed and ceiling fan.

There's a closet behind to put stuff.

Here's the bathroom. Without saying I am solely responsible for cleaning it.

There's a nice bathtub.!

The living room...dining area where we eat our meals. Many long dinner discussions late into the evening here.

The kitchen..where all the washing and cooking is done. There's a big fridge, gas stove, microwave oven, toaster.

My office space in ISyE. That's where i'm supposed to do my work...

A pic of the Midtown Marta subway station...

Korean food (88 Tofu) after some tiring groceries shopping at Buford Farmers Market. yummy!

Right...i realised no pics of scenery so far haha... Haven't been taking many outdoor photos so far coz I dun want to look like a tourist haha...well but there are some places i visited...i'll post more next time!

First Week in Atlana (Recollections 8)

2006-08-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

6th of Aug Sunday in the late morning, Eric brought me to buy groceries at this marketing supermart where there were many spanish pple, koreans and chinese. According to him stuff were much cheaper here than in places like Kroegers. we took the NE line Marta all the way to the terminal station Doraville, and route-marched in the sun all the way the the supermart. We brought along our large haversacks to carry the groceries. It was super crowded and the trolleys were super humongous, so half-the time i was busy manouvering the trolley around the mall to avoid obstructing pple. I bought lots of fruits like peaches, plums, grapefruits etc, and also some vege, squid, beandcurd, soya milk, and a chopping board. Eric said i should get my own personal chopping board. After i loaded y stuff my bag was darn heavy i think over 20 plus kilos.. we walked to a korean restaurant to eat lunch; "88 Tofu" was the name of the place. The food was pretty good and authentic! And very economically priced. After tt with our heavy bags we route-marched all the way bag to the MARTA. Back in Midtown we walked all the way back home. It was rather tiring!

First Week in Atlanta (Recollections 7)

2006-08-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

On Friday the 4th of Aug. In the day was quite uneventful...i went to campus the post the mail-in rebate and then went to my office for the rest of the afternoon. On the previous night I saw an ad tt was letting out a one-bed one-bath apt in homepark so i got Eric to showed me the way there...we were there at night but alas..i was too late as the apartment was aready taken..sigh..timing is not on my side. I was by now feeling rather anxious to find a new place. the demand season is in and now its the supplier market.
The next morning, i was awakened by Eric to help him shift his bed and shelves..he got a temp room to put up on the next street. So i just groggily followed him to move his stuff..he got a friend with a car to help move the bed. After tt, i called this lady who was subleasing an apt in Lindbergh area. Another guy was taking a room so i could take the other. I decided that since Homepark is now rather full, i can try somewhere further, since taking the MARTA is considerabl acceptable to me. So I went down to Lindberg MARTA to meet the lady myself. That was the first time i took the MARTA; and by myself! Okay, it was only two stations away from Midtown. MARTA looks a bit older than Singapore's MRT; but the speed of the trains were certainly v much faster. Inside the seats are cquite spacious and comfy. At Lindberg station the person then picked me up and drove me to the apartment. Wow, the luxury level is way above homepark houses of coz, and it was v tempting to take up the offer. However, it was simply too out of the way for me; and only for the month of Aug is it for lower rent. after tt, i had to sign lease with the company for a year and find a suitable roommate to cover the rent. In the end i decided against it. There were simply too many variables involved.
In the evening, Eric and I once again marchd from home to the Catholic Center in campus. Wanted to attend the sunset mass there; but alas it was closed for summer break! Another wasted trip! Eric is not a catholic, but since he came to US has been attending various church services etc... so many denominations in the vicinty here...Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian...but no Catholic church!! Really miss attending Mass, but the other churches were simply not within travelling distance via public transport and walking...Today is such a waste of time...

First week in Atlanta (Recollections 6)

2006-08-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

3rd Aug ...Thurs. Today i was darn drowsy... do not know whether it was bcos of the running around for the past few days, the jet-lag, or bcos of the benadryl i took...or more possibly all of the above. Eric told me tt he'd be getting some sandwiches from the the store at 14th street for lunch. So i went to my office, but simply couldn't do much things. I was v drowsy and fell asleep till lunch time, where i made my way back for lunch, and then after tt crashed into bed for the rest of the afternoon. During evening time, we decided to set off the fumicides. We had to vacate the place for 4 hrs while the fumicides were active, so we setted off at 8 and scanned the neighbourhood street by street for places up for rent...took down their numbers and contact. We walked till it was dark, and had dinner at this place run by cantonese pple called Chinese buddha, u know, the kind of chinese restaurant tt serves fortune cookies after u r done. We had our fill, packed the leftovers (the portions were huge) and left. The food was above our expectations though. We then walked all the way to Peachtree street, the Midtown Marta etc and headed back. Along the way there was this club, outside the queue was unbeliveably long, snaking round and round and round. it was obviously an African-american joint, and many were super well-dressed in their hip hop garb. I felt a little out of place just walking past them. Oh yeah btw the Afro-americans here are exactly wat i always see on tv, the way they speak and dress and body language...to us its so drama and exaggerated..but ts right there on the streets!

