Dream profession

If you have no worries about money and life, what profession are you going to choose?

Mine will include being an artist. A painter and playwright.
Today I read a piece of Anne Truitt's Daybook where she describes her daily life living in an artist community. She would woke up early, and work the whole day till dinner time. The work is only interrupted by the walk she did to pick up meals served by the community. She answer her letters at the evening before sleep.

This sound very romantic. Oh how I long to be able to work on one thing the whole day without being disturbed by house chores, groceries, and cooking! No emails and phones! I am an einzelgänger and I adore solitude.

It is easy to say that during my unemployment time, I could do such thing. But that is not true -  being between two jobs means being continuously alert if there is an vacancy that needs to be applied or a call from an agent asking if I was interesting in a job there-and-there. And dealing with the pressure and continuous question of whether I should take another similar job as the last one.

My worries of being an artist is 1) I am good in science and I feel that it is my obligation to use it for the greater good. I might be less useful if I was an artist. 2) I am not sure if I am good enough.

I actually wants to be a freelance researcher -  the one who works at home and delivers results, just like an artist with her commissioned work. But my field requires lab and expensive software, and the skills are difficult to develop without a proper laboratory/industrial environment.

Well, I will keep it in my heart. My focus now is on how to keep producing arts, focusing on illustration, amidst the other work of saving the world.

For further read on finding your calling, I recommend the book from Roman Krznarik, How to find a fulfilling job.

A paid day-job!

Yaayyy!!! I have a paid job!
My agent called me today at 5 pm to say that the research institute finally has made up her mind and agrees to spare some budget for me. The institute has left me hanging in there for a while.

It is a job in research about energy from wood gasification. This was not my first choice of research topic, but maybe other topics I like will not serve "the highest good". It is superstitious, I know.

This morning I chatted with an ex-colleague who worked at a company I applied for a while ago. I asked if there might be a position available. She said that she is not happy there and thinking seriously of leaving. She was sad because she might have to leave the country. And I was jealous on her!

Then I posted a request for "intention avalanche" on my facebook page. It is like a joint-intentions for people who struggle with their lives, unbeknownst to us.

To conclude the day:
Take a deep, long breath. Do not rush. Life is a marathon.

The prestigious companies with their beautiful labs are maybe not as shiny as they look like.

If people hurt you by their well-meant advice, critics, and pity, just smile and erase their words from your head as soon as possible. Forgive them. It takes wisdom to understand someone's pain, and most people are simply not capable to do so.

And even if people might hurt you, keep on communicating with friends because they might need your help. You are not the only person with problems.

Stay healthy and sane. Exercise and meditate. If everything else falls apart, at least we are fit enough to keep on moving.

May the force be with you.

On Confusion and finding the address of God

I haven´t been blogging for a while, as my rants lately have too much desperate tone. I just kept them in my black Moleskine. I am in a pretty bad shape mentally due to the pressure of not having a day-job.

Today I feel slightly better, after being tortured since a few days ago about which path I should take. Concentrating on own project? Take any job offered by the agent? Back to education? I keep on thinking until my head hurts and my hands become cold. I also cried. Our financial situation, although still alright, shows that we need to be careful. I have quit working in cafes.

But tonight I received a help from above. I read an intriguing tweet from an Indonesian artist I considered as a sufi. The fact the he understands science make me like him even more. He said (freely translated):

"The address of money is God. People are struggling to find money while they have no idea what is money's address."

This is similar to what my friend has said, someone I considered as being on a good way to his spiritual enlightenment. So we need to find God first if we want to have money. We have to find God first .... yes! Matthew 6:33.

"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well".  "All these things" here refers to food and clothes mentioned in earlier verses.

How do I find the kingdom of God? I don't believe that merely doing charity and praying will bring me to there. I believe that we need to find the purpose of our life and walk through it. It is something that I have forgotten amidst the stress. And also I believe that the way to the kingdom of God depends on our situation.

Sign #1: The head of the passage is, "Do Not Worry". Ha! This fits my situation. I have been worrying too much these days that it brings me apart from God. And Sign #2: As the artist-sufi often said, "if you worry, you insult God". Jesus said similar thing.

And Sign #3 is that suddenly I am reminded about Ignatian Spirituality. According to this teaching, God is actual and plays role in our daily struggle. Ignatian Spirituality emphasizes discernment of spirits which is the ability to distinguish all elements of the "motions of the soul": thoughts, imaginations, emotions, inclinations, desires, feelings, repulsions, and attractions.

Spiritual discernment of spirits involves becoming sensitive to these movements, reflecting on them, and understanding where they come from and where they lead us.

