One Of My Best Duck Dishes

Korma Duck with coconut milk, lime leaves and honey

It has been sometimes since my last update. I had so much fun over the weekend. I went to clubs and got drunk just to release some of my tenses. Arghh..being a PhD student is actually very demanding especially the time because you need to make sure that you are not behind of your plan. Otherwise you have to be quick at several parts or stages of your research. I mean if you are currently behind of your plan, make sure you can do the next tasks quicker to make sure you are back on your plan. After several attempts and failed to develop my algoritham I had a long weekend holiday in London just for a change. I was feed up being in the office most of the time or clicmbing mountain over the weekend. I needed a change and didn't want to think anything related to my research. Yucksss!!!! Last Friday I thought I was dying and wanted to puke everytime I think about it. One way was I left my laptop in Wales and went down to London with no laptop. I think for the first time ever I didn't bring my laptop together with me travelling. But several days off made my brain fresher and new ideas came this week. So for four days, I think I've developed an algorithm although it doesn't work as I expected/wanted but the result was much better than last week.

Anyway, I should be talking about one of my best duck dishes. Fuhhh!!! I must admit this is one of the best. Maybe not the best but I am certain in my top 5 among more than 20 duck dishes I can cook. How to make it? Mmmm...not that difficult. In fact quite easy as long as you know the ingredients. The most important thing is to roast the duck in an oven for about 1 hour 45 minutes (or 2 hours). But I prefer less than 2 hours because I don't really want the duck get dried. I like it moist and make sure the skin doesn't get crisped. Once the duck is cooked carve the breast and chop it into small portions. The most important is its gravy. A few things that you need to mix and fry them together. Here they are;  Kaffir lime leaves, korma curry, coconut milk, honey, onions, chicken stock, lemon juice and salt. These are easy to get and you can get all of them from a single shop like Morrissons, Tesco or even Asda. So just fry them all together with olive oil of course or corn oil (doesn't matter). When the gravy is boiling just put it in a plate where you put the chopped duck! That's it! simple but very delicious. I would personally rate this 4.7/5.0!! I had a duck dish somewhere in Oxford and my personal rate was 4.8/5.0. So I'm still learning and finding the best ingredients to get the best taste for duck!

Just A Love Letter

Well, it has been sometimes since I made something through my emotions. Today is really bad. Probably one of my worst days ever! It started since yesterday when everything didn't go what I wanted. And my thought got so chaos with everything. Memories came to my head disturbed my concentration and went into my emotions made me feel a little bit upset and emotionally unstable. But I managed to controlled myself until today's afternoon when once again my plan didn't work and emotions were playing up and I just couldn't concentrate what I was doing in the office.

I went out of the office very early today about 3PM or a bit early which I never done it before but then I can't take it anymore. I needed a rest and when I got back at home (I had my hair cut on the way back home) I had my bath and shower (yes both). Listening to several sad songs (i don't know why they were sad songs but it felt nice soaking my body in the tab). Anyway...I had my dinner and after dinner I wrote something from my heart and how I feel about love.

Take my hand,
Hold it tight and touch my face,
Down my chest,
Can you feel my heart?
It's beating faster than you ever know.
Can you see that you are always there?
Always at the centre of my heart.

Do you know what does it means?
It's not just a love
But,
It's a love with tears, blood and flesh,
Love with tears means emotions,
Love with blood means sacrifice,
Love with flesh means togetherness,
Because love with tears, blood and flesh means unbreakable,
When love is unbreakable it stays forever,
When love stays forever it means it never dies,

That's why love never lies
That's why you can't deny love
Because once you denied it
It hurts you.
To mend a broken heart is tough and painful,
So when it comes to love,
Don't forget
Love needs tears, sacrifice and togetherness
But it has either happiness or painfulness

Originally written by: Jungle Boy
23/08/2012
8.15PM in  a conservatory of Aberaron Village
Wales, UK

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday.......
Yeah...yesterday was a history and today is a plan as tomorrow is the future. I've heard this so many times and this is absolutely true. Anyway, yesterday was a lot of stress with much heavier work carried by my little tiny brain. Sometimes I said to myself that those are too much and I would never be able to handle or even to solve it. I came to the office almost 11AM. My brain was struggling thinking about what shall I do today. Arghhh...what a day. I wasn't in a mood at all to do what I suppose to do. Lots of journals on my desk and some of them I've read 3 or 4 times. Pretty boring and I tried not to look any of the journals as it makes me feel like I should do this method of the other method. I've tried several method and none of them has the potential to achieve for what I want. An hour later I started drinking my coffee in the flask I filled in about couple of hour ago. As usual coffee is a good booster especially brain. I then slowly persuading myself to open MatLab. With a my laziness I slowly pushing my brain to think about something else. Something new with a better prospect to do what I want to do. Although it's still very early to say but then based on its logic plan, it seems like this has a very good potential to do a segmentation. Although some of my friends thought it's something very weird idea but I was so firmed to myself that this technique would work. After several hours mingling on MatLab I completed 70% of the algorithm (or maybe 80%).  With that piece I did a few pretests and it shows very good potential to do what I want to do. Although the result is still very uncertain but then this should be a good start for me to achieve my first objective.

