Where do I belong?

Sometimes I'm not sure if I know where I belong. In the corporate arena, or in front of a computer? I guess I can't be blamed. After all, how many people go to work like me feeling as if they are a PhD student? Yet I am not a PhD student, nor would you classify me as a researcher, and I'm getting no guidance at that. But then again, I guess you just do what you gotta do and just see where the wind blows you know.....

So I've been learning something new everyday lately. And with everything new I learn, I learn that there's more things that I don't know. Now, that's kinda freaky you know, cos it really should be a nutty professor who's doing such things and worrying about how to save the world, not a government engineer!

Just yesterday I was trying to get the gist of nonlinear static analysis. I mean, that's the stuff that most finite element programs can do nowadays, so its no biggie. We learnt that in school too, all that Newton Raphson strategy with automatic load incrementation, stiffness update, iteration, energy norm termination blah blah. But Professor Filippou did warn that its not so simple, you gotta know when to use which parameters and which strategy. I thought it was all baloney, just turn on all of the controls and put the maximum parameters, that always works in the classroom right? Well, in the real world, your computer software (and hardware possibly) is gonna blow up in your face if you don't know what you're doing. And what matters worst is, what parameters do you even start with?

Today I moved on to eigenvalue analysis. There was this chapter on Guyan reduction. Basically that's good 'ol static condensation that you learn in school, just condense out all the undesired degrees of freedom to make your solution go faster. Simple stuff? Again wrong! In a real model you may be looking at thousands of degrees of freedom. Let the computer decide? Turns out that's the least accurate way....

Let's not even talk about meshing. Use the automatic mesher in the computer? Yeah it churns out very nice symmetrical meshes. But computational mechanics is not about aesthetics. Nice mesh often equals poor mesh, especially if your dumb automeshing software always takes the easy way out by mixing tria and quad elements, resulting in stiffness locking. Guess you can't rely on automatic meshers despite their claimed sophistication....

And there's more to come: nonlinear contact analysis, damage modeling, geometric nonlinearity etc. And I always wondered how difficult could it be to use a general purpose finite element program? Pretty damn difficult, if you want to push it to the limits and there's nobody else around to help you....

so u think you can dance?

Did everyone watch the finale of "so you think you can dance?" tonight? That was some hard core action! As expected the top 2 dancers were that couple from San Francisco (Bay area rocks!). Their moves were so awesome, coupled with their ever smiling personality! I mean, you can see they were dancing for the love of dancing, for the love of the music, winning or losing doesn't really matter. How I wish I could dance like that? Just feel the music, and be good at it too....

Ever been to zouk lately? Zouk was good last Saturday. Can't remember the DJ's name, some ang moh who was spinning a good mix of house and trance. I could imagine those 2 dancers grooving away at Zouk.... Well, maybe Spundae at 1015 Folsom in the City. Yeah, that's the place to be alright! The last time I went there I think was Armin Van Buuren in 2004, though I may be wrong. He brought out Burned With Desire when my 2 friends went out for a smoke. That was so AWESOME! And I got his autograph too, though I lost in eventually in the process of moving.... My aim in life? To go to 1015 Folsom every saturday. Okay, alternate Saturdays in the winter, so I can fly up to Whistler every other! ;) Maybe I should just find a job at Boeing in Washington state, just like C. Right in between, the best of both worlds. Xcept that Washington ain't have much good Chinese food..... Well, you can't have everything I guess...

Somebody gave me a gift last week. She came back from Taiwan and got me a bottle of Taiwanese wine. I haven't opened it yet, cos I've already had too much alcohol in JB and its time to detoxify haha. But it was wrapped so nicely and that really makes it special: the extra effort. I'm not good with gifts, to be frank. Most of the time I just put it in a paper bag. A nice paper bag of course, but you could see there wasn't as much effort in that. The last time I put efforts into gifts I guess was Freshman year in Cal, and after that somehow I never got down to doing it again. That was a long time ago.... Guess I should spend more effort next time.

Anyway, I'm procrastinating again. I like to do the hardcore technical stuff. But somehow when the work is presented to me on a plate, I procrastinate, preferring to do the simple meanial tasks first. An article I just read says that just spend 5 minutes doing the hard tasks first. Then later when you go back to it, it won't feel so hard. Maybe I should follow this advice at the start of the day. I often take that 5 mins like 5 mins before knocking off work! haha

Back from JB

The long weekend is finally over..... Not! I'm still off on Monday haha! Well, this weekend was a project team retreat in JB using funds from our recent IQC gold award. JB is a city in Malaysia that is really close to Singapore for those who don't know. So what did we do? Basically, eat, shop and watch soccer! It's world cup season I guess, and a weekend getaway in a town where the world cup is being watched everywhere you go, there's no lack of entertainment. Wanna go to a bar? They're watching the world cup there. Wanna have supper at the hawker center next door? There's world cup there too. How bout just hang out in your room? Roommates watching the world cup!

The hotel lounge itself had a huge screen which was showing the game, of course. But they also had some skimpy chicks dancing and singing throughout the whole match, which means you can't hear the commentary. Isn't that the worst possible way to watch a football match? Apparently most people think not, cos the lounge was fully booked!

Traffic was really a bummer on the way home though. Which is why I didn't have much of an afternoon today. But otherwise, an unforgettable trip. Didn't take too many pictures though, cos despite what they tell you, I ain't feeling comfortable walking around JB with a camera slung around my neck. A sure target for robbery especially during the midnight supper sessions. I find it kinda strange that the super low cost housing and all is like right next to our 5 star hotel. I mean, once you step outside the hotel you are a prime target for a mugging..... Maybe that's why the only hotel guests who stray out to the neighbourhood for supper are Singaporeans and Malaysians...

We had lunch at this nice pizza joint on the ground floor on the first day. It was a nice quiet pizzeria, pretty much like pizza hut up a notch I guess. I had absolutely no idea that once nightfall beckons, all the tables would be gone, and the whole place would turn into a dancefloor! Heheh, the ultimate business transformation I guess! Even the pizza signs and menu remained during dancefloor mode! I guess the only telltale signs were the beertaps which were strangely not in operation during lunchtime.....