CNY update
January 25th, 2009 by boon
I am busting my brains out over my physical ergonomics paper, but I am happy to be *almost* done. It’s bedtime, so I just wanted to send a post out before I grab some shut-eye.
The year has started out well, and the modules we’re doing this semester are a lot more exciting. There’s a new elective module I decided to take called Affective Interaction, and it’s the labs I love most. Yesterday we were playing with plasticine and coming up with gestural interface devices designed around affective states to facilitate interactions between couples. We ended up with a salt-and-pepper shaker (how mundane, I know).
Weather-wise, it’s not so cold, but it’s really wet. I think I prefer cold, to be honest, but I’ll shut my gap just in case I might regret what I just said. It’s good to know the wife is starting to get used to the weather, and has gotten addicted to weather updates at the same time. I am starting to think the summer might be a good idea. At least it won’t be so much of a guessing game.
CNY will be very quiet for the both of us this year. We don’t seem too excited to watch lion dances and hear firecrackers pop. There’s no such thing as “yee sang” outside of Malaysia, at least people have been telling me that it’s solely a Malaysian thing. So, we’re going to stay at home and eat lamb mousakka or bak kut teh or something.
On the topic of my dissertation, I am leaning towards doing something that involves observing people doing stuff in their daily lives – like washing the dishes, playing with their kids, mulling over the economy, and getting drunk. I just thought it would be a stark departure to my usual boring repetoire of building web pages. I’ve heard horror stories about ethnographic studies, like how much hair you can lose just by attempting to transcribe a hundred interviews. But it sounds like fun and I don’t have much hair to lose anyway. If that works out well, I can put it on my CV and pretend I know how to do “research”. 
Parents will be coming to visit in a few months time, thanks to AirAsia. I hope they don’t run out of nasi lemak on board the aircraft, and force passengers to starve. It happens. It will be good to see the folks here. And it coincides well with my term as well, as we’ll break for Easter around that time.
But between now and then, there’s a lot to do. Books to read. Articles to scan. Papers to write. Assignments to do. Code to hack. Food to cook.
I’ll stop here and let the story write itself, I suppose.