Today.........
I didn't need a coffee to start the engine of my brain. I came to the office quite early and feel very excited to start MatLab. In fact, I couldn't sleep well last night because my brain didn't stop thinking about this algorithm. Now I am doing it and I hope to see some potential results by today...

Frustrated With the Weather

How I miss to have a holiday here again

Well, it's almost 3 months since I came to Wales in June 2012 and been living to the UK almost 3 years now but on and off otherwise I would die. The main problem here in the UK is the weather. People are talking about the weather and again, again and again. When the sun came out many people will go out and enjoying the sun but when the thick dark cloud came everybody will be miserable. Well, not quite true because some people like it cool as they say it feels fresher and nice. But not for me because the cool weather here is actually doesn't feel very nice because the wind is always blowing and this makes the cool weather feels cold.

I really enjoy the hot weather

Well, maybe for someone who likes to trap himself/herself indoor and doesn't keen to enjoy the outdoor activities like camping, picnic, hiking, this kind of weather is good for them but someone like me who likes to explore places this is far too cold for me. Anyway, I'm complaining the weather at the moment and feel a little bit frustrated with it. Although I have been here for three years already but I still feel I need warm weather rather than thick kind of climate.

Nice weather that's what I'm looking for

 For 3 months summer we only had a few days hot weather. I mean that's not enough at all. When the summer comes it should be at least 80% should be hot (or at least warm) days and it's okay for the other 20%. But it's true what my friend said last time. He said something about the weather in Wales is always wet and dull. I thought I already used to it but then this year's summer gives me the real challenge of being a British. At the moment there are only two factors make me staying here in the UK. The first one is the money and followed by their best education. If not because of those factors I would never wanted to live in this country.

I can even sleep under this very nice weather

The old say "the grass is always greener on the other side of the land" (something like this i think!). A perfect place is heaven and as long as we are living in the world, there are always complains. I know sometimes Malaysia gets very hot but then that doesn't not stay long. In a few days it will change not like the weather here in the UK. The miserable days will last up to a week and sometimes months. Anyway..I shouldn't be complaining too much because I am here and I must be grateful for what I have because my life is much better compared to millions of people who never had the chance like I have now.

A Stressful Day For Me

I'm talking about my PhD research again. It has been very stressful for me last week and this week. I have read so many journals investigating several method with a great hope that this any of them would help me to achieve one of my objective. I find it so stressful. Basically I have done 25% of my first objective and I am stuck at the moment. I have successfully extracted more than 10 features from an image using three different methods which are Lindeberg Edge detector, GLCM and Local Binary Pattern. So each pixel has about 10 feature vectors. Now I want to combine them (fusing them) but I don't know how to do this. I have spoken with several postdoc researchers in the group and they suggested me a few methods but after many hours investigating those methods it ended up with null result. Very disappointing day for me actually. I really hope sometimes this week I could get some idea on how I can fuse those features for classification without using a database as a ground truth comparison (it sounds very strange) .

Anyway, as soon as I finished in the office. I went to the gym and had change. A few minutes later I went out of the gym and had a 10KM run on the circuit in 49 minutes. Also a little bit disappointing because I really thought I would time myself a little bit faster. In fact, after the 7th KM I really thought I was doing quite well and had the change to make a new personal best record for 10KM. As soon as my watch beep which means I completed the 10th KM I quickly press the stop button of my watch and looked at it. My watch shows 49:00 with 10.01KM distance. Arghhhh!!!!! What the heck!!! I was about 18 seconds slower than my personal best. Very disappointed because after a weekend rest and great food I thought I could run faster. Mmmmm.... never mind!!!!

Tomorrow I must go to the office a little bit early not like today I came about 10.50AM and finished at 5.30PM and had my run just before 7PM. I am now a little bit tired and I need some rest before more difficult work need to be done tomorrow.

Friday's Dinner With Delicate Taste

Pineapple chunks and Chinese mushrooms cooked with vegetable stock

 There was a friend visiting last Friday and I was more than happy to welcome her with my delicious and very delicate Malaysian Cuisines. So I went to the office in the morning while she was having her walk at Haford Forest (the best forest I have ever been so far). She had about 4 hours hiking and it was a pretty long walk. But I believed with the amazing scenery of the forest she enjoyed it and every drop of her sweat worth for it ha ha ha..

