Because only love can hurt like this

Hi ya... having an afternoon break at the moment...working from Belfast and trying to do so much school work as I can. I think I've done my conference slides presentation for Italy and then today been doing my camera ready paper for Portugal (camera ready means a final version of your conference paper before it gets published)...I think I've done most of it but there are a few bits and pieces which I need to finalise and perhaps think carefully how I'm going to present it in my paper. I think some of the comments from the reviews are a bit confusing (sounds like they missed some of my points)...Anyway.....let do the actual content of this post.

True...love hurts you differently...love does not left scars physically but emotionally. Believe it or not...love is probably the most painful thing I have ever felt in my life. When you thought you got the person that you love the most and finding out that you are losing the person...you started to think "here we go..same old story"....some people say the first cut is the deepest but some people say the last one is the killer....well i kind of agree for both of them...I certainly have experienced the first one and I think I might just on the edge of the second one.

When you are already in love with someone..no matter how hard or how difficult the obstacles are you will be always in love. At least that's what I feel at the moment anyway. I know and I understand..trust needs to be showed. I couldn't agree more....lots of people can say the three magic words but not all of them can do it in reality. You know what I mean the three magic words right?

Sometimes making someone to trust you is very difficult. This is typical world..people judge other people so quickly without knowing the reality. Things happened for reasons....this is world...people judge you based on texts, letters, mails or anything without knowing or thinking "why did he/she do it". If you judge people based on texts....may I know if you judge genuinity based on texts as well? yeah..that's the problem right? Nowadays, people like to show how much they know about someone based on what they read or see instead of what they have experienced. Remember..seeing something is much easier than experiencing something. If you have experience it then you know how good or difficult it is and then you started to realise about finding other alternative.

Yes I did write about money is important than romance...oh yeah....but before you judge me based on this have you ever experience what I have been through in my life? Have you ever know anything about myself? If I ask you what life means..do you really know what life is in practical? Or would you define life based on what you've read from books. I might be younger than you (yes you...i know you are reading my blog)..but age never defines how much experience do you have in life. Anyway...I'm not that kind of guy who likes to argue about something. I always walk away from arguments...because I know arguments never solve problems.

Remember...every person is unique and never ever judge a person based on his opinion unless you really know him/her inside out. People say something based on what they have experienced in life...like you...you have different view about something which are completely different than the other people. But your opinion doesn't represent the rest of yourself...or does it? It just means that you have experience something different than the rest of the other people. Oh well...enough for now....I better continue my camera ready paper :-) Ta'da :-)

I'm the one by your side

My legs are a bit tired tonight but still want to update my blog just to make it alive again. I started this blog about five or six years ago and ever since I always try to make sure this blog is stay alive.

You know when you are in a relationship right? It feels so good and everyday you feel like you always have something that you'll be looking forward. Everyday the person's name is on your head and you remember all the things that you used to do together, you feel like the person is just perfect for you and you just don't want to lose that person.

But in some cases, some people have been in relationships before the person met you. Sometimes in your conversion, the person talks about his/her past. Some of them had really good ones. I mean really good relationships. But for some reasons "it is better to leave than to hold on". There are so many reasons this happened...and one of them is death.

Okay okay some of you did not understand what I'm trying to say. Let's put it straight to the point. Dating with someone who had an amazing relationship but his/her gf/bf passed away just before they got married.

So basically, every time you are having a date with the person you always feel like you are being compared (even if the person never compared). Don't you feel that way? I do...most of the time. Sometimes I feel like I want to be better than the person's previous partner/bf/gf. But you know what..I've read a book about dating (I can't believe I was reading it) and according to that book, never compete with a ghost and the ghost will be always the winner. You will end up a loser and disappointed in the relationship.

So this kind of relationship scares me a lot... I don't expect to be better than the previous one in all aspects but I do want to be better in many aspects. Because I always have the thoughts if the the person's previous one is better than I might be forgotten easily because the ghost will be always in his mind. Eventually you might end up an uncertain relationship. What's the point of being in a relationship if your the person past is always the background and shadow in between you and him/her?

As the song says...he's gone....but he's still in your mind...he's the background of our relationship...makes me feel like i'm number one but i'm not the only one :-(

Yeah...he had a perfect heart and flawless but he's gone and i'm the one by your side....i can see in your eyes that you are not ready though you've said you are....we can't smoke without the fire i'm afraid :-(

Second Best after a Ghost?

It's Saturday and I am just getting up with a slight sun shine shooting my face. It is quite cool out there but still I have to go to my lab. About a month ago I was loosing my concentration doing my PhD. I tried to focus but there were so many personal problems happening that time. I played the clown and tried to cover up all the doubts. In fact, I wanted to just stopped and pull out of the journey of my PhD despite having 7 publications after 2 years 3 months (more than half way of my PhD). It was so tiring and personal problems made it even worst than I ever thought.