My conclusions of today:
My way to the kingdom of God is by stopping to be worry. Meditation helps to let the Universe work with me. It also helps me in discernment of spirits. Small achievements help to stay optimistic. My small achievement is my daily writing on this blog, every night after Lrrr goes to sleep.

(I might also do the Spiritual Exercise. I can buy the app for it but I am rather reluctant to practice spirituality via my cellphone. I feel that gadget screen does not combine with soul-searching.)

Good night, and I wish peace and clarity of mind for you.

Finding God in a strange church

Observing how people struggle to find their gods turns out to be my favorite hobby. Years ago, I wrote in the Indonesian students mailing list the things people do to find their own gods, like by being member of a church located in another city, or changing the denomination. I say 'god' without capital G as I believe what we are looking is our own personal god, not the God as written in the holy scriptures, but the one who speaks personally to us.

Last Sunday, I had the urge to see my own god. I felt weak and depressed after the talk I had before with some friends, which can be summarized to "why haven't you find a job at the moment, after being unemployed for so many months". Because yes, I have been asking myself too. There is no job out there yet worth selling my time to explore myself and to perform the experiments with Lrrr. That is it.

So I woke up early (for a Sunday morning) and biked to the Catholic church in the city. And alas - it was locked. The priest must be on vacation again, and they forgot to put the announcement on the door, again. What to do? In normal situations I would have gone home or spend the afternoon in a cafe, reading a book. But I desperately needed my god, so I entered the only church that was open at the moment, a Christian church called "City Life Church". From outside, it looks like the regular Protestant church, with some ushers standing outside with "You're welcome" printed on their t-shirts.

Inside, the band was playing worship songs with many Jesus' in the text. This is also typical Protestant: beside saying how great is Jesus, the song lyrics do not say anything much. However, the gesture of the singer, asking people to stand up and rejoice for Jesus, as He has risen and He wanted to be with us ... it was enough for me to make my eyes water. Oh, how I needed Him to speak softly to me and say that everything will be fine, that I am loved!

I deduced that City Life Church is a Christian church without a particular denomination, based on the songs (only about Jesus) and the attendees. There were many immigrants there, including me. We were people that do not fit into the normal Dutch churches. For me, it is easy to enter a Catholic church and feels a bit at home, but I cannot imagine a Somalian asylum seeker entering the Dutch Reform Church. The guy next to me had an Arabic Bible, and I could not believe that he is a Protestant. Probably Coptic or some other very old Christian. To gather people from various streams, the church needs to be as neutral and basic as possible, hence the Jesus-only text.

After the worship, the young pastor came to the stage for the sermon. The sermon was about going out and spread the good news, like how Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman. Then the praying - well, they pray for people who needs jobs and who struggle with their relationships. Very modern, isn't it? I liked this part. This is a part that I missed from Catholic church, the ability to react to nowadays problems. The pastor said, Jesus is working on giving you a right place, so that you not only can earn money but also be a blessing for the people around you. Hey, I like this! My eyes started to water again. So maybe that's why it is very difficult for us to find jobs: we need a good place.

And that was it. There was no confession, no communion, even no Our Father. Basic, I told you.

My thirst for god was fulfilled. Thank you, City Life Church! Hope lost souls like me can always find your door. That being said, I would prefer my Catholic church whenever possible. I missed the silence, the opportunity to have intimate talks with The Transcendent, the rituals. I am not a puritan, so for me church is not the matter of keeping it strictly by the book, but to connect with the spiritual me, the part of me that has grown from years of singing Gregorian songs and chanting Hail Mary.

(Back home, they adapted the Javanese tunes into the hymns. This was even better as I can connect the Javanese-me and the Catholic-me.)

But when the Catholic church close their doors, I know where I could turn to.

I am a prophet - no, you're a lunatic

The advantage of having spent some time in the university is that I got to know people with various areas of expertise. So that is how I got to know Chris, a psychiatry resident. We call him doctor-doctor Chris, since besides an MD he also has a PhD. I know him through Iwan, his housemate, my fellow countryman whom I knew since my PhD time. Last time we saw him, he just moved to the mental institutions for the criminally insane as a standard psychiatric practice bored him. At the moment he is a resident in the acute psychiatric service.

Yesterday we had a barbecue at Iwan's house. Chris was at on-call duty, which means that he should be ready to pay a visit if somebody had an "sudden and severe psychiatric symptoms". However, I expected that there won't be many emergency situations so he could enjoy his dinner with us (minus the beer). I was wrong.