Duck and Chinese mushrooms cooked with honey and black pepper

 When I was in the office with my throbbing head squeezing my brain I actually had a few minutes looked on the Internet to get some ideas what to cook. Huh! I can't find any and what I did was imagining something or some sort of very soft flavour and something sweet and sour to go with it. At last, a yogurt popped out of my heavy tired brain and of course mango has the flavor of sourness and sweetness. Exactly what I wanted. For the duck I have already planned to cook it with honey and black pepper.

Prawns and mango tikka curry and yogurt 

So as soon as I finished at the office I didn't even go to the gym because I knew I was late already. I needed to do some shopping at Morrisons and also needed to go to the filling station. When I come to Morrisions there were so many people shopping which surprised me. Why on Friday? But I would guess they were buying food for their weekend camping or picnics. I was there at least about 30 - 40 minutes and quickly drive to the filling station. Huh!! I was late, as soon as I arrived I had a quick chat with her and went to the kitchen cooking the food. I took at least about 1 hour 30 minutes to do everything. Since they were new recipes and I never cooked them before, I had to be careful in many aspects especially the flavor and the thickness of the sauces. In fact, I had to cook twice for the honey and black pepper because it wasn't enough to moist the duck. The prawns tikka curry and yogurt dish was great but the sauce was a little bit watery and I should have make it thicker. But in many aspects they were very nice indeed and she enjoyed the food. Overall rating I would give 8.5/10 ha ha ha ha if those two factors were perfect it would be 9/10. After this attempt cooking curry and mango I am now looking for a something different with very exotic flavour. Maybe cooking with papaya or maybe apples. Those fruits are rich with vitamins and should be good for health.

Weekend Photography

Bob is catching fish but how can I rotate this photo?

Bob is catching some prawns and fish. He said he did catch some and when I looked into his yellow bucket they were all baby prawns except there was one prawn which looked reasonable huge (not really but better than the other prawns). I really thought he would bring them back and cook some but then he released them back to the sea. Lucky prawns and fish. If it was mum..no chance..definitely supper!!!

Anne is enjoying sitting on the rock covered by moss

Anne looked happy and amazed with the beauty and amazing different shapes and colours of the rocks. I personally think it was okay and nothing special. I mean I have been to many places which are much better than this one but than it wasn't too bad because this place is just for a quick walk.

Very rocky covered by moss

After a little bit dissapointing week knowing KNN method does not work to achieve my first objective I went out to a a little village at where I live with two friends Bob and Anne. I went there for a photography purpose whereas Bob wanted to catch some fish and prawns and Anne wanted to have a walk. When Bob said he wanted to do some fishing I had a little laugh in my heart. By looking at the rough sea, it doesn't look like it's a good place to catch some fish or even prawns. I never been to this part of where I live although I
ran many times along on the cliff. So when I was there here are some photos I've taken. The weather turned to a glorious sunny day after a very dull raining miserable morning. Thanks God! You were so kind to me :-)

Anyway, my weekend was pretty relaxing because I did nothing much but just eating. In fact, I actually missed the some usual work which are cleaning the house, cleaning the car, some ironing, etc. I wish I have done them today because I think I'm pretty busy this coming week. I need to catch up so many things and need to make sure that I am back on track to achieve my first objective. Well I am on track but I mean I am a little bit behind from my plan. So I have to work harder now. On Tuesday my friends will be having a reunion in London but I don't think I can do it. So I would miss it and sadly I will be working in the office. Huh! very tempting to go to London but I can't do anything about it.

I still hope to meet my bruv in Dunstable this month before I get really busy when the term begins in September. Since I got the full grant/scholarship from the university I have to do some teaching to undergraduate students which I really looking forward. Till now, I will post about my new recipes in my next post. Take care all...and see you in my next post.

Climbing Tryfan North Wales, UK

Standing on top of one of the ridges

Being a PhD student, a fell runner who always want to keep myself fit, a part time lecturer (will start in OCT 2012), houseboy (LOL!) and a traveller is not easy. I have so many interests in life that I want to do but I don't have enough time. So when I feel like I'm happy with my research I will have a jump and have a quick travel. It doesn't matter where it is, I will do it!

On top of Tryfan mountain with lots of flies

Dangerous climb

Testing my freehand rock climber skills

Beautiful view of the mountain

Walking on the ridge

Well, sometimes after climbing this mountain it makes me think that life is like walking on a sharp ridge and we can easily fall to the right side of the ridge or the other side. But one if you sit on the ridge it will definitely makes you safe.

Lots of rocks

Relaxing on the ridge

It was Friday last week when the weather was really good and I was very busy with my research on KNN classifier. Basically I spent lots of time like 5 days just to investigate this method to be applied on my research. So sad after today's discussion, this method doesn't work for my first objective. I feel a little bit stupid now because for how many journals I've read, I should have known whether this method is adaptable for my first objective or not. Anyway, let's don't talk about it. It makes me feel sick and honestly I am so hurt because I felt like I have wasted 5 days of my time.