Anyway..i'm writing this because of the doubts shouting and playing on my mind. In fact there were whispering into my ear saying that I am taking probably the biggest risk of my life. I have taken so many risks in the last 29 years of my life but I have never done something like this. I am in the third year of my PhD (hopefully to finish soon) and if the relationship failed to work before I finish my writing up it would be a disaster for me. This, once happened to me when I was doing my undergraduate back in Malaysia. As a result of that I got B- in most of the modules I've taken despite my aims to get B+ and A- in all modules. But that was different than the one which I'm currently working on. It's a PhD and the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Everything is over the top of my head and if I slipped my concentration I will be in trouble.

For the first time ever since I was born on this earth.....I am reading a book about a relationship..it sounds funny as I am not really into novels or some sort of books which tell me about how to do things..but this time I am in it and I am riding tying to understand where exactly I am in this situation.

Entering into a relationship and fully committing into it is a risk...a huge risk really. I don't want to be the second best or next best after a ghost. I've been reading several articles on the internet and they were all very fascinating. After reading probably 5 or 6 articles, my brain is telling me that I should be more cautions when it comes into this kind of relationship. This time is so different.....

However, my heart is telling me that love is all about patient...let it grow slowly and eventually you will see the fruits. But am I being too jealous here? or am I being just over the top? or am I being disrespectful to the one who had gone two years ago? I understand the memories you've made together. I didn't expect you to change within seconds and I didn't expect you to forget everything about what you have been through with your late partner. My heart is singing every day and he's getting excited every day but my brain keeps telling him to put a great wall in front of him. Just in case something might happen before I finished my PhD..at least I would not be crumbling though I might be crushed out and tumbling.

I have a heart...and the only heart I have is the one I'm risking at the moment. I don't want to be a filler or just to fill in a hole in your broken heart. That makes me feel like I am the medicine of your broken heart because someday the medicine might be not working anymore and eventually we have to end it. Though you said I am the number one and the only one out of 6.5 billions people in this world but I suppose the main question is are you ready? or do you want me just because you want to mend your broken heart? Show to me that you are ready in this relationship.

My eyes are telling me that your grief might not ready although your heart might be ready......I feel like I'm picking up the pieces of your past life :-(

.......because i don't think you understand the difference between "moving on" and "letting go".....if you are moving on means you are healing your broken heart..but if you are letting go means you are ready for the new chapter of your life

You've seen my tears, you've seen my heart and I have showed my scars...but I haven't seen your tears...I don't want to be the second best after a ghost. I don't want to  compete with a ghost because I've been told the ghost will be always the winner.

My PhD is Getting Closer to Its Completion

Back again just after a few days from my last post. Sounds very strange because I don't always have the time to post unless I am really in a good mood to write something. Nah...today's post is about how I feel the progress of my PhD. I have completed just over 2 years 2 months of my PhD and it is getting closer and based on the recent results I've got this everything seems to be getting more exciting. Oh by the way the only reason I have very little time to write this post is because I am running an experiment again and while it's running I think it wold be better to do something...and that something is updating my blog. LOL!

Earlier results I got last Saturday while I was writing this post showed that combining different methods seems to produce better results. So that's good! I did some simple operations to find whether my framework is really working or not and it seems to be working fine...what I'm doing now is just to make sure the framework is really work instead of just a fluke! I don't think I will get the results by today but I just hope that all three experiments can be completed by tomorrow morning. At the moment my prostate cancer algorithm framework has the accuracy of ~90% but again I need to verify all of them by re running all three experiments an do a thorough calculation.

It's getting closer but I'm not sure if it is closer for a completion but certainly it is one step closer. Throughout the years of my PhD nothing came easily...just before you think you are done or you got it, something will happen and somehow you could lose your way within your project. Hence, for this moment I would like to say I am a step closer but how far to go I'm not so sure. My brain is so tired...I mean doing a PhD is something that I thought I could do but I'm riding it now..faster and slower and softer and sometimes harder..how knows when I will stop but certainly I have drawn the boundary after the first year of my PhD. I can't wait to finish my PhD..it is really tiring...it's like every day is an exam :-(

But I know I am strong and I will never give up until the moment I put the round hat on my head :-)
I am here...riding it rapidly...never give me never ever....as long as I'm breathing..the word 'give up' would never appear in my head :-)

Squeezing My Brain Before a Short Holiday

Hollaaa...back again in my little blog trying to make sure my blog is not too empty or at least something is happening :-) The moment I'm writing this post I am waiting my desktop to produce experiment results. I ran it yesterday and decided to play badminton hoped that it will just do its work and will email me the results when I got back home. Unfortunately, when reading the 357th data, something went wrong. As a result, It stopped working and produced an error which needed to be fixed. When I finished badminton and got home, I checked my email and didn't get a report from my algorithm. Then I thought there must be an error somewhere while reading one of the data. This morning, when I got the office and check MatLab, yeah I was spot on! So I had to fix a few parts of the algorithm to make it working again. But this time instead of reading it from the first data I started reading the data where it stopped  before. But I have to save all the results from 1st data till 356th data. I have about 450 data all together and I just copy and paste all of them and analyse the results combination.

