The Second Meeting

As you can see, procrastination led me to post like one week after meeting Mr Siva, so the two posts together. I had fun today. Fun is a subjective word. I was made to connect a keyboard and a Ethernet cable to establish network connection with an iMAC. It was quite an enriching session for me, that five minutes. Recall me being a self proclaimed computer idiot, and you can guess how well it went.

I was supposed to start on search on my topics with the existing literature on the internet via Google and LINC. I tried 'fauna of "Kent Ridge"'. Frustration came in the form of addresses. As we all know, many people from the university published many papers and the address is the same. With "Kent Ridge" in it. There were some papers that had similar studies conducted in fauna survey, but of little relevance. Mr Siva advised titles with "Kent Ridge" in them. My guess would be that it will indicate if there really had been any studies on the fauna of Kent Ridge. The search via LINC and a further narrowed search on the theses collection revealed little. Most were not related to faunal studies and the rest were studies made on other places of the world, other than Kent Ridge.

I'm actually thinking if this will pose a problem for me. One scenario would be that I would have little comparisons to make; another would be that I have little or no reference for my projects. Mixed feelings arose. I learnt later, that I would have to go through the records at the Raffles Museum. This made me feel better. Although it may be more work, I would have a better idea and on firmer ground when I'm doing my own field work, as well as to train my eye in spotting the many different forms of biodiversity.

p.s. It gets easier to write, but I start to ramble on.

The First Meeting

I have never thought that I would EVER write a blog. Not that the notion has never flashed across my mind before, but because it was daunting, to a certain extent. I am, what a lecturer from SoC would call, a self proclaimed "computer idiot". I am not proud to say that, just that it provides a safety net, well sort of; when people speak in terms I do not understand, I can excuse myself. I guess i understand the rationale of a blog now, standing in my supervisor's shoes, that it will help Mr Siva in evaluating if I have grasp the concept correctly. So on top of this blog, I have other new things added to my explore-the-realm-of-the computer experience. For a start, I finally understood why Winston persuaded me to get a Gmail account. He was practically selling it to me. When I asked my contacts to add my new email account, I've got the "told you so" from him. Furthermore he concluded with a "You will never regret it." Shucks, I think I'm not addressing my title. That was lesson number two: Be concise. So, the first meeting was rather uneventful, except for the fact that I've come to realise that my next semester will not be a breeze and that I was to one point questioning my decision in doing UROPS. There was a tiny part of me which wanted to just run away from it all and pull out. Just a teeny weeny part, Mr Siva.

p.s. I actually required some strength to actually click on the "post" button.