M. Gladwell talkin abt communication

Frm N95

Been a while

4 weeks since my last post; i wanted to post something last night/morning, but internet was not working; thou i am sober now, whichever is better. So wats going with me in Irish land. Last weeks have been busy in several ways, had few presentations to give and the dry runs for those never went very well, so had to spent even more time in polishing the slides; in the end both presentations were good. In between those, its xmas time and to be true, am kinda sick of going to xmas or related parties; but i still have to force myself not to go to one.

Working in a university (phd student/research) has it benefits :) .. so I/we started with

1. xmas lunch with just our own group .. extending until late night
2. evening drinks with people from just our floor, to have more collaboration/interaction .. turned out be a whole night affair
3. xmas party from the CS department .. extending until 7 in morning and for some other friends, going on until 7 in evening of following day :)
4. mould wine n mince pies evening from student advisor at our dept.
5. xmas party from the research lab i work in
6. after xmas parties of people who i knw in other departments.. eg. conway
7. and yesterday xmas/new-year's party by a friend

this is all in last 4 weeks, along with work n presentations, along with some drink evening with colleagues on odd days also; can imagine why i am sick of going to another one of those.. next week, am sure there is something from friends in other dept. but i have TO avoid going there. Thou' all of them were great fun. One of the best's :) times .. thanks all ..

Happy Halloween OOOOOAAHHH

some pics from our halloween party ->

Group Shot


Coolest Costume .. in symphony


actually he had a cool costume too, he had like a huge coffin around
him, probably too tired to carry it all around :)


The facebook's zombie :)


Red Stars


Guinness is the imprtant one in the picture

Demonstrating - First Timer

For last few weeks, I have been demonstrating (TA for US system) for a software engineering project coursework to 3rd year students. Its been kinda strange to be on the other side. I took the position to gain some insight into tutoring, but only 6 weeks before the end of semester (sem ends this week) as they urgently needed someone to help out with project teams.

Telling students what they should do, seems a daunting task for myself. And then I keep imagining myself in their situation (until last year, i was in their position) and how to deal with students who don't work-at-all, work-a-bit and then there is always the one who does all the work. Its hard to make a choice between the one who does all the work and the one who doesn't do anything at all; but its still a team. And then if they don't complete assignments, then what, did they had valid reasons; late joiners to team, what about their reasoning. I am trying to be casual and do my task of motivating them to do their assignments, task completion and complete the project on time. Next week is final submission, will update about progress :)