This is my desk in the office..writing this post while waiting my algorithm to complete its job

Anyway, It will be very busy week in the next three weeks. I have to prepare my journey to Ireland for another conference. I am looking forward to see the place. I got the feeling that it will be fairly similar with England? Wales or Scotland? Mmmm...I'm not sure but my gut is telling me these places will be very similar. That is why I am so looking forward to see Italy instead of Ireland. Well, it would another holiday for me (if you call it a short holiday) and the most important thing is to meet up with another PhD students and hopefully will make some friends :-) . But before that, I have to do a short talk to the Department's workshop on the 20th of  August and that is in a few weeks time (less than two weeks actually). I need to arrange my flights and also hotel. Just after my conference I will be heading back to London as my friend nick is coming for a visit in the UK. I will update soon regarding to our preliminary plan on Nick's visit :-). Yeah all the way from North Borneo and I am excited to visit Paris, Belgium and Holland (of course England, Wales and Scotland as well). One of the most exciting and fun thing to do is camping (hopefully we can do this) as well as climbing mountains :-). But at the moment I have a task which I need to do by next Friday (next week) and have to report my Professor about the initial outcomes. Fingers crossed I will get some good results. But it will be very very busy...it's Saturday today and I am in the office on my own working on it and need to implement a couple of experiments.....Till now see ya....I got the results already...looks better than my latest method? Mmmmm...I will update soon...

Accepted for Ireland and Italy!!

Hello All...after several weeks I have been silent from my blog here I am updating my blog again. Updating my blog is a pleasure for me because since I started my PhD I have been so busy and didn't have much time to update it. In fact, at one point of my PhD I almost forgot the fact that I have a blog. I have put so much effort into my PhD in the last 2 years 1 month of my PhD and I hope I can finish my study in 3 years. It's not because I don't enjoy what I'm doing but I really think it's time for me to get a job and start to think about my future especially the financial side of my life. If my parents were rich then I wouldn't mind to have another two years of my PhD by concentrating more on journal publications...

After a double rejections in my previous post, I almost  lost my motivation to do my research. In fact, I thought I must be really stupid because my two papers got rejected at the international conferences. Even more hurtful when you got some stupid comments or unhelpful feedback from the reviewers make you think weather they read your paper carefully or just simply scan your paper. But for more than two years, my experience writing paper is you will definitely get stupid comments from reviewers. Maybe this is one of the main reasons why it is important to submit into very high ranking conferences. But then the acceptance rate will be very low and if your papers keep rejected by them it can be very demotivated. As a result you feel like you don't really want to do your research and eventually lose your interest. Nah..this is very dangerous..if you loosing your interest then your performance will be slowing down and at one point if you are not resistant enough  you will stop and most probably end up with MPhil or you don't even get it. That's why all of my conference papers I submitted into average conferences (acceptance rate between 40% to 60%). High ranking conferences' acceptance rates are ranging between 10% to 30%. I just wish I had the time to do more investigation of my research so I could have better publications. I'm still aiming to submit paper into MICCAI and Medical Image Analysis journal which are the top publications in medical imaging.

Anyway...after almost a month rewriting my papers and submitted them into two conferences in Ireland and Italy, finally they got accepted. I am very happy indeed because I've invested so much time into one of the two my papers. When I got the first notification email from the conference organiser saying that my paper got accepted for an oral presentation I was over the moon and felt like.."yeah I did it and I know I can do it..". Perhaps two weeks after that I got another notification email from a conference in Italy saying that my paper got accepted for an oral presentation. It was a fantastic news of course. One more time I thought "yeah I did it again! oh yeahhhh..now i'm going to Italy". Yeah I am very happy because I'm going to Milan in Italy. I really hope that I have the chance to see Venice because people said this is probably the best spot to see the beauty of Italy. I can't wait to try their food of course especially their spaghetti!! Yesterday I have just completed final version of the papers and the conference registrations (for both of them). Today I spent most of my time surveying hotels and flight tickets to Ireland and Italy. I found a few but haven't booked yet. I should do it very soon to get the best deal even though the department will pay it. The thing is I always like to get better deals..I mean why should pay more if we can get a cheaper price?...ok..ok enough about that..it's the second day of eid mubarak (the muslim festival..not sure if I spelt it correctly) and I'm carving for all sort of different biscuits. For me..it is difficult to find pretty and delicious biscuits in the UK or at least this is true at where I live (Wales). They are plenty of puddings or cakes but not biscuits. Most of them are not hand made biscuits but machine made LOL!  They don't taste nice ..well some of them but most of them don't taste  good. I am at the moment missing Malaysian food so badly especially the food from Borneo. Really really badly...If I'm honest the food in the UK are ridiculously plain and almost tasteless..and boring because most of them were cooked in ovens or microwaved. Arghhhh..that's really bad..that's why most British don't know how to cook when it comes to using fire. I like cooking with fire but most people here are cooking with ovens or microwaves. For me that's not cooking but your just heating up your food to cook it. Cooking when there are several processes involved in it. not just simply take a chicken out from the fridge put some olive oil and black papers and put it into the oven and wait for 2 hours and...ta..da...it's cook. wow! that's magic! LOL! (this is not cooking)...

