Thursday, November 27, 2008

RTSS nightmare

Just attended a mock-presentation as a rehearsal for the presentation of my first paper in RTSS.
I'm working on this paper with two profs, one from the embedded system background (my main PhD tutor), the other from the formal method background. It's my main advisor who will present the paper.
People from both area gathered for the presentation, and ... the question session started...
all hell break loose >_<
oh my, while my prof seems could manage all the questions, my guts churned listening to the questions coming.

I still have sooooooo much to learn in formal area T_T

It's half an hour after it finished, and I'm still disturbed in that how I'm still lacking all those knowledge.

I'm so far away from having the ability to present my own paper and defend it from all those questions.

While it's a consolation that
it won't be me who present it myself anyway, and I won't be able to even help answering the question since I couldn't attend it, and that I'm still a first year PhD student (well, ok, starting my 2nd year now),
still... I thought that at least I could possibly manage some of the questions.

It's so overwhelming in that this formal area is such a vast body of research.
Unlike when it was way back in high-school, or even in bachelor degree, where you have a finite set of references. And reading and mastering them will grant you the knowledge to master the material. Now, it's all current researches and papers which made up this body of knowledge. New papers published every so often. And I thought I've read soo many papers on it. But still I it doesn't seem to be enough. and the show of force (show of knowledge?) in that discussion forum scared me...

I'm still a looong loong way from home....

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

For my fellow Indonesian students...


Pesan Sukarno kepada Pemuda Indonesia

“Engkau hai pemuda pemudi yang ada disini, sedang mengerjakan investment. Kerjakanlah pekerjaanmu dengan sebaik-baiknya. Kerjakanlah sebaik-baiknya oleh karena apa yang kau kejar sekarang ini ialah ilmu, dan ilmu itu bukan untukmu sendiri, tetapi ialah untuk anak cucumu, untuk bangsa Indonesia, untuk rakyat Indonesia, untuk tanah air Indonesia, untuk negara Republik Indonesia … semuanya menunggu-nunggu akan kedatanganmu kembali agar supaya kamu nanti dapat memberi sumbangan kepada pembangunan tanah air dan bangsa.”

(Pidato Bung Karno di depan mahasiswa Indonesia di Amerika Serikat, tahun 1956)



I got this quote from a random mail, I just can't help crying somehow reading it...
Maybe it's because I'm just too stressed with my work here now...
but then, have I really done my best? Have you?