blogg! blogg!

Just taking a little break from staring at my non-linear Poisson Boltzmann equation, which I can't solve. Its for my project that is due next week. So far I have no idea how to do solve this. Its getting close to the end of the course, and everything is getting hectic. My director (advisor, as they are called in California (and probabaly other states too) grad schools) put me as a supervisor to this one undergrad for her end of studies project. Its obligatory, the student tells me, to do a project like this. People tell me its good to get an undergrad to do my work, but she never really did do any work for me. She's always late and never tells me when she will be busy or available. Anyway, so far we've been teaching her a lot of techniques and its finally time to do some real experiments. Well, guess what? She decided to quit!!!! Yep, just like that. She will take the F she will inevitably get, pay another trimester of tuition during the summer or whenever, and then erase the F when she takes on another project. Apparently she took on too much coursework or something, which is preventing her from completing anything. She sorta wasted a lot of my time since I have to teach her all those techniques and sit through with her while she learns how to take care of cells. But, now I'm a bit relieved since I have crunch time on my end, and I can't spend any more time with her. Meanwhile, the day before (which was a holiday for us), I had to come to school to show her how to pass a different type of cells, look over the protocol she wrote and counsil her on how to fix it, and of course she was late again. I started the cell treatment without her.

Life sucks (but not on account of the story about the undergrad, its more about the unsolved mystery of the nonlinear Poisson Boltzmann equation and the report due on monday, the presentation on tuesday, and the neverending homework that is already due which I haven't started)! Now I have to get back to my equation. Doesn't anyone have an algorithm to solve nonlinear Poisson Boltzmann equation for the electric potential profile.

Oh ja, we had Easter weekend (4 days) which was spent on worrying and being sleepless and going to school to treat cells. Actually, I took a day off to goof around with some friends and take a stroll up the Mont Royal, but I wore the wrong shoes, and my feet got cold, and it got chilly with the melting snow. Then we ate a burger and a lot of doubly fried french fries for dinner. That was fun, with the exception of freezing my feet off.

yesterday i ditched work and went to the sugar shack with a whole bunch of graduate students. it was a school organized event. this shack was supposed to be cooler than the other one. actually it is. there in the woods, we actually see maple leaking trees complete with buckets hooked to the spigot that was screwed into the tree. the tour guide, who is the grandson of the original dude who opened the sugar shack, told us that to make maple syrup, you need 40 liters of maple water to make 1 liter of syrup. and it takes hours and hours and boiling... the cabin smells great . there is a baker who bakes all the bread, he showed us how to make bread (man, thats a lot of bread, about 98 loaves of bread i think he said) in this huge oven. outside we got a horsey cart ride. after the ride, i was petting the horsey and one of them nudged me softly. i got horsey goo on my jacket!!!! good thing snow took care of it. they also had a store, where you can buy maple stuff. those things are expensive!!! i got some jelly for breakfast and some souvenir for my friend who couldn't go because they ran out of tickets!! the tickets were a great deal. normally it would cost each of us $23, but i paid like $5. well, they have to give us some discount for making us pay an association fee every freaking session.

so while we were eating, there was even live entertainment. the bartender was the singer and guitar player. there was this other dude who was playing the violin. they sang a total of one song in english, and the rest were in french. there was a table full of french exchange students sitting behind me. one dude really annoyed me because he kept walking on our benches, where i had my jacket, and he even kicked me without realizing it. anyway, that dude kept doing that the whole time we were there.

the entertainment had us do a dance. he got all the girls from our group to go up in the front of the room and invited the dudes to pair up. normally guys would rush to have their pick, but i guess engineering graduate male students are shy. (its an engineering school, naturally there are more guys than girls) so, the danse involved counting from 10 to 1 in different languages (just to make it more interesting). we were to bow, kiss each other on the cheeks, do a spin to right, a spin to the left, and construct a bridge with our arms. the girl at the end is to run under the bridge to the front of the line, and the girls would switch partners. this went on a few times and they finally let us go.

there were a lot of food, and you can keep telling them to bring more food if you're still hungry. they're nice about it. i didn't eat half as much i did last time and i didn't enjoy myself as much as last year though. last year we had a bigger group of people we know. this time it was just 7 of us. it seems less festive without all the other crazy people. our table had the most exotic gathering of people. there was one Tunisian, Canadian, mix Chinese-Canadian, Polish, German, Mexican, Russian, Indian (or i think Indian), a dude from Holland, and me the Taiwanese. i don't think we were singing along to most of the songs, since we never heard of those French songs. but we sure made a lot of noise as the biomedical engineering group. every time they said biomed engineering, we banged on the table. i guess we're the loudest engineering group. hehe.

next week we have a 4 day weekend for easter. i hope i finish my three assignments by then. i want to have fun too!!!!

# posted by Reiserin @ 3:12 PM