Enough about that because at the moment I am sleepy and lazy and not in a mood. Today is a bad day for me..I feel like I want to scream on top of my lung!! But I'm trying to calm down myself and nothing had happened. I think I better have a run and hopefully I feel better after :-)

The 'Joy' of Double Rejection

Hell ya! Today's entry is about the 'joy' of double rejection. I bet many of you have been rejected before or probably I should say unsuccessful rather than that nasty word. There is no joy of being rejected of course. I my previous post I talked about how was my feeling after my ICPR paper has been rejected. In fact, I said I managed to get better results. Well, it was true. But the saddest part is as soon as I posted the entry, I received an email regarding to my MIUA paper decision. I must say it was the earliest paper decision I have every received in the last two years. In all conferences I have attended or submitted a paper before, all of them extended the 'Author Notification' date to one or two days late. Initially when I open my uni email, I got an email with a header something like 'Decision paper number 49' and I thought it can't be because it was about 3 days earlier than the date posted on the conference's website. Then I slowly opened it and so scared to read the email. What I did instead is looking for any 'happy words' such as 'delightful', 'congratulations', 'pleased', etc. But you know what? I didn't find any of these words but I found the word 'regret'! Oh Shit!!! as soon as I saw this I said to myself this is another unlucky paper. Oh!!! I was really disappointed and I can feel my blood was boiling that time. I can feel my vein kicking and pumping off my red blood to my brain which caused millions of questions. For the first few minutes, it was really really hard to accept the fact that my paper has been rejected (after my ICPR paper has been rejected recently). I was so fucking upset but after half an hour my blood pressure went down. I think if I had measured my blood pressure in the first a few minutes it went up to 180/90 which is very very dangerous (I could be dead after reading the email LOL!).

I read the feedback from the reviewers. The same to ICPR, one reviewer accepted it and the other two rejected it. Next I read every single line of their comments to make sure I am wrong in some parts of my paper. I agreed with some of their comments (maybe about 20%) but the other 80% I don't think their comments are helpful. In fact, some of the comments show how naive he/she is in image processing (am I being over the top now? probably...but until you've seen this one particular comment then you understand me LOL!). Anyway, on the good side of his/her comments, he/she suggested me to do one thing which is to normalise my histograms. Initially I disagreed because histogram normalisation is implemented when we want to measure similarity between two histograms. But I persuaded my 'black heart' to just bloody do it and see how's the results. I took about 10 or 15 minutes to modify my algorithm and ran the program. After about 3 hours I got the results...ta..da...............surprisingly accuracy, sensitivity and specificity have increased 4% which makes my method produced almost 90% accuracy. But then it was only 4% and I'm still not sure how significant the increments are. But the main thing is..it is visually better to present 89% sensitivity instead of 85%.

After a long discussion with my supervisor we agreed that the reviewers did not read thoroughly my paper. They probably jumped from the first line to the third line and to the seventh line. If this is the way they did it then I would say I hope their papers will be rejected as well in other journals or conferences (wow...is this me? swearing LOL!). If my ICPR rejected paper is submitted to Portugal, my MIUA rejected paper will be submitted to Ireland. Well..well...well....what do you know? there might be reasons behind of double rejection? God knows! In a couple of weeks time I will be going to London. I hope that I can present my ICCCV paper fluently and I hope London brings some luck to me :-)......Summer is around the corner and I can wait to wear my shorts and t-shirts again. Phewwww.....I am tired I need a break either in June or July.

Taking My Deep Breaths

Holla la...it's me again the Dr.Jungle boy who is always dreaming and chasing his dreams. Every day he tries his best to make one of his dreams comes one step closer. Anyway...that's not what I want to talk about in this post. The thing is that I want to talk about what I have been doing in the last two months since my last update. If you followed my previous post about how disappointed I was with the rejection of my paper, finally I managed to get over of it. Really? Yeah after several weeks. In fact, I now can say there is a reason why my paper was rejected. I took about 3 solid weeks to do further investigation about the rejected paper or method. I lots of modification not only the paper but the algorithm. In terms of line of code, it was previously less than 100 but after huge changes it's now 400. That's a lot! I mean for s single algorithm in a single conference paper. When when it comes to writing or explaining the method in the paper, I was struggling to make it 8 pages. Initially I made 10 pages and till several revisions, I managed to make it 9 pages. I sent it to my supervisor and very pleased because he took only several days to review it. He got back to me with some very useful feedback and finally I managed to make it 8 pages. I submitted the paper into ICIAR conference which will be held in Portugal. This time I am very positive with my method and I really hope the paper will be reviewed by the right people and hopefully will get accepted.