When we got back, i opened my rrom and saw the biggest victim of our Operation Bug holocaust... a cockcroach lying on its back on the carpet motionless. The cockroaches seemed smaller and darker than those in Singapore though. Singapore roaches are mutations i tell u. And a with moth flying around, seeming to be concussed. I had a good night's sleep.

First Week in Atlanta (Recollections 5)

2006-08-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

The next day; Wed 2nd Aug...In the morning Eric brought me out for another orientation walk... this time we hit 14th Street. there is a barber there who cuts hair for 8 bucks. Quite cheap compared to the school one. We also went to the CVS pharmacy, and i got myself some cream for itch, and also some benadryl for allergies coz my legs were darn itchy from the bed bug stings. We also bought cans of fumicide for Operation Bug Holocaust. I went for the orientation talk at Savant Building in the afternoon..Sheila was the person in charge of us visiting scholars' visa issues. There were few other pple here..a european, indian, and two koreans. One of the Korean seem to had much difficulty with deciphering Sheila's english, while the other K-guy seemed more confident. Funny thing Sheila asked the more eloquent guy to help out his 'fellow countryman', but seem like he didn't even bother. Anyway, the main pt was tt we had to buy enough insurance to cover ourselves in case; coz medical costs in US here are exorbitant, and a simple injury can set you back a few hundreds or thousands of USD. So, better be safe than sorry... Also told Sheila about my case where i haf to transfer my DS to ASU nxt year..seem like not a difficult process for her. i aso realised i couldn't go out of US after my visa expire on Dec, coz i can't get back in, unless i re-apply for a new one in Singapore again. Oh well.
After the talk i went back to GroseClose, where i saw Eric and he told me tt the LeaseGuy's friend told him tt he gotta move out of 486 Calhoun by middle Aug coz the guy's friend is moving in. Tt came as a bad news coz it aso means the more i wanna get out of there, b4 end Aug. time to start hunting for rooms!
Memory is failing me as i can't recall wat i did or had for dinner that day... but i guess after a few days we seem to be eating the same things over and over.

First week in Atlanta (Recollections 4)

2006-08-07T06:01:00.000-07:00

On Tue 1st Aug morning, Eric brought me to find the OHR, ie. human resource. Over there i had to fill in some forms regarding employement in US, but of coz i was getting zilch dollars from here, but then paperwork must still be done. Finding the place took up alot of time as we walked quite a bit in the hot sun, and me carrying my Acer was quite tired. Anyway we aso checked out the Wahcovia bank in campus. Why we check out the bank? Yup becos i had to find out if i can cash cheques there i/o an account. As you know i bought a cell, but in US they have this thing called the mail-in rebate where u pay more than the offered price upfront and then later mail-in to get a check for the rebate..so mafan rite? Eric said tt's the practice here, coz the company can take our $ as a loan for investment and within the period that the mail-in the rebate they can roll some value out of these. In the morning we aso visited the Engineering bookstore...there they sell new and used txtbooks. Books are darn expensive here...dun think i will buy them here!! they have a scheme where sudents after the sem can sell back the txtbooks (provided they are good condition) and get some cash value back.

During noon we then went back to ISyE to look for Mark; the facil manager who then showed me my station..its a nice office i'll post some pics of it subsequently. The day went past pretty quick after tt; dinner was some cooking by Eric plus leftovers. Fortunately for me Eric is quite a seasoned guy here, so at least i get to eat some chinese food. (however, i find their flavoring super salty!). By evening i realise then my feet have been bitten like crazy by some mysterious bugs and were darn itchy. I went to clean my bathroom at night to make sure hygiene is in place.

First week in Atlanta (Recollections 3)