Okay let's get back to my hiking experience at Tryfan mountain which I did last week. It was a glorious day and I thought it was a nice day for a walk. So we left the house at 8 in the morning (if i not mistaken). It took about 2 hours or a bit more to reach the place. As soon as we arrived, there were many people who have started climbing and there were so many rock climbers doing their own things enjoying the challenge as well as the warm weather. My first impression of the mountain was quite good but then as we walked along its path at the lower part of the mountain it was quite boring actually. For me it was just like walking on a normal mountain and there wasn't any special things or something interesting with the view. In fact, it was just green grass with very limited view. Pretty boring actually because nothing much you can see. But then after an hour walking the view was getting better and we took a different route, not the one where most people were walking that time. When we reached at the upper/higher part of the mountain the sceneries was getting really good with different views. In fact, the different rock formations make the mountain so unique and very different compared to many mountains I've climbed. The last part of climbing was a little bit dangerous and I was a bit worried if the rocks were a bit loose and you could easily fall from the ridge.

After about two and half hours of climbing/hiking we reached the top with a glorious sun and very good visibility and almost no wind blowing. This makes the temperature felt so warm and even when we were having our lunch it was so nice and didn't feel cool at all. I really liked it. On the way down we chose a the longer path which is the path we suppose to take on the way up. This path was much longer but easier compared to the one we took was shorter but very difficult and technical. I realised that there were two more mountains near by Tryfan and would be my next plan to climb them. Would be really nice if we can do all of the three mountains in a day. Gonna be a long walk though but i know i will enjoy every second of it.

On the way back I managed to take a photo of this Ugly House. It's a small house kind of bed and breakfast i think. But one thing though, this house does look ugly. It's a pity i couldn't take a photo of the house. Otherwise you will see how ugly the house is.

Olympics Closing Ceremony with these Fantastic Food

Chicken with chillies powder and honey 

Fried duck rice with crunchy beans

Chicken Rolls with cheese

Huh...it has been a long week for me and lots of things happened. So far my PhD progress goes okay and I managed to get some ideas about how i'm going to achieve my first objective. In fact, I I'm getting familiar with MatLab and this makes me feel a bit better. I am still learning and not quite sure about a few things but then I'm sure I will get into it. At the moment I'm watching the Olympics closing ceremony with a beer which is very relaxing. Loving it so far and waiting for the moment where the Spice Girls singers are performing. I did a few things today. I mean nothing new just a usual things such as cleaning the car, hoovering, washing, cooking, etc. I enjoyed watching the Men Marathon this morning as well. It was really great event and I was amazed with the speed of the runners maintaining paces from 3:00/KM to 4:00/KM  for 42KM. It was bloody difficult to do that.

Anyway, after a long week I came out new recipes of chicken cooked with chillies powder and honey and also chicken rolls with cheese. I never cooked something like these before but they turned out so well. Something not quite right though. I think the chicken rolls were not moist enough but it was okay for a first attempt. After a tiring (not really) day with lots of house work done I did enjoy the food I cooked. So next week maybe if I'm not busy I will try to make different recipes. Huh!!!  All of them are either originals, modified or some of the food I've cooked are a typical food of Malaysian (But I usually will modify the ingredients)

For some reasons (don't ask me what are they), I don't feel so happy tonight. I'm having one of those nights where my feeling is touched and something is bothering my mind at the moment. So I need to drink more of my favourite beer which is Budweiser!!!! Tomorrow I want to get up early so I can go to the office early and start my work.  If the weather is good I wouldn't mind to have a 10KM run after the office hour.

Another Personal Best 10KM

Fantastic Seafood dinner

YES!!! I am so happy today because I made another personal best of 10KM in 48 minutes 42 seconds. After yesterday's run 49minutes 46seconds finished with little fatigue I knew I could have done better. So After the office I quickly went the gym and started my starching on the track for about 15 minutes. The weather was really nice and warm. I really liked it as it wasn't feel cool but just great for me to have my 10KM run. My work in the office went smoothly and one of the Postgraduate Researcher Dr.Harry taught me a few things in the coding implementation on MatLab. He was very helpful actually and thanks to him.

Anyway, I don't really want to talk about PhD research in this post but more about my new personal best. I started my first KM with the pace of 4:57/KM. When I completed the first KM I thought I was slower than my previous run. Then I increased my pace in the second KM and finished it with 4:46/KM and it was a few seconds faster than my previous personal best. The third KM I just managed to do it under 5 minutes which was 4:59/KM. Still a few seconds faster!!! The  fourth KM I was just a second faster than the previous KM. I was trying to increase my pace in the 5th KM but 5 seconds slower than my target to run under 5:00/KM. It was 5:05/KM (Slower than the previous personal best). I looked at my watch and oh hell I was really upset and said to myself I must run much faster in the 6th KM. I thought I was running faster at the 6th KM but then when I finished it my watch showed 5:00/KM. I was really upset again and at this point I didn't think I could make a new personal best. When I was running faster at the 7th KM my mind was doing a simple calculation what would be my finishing time. A few seconds later it seemed like I could have the chance to make a new personal best only if I ran under 5:00/KM for the last 4KM.