The most challenging part is developing my other method while my heart is still bleeding. I mean it was in March when I was aiming to submit a paper into MIUA conference which will be held in London. The main reasons why I wanted to submit a paper into this conference is this conference is a medical based one which means all presenters will be most likely come from medical imaging people. It will be very good because in general in every presentation you have general idea of what they will be talking about. In many conferences, most of them are generic and most probably you will end up attending a presentation which are not within your research interests. Second reason is, my supervisor is one of the steering committees of this conference. So I would like to support this conference (by submitting a paper into it). Anyway...I got the new of my paper rejection when I was developing this MIUA method (and writing the paper) and I was shattered and feel like I wanted to cry. Really? was it that bad? Yeah It was really that bad because I really wanted to attend ICPR conference and wanted to see Sweden of course. Another thing is, it's a huge conference and will be attended by hundreds of different people from all over the world. In networking point of view, this is a golden opportunity of course and making new friends! But hey! I missed it but I have already promised to myself to submit a new paper to this conference again. I will make sure to give my best shot this time! Somehow I managed to survive from March and April. It was horrible months and experience of course (not much in April but March). I do hope May will be a better month for me and June will be much nicer.

After I submitted my MIUA and ICIAR paper, it was the journal. It was a difficult one because I had to write about 17 pages (maximum 20 pages). It was a long paper and the longest paper ever I have written. I submitted it to the co-authors and got feedback from them. Very useful comments actually. After several weeks of hurdles I finally submitted my journal and I hope God would give me some good results in the next a few months. Waiting the decision results of your conference/journal papers are worse than waiting your exam results. Because in many exams you actually know how well you did during the exams but it is very different in writing paper. You are basically proposing something you think which is right and of course there is no definite answer for that. But different reviewers have different opinions about what you think right. In their views it could be completely crap or something unacceptable at all. So it is actually very difficult to justify the criteria of an accepted paper. In many cases (which I believe many research students have done in the past) you will try to follow a general set of rules of a 'good paper'. For example, precise writing, flawless errors grammatically, using graphics to explain complicated subjects, all sections are connected each other, convincing results, experiment of a massive data, etc. Well, you name it!!!! I bet many PhD students have done this before but I'm telling you that those criteria are very subjective. Again I'm saying this..different reviewers have different opinions about it.

Right! Enough about it...because I really don't want to talk about it anymore. In the last four months I have written one journal three conference papers and I am now really tired mentally. I am now taking deep breaths and just enjoying my badminton sessions. This May I want to enjoy the month and free pressure from doing any sort of experiments. However, I am at the moment developing a new method again. Yeah a new method believe it or not. This idea came when I was reading about local binary pattern. So this new method will be based on the idea of local binary pattern. But this is not a local binary pattern based method. This is different of course! I used similarity measure metrics to measure if an unknown sample is malignant or normal based on the model constructed in the previous phase. Ha! that's sound so brilliant now LOL! But I'm taking this very slowly..I have about 30 days to do this before June. In June I am planning to combine all of my methods and hopefully will get good results. Okay folks my coffee has gone cold..now I need to make a new one and enjoy it :-)

P/s: Feeling blessed cuz I have this precious time to update my blog :-) 

The Evil March

Well, here I am updating my blog just because March is an evil month for me. It has been several weeks since I updated my blog back in France. Now it's time to moan about my life being a PhD student again. I have been moaning about traveling on my own, not sure if doing a doctorate is something that I should be doing or not, and many other stuffs. Oh Shit! That's life!. Anyway, the thing is I have been working so hard recently writing papers got accepted. But recently, my paper got rejected which made me feel like I want to scream on top of my lung. The moment I received the email, my hurt beats like I just finish a 100m sprint. I was excited but at the same time I feel very nervous. Line by line I read the email till the moment I saw the word 'regret' then I realised my attempt this time is unsuccessful. Oh holly shit and crap! I always have faith with my paper especially if the paper is based on my own work. I believe that the method which I proposed in the paper has better potential in doing its job in comparison to some of the methods in the literature. But this is life, people don't think like the way you think.

But hey you..I never expect people to think like the I think, far from wanting them to think like the way i think. But I would expect people to think twice before they even say something about my work. This sounds like I can't accept the fact that my paper has been rejected. No! that's untrue! Because I can accept any criticisms but they have to be constructive. The first reviewer commented a few things about my paper which I think make sense. The second reviewer accept my paper with a few minor corrections. But the third reviewer sounds a little idiot. After discussion with my supervisor this afternoon, he also think the same. The third reviewer might be one in the 20%. For me 80% of the reviewers I would categorised qualified and the other 20% I would say, they might be qualified but they don't really understand with your work, or probably they are just too lazy to read the whole paper and just give some stupid feedback of your paper based on their assumptions. Or it could be, they are so arrogant and just simply didn't like your paper because they thought it should be done like this rather than like that. Phewwww!!!!!

