Happy Valentine's Day!

I had few hours of sleep only last night, woke up early this morning and wondered what's going on with my body and mind. It didn't feel alright at all while I was preparing to leave for the university, perhaps due to insufficient sleep and feeling tired.

Later in my lab, I discovered this bad news in my emali's Inbox. The server of a workstation I usually use for doing my research in another university has broke-down again yesterday afternoon, due to suddent power-cut. It was done accidently by the electricians.

All my data are stored in this workstation and all my works done using this workstation now cannot be retrieved while the server is dead. This is the second time I got the same problem. We spent about $500 to repair the server in the first occassion and now we probably need to spend the same amount again, or even more, depending on the extent of the problem. Nobody look after this server and workstation , and also the maintenance cost is to high because it is a Unix-based machine. I am the only student using it at the moment.

Bad luck!

And to think of the bad news arrives on Valentine's Day...*sigh*

Melbourne Weather

I was fooled by my own "weather forecast" once again this morning. Having confidence on your own logical thinking doesn't mean you can beat Melbourne weather, for sure.

It was cloudy above my suburb when I was having my breakfast this morning. The clouds were actually fairly dark and it was not windy at all. Yesterday was warm all day and logically I thought there must have been enough precipitation to form rain-clouds. So I put on my jacket, and then my rain-coat, just in case if it rained while I was walking to the university.

Ten minutes later, all the suddent the dark clouds moved southwest and the morning sun started to shine bright. I was approaching a busy junction without taking off my rain coat. Apparently it started to be a bit windier, therefore clearing the sky and the dark clouds were only local.

Five minutes later, I started to feel a bit too warm due to walking under bright sun with jacket and rain coat. So, I finally took off my raincoat, the sun kept shining bright until sunset and there were no rain at all today.

It was not too bad though because once I was wet due to similar mistake. I was confident it would have been a bright shiny day, apparently it rained in the afternoon untill evening, non-stop, giving me no option. How wrong I was.

So, the lesson to learn is: never trust yourself when dealing with Melbourne weather.

Expressing a Friendship

It was 12.05 mid-day, 15 minutes after the last service on Sunday ended, when I saw two old ladies walking out the church slowly side by side, talking to each other while moving along the pathway to a junction. The sun was shining bright, temperature was fairly warm and the sky was blue, with very few cloud.

Our parish is located 20 m off the northwest corner of the junction between North-South Huntingdale Road and East-West Ferntree Gully Road. I was sitting in a bus stop in front of the church, waiting for my friend who wanted to pick me up for our lunch, when the two old ladies passed by. The first lady is quite big, definitely bigger than Mum, she is an Italian and I think she is 50 something. The second one is smaller, but has similar height as the first one, and I guess she is also in her 50s.

At first, I thought they were walking together because they coincidently wanted to go to the same direction. Perhaps they are neighbours to each other. So, I continued looking at nice cars passing in front of me, there were one SAAB, some Mazda, one Mercedes, a lot of Toyota, one Nissan, many Ford, one Suzuki and many more brands I cannot remember.

Five minutes later, I still saw the ladies talking to each other, this time they were on the east side of the road, at the northeast corner of the junction. That means, they had been talking for at least 4 minutes at the corner before I saw them again for the second time.

It seemed they wanted to part way, the bigger lady going east and the other one going south. I saw them hugging each other for about 30 seconds, and then kissing each other's face and kept talking for another 2 minutes, hugging each other again and then they moved to different direction.

Thinking of the way they embraced each other, it was as if they are not going to see each other again next week. Perhaps one of them will be going away for holiday or long trip abroad. However, it could also be due to the deep relationship between them that possibly started many years ago. Whichever it is, one thing is definitely true, words alone are not enough to express their care of each other. Their friendship needs to be expressed with hug, touch and, of course, words.

I am sure we all have our own best friends in every periods of our lives. Perhaps we have met these nice and good mates when we're in our high school, university, at work or probably she/he is one of our neighbours. I am also sure that we have our own ways of expressing our friendships. Good friends do not come up often, so if you have even only one best friend, make sure you maintain this friendship forever.

There is a saying told to me by someone, "You don't need to have many friends, but you definitely need some best friends."

Drunken Ferguson

Sometimes, a footballer can be a comedian, when he does something silly and makes us laugh at him. I am still gigling since this morning after reading Duncan "Drunken" Ferguson, the mighty Everton FC "super-sub", was given another 4 matches ban by the England FA, after his 3-match ban expire.