He also had on-call duties during his time with the criminally insane. Emergency situations happened scarcely, and most of the time he can just stay at home. But this time it was different. When I arrived late in the afternoon, Chris was recovering after taking care of two patients. Not long after that, he got a phone call and he was gone and did not return until 10 pm. We have left some salads and nice pieces of meat for him, so he could enjoy a proper, albeit late dinner. Then around one in the morning, when we were talking with a nice cup of tea from the small plantation owned by Iwan's mother, he got another call, and he returned at around half past six, exhausted.

(The criminally insane were probably sufficiently drugged to keep them stable.)

He told us about his patients over breakfast, when his service time was finally over. Here we heard about words like depression, manic, and psychotic. One patient said that he`s going to buy a gun and shot himself dead. Another patient is a depressed tenured professor (!). The last patient, however, was really interesting. She was a very religious woman, and at that night she said that God has descended on her.

How appropriate as yesterday was the Pentecost day (!!).

She became severely psychotic and her husband, who has seen such behavior before, called for help. When Chris came in that unchristian hour, she fiercely attacked him with questions often asked during exorcism.Think about questions like "who's your master? Do you believe in Jesus as your Lord and savior? Are you sent by Lucifer?" . It is rather eerie, and my apology for the hard working psychiatrists, I find it ironically funny.

I was also sure that she was trying to perform exorcism on Chris as she spat on him, poor Chris. She also cited many verses from the Bible. After Chris' boss came and the major granted his permission (yes, it is required), the religious woman was brought to the hospital.

Should I remind you about Pentecost? This was the day when the Babylon curse was lifted. Fifty days after Easter, the Holy Spirit descended unto the disciples who keep their faith that Jesus will return as a King. As the results, everybody understood everybody although they came from various regions, as everybody was "speaking in tongues". This day confirms the Christians belief that Jesus has ascended to heaven and sit next to the Father, and that He stays inside us Holy Spirit. Basically the ultimate confirmation for the Christians' faith.

If you had a religious upbringing like me, you'll probably be disturbed as well. I had friends who joins the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements and believes in "speaking in tongues". It is not my cup of tea, but turns out that it is indeed possible that they are crazy. And also: when the saints and disciples said that they have had a revelation, who can tell if those are not one of those psychotic or manic attacks?

A clear description of the revelation is the ones St. John had, the famous revelation of apocalypse.

"And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority." (Revelation 13:1-3)

There is no way to know if this was a real revelation brought by the Holy Spirit, or if St. John's brain was short-circuited. Or maybe, it makes no difference since we can interpret anything freely. We also have no idea if the things experienced by those mentally troubled are not true. Who knows if the woman was really "god"? Maybe those people have wider perception compared to "normal" people and therefore have the ability to detect more signals.

Oh, one thing just struck me. I have an idea on how could we differentiate between prophets and lunatics. Chris mentioned that the stories mentioned by the insane often reflect their world view and belief. The religious woman thought she was god. Napoleon used to be very popular among delusional people, but it is not a trend at the moment. I guess the lunatics will just use the existing ideas they've learned to create their own self view. Prophets (assume that they exist), I guess, will come up with new ideas, something people have never thought of before. 

I stand corrected. But for now I will see the Bible through different eyes.

I am saving the ocean

I have to write this now, before it is over, before I forget.

I am a volunteer for a really cool project called The Ocean Cleanup. You can google it. It has a website but it is still under construction. This project plans to clean the ocean from floating plastic debris. They have performed a feasibility reports that includes two trips to the Pacific Ocean and a massive computational modelling. The feasibility reports will used to attract sponsors for the real action of cleaning up.

The report, written by 20+ authors, need to be compiled, edited, and cleaned from all the comments before they are read for typesetting. I am one of the editors who are doing this job. There are several other volunteers who work with me right now, spread in both sides of the Pacific. The original plan was that I would stay for one week in Delft, and the print-ready version would be ready at the end of the week. But from the first day I knew that it was impossible, and this is my fourth week of editing. At the end of this week, the book will be ready. Really.

It was a great experience. It also gave me a chance to learn about myself. I was really happy when they said that I could come to Delft, and I have never felt so happy about work for a long time. So I learned that the goal, the reason behind a job is very important for me, much more important than money. For a week, I shared a house with an interesting guy with lots of experience. He is in the "start-over business". I read his books about urban shamanism, and I realized that I did not accept myself completely which might be one cause of my hay fever. He also told me how several homeopathic ways to reduce my symptoms, based on his own experience. Oh, and he said that allergy is partially psychosomatic. He might be true.