I still feel the pain, sadness and disappointment. Not sure how to mend it for the next few days. In fact, I would probably be miserable for the next a few weeks. Recently, I have written another paper and submitted it to a conference in London. Maybe I will be okay after getting a good news from the conference. Otherwise, if the decision result for my latest paper get rejected again then I will be super duper miserable. Even my recent paper I already feel like a shit and demotivated to do the rest of my other work. Let alone if my latest paper got rejected. I don't know where to put my face and brain. This is even worst after my meeting with my supervisor, because he disagreed with some of the comments from the reviewers. This makes me think that I deserve better comments and should be at least invited for a poster presentation. I don't like to say it let's put it like this. The first reviewer rejected my paper but the second reviewer accepted it. The third reviewer which basically will determine whether my paper will be accepted for my paper gave last resort to my paper. Which basically mean it's up to the committees chair to decide whether to accept it or not. As it happened, the chair rejected it. Not sure why because the comments from the third reviewer were pretty rubbish and didn't make sense at all. Arghhhhh...why?.....why?why?

Changing the topic, I also lost my badminton tournament last week. Close yet too far to reach the semi final. But I didn't mind much about it because I thought there will be good news coming soon. Then it comes to my paper decision result. The whole situation made everything even worst. Till now I am writing this post it is actually very annoying. I didn't feel very sad when my second paper got rejected because I knew there wasn't much work I've done in it. It was just a review paper which doesn't have the originality in it. But my ICPR paper which i submitted to Sweden, I do think is a novelty or some sort of contribution in it and knowing this paper is rejected is so heartbreaking. This result is really demotivated me especially my eagerness to write more conference papers. I used to enjoy writing a conference paper but now the feeling and excitement is a little but low than before. Haisshhhh.....that's life! Whatever the reason is I still don't like the fact that my paper which I thought (that time) was my best one. Arghhhhhhh.........

Anyway, I am going to revise my paper based on the reviewer's comments and going to submit it to a conference in Portugal. But before that I want to fully concentrate on my journal paper first.

A glimpse of Nantes, the conference and some thoughts

Here I go again folks, updating my blog. It has been a very busy day in the conference. By the time the conference finished I felt very tired mentally. I attended most of the sessions I wanted today except the sessions after 4PM. For most of the sessions I did ask several questions which basically means I did pay attention for most of the sessions. There were many sessions which I think very technical and only one was very easy to follow but lack of technical report in a presentation make you wonder how did the authors do it. Anyway...the thing is the audience know in general how the methodology works. But I think the presentation of the day is the keynote  from University Collage London. It was about a 3D cave reconstruction. It works by flying a device to go through along the cave and as the device flies it takes lots of information about the cave such as surface, angle, interesting points,  edges and many more. By taking all those information the algorithm will manipulate it for the reconstruction purpose. The most interesting part is, one of the caves they tested is the Mulu cave in Sarawak, Malaysia. In fact they are collaborating with some scientists in Malaysia.

Let's talk about the conference. First of all the conference venue facilitates are first class. Secondly, the services provided by the conference committees was superb! Thirdly, the food was really is amazing. The first day of the conference I gave a 7 out of 10 but today it was 8. I must say, although the french don't use much spicy in their cooking they still manage to make their food so tasty. Don't talk about the desserts. It was 8 and 8.5 for yesterday and today, respectively. There were so many biscuits on tables but I didn't really treat myself with those because I knew they are fattening. So far, everything went so well especially the conference but there is one thing I notice which is so different then the rest of the conference I've attended. For all the conference I've been, for lunch the conference committees always invite us to finish the food. But here in France, it's so different because we were only allowed to have once for every course. Today I wondered if the food were actually all finished. So I stayed in the lunch hall till everybody finished. Guess what I found out? There were so much food left and I don't understand what they were going to do with all those food. Such a waste! I mean why can't they just ask us to just finish it (sounds greedy)? Or perhaps they save it for the staffs (this sounds a bit cheeky). So yeah I am a bit disappointed with lunch because the food were really good but we were not allowed to have as much as we can (greedy again).

Okay, now let's talk about Nantes, where the conference is. I am staying in a studio apartment hotel which is very nice because it's clean, free wifi, and  quite spacious. I always make sure my room has unlimited wifi access. There are some expensive hotel rooms don't provide free wifi or internet connection to their guests. Nantes is definitely not a small city. It is actually quite a big one. Before i cam here I thought Nantes is a small city and I could walk around it within a day. I was completely wrong. But this city is not really a place that I would like to visit regularly because there's not much attraction or interesting places here. I think it has a couple of museums here but I am not really into that. I like a place which has something very rare and difficult to find at other places. It has several ancient buildings but many of them are already replaced by new modern buildings. In fact there are quite numbers of modern buildings built  among the old ones.

Food in France is generally very good but I haven't done the whole experiment yet so I can't say much but so far all the food I had in and off conference were really good. Much better than the ones I had in germany and hong kong (but the food on streets in hong kong were really good).

