frutti.gummi

I've accumulated a lot of photos during the years which i lived in europe.
Some are photos of social events but the bulk of them are vacation photos.
Some of these photos are my only souvenier of the places I visited.
I have to limit the amount of physical objects I have because it's a hassle to move from one country to another with too much stuff and it gets very expensive.

I wanted to show my family and friends my photo collection and I prefer showing the photos on paper instead of on the screen. I just feel that it's more intimate that way. However, I don't like the standard 4x3 prints because I cannot annotate them. Then i remembered about photobook printing services.

I really like Blurb's BookSmart but they're based in the UK. Their software is very intuitive and you can just drag and drop your photos onto the pages and move around to arrange them. I did a few pages during my last week in Europe but didn't have the time to finish it.

In Malaysia, I found Photobook and saw that they're offering 40% discount.
So, I decided to try their software. It pretty much does the things that BookSmart does, just the interface is not as smooth and sometimes it gets very slow.

I like the idea of the photobook as it allows me to have a combination of photos of different sizes and text on a page. I chose the large square book (11"x11") and managed to fit up to 16 photos in a page. I only have one page with that many photos though. I've managed put together a nice collection of photos into the 40 pages and have them printed into a hardcover book. I received my book in just a few days time. It was delivered via courier and bubble-wrapped in a box. Opening the box gave me the feeling of opening a Christmas present! Hehehe. Well, I was also afraid that I might have made some mistakes and was so happy to see that the book turned out beautifully :D

I got the opportunity to have the whole house to myself this weekend when my family went out of town. After living back home for about 8 weeks, I'm starting to miss living on my own. So I actually stayed home during the weekend and managed to do the things that I enjoy; cooking, sleeping, watching videos. Hehehhe. I cooked chicken porridge for lunch using leftover chicken drumstick from CNY dinner and some mushrooms from the sea cucumber with oyster dish. For dinner, I finally get to eat a big slab of meat; Steak with baked potatoes and some cherry tomatoes and green peas on the side. The steak took a bit more time to cook than I thought but it's sooooo juicy! :D When I set the table, I found out that my house don't have steak knife so I had to use the smaller meat knife to cut the steak into strips first.

On Sunday, I made bacon and egg for brunch. Although the bacons are over 100g, about 50% of them are purely fat! I don't mind if the fat is between some meat but the ones I bought, 99% of the fat is on one side. Should've looked properly before buying. Anyway, I ended up discarding half of the fat away since I cannot stomach just the fat alone.


I'm on a meat eating mode lately. Lol. Gonna buy more meat.

Although I had not celebrated CNY at home for the past several years, I can remember the super hot weather and the amount of food that we eat. For those reasons, I don't look forward to CNY and avoided being home if I could.

Well, this year I am home and it has not been a very pleasant experience, mostly because it is extremely hot at home. When my uncle's family came to visit on Sunday, I had to play host since my mom went out. Otherwise, I would have hid inside an aircon room upstairs. I offered them food and drinks and sat in the living room to chat with them. Although I could feel the air blowing from both the ceiling fan and the stand fan, I was sweating. My butt and thigh were especially wet and sticky! Was lucky I didn't have to cook but I did help with the dishes after dinner.

My family don't go out visiting relatives so we've been staying home most of the time. Hence, it's also super boring. At first I tried not switching on the aircon, but I eventually gave in and switched it on. I've been watching tv, videos, and reading books in the room.

After several meals of the same CNY food (chicken, Chinese sausages, roast duck, steamed fish, prawns, mushrooms, abalone, sea cucumber, etc), my dad suggested we go for Subway yesterday. I was so relieved that we can take a break from eating all those food coz I don't really like them. Hehehe. The fridges are still full with all those meat and vegetables and I think it'll take us a week or two to finish everything. There is hope when my mom suggested we make Thai chicken salad last night; instead of just re-heating the plain old steam white chicken. :D As for tonight's dinner, I'll be making spaghetti ai gamberi (prawns). Mom was being super generous yesterday and we bought very expensive tomatoes at cold storage, over RM32 per kilo! For four medium sized ones, they cost about RM15. Those are the kind of tomatoes that I buy in Italy. Hehehe. Hopefully they'll be as good.

So, CNY is not so bad after all. As long as I get to stay inside aircon room and not have to eat the same kind of food every meal. And I get to cook what I like! :D

During the course of my thesis, I was quite sure that I would be moving back to Malaysia after I've completed my studies. Unlike many of my friends, I didn't look for jobs or Phd positions. Instead, an opportunity came knocking on my door. My thesis co-advisor asked me if I am interested in joining his research group. The work that I do could be counted for my PhD when I officially enroll.
Since I've never thought about pursuing a PhD before, this will give me the opportunity to see if it's something I would like to do. After giving it much thought, I decided to give it a try. And so I moved back to Trento in Jan 2009 to start my "PhD".

I worked together with a bunch of other students in an European project and during this time, I found the area that interest me most: Recommendations. Since I had zero knowledge in that area, I had read lots and lots of papers to get to the state-of-the-art. Because it's a multi-disciplinary field, there's so much that can be done. Most of the time, I enjoyed reading the interesting articles and everytime I found a good article I get excited, it's kinda like treasure hunt. Hahaha. I read so much that at one point I neglected writing my research proposal and my advisor told me that it's best I don't read too much so that my brain won't get polluted. It made me realize that I already had sufficient knowledge of what's out there and I should resume my attention in my work, that is recommendations of scientific publications.

This experience has given me an insight into the world of academia. After about 5 months, I knew what I wanted if I were to do a Phd (it's a possibility now) and I realized that the current group I'm with is just not a good fit for me. I know that if I wanted to, I'll manage to stick it out for 3 years to complete the Phd but I'll definately be miserable. After much discussion with friends and family, I decided to put it off for now and just get a job like an average joe. I wrapped up my work in Oct and moved back to Malaysia the following month.

I know I like the research but I also know that I don't have enough passion for it. I guess it's one of the things that can be parked under the "nice to have" category. Hehehe.

It's been over a year since my last post. Occasionally, I did thought about updating the blog but had kept putting it off. Over the last couple of weeks, I get this feeling as though I have not wrap up the work that I have started. I mean, thesis submission is not the end yet!

I started writing this blog when I first moved to Europe for graduate studies. So I felt it should have a post about graduation; the end of graduate studies. Well, unless I didn't graduate. Hahahha.

The fact is, I did graduate. I received my diploma from Germany in February 2009 with pretty good grades (1.3 for thesis, woohoo!) and another diploma from Italy at the end of April. However, I did not attend the graduation ceremonies. I received my German diploma through the mail as I was living in Italy at the time. As for the Italian diploma, I picked it up from the secretary's office after I got back from my London trip. So yeah, I finally graduated in spring 2009 with two diplomas. :D

Update: The reason why I didn't make any effort to attend the graduation ceremonies is there's no elaborate setting and no graduation gown involved :p