And I learned about my way of working. I am really analytic, and I cannot handle a combination of work and intensive communication in one time. A limited communication, suits better to me as it allows me to finish one job before moving to another. So give me something difficult to do and leave me alone. I also have a very sharp eye on details, and I need to learn to prioritize. It hurts me that the references are not done properly, although I chose to say nothing as the priority is to get the book printed on time, as promo-tours are already scheduled.

Having a day job is nice as I had an excuse not to think about the dishes and laundry. However, the house was really abandoned and more house chores was needed in the weekend after I returned.

What project would I be doing after this? I don't know. But right now I am grateful for the chance I have, that my situation allows me to work on this important project. 

Being jobless has its advantages! This reminds me of the Paulo Coelho and his interpreter, Yao, begging for change in Moskow, as told in The Aleph. Yao said that beggars purify the city because it gave people the chance to share their wealth and to show kindness. The jobless volunteer for projects that will  allow the wealthy people to contribute to the better world. We, the jobless people doing volunteer works, we are the beggars of the capitalistic world, and we are purifying the Earth.

Another thing worth remembering. My Delft week was the Holy Week, Semana Santa, and last year I was in Rome with my parents and Lrrr. We had a White Thursday mass with the newly crowned pope. This White Thursday I had a mass in Delft. Masses in the Netherlands were normally really boring, but here the choir was good and the priest had a good preach. He talked about Father van der Lugt who was killed in Syria after years of being a carer for the people in Homs. He also talked about Pope Francis, who in a recent audience with five teenagers said that he was an authoritarian but that was a mistake he has learned from. We are not suppose to point others and saying that we are better than them. We are here to serve.

I had a feeling that I was supposed to be there. It feels alright.

The importance of creating your own story

I used to wonder what the meaning of life is. But after watching Cosmos at National Geographic, I realized that it was an irrelevant question, as what George Lucas mentioned. We did not exist. Then we exist. Then we'll gone in a fraction of a blink of an eye. There is no meaning. We are.

However, Cosmos is also a very beautiful story of our universe. Last week I watched The Grand Budapest Hotel, and basically it is a version of somebody's life. The writer said, "If people know you are a writer, they will come to you and tell their stories". Stories give color and differentiate our life, or universe, with the others. As it turns out that our universe is not the only universe in the multiverse, it means they are many other stories. The number of stories that have been, and will be created, is infinite.

When you remember somebody, what you remember is also the story he created, or the story you created when looking at him. When you said "My grandfather liked to take me to .... " then you are telling the story you create about your grandfather.

Our universe starts with a big bang and will be ended with a massive shrinking. One particular planet in our universe has one-cell organisms, dinosaurs, mammals, ferns, and human (not at the same time).  Human life starts with a birth and ended with a death. But what happens in between is different. As we are craving for immortality, we want our stories to linger even long after we died. It doesn't matter if the story is good or bad, as long as it is a story. Evolution is an example of a good story. Another example of a good story is that in The Big Fish.

I used to have a story. However, these latest years have make me spread thinly, the plot of my story weakens. I realized this as sometimes during parties I met people and I could not think of anything interesting in me to be told. I wanted to be a person I thought I needed to be (to be loved), and abandoned my story. Maybe that is why this pause period is given to me, to let me pick my story where I left it.

Paulo Coelho said once "don't be useful. Be yourself". Functionality is not the most important characteristic of our lives. We are not a pair of scissors. I believe that when we stay true to ourselves, we are creating our stories.

In the next posts I will write up my story. What is your story? If you don't own one, make it. It doesn't have to be true. Truth can be boring, and we are not writing a peer-reviewed paper. It was not important if the story in The Big Fish was really occurring. "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story"*, said a guide in Prague to me. Make a good, glorious story of your life, one that make the eyes of the children wide open when listening to it.

*Turns out this is also a title of a song from Gaelic Storm.

What if

Things I like from my PhD

After the previous post, I feel that I have to wrote down about the things I like from my PhD - as a balance, and also to stay grateful.

1. I had a good adviser. His scarce advises were sharp and useful, and moreover, he was a kind person.

2. I wrote 5 publications and 1 patent, and I was the main author for the 3 publications. All the publications were published in Q1 journals. I have left some impact to the academic world. I have tangible results. Yes, I can write.

3. I had chance to go abroad and works with great people from all over the world. I have worked in Finland and Russia, and presents in AIChE in US. I know that I am good at communicating with people with various background. The times I spent abroad were amazing and I learned a lot from them.