Okay I then increased my pace and and I can feel my heart race was increasing. I finished the 7th KM 4:52/KM. I thought it was still a bit slower and then I increased my pace again at the 8th KM. At this point I wasn't sure whether I should have done it or not as I have 3KM to go. When I finished the 8th KM I looked at my watch and it showed 4:48/KM. I said to myself it was better but then I wasn't sure whether I have the energy for the last KM or not. I thought that time I have to give all I have now. I then increased my pace again and finished it with 4:43/KM. Last KM, I ran as much as I can and I can feel that time my legs were really like jelly but pushed myself very hard. In fact my breath was getting very heavy that time. I finished the last KM with a really great pace of 4:28/KM. I never thought I could do that in that after running 9KM. When I looked at my watch I just smiled and really happy with 48 minutes 42 seconds. I just got the feeling I could have done 47 minutes 50 seconds if I ran a bit faster at the first 3KM and slow a bit from the 4th KM then maintain my pace until the 7th KM then increase my pace again at the last 3KM. Strategy is very important when running but of course your stamina comes first.

Okay folks I'm going to bed now and not going to the office tmrw. Another mountain on Friday!!!!! Will upload pictures on the mountain!

My 10KM New Personal Best

After a really busy day planning three different algorithms without knowing the prospect of their outcomes I had my 10KM run again at the end of my day. It was about 5.30PM I quickly shut my laptop down and then went to the gym. Well, I went to the gym just to get changed. I should have done my sit ups but after the 10KM it was almost 7PM and by the time I get changed again and walk back to my car I will be a bit late going back home. So I quickly went back into the changing room and picked my beg and drove back. As soon as I arrived I had my shower.

Anyway, more accurately 10.03KM in 49 minutes 46 seconds. Previously my personal best for 10KM was 52 minutes and that was back in Malaysia. I then changed my training I did train a lot on the steps as well as running on a treadmill with 15% gradient (maximum on that machine). I didn't know those training actually improved a lot my pace. Although on Monday my left calf felt a bit in pain after 3KM running and had to stay until the 10th KM but this evening was really good. Everything went so smooth and didn't feel any pain at all. It was all the kilometres I felt so consistent and controlled my breath. In fact at the kilometer 8th, 9th and 10th I still can speed up my pace from 5:05/KM to 5.01/KM, 4:56/KM and 4:35KM respectively.

By looking at my Garmin Analysis here is the report of my run. There are five Kilometres when my pace was under 5 minutes per KM. There were 5:07 (6th KM), 5:05 (3rd KM), 5:05 (7th KM), 5:02 (5th KM) and 5:01 (8th KM). My next target is to run 10KM under 49 Minutes. Which means I have to cut off about 40 seconds. To do that I have to run under 5 minutes every kilometre! I probably need to do 2 weeks training running on 15% gradient and also training on steps. So we will see whether I can do this or not.

Going to bed now folks...need to concentrate on my algorithm development tomorrow.

Relaxing Weekend but Busy Week

Before I ironed my clothes

After Ironed. Gosh they were a lot actually and not sure if I enjoyed it

Huh...after a relaxing weekend this week is so bloody busy. Well it wasn't really a relaxing weekend but I spent most of my time watching Olympics. I actually did quite a few things such as general house cleaning, cleaning my car, ironing my clothes, etc. Anyway, I don't hate ironing but I don't like either. So basically ironing two or three clothes are okay but not 15 or 20 clothes. For the first time since I came back to the UK in 2012, I ironed all my clothes which was quite tiring as it took about 2 hours to do it all (or maybe more because I was like stopped and continued again). Huh..but I'm glad I did it all because this coming weekend I don't have to iron many of them. Maybe just about three or four of them. So that was okay.

This week going to be quite busy for me. Firstly I had 10KM run on the track at the University Sport Centre yesterday. The weather was really nice so I decided to run outside of the gym. In fact, only a few people were running on the track so it was nice running on it when it's not crowded. I completed the run in 53 minutes 30 seconds. It wasn't very fast and I could have done better anyway but I decided not to chase my personal best because I wanted to enjoy the run while I was running. After that race I went to the gym and I had my 110 sit ups. Was pretty easy actually and my body already get used to it. I was thinking to add more up to 150 sit ups but then I didn't want to take the risk of having sick abdomen as I've experienced it before and it was so painful. So I better just stick with it at the moment.