So tomorrow will be the last day of the conference. But I will only attend half day. I hope some of the people in the conference will be free so I can see the other side of the river in Nantes.


I was searching a conference about medical image analysis yesterday and I found two or three of them which will be held in September and November. So, most probably I will be submitting/writting a couple of papers by because June or May (I have very high expectation here!). For my PhD before i'm planning to write up my thesis (in 3 years), I would love to have 7 conference papers and 2 journals. But that is my highest expectation. My lowest expectation would be 5 conference papers and 1 journal. My other top expectation is to submit a journal into number 1 journal in medical image analysis. But this is very difficult indeed. I'm not sure if I can achieve this but I will definitely do my very best because having a journal published in a number 1 journal in the world in medical image analysis would give a huge boost to my CV in my academic career. Anyway...stop about blogging..I think it's time to go to bed. I am tired and just finished watching the all england badminton 2014. Interesting matches and would love to see some good results tomorrow. Okay folks..night night....p/s: unedited xx

Exploring Each of My Thoughts

It has been almost two months since I last updated my blog. If you look back to my posts, the last one was in January 2014 and this is the second post of 2014! Yippieeee! I am happy because I know, I don't usually have time to update my blog. Updating my blog is something so precious for me. I used to update my blog several times a day. In fact, when I just started my blog I was so obsessed and updated my blog almost every hour. It was insane of course I don't know where the hell my ideas came from. Some of them just a copy and paste post of course. Anything I found interesting from others' blogs I put them on mine as well. Correct! That's not clever at all. But I was a newbie that time and all I wanted to do is to update my blog and hoped the contents are interesting.

Well, I have so much I wanted to say but I have so little time as I need to go to bed very soon. I am currently in France, more specifically in Nantes. I never heard this place before but it quite a nice town actually. When I first arrived here I thought it's a small town but then after wondering around, this is a well sized place. Not too huge neither too small.. but just nice! Okay I am in France and will be attending a conference tomorrow. My aim is to attend all as many presentations (medical imaging) as possible. I only interested in medical imaging because that's why research area at the moment. Okay now let's go through each of my thoughts (LOL!)

1. Attending a conference on your own is always odd! I have attended three international conferences so far and all by myself traveling from the UK. It was in Germany, Hong Kong and now in France. All the national conferences I've attended so far were accompanied by some other PhD students/Post Doc. Therefore, for every conference I always hope I can make new friends/contacts (which is always the case). It is always nice to be able to keep in touch with people (doesn't matter whether they are from the same research area or not) via email or facebook. The most common way to keep n touch with the people I have known or met in the conference is via facebook. It seems to be very effective way (not sure why). So let's hope I can make some friends tomorrow.

2. I feel happy when people follow my blog and get back to me how inspiring my blog is especially achieving my ambitions. Yeah if you guys want to know who I was then you can go to the very first post of my blog. You can see how terrible my writing (English). It just recently I have improved a lot. My IELTS results weren't that amazing. I just managed to get band 6.5 in overall and only band 6 for my writing. I think this is a minimum requirement for most UK universities. But I remember it was very hard that time because I was working as a software engineer with Motorola that time and I had to take a night class from 8 till 10PM every night. It was very tiring actually but my determination pushed me to the edge of my limit. I hope this blog does not just inspires people who want to succeeded in life but also to those who have been trying hard...my advise is don't give up ..keep doing it...keep tying it. God knows when is the right time for you and you never know..because at the moment you surrendered success might be just around the corner of your life.

3. I've read several articles about PhD students committed suicides, mental problems, sick, etc. Wow! I think I am quite far away from these. It is quite worrying! That is why I always have physical exercise at least 3 times a week, 2 hours per session. I usually managed to make it five times a week but sometimes i was just too tired. It's weird how much the effect of mental energy to our physical energy. I spent most of my time in the office thinking different solutions of my PhD problems without any physical efforts but by the time I finished in the office I was so tired. Most of the time I just pushed myself to go to the gym and have a 5 or sometimes 8KM run. After my run my head did feel relax and showers make it even better. But hey folks, in many cases doing  a PhD is a choice. People took effort to make applications as well as the scholarships. For me, if you have made the effort to apply for a PhD plus the scholarship, then you should have known and ready the challenges are. Doing a PhD is not easy. I must say it is very very difficult. It's not just how brilliant you are but it is a combination of so many aspects of yours. You need to be tough mentally, emotionally, good management skills, etc. Trust me, if you want to do a PhD think about it again.

