three things to do

first is to find students who want to do part time job in my prof's symposium in Shang Hai. [ I have asked the students and all five of them will do the part time job.]
second is to think about my future, which one I want to do, to be a software developer or to be a researcher. If I continue my study, there will be a bright future, that I can become an expert in ASSR measurement system. This system is to assess human hearing level, and probably it is a new study in Indonesia, so if I return to Indonesia, I can become a prof. Gotta find a reason why I chose not to be a researcher.
third is to find a succeccor, students who are interested in my research.

That's what my prof told me today in his office.

need a successor

When my prof told me that I need to find a "koukeisha", even though that was the first time I heard the word "koukeisha" but I knew it right a way that it means a successor, i.e. someone who will continue my research. I plan to work in a company and not to continue my study in the univ. On the other hand, my co-reseacher is a busy woman, working as a professor in another university and she doesn't have time to develop the block diagrams and/or tools. She does have a lot of idea and plans to develop a compact measurement system for ASSR including the sound stimulator. So.. till now my job is to create the block diagrams, turning her idea into reality. The reason why I don't want to continue my research is because it is not my own idea, so I don't really feel like it is my real work and I'm not sure about the future of this research. In the past few years in Japan, there are no researcher working on this kind of research, and the measurement system used in hopitals recently are imported from Canada.

So after I talked to my prof about my plan, he asked me what kind of a person that is fit to be the successor. I didn't really know how to answer that question. First of all, the research is something that is quite new, and the expert in this kind of field is not many. My co-researcher is someone that is dependable, she can explain a lot of things. But the problem is, she doesn't really know about LabVIew, the software that we use. And I remember that 6 months ago we were stuck in a stage where we don't know how to read the ASSR waveforms, the BRW file. This BRW file is the output file from the measurement system (that have already been commercialized and sold to many hospitals) developed in Toronto University. That time, we didn't know the data format in the BRW file. Without the ASSR waveforms, we wouldn't be able to start our research! Eventually I tried to read it as a binary file and after fixing couple bugs in my block diagram, finally we are able to read the BRW file. So... now I realize that the successor should be someone that is creative, and can work without technical guide. Up until now I thought my works is not something big, but now at least I understand the reason why my co-researcher appreciated my works.

A Visit to YSL

Yesterday, I visited YSL (Yamato Software Laboratory) at Kanagawa Perfecture. Actually it is a tour inside the Yamato Laboratory for students who are accepted to work in YSL. I applied for software developer job on December last year and received acceptance letter in early January. It was kind of late actually, because usually Japanese students would already have applied on March or April. Because of that, other accepted students already visited the YSL and I was the only who haven't joined the tour. Although I was the only student who joined yesterday tour, the visit was fun and the people in YSL were friendly.

YSL is in 4th and 5th floor. First, I met Kouda-san, the HR staff. She took me to a meeting room then gave a brief explanation about the tour. Then Okamura-san (uhmm.. I don't really remember her name) came. She is a very nice woman, and her presentation was easy to understand. I met the chief of YSL, Iwano-san in his room. We chatted about Indonesia (the location, language, etc), about Japanese youngster nowadays who lack interest in software developing. I was so nervous that I didn't ask him anything. Should have ask something because it was a rare chance to be able to talk to the chief of YSL. After meeting with Iwano-san, we went back to the meeting room and I was introduced to Akamatsu-san, my advisor, and Matsunaga-san. We had a long talk about the working enviroment, clothing code in the office, the training, lots of thing. Akamatsu-san and Matsunga-san nicely answered my question.

The last session was the tour, we went to the cafetaria. It is in the 2nd and 3rd floor. The cafetaria is so big. In the 1st floor, there are japanese room, with tatami, the short table and the sliding door. I was impressed. Wow.. japanese room, and the TRL (Tokyo Research Laboratory, other division located in the next building) also have a refreshing room with tatami. Then we went to TRL and I could see cubicles with high walls (compared to the cubicles in YSL) blocking our eyes from seeing anything inside. The reason for the high wall is to help the workers concentrate in their work. We went back to YSL ground and went to Tivoli office room. I could see PCs, servers, printers, etc. The network inside this room is not connected to the outside, because the PCs are for testing and running experiments. It was really hot inside the room, maybe because of the large number of the PCs in the room. Next we went to Akamatsu-san's cubicle. We had a nice chat there and then the tour was over.

it's 3.45 AM here

and I'm still doing my research.. the experiments. Need to do 7 more experiments. Found little bugs here and there, but because the bugs don't affect the experiment results so I won't fix the bugs today.

Beside having to finish writing my graduation thesis and 2-pages summary (the deadline is Monday next week), I have to write an essay in japanese (400 kanji) about my career plan in Nihon IBM and which kind of industry that I am interested in. The deadline for the essay is on Jan 31. Because it has to be written in Japanese, I should finish writing it before Jan 23, so I can ask my Japanese sensei to check it on our appointment day (We only meet twice a month). Also, I have to submit 4-pages full paper and register for the International Workshop on Nonlinear Circuits and Signal Processing 2007. The workshop will be held in Shanghai on March 3-6, 2007. oh.. busy busy days.

oh no.. found a weird result in my experiment :-O
gotta check the block diagram again...

sooo slow...

am using virtual PC to run labview on my Mac (iBook G4)... and coz I didn't upgrade the RAM, sooo the application running on the virtual PC is sooo slow... arghhh...
no wonder I hate working on my research... I borrowed my friend's laptop couple weeks ago.. DynaBook.. However I only installed LabView version 7 and the subVI files I have saved in my Mac are all saved in LabView version 8, so now I have to save the files again for the old version.