Anyway, today was a little bit different. I had my meeting with my supervisor just before 11AM and then it was probably the longest meeting ever with him. I think we were talking about my algorithms for about 40 or 50 minutes. He usually stayed just about 30 minutes but an extra 10 to 20 minutes today. I proposed three different algorithms and two of them were a little bit dodge ha ha ha..I mean some of the parts are quite complicated and take time to develop without knowing the prospect or the results/outcome. So I don't really want to take the risk spending months to develop a single algorithm with very uncertain outcome. At last after discussing a few things and a few modifications he thought the second algorithm has a better prospect not only in the term of accuracy but also in the term efficiency. So I picked up the second algorithm. Now I know exactly which one to choose but there are still a few problems. One of them is I don't know how to combine features extracted from three different methods and then using those features for the segmentation process. Well this is the main problem. I asked him and his answer was "This is the main challenge in your first objective". I asked Raquel the Spanish girl and she has no idea. Well.. Tomorrow I'm going to ask more people I guess.

But before I want to think about it I better do the feature extraction process using GLCM first and then the second one of to get edge information using Lindeberg method. I never heard this method before but by looking at the results this looks promising. So a huge thanks to Reyer my supervisor for suggesting me this method. He also suggested me to do a noise removal all the pictures produced  using three different methods which are Local Binary Pattern, Co-Co-occurrence Matrix and Lindeberg. The images produced via those methods have to go through a noise removal process to make sure that any unwanted noises would affect the accuracy of the segmentation process. Well, but the problem here is how do you define a noise? What noise means? And how do you know what are we removing are noises and not an important feature of the image? Because some of the images may contain important features or regions which are separated form the main regions. You see what I mean??? It's like a never ending story. It goes on and on like a bloody river. At one point you think it's gonna end but then there are lots more to be done.

Okay guys, I'm off now and I had only 5.3KM run in the gym today. The weather was terrible and yuckss. I ended up 5.3KM in the gym running with my laziness. I wasn't in a mood doing anything energetic today. But I pushed myself for a short run 5.3KM in about 30 minutes. It was pretty slow actually because I can finish 5KM in 23 minutes and that's my personal best. I wish I can do under 20 minutes in 5KM. Wow!! I'm working on it anyway. Huh..I don't really want to finish my PhD when a big belly like most of the students in the department ha ha ha...I mean I want to stay slim and keep myself active and in shape. Mental health is very important but then physical health should come together. In fact, it has been proven that doing physical exercise releases tenses. No..no...no...don't ask me how does it work. But it does work. If it's not then I would not bother to pop in the gym and have my  physical exercise.

Okay..okay..I'm going and will be back later...zzzzzzzzz
P/s: Oh team GB is doing very very well this Olympic actually..so Well Done!

Half Duck with Chips My Unusual Dinner

This is a half duck with chips very unusual dinner

After a lazy morning today I actually managed to do a few things such as general house cleaning, car cleaning, I got my ice cream which was very nice but I didn't go to the office and I didn't read the journals I printed last night. I spent most of my time doing some general house cleaning while watching Olympic games. I was a bit running up and from one room git back to the living room where the TV is because I didn't want to miss any interesting moments. The best moment is watching Men's 10,000M final where my favourite athlete which is Mohamed Farah of Team GB won a gold with  fantastic sprint in the last lap (400M). Watching him running with a slow start but eventually improved his position from the first lap, second, third until the last lap when he speeded up and become first leading to the finishing line. That was just phenomenal after a great disappointment of him when he lost a gold medal just a few meters Olympic in China. This year he came back with much better stamina and strategy. Although he started slow with among the last runners in the group but he chased each of the runners as he finishing the 10KM. Wow!!!! Just amazing watching his speed especially in the last lap. On the other hand, I would like to say congratulations to the American runner who didn't look energetic throughout the race but then he did really well in the last 200M and his effort paid it off.

Anway, changing the topic for the first time I had something very very unusual for my dinner tonight because it was half duck and chips. Most people have chips together with chicken or fish but I had mine with duck together with lemon and tomato ketchup of course ha ha ha ha ha...But I really enjoyed it though although I know it I did consumed thousands of calories today. I had hearing in the morning, garlic bread and mussels for my lunch and of course half duck and chips for my dinner. What the hell???? I need to run 10KM every day now from Monday to Friday next week. I can't ruin my training as well as my weight. So tomorrow I don't really have a specific plan maybe just doing some more general house cleaning or maybe ironing my shirts. But I would fancy to have a walk in a mountain if the weather is good especially the visibility. In fact, I would not mind to have a run at Cadair idris mountain. My best time was 1 hour 15 minutes and my target is to improve it to under 1 hour 10 minutes. Huhh....anyway I will see how's the weather tomorrow....

Okay guys..I need to watch the Olympics again..see you again in my next update..

