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