4. Up to now since i started my PhD (1 year 9 months), i already have 4 conference papers accepted, 1 conference paper under review, 1 rejected conference paper and 1 journal paper under review. At least I know I have done 7 attempts so far. I'm not sure if this is good or not. It seems like I am very much obsessed with the number of papers. Recently, my paper i submitted to London has been accepted. But I do really hope the paper I submitted to Sweden will be accepted as well. I am so damn crazy and desperate want to see this conference and the country of course. I am a bit worry because when I checked the paper i submitted there were a few minor errors. But I do really hope that the reviewers don't really get too fussy about it because they can be amended within half an hour. So I am planning to write a paper for MIUA conference, I have two in mind so far but I don't really know which one I should go. The main problem is I have no idea how the results look like because I haven't run the experiments yet. I hope to get some good results so I have something to write. Anyway, back to the under review. This is probably the toughest and waiting for the result is really daunting. In many cases in exams you know how well you did in the exam but writing a conference paper or a journal paper is really scary because writing a paper usually will take about 2 weeks for a decent one. Some people may take less or more. When you finished writing your paper, it seems to be okay and sometimes you have very good feeling that the paper will get accepted. But then in the reviewers' views your paper might be just another piece of shit which doesn't worth a penny. Hence rejected! So till now waiting for the results for my other two papers are so uncomfortable.

5. Okay this is the last in my mind. I have some other but I need to go to bed. I've been up since 3AM to catch my flight from Manchester airport to Paris and then to nantes, France. I am now so tired, but the last thing I want to say is that sometimes I have a feeling that I should not be doing a PhD now. I should be doing something else. I don't know why I'm doing this PhD. I should be working now and making money, saving and holiday. At the back of my head I always have this very very bad feeling that doing a PhD is not the correct path for me. But then when I look back again what I have prayed to God and how I'm doing my PhD now I think I have done the best decision of my life. Yet this is very uncertain because I don't know what happen to me when I finished my PhD. I might become one of those people who has a doctorate qualification but never used it. That would be really sad otherwise. But again some people say everything happens for a reason.Well, time will tell. So much plans but so little time left. Money is very important to start up something. In this world if you don't have the money there is no other way you can start something. So I hope after my PhD it's gonna be another chapter of my life. New start with new challenges.

Mmmm..okay I think I have written enough for this post. Not really I have more to write but my eyes can't stand anymore. I am so sleepy and really tired. I've been up since 3AM. I have a conference tmrw and I need to be fresh and sharp in the conference especially during my session. Okay folks..bye for now and I'll see you again in my next post. I will try my best to write a post this week but no promises! :-) xx

A glimpse of Hong Kong

Holla all...here I am back again after so many weeks or perhaps months. I have been so bloody busy (usual excuse but true). First and for most my paper which I submitted to France has been recently accepted for a poster presentation. This means I already have three accepted publications so far and I do really hope that my will have more publications. I always believe that the more publications you have the better your chance to pass your phd viva. This might be not true in all cases but I believe it's true in many cases. Anyway..that's not what I want to talk about in this post. It's about my opinion of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong from the top of Victoria peak

I stayed in Hong Kong for 10 days in Dec 2013 for a conference. But the actual conference was only three days and the other seven days was my holiday. I'm writing this post in Hong Kong as my flight to Paris is tomorrow morning. I'm staying up don't want to fall asleep. I hope to get a good sleep on the plane to Paris. Anyway, y first impression of Hong Kong is it's an amazing city full of dollars and luxuries. I remember when I was on the coach going to my hotel from the airport I saw high raised multimillion dollars  apartments decorated with beautiful neon lights. At that time I am thinking this city is another New York. As soon as i checked into my hotel room brain said let's explore and see what this city can give. I am an explorer and a traveler of course. I like to compare to different things to get the best of them. But I thought it was too late and didn't proceed my plan but managed to go out for a couple of hours for my dinner. My first dinner in Hong Kong cost me about 100HKD. I didn't realise it was expensive that time until the next day when I was walking on one of the popular streets. I saw there were so many restaurants and stalls with much cheaper prices less than 50 HKD.

Anyway it was an experience. That's always happen especially when we are new in that place. I continued my exploration. As I'm walking on a street with multimillion dollars building on both sides I noticed they use lots of bamboos scaffolding. It is very strange because they don't look safe at all but according to the local people I've asked. Bamboos scaffolding is very cheap hence maximise the contractors' profits. This is indeed very dirty way/trick of minimising the cost. However, in terms of infrastructure development, HK is probably having one of the best in the world. I don't think UK, France or Germany has the facilities what HK can offer. For example the trains services is every minute and the latest is every 3 minutes where in those countries could take up to 5 to 8 minutes in their capital cities. On the other hand, night life in HK is alive every single night. It seems like the city never sleep especially eating places, markets , bars and pubs make most streets never get dark.

So how about the society or the people? I'm not sure how do you measure politeness but they never hold the door for you and they certainly never say thank you if your gave a way to them. Saying thank you or showing a sign of courtesy is almost null in their life. These sort of acts is probably something very strange for them. Cutting or jumping a queue is something normal. I dare to say this because I have experienced it several time when I was in HK, It happened in fast food restaurants and counter tickets.

Finally I never been to a city where I caught bugs so quickly. Only in HK because the air is actually polluted badly. I had a few bad days in HK but I must say I had an amazing experience as well. HK is a beautiful and very nice place to visit but I don't think it's the best place to live in the world.