Jungle Boy and His Posh Breakfast

Today's and yesterday's breakfast

I got up very late again today (but it's weekend) and yesterday but had great breakfasts both are hearing fish with lemon and a tomato as well as white bread.  What a posh breakfast to start my weekend eh! Yesterday I had very little progress on my PhD. I managed to segment a few tissues although it didn't segment the tumour successfully. But at least I can see very little progress and I've read more articles/journals about my research which gave me more idea about how to achieve my first objective which is to develop a generic texture based segmentation methodology. I'm not sure if this methodology is robust enough or not because based on the previous studies made by several researchers they have successfully showed that segmenting an image based on its textures are not enough to do accurate segmentation because they believe that it needs different features which is colour information. Anyway I don't really want to talk about it when updating my blog. It's weekend and I should be enjoying it.

Healthy and unhealthy segmentation

There are a few things I fancy to do this weekend. First, I fancy to spend my time in the office but at the same time I like to watch Olympics. Secondly I should be cleaning my car but it's raining since I got up this morning. Thirdly I should be doing some general house cleaning and also I fancy for a couple of hours gym session. I fancy an ice cream after the gym yummyyyy.....it's everywhere actually but I'm not sure which one I should start first. In fact, I have two journals which I printed out last night and I should be reading it by now while watching TV. I had only 5.3 KM run in the gym yesterday and I'm still planning to run 10KM on the track but haven't got the right time to do it. It's either raining or lots of people running on the track. So I always ended up running on the treadmill.

Okay guys, I don't know what to update at at the moment. My Spanish friend Raquel texted me this morning whether I will be going to the gym or not but I was watching heptathlon and quite disappointing when the contestant of team GB lost her medal in the last 200 meters when the three runners from Australia, Switzerland and Sweden speed up and left her behind. In fact in the last 200 meter there was another runner overtook her and she ended in the fifth place. I can't really believe it actually because she did really well in swimming and cycling and also was  leading in the first 7KM in 10KM running but she gradually lost her position until the last 200M. She looked a little bit disappointed but then in a game this always happens.

Okay I must do some work now. I need to clean my car. Yesterday there were a few sea eagles perched on my car and dropped some shits on it which I really hate. After the car I should be doing some general house cleaning....okay guys..the sun has just came and I better clean my car before it disappeared. Happy weekend guys!!!

Chef Eats Rubbish Food

Chef eats rubbish food

I woke up very very late today. It was almost 10AM and I realised I was late, with heavy rain at that time. I quickly grabbed my towel and with my naked body I went straight the bathroom. With my half asleep head I grabbed my tooth brush and put tooth paste on it and cleaned my teeth. Fuh!! Felt fresher and had my shower after that. While I was enjoying my shower suddenly there was a funny sound outside the house. I quickly opened the window and so bloody heavy raining. I thought to myself I just work from home but then after a few minutes I changed my mind. So I had my brunch and  it was eggs, some salads and tuna which were quite unusual for me. I usually some rice (yes rice in the morning) or sausages. Anyway, an hour later the rain stopped and I quickly started my car and drove it going to the school.

When I came to the office there were a few people working on their projects. I arrived about 12PM and I thought I was the latest but then there was a PhD student who came just after me. Ha ha ha! I finished at the office at 6.30PM after a very disappointing day for me. I did several things today but everything didn't work at all. I asked friends in the office but non of them can give me some useful tips or opinions. In fact they thought I am doing quite fast and was impressed with my PhD progress. But for me it's quite slow. I mean I should be able to get some solutions or figure out something how to do the algorithm. On the other hand, my friends thought my first objective could be done as a PhD topic. Someone who is a postdoc researcher thought my first objective sounds a little but impossible because he said "every picture has its own history so it's not easy to do an algorithm which is able to segment different types of images". Gosh!! I thought "Am I doing something impossible?" Huh!!! It makes me think now that am I doing something out of my capability??? God knows but I hope He will light my dark PhD journey.

A friend Yogi, who I met in Manchester University emailed me an undergraduate lecture note about Morphological operations which was quite useful but my main problem is I don't know how to convert it to Matlab Code. This is my second week using MatLab and still try to understand with some other things. Mmmm...I'm sure I can handle MatLab once I understood how to an image actually processed in or using MatLab. I got the feeling my main problem is still lack of understanding in image processing since my BSc and MSc are in Software Engineering. I did a lot of coding in the past so I should be able to quickly understand MatLab which I did but just something is not quite right at the moment. I kind of not very sure what it is but I'm digging it. After I finished at the office about 6.30PM I went to the gym as usual and there were quite a lot of people today. I had even simpler today with 5KM run 0% gradient and only 50 sit ups (I usually did more than 100). Anyway as soon as I did those training (no steps training) I went out from the gym and had my shower.