2006-08-06T21:30:00.000-07:00

So the next day is Monday. First thing in the morning, Eric brought me to get a cellphone. Getting a cell is rather essential as i need to haf a contact number for many things. We took a 'Tech Trolley' which is essentially a shuttle service in GT to Midtown MARTA station, to this place along 10th Street called the Tech Square, where the hotel and conference center for GT acads were. There was a cellphone shop there: T-mobile; I bought the cheapest phone and on prepaid scheme.
Following tt went down to GT; Eric brought me to the Savant building and I checked in for an orientation talk on Wed. We then went to the student center to make a GT BuzzCard; i.e. matric card la. Had to take a photo in the BuzzCard center. Chop chop made the card, and we went off then to take lunch at the student center. I ate a box of chinese noodles and a bowl of salad. After tt, we went off to OIT (Office of IT) to get an email account. After tt i went to ISyE to look for Jennifer Harris, the admin manager with Ellis Johnson's office. She was a nice lady with a thick Southern accent, so sometimes i couldn't catch wat she said. She brought me to meet Lorraine Shaw, the person in charge of foreign visitors and visa and stuff. But Lorraine was not in. So she brought me to me to meet Mark, a facilities manager who was supposed to be in charge of allocating my place. Well, my place wasn't ready, so I waited upstairs in a room where the IT pple were. This guy Andy then help me to apply for a ISyE account. Later, Mark came up and said tt I had perhaps to wait for a while more as he was still trying to settle stuff regarding my room allocation. I said maybe i'd come back tmlo morning then, and they were happy with tt. I left the building, and Andy suddenly called me on the cell, and said Lorraine was looking for me. So i went back to meet Lorraine, a nice old lady actually. She was going to tell me the list of stuff i need to do, like get the BuzzCard etc, but was surprised tt i got tt all done already (thanks to Eric!).
By the time i got back, it was almost dinner time. Eric decided to cook, and i could only make salad. He demo-ed to me how to fry the fish. We had some 'mian-tiao' (chinese noodles) and fish and salad. Dinner ended about 9 plus and we chatted for a while. After tt, Eric said tt he is going to show me how to do cleaning up duties. Wow. Clean the stove, wipe the kitchen surfaces, mop the floor, vacuum the carpet, washing the toilet... by the time it ended was almost midnight. I was really bushed!

First Week in Atlanta (Recollections 2)

2006-08-06T17:06:00.000-07:00

The next day when I woke up, it was already 1330 hrs. The effects of the jet-lag will be with me for the week. I washed up and P. Chew picked me up at 2 plus to go for grocery shopping, with his family. We went to wal-mart, where i got lots of stuff like pillow, bedsheet, a comforter, household items and appliances etc. Nextwe went to Kroeger's to buy foodstuff...bought lots of fruits...blueberries, plums, strawberries, etc etc...vege aso, to make some salad for the week... bought some bens and jerry too.. (Later on I checked my bills...goodness gracious i spent over 180 SGD in total for today shopping trip...)

Came back, dropped all the stuff, and then P. Chew picked me up to go for dinner . its at a place where a lot of Vietnamese are...like a Viet-town...had some Viet food...soup noodles...shiok after a long travel...Went back home and soon after crashed into bed. Simply very tired to do much things.

First Post; First Week in Atlanta (Recollections)

2006-08-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

It has been a week since I arrived here in Atlanta. Yup, will be here till end of this year (i.e. 2006). I arrived on the 29th July 1830 hours after about 30 hours flying and transit. Prof Chew picked me up at the Hartsfield Intl Airport. Very very large airport, later I learnt that it was the busiest in the States. It was much hotter here than I expected; now is summer and the heatwave is hitting the States... average about 35 deg celsius in the day I think. But of coz not as humid as back in Singapore.

P. Chew drove me to where I was supposed to be staying, this room I got on Craigslist, 486 Calhoun Street. This is where the so-called 'Homepark' is, the region between 14th street to 10th street...almos all the houses here are rented out to GT students. GT campus is just across 10th street. When i arrived...first sight of the place..goodness, so old and run-down. The guy who answered the door was a PRC housemate Eric. First reaction was a shock from him tt I'm paying 500 USD for the monthly rental. I've been conned, he said..the previous guy who moved out paid only 280 USD. The other housemate, the guy holding the lease, whom I liased with on Craigslist, raised it to make some $ for himself..and of coz, I was the fool who is getting conned.

Eric was super-duper welcoming, helped me move my luggage into my room. I got quite a big room though, with attached bath. Next he brought me to across the street to eat dinner; what they call Tech Plaza, and a eating place called Citi-Cafe. I was not really hungry, but just ate some tuna sandwich stuff. Following that Eric brought me across to walk the campus ground. Finally i get to see the famous Georgia Tech. The walk was about 10 min to the ISyE building, or the Groseclose building. It is right across the sports recreation center; like the MPSHs in NUS. Btw, during summer, the daylight is until almost 8 plus PM. He also showed me the Student Center, where there's a canteen of sorts to buy lunch; and the Savant building, where I was supposed to report on the following Monday.

We came back 11 plus and I unpack and set up my stuff. Eric started loading me with info and advice, and suggested that I should look for a new place to stay. I was like ??? I just moved in.! He quickly showed me where the chinese newsgroup was and where I could look for places. I was too tired to bother..took a good hot shower; and went to bed. Oh btw there's a queen Size bed.