blue room

Please…please…please…don’t say “Thanks for the add” because it gets on my nerves. I may not be an English major or anywhere near English expert but I’m pretty sure that the article “the” is followed by a noun. I don’t think “add” is a noun. It just doesn’t sound right. Why don’t you just say “Thanks for adding me on your friends list” or “Thanks for accepting my request”? I know those are longer but at least you aren’t being a ‘tard.

One more thing: Text speak on the Web is downright retarded to me. Text speak is for texting, not for posting comments and testimonials or private messaging or posting shoutouts or replying to forums. There is more than enough allowable number of characters for you to say what you want in there. You, most likely, won’t get the message across clearly AND you are showing everyone in the cyber world that you are not smart enough to spell words right. OR maybe you really can’t spell and you are hiding it by text speaking. Well, do not fear because most web applications come with spell checkers. But if they don’t, there are online dictionaries available.

So, please…?

Today is a beautiful day. After performing my church duties, I went home and did nothing but relax, listen to music, eat, and read. I didn’t even do the laundry because I don’t know what has gotten into me last Friday that I decided to do the my 2 weeks worth of laundry in the middle of the night. So now I’m laundry-free…yey! I didn’t even text, my phone didn’t even receive messages (not that I don’t want receive messages from my friends) because I told everyone that I have no load (although I still have like 5-peso balance but that’s for emergency). I believe I really deserve this day…after weeks of work and yesterday I started with school as a student again and doing my all duties in church and everything, I do need some days like these to relax. Right?

I attended a seminar-workshop on Natural Language Processing (NLP) yesterday. The following were my thoughts while listening to the speakers:

• Speakers are people from SIL International. White men. Very tall. One has nice blue eyes (but old). They are very good at what they do.
• Introduced to SFM (Standard Format Markup), CC (Consistent Changes) Program, a stream editor, Lexique Pro
• I’m very sleepy, so so sleepy, my eyes are dropping.
• I’m having a nosebleed, especially the linguistics part.
• Long word: antidisestablishmentarianism
• New to my ear: computational linguists vs. ordinary linguists
• NLP is quite interesting but I think it’s kinda tedious.
• I know I should be interested in this, after all I have taught Automata Theory andFormal Languages and I know it’s not the first time. Unfortunately, I really don’t see myself getting into NLP research anytime soon.
• This is like exploring other possible research topics.
• CARLA - Computer-Assisted Related Language Adaptation
• I think that if a computer scientist wants to concentrate on Natural Language Processing, it would really help to study linguistics too, except maybe if he is a native speaker of the language he is concentrating.

That constituted half of my day yesterday. The other half was mainly battling against a very bad sinusitis attack while giving lectures.

As you might know, I’m a college instructor. My professional life is actually a 5-month semestral cycle, just like the academic life of a student. It starts when classes start and ends when classes end. In every semestral beginnings comes excitement and anticipation (even when the subjects you are gonna teach are not what you dream of) brought about by the commencement of a new professional life: new faces, new courses to teach, new preparations, new experiences, new blooppers. And every semester (much like every New Year), I make resolutions. I always look back the previous semester and see what has gone wrong (believe me, something always goes wrong like not being able to submit grades on time or being habitually late) and ponder on how to prevent things from going wrong again and promise to make things better for the coming semester and swear to myself to keep them. But, well, like New Year’s resolutions, new sem resolutions are never kept either. I do try so hard to though (that has to count for something, right?).

So this time, I thought of posting my resolutions for this semester (which has just begun) so that there is evidence that I made some and that you, dear non-existent readers, can remind me of them. Ok, here it goes:

* I will submit grades on time.
* I will come to class on time all the time.
* I will check papers immediately so that I can return them to my students immediately.
* I will be more organized with my portfolio, and just be organized with everything.

I guess that would be all for now. I don’t want to make so many of them coz that would be so many unkept promises. I know those are what a “good” teacher is supposed to do. Oh well, we all have our shortcomings, right? Hehe…justification?!

I don’t know what has gotten into me today. I must have been possessed!

This morning was my first meeting for the laboratory. My class was at 7:30AM and I was already in school at 7:15AM. Imagine that! Last sem I never arrived on time for my 7:30AM classes. I was even late for 30 minutes many times. Since it’s a laboratory class and we haven’t covered anything in the lecture, then I can’t have a lab exercise yet. So that our time won’t be wasted I decided to have a lecture. The lab was for 3 hours but since we had technical problems (nothing new coz we were at the “old” lab room) like some students not being able to log in and my monitor not working, I was able to start late for my lecture. Can you imagine that I actually lectured for the rest of the lab time? That’s for more than 2 hours. My next period, as it turns out, was the lecture time for the same class so I continued with my lecture earlier. All in all, I was able to cover 4 modules for that section and we’re ready for our first quiz. That’s totally a record-breaker. Moreover, I didn’t realize that I exceeded 10 minutes of the period. If you know me or you were my student before, you know that I never exceed my time. I guess I was carried away with making a good start of the semester, huh?

My next period was another Probability and Statistics lecture in the afternoon. And again, I got carried away and exceeded 10 minutes. The teacher for the next period was already waiting outside my room. Gosh! I’m making this a career. I must be so serious with this, huh?

In the next periods I was already conscious with the time so I didn’t exceed anymore but still I consumed all of it. I was hyped. I talked all the time, not even minding that I lectured same topics (and examples and jokes) for all my 4 sections today (since all my classes are Probability and Statistics). So I was repeating everything I lectured 4 times over…and I did it! I guess this semester won’t be so hard for me.

Is this a new life for me? Nagbagong-buhay na ba ko? Toinks!

I made a spur-of-the-moment decision yesterday. I’m going to enroll in a doctorate degree, most probably a major in Technology Management. Well, I figured I wanna keep busy with studying. I think I am more efficient if there is a lot of studying to do. And another thing is that I’m given all Probability and Statistics teaching load this semester, as I have predicted. How boring and monotonous could that get?! I haven’t really started teaching this semester yet and already I’m tired. I need some “spice” I guess. I’m not gonna hurry though, just one or two subjects per semester til I finish (if I ever will). Oh, I’m excited!

Oh, wait! Here’s a problem. I have no money for enrolment…none even for the entrance exam fee. It’s supposedly payday two days ago. Unfortunately, my clearance didn’t make so…here, I’m kinda starving! Huhu…I’ll find a way…

Last night, going home, while in the middle of crossing the busy street to my boarding house I figured this out (actually, I’ve figured this out a long time ago, I only put it to words now):

To successfully cross a busy highway, without a pedestrian lane or a sky walk, (and by successful, I mean, getting to the other side without damage) you have to take into account whether or not there is any approaching vehicle to your left, then to your right (wait, that depends on which side you’re on), and if there is, calculate the time it comes to you by dividing it’s distance from you by the speed of which it is approaching. Then calculate the time it takes for you to cross the street, assuming there are no obstacles in the way. Of course, you can’t literally measure those so you just have to estimate. If the estimated time it takes the vehicle to come to you is less than or equal to the time it takes for you to cross the other side of the road, then do NOT cross. If it is greater, then you may.

Formally, we can say that success of crossing a busy highway is a function of the presence of vehicles approaching, their distance from you and its speed as it approaches you…of course, your presence of mind too.

That’s one heck of an amazing analysis, isn’t it?