On my way back I stopped at Morrision filling station and filled up for 40 pounds (so bloody expensive compared to the fuel price in Malaysia). Just imagine the difference RM200 (40 pounds) compared to RM40 (8 pounds) to fill in a car like Nissan Micra 2010. But I can't complain it as I am in this expensive country you either take it or leave it. But I'm taking it and that's why I'm doing my PhD here and did my master in this country as well. As soon as I finished in the filling station I drove back going home and had my dinner. Something rubbish because I wasn't in a mood to cook for a dinner so I did something very simple and they looks rubbish actually. They were some rice, eggs and also noodles. They were typical kind of dinner especially Malaysian students. Yeah they were rubbish but I didn't mind at all because I am tired. I am updating my blog with my eyes are dropping and watching the Olympics on BBC. Huh....Okay guys I am going to bed now and feeling quite sleepy. I should be getting up early tomorrow so I can go to the office a bit early and do more stuffs especially the bloody algorithm. Huh...sleepy and night night ....

Slow PhD Progress Like a Tortoise

I had kind of short session in the gym today. I went out of the office about 5.10PM with my throbbing brain as I can feel it. I had a short discussion with my friend Raquel who was very generous explaining to me about the source code to extract different colours in an image. It was about 30 minutes then I realised that I should be heading off to the gym. I quickly went out of the office and started my car going to the gym. There was a space exactly in front of the gym building where I parked my car. I started my training in the gym about 5.30PM and finished just after 6.40PM. I had a quick run on the treadmill for 5KM in 23 minutes but on a 0% gradient. I did a little bit different because I wanted to test my legs and stamina running on a flat ground after been more than two weeks training on 15% gradients  and on steps training. I can feel quite  a lot of improvement in the terms of stamina. Before I trained running on 15% gradients I started feel fatigue after 2.5KM but this evening I felt fatigue after 4KM. That was really good but then there was a problem. I wasn't sure whether it was because I didn't do enough stretching or other reasons but just after 0.5KM my calf felt uncomfortable and as I was going faster I felt quite hurt until I finished my run I was struggling to walk. In fact I had to stop and stood up leaning against the wall for a rest. It was quite unusual actually because I never had it before. At the same time I assume another possible problem is I didn't drink enough plain water this week. As a result my body was dehydrated and didn't have enough fluid to carry oxygen to my body. Well I'm not sure what exactly happened to my legs this evening when I was running but surely something went wrong. I hope my training on steps are not affecting my calf muscles.

Changing the topic, my PhD progress goes very very slowly at the moment (Although all most of my friends though I'm doing quite fast). I think I did reasonably fast putting together things what I want to do but then I am at the moment stuck at one point achieving my first objective. The problem is I don't know how to capture and manipulate the information from a binary image. I  was looking for an example of algorithm to be able to do this sort of things but I couldn't find any. Quite depressing when I come to the office and you nothing you've done. So I didn't do anything on my algorithm but I read more articles/journals just to understand more things about Local Binary Pattern. I think this is one of the problems so far and the main huge problem. I just hope I will be able to find the solution for this. I have about four months to do this thing and I really desperate to do this as soon as possible. Once I've done this I think I should okay already for the other three objectives. I came to the office 10.45PM and started my PC. I quickly trying to solve the algorithm for about 3 hours but it ended nothing changed at all. In fact, the more I tried to do the more it gets fucked!!I was very upset but the gym made me fresher again. I really enjoy my sessions in the gym so far because that is the only way for me to get my head out of my research. At home I usually just watching TV since it's Olympics and I love sports and also updating my blog.

Anyway I hope to go to the office very early tomorrow so I can start early and finish at the office at 4.30PM. This therefore will give me more time in the gym. I did quite small amount of training in the gym actually today. I climbed only 30 floors, ran on a zero gradient for 5KM and 110 sit ups. I should have climbed at least 150 floors but I came quite late so I just stopped it and had my shower then gone home. Anyway guys, I'm going to bed now and hopefully do a little more progress on my algorithm. Okay guys...gotta go now and  good night :-)

Oh No my PhD is Demanding too Much

Maybe it's time for me to say my PhD is too demanding (I'm sure it's a usual case). I will eat a lot when I'm in this very tense situation and I don't like it at all. The picture above was taken in Manchester during summer school when we were in the pub watching football match. So all I had was a huge dinner (I was hungry) double burger with chips, two bottles of Budwiser Beer and also a large glass of Carlsberg. Loved them though. Anyway, back to the office work. I have planned my algorithm and all I did today was converting it into a source code. I implemented one by one, piece by piece. At the beginning it works okay but as I doing the harder part of the algorithm and tried to run it everything went shit!! Honestly, It just didn't work and the segmented result was rubbish. I was very calm at the beginning but then at last after tired doing more and more useless modifications I fed up and  wanted to cry in the office. Arghhh..it was very disappointing. Although, I did achieved what I wanted to do today  but I was trying to do a little bit more but it was all ended up rubbish.

So after office I went to the gym and I had 3.7KM with 15% gradient and 160 floors climbed. So after the training. I went to the gym with a friend, Raquel but she did just something light. I had something simple for dinner but it was okay because it was quite tasty. Not too bad actually. Anyway...I am mentally quite tired today although physically fresh. I need the bed now and get some rest. I will update tomorrow again..