He is a little bit mad, shall we say. In his last match against Wigan Athletic in the English Premier League, he got a red card only a couple minutes after he substituted another Blue's player, for hitting one of Wigan's player. For this violent conduct, he was given 3-match ban, after shown a straight red card.

Following the red card, he shoved another Wigan's player on the face, before he stepped out the pitch. The referee said this second violent conduct justified another red card. So Drunken basically got two red cards in one game, not even a game of 90 minutes, but merely less than 10 minutes. Is this not funny? ;p....

Behind a Movie

Imagine you are sitting in a cinema and watching a movie at the moment. This movie is given 3 stars up by critics, starring handsome and beautiful and probably famous actors, too. You are enjoying the movie, impressed with the performance of the actors and also the scene setting. When you finish watching this movie and you think you want to recommend this movie to your friend, how would you tell your friend about this movie?

I believe you will say, "Hey dude, Al Pacino performed very well in this movie, he is such a great actor, and blah...blah...blah."

There is one thing we tend to forget when we're praising a movie, that is the crew behind the scene who work together to produce a successful movie. Among this crew, it is reasonable to say, a director, who is the first person to watch the movie scene by scene is one of the key people, if not the most important one, in creating an excellent movie.

A director sees a movie through the spectators' eyes and minds. It is useless to have a good movie script, good actors and a good cinematographer without an excellent director who can blend all elements into a great movie to watch. This doesn't mean good actors are not necessary as long as an excellent director is available to direct unexperienced performers.

In the eve of the 78th Oscar Annual Academy Awards, 5 names have been included in the "Best Director" nominations. Two out of these 5 nominees are among the best people in movie directing: Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee.

Steven Spielberg has been nominated in the Academy Awards for the 11th time, with two wins for Best Directing category; whereas Ang Lee is only his 3rd time, no win so far. For Ang Lee, this year becomes quite a hopeful year because his latest movie "Brokeback Mountain" has also been nominated for 7 other categories.

The Brokeback Mountain movie, which is based on a novel written by Annie Proulx, has surprised its own original author as she previously thought it would be impossible for a Taiwanese born bloke to direct a movie taken from 1960s sheepherding-cowboy era of the American society. But Ang eventually delivered it, even it surpassed Annie's expectation, as she put into her own words, the movie is even better than her imagination was when she wrote the novel.

Now, I have never watched the movie myself nor have I read the novel, but I think this is one of the evidences that people behind a movie can make imaginations become "realities"...at least in the movie.

Diamond

People are paying too much for diamond...

That is the opening sentence of a radio advertisement which is played nearly twice in one hour, everyday.

Diamond is still among the most wanted jewelries in the world. Girls like it, and men like to buy it for girls, eventhough it is very expensive.

Diamond is found in a very old continent, such as Africa and North America. It is comprised of Carbon which has been burn by high temperature and pressurised in high pressure. Diamond occurs in the form of a vein or pipe, the "diamond pipe".

There are not many Diamond producing countries in the world. South Africa is one of them which produce high quality diamond. Due to its rarity and beauty, we will have to spend a fortune to own even a small piece of it. Unless...you are a geologist who knows where to find it.

So, girls do you want Diamond? I am a geologist, you know :)...

Jealousy

Be aware of your colleagues who are jealous of you! This is a serious warning. You never know what they will do to you when they hate you.

It will be worse if they think you're their rival, the person they have to kick out from their environment because they don't want to you to be more successful than they are nor they want you to get the promotion you deserve.

Jealousy can occur in all kinds of organisation, be it a small or multinational company, or even in an academic institution. Talking about jealousy in an academic institution, its effect can be much much worse than in a business company, although you would think academics tend not to think about gaining money for their own profit.

As we know, there are many smart people in an academic institution, but unfortunately some smart asses are also egoistic. They are those who tend to think "I am the best or I should be the best". These kind of human can be dangerous when they think they lose out on something. They will try to find your mistakes, blow them up and become the whitleblowers to your boss.

Eventhough you have many ideas to do something for the university you are working for and to your students, including setting up industrial standard research facilities in a university and trying to be proactive in recruiting new students, those all are still not enough. You eventually still lose your position, which means the research you want to do in the university will not continue, which is a pity. To make it worse, those people who are jealous of you are celebrating for your departure.

They are happy to see you go. You lose, they win...