4. I gave lecture in reaction engineering and supervised a student. Another good experience. I love teaching.

5. I took the catalysis course and passed with an 8.1. As I don't have catalysis background, this gives a good feeling that I can learn quickly. I did learn very hard with my colleagues before the exam! (and we all passed with great marks). And this shows that I am not a quitter - a colleague gave up just 2 days before the exam, despite having studied together with us.

6. I managed to make some good friends. Not many, but good ones that stay being my friend until this moment.

7. And off course: I finished well. I survived with only negligible scars. I made a beautiful book and I answered the questions well.

8. I learn many skills, thanks to my great colleague: which End-Note version I should use, making nice graphs with Origin, playing with the data from the continuous experiment to ensure that the average really represents the experiments ... and many more.

9. The catalysts that we developed may be used in large scale for the sake of mankind. Isn't it great?

Phew! That is a relieve to see that not everything I did was wrong. It gives a good feeling and great self-esteem boost, now I can move further!

Interesting journal!

There is a great new journal from Elsevier: MethodsX. See here. Why didn't it appear earlier? I think an important contribution that I made during my PhD is the tweaking of the methods to properly attain the mass balance during the catalytic hydrotreatment.

Things I regret from my PhD

PhD is bitter sweet. The bitter things linger a bit too long, and at this moment I want to put them down here, and erase them from my mind. I will start...

1. Commuting. Commuting is annoying when you have a job and terrible when you do the PhD. PhD is the time to develop yourself as people, not only as a researcher. Due to my commuting I didn't have enough time to develop my hobby, my personality, and make friends. And being a person who function poorly without enough sleep, I wasted many hours in my lab. Sometimes I need to ask my friend if I could stay at her house when I needed to do a C-NMR. Commuting was a consciously-made choice, though, as Lrrr works somewhere else, and compromise was required.

2. My PhD topic is somewhere between chemistry and chemical engineering. I did it at a chemical engineering department, but none of the main professors gained their master's and PhDs in chemical engineering (they were part-time professors with chem-eng backgrounds, but they don't supervise PhDs). They were PhDs in organic chemistry or physics. They don't have enough passion for the process-related topics, and my chemistry baggage is not heavy enough.

3. I did not take enough courses. Courses are not given by the universities, but by the national "research schools", and they were not compulsory. My excuse was that I was too busy. 

4.  Lack of career orientation support. The fraternity is good at arranging this, but it is more for the master's student. I think the career orientation should be given by the university, and I think they should be a bit more proactive. I get the career orientation from the conference, and they were not very helpful.

5. Lack of supervision. There are not enough faculty to supervise us, and I did not understand why my advisor did not have a assistant professor to take care of the daily supervision. Although he is a very good teacher, my advisor did not have enough energy or time to give a proper supervision and some career overview. We were strayed students. 

6. I did not take enough vacations. I had 41 vacations days, I only used about half of them because Lrrr has a minuscule 26 vacation days. To go somewhere on my own would have been good.

All right! Now there are out of my mind. Time to move ahead. Looking at those things above, I think that postdoc is really not for me at this moment, as there is no "we" in academia, just me: my projects, my grants, my publications. And I don't want to do a postdoc simply to wait for other better job to come. Everything will be fine at the end. 

Color quiz

I get several calls from job agencies. Now thinking of returning to the 9-to-5 job gives me a strange gut feeling. Would be an entrepreneur suits me? Is postdoc a better option? So I looked at  a job search site to find a quick career match test. One of the test options is the color quiz from  this site. I took it and put the result below. I have to say that it is surprisingly accurate.

Your Existing Situation

"Craves change and new things, always looking for new adventures and activities. Becomes restless and frustrated when she has to wait to long for things to develop. her impatience leads to irritability and a desire to move on to the next project."

My comment: yes.

Your Stress Sources

Feeling empty and isolated from others and trying to bridge the gap between herself and others. Wants to live life to the fullest and experience as much as possible. she cannot stand any restrictions or obstacles put in her way and only longs to be free.

My comment: freedom to do things my way is always very important to me.

Your Restrained Characteristics

"Finds satisfaction in sexual activity, but is emotionally detached which prevents her from becoming too involved."

Giving more than she is getting back and feels misunderstood and unappreciated. Feels she is being forced into compromising and even her close relationships leave her feeling emotional distant.

His arrogance causes her to take offense quickly. Only those closest to her know deep down she is sensitive and sentimental.

"He is able to find satisfaction through sexual activity, but can be restless and emotionally distant so she never really gets too involved with others."

Current events leave her feeling forced into compromise in order to avoid being cut off from affection or future cooperation.

My comment: Whaaat??? This is certainly not what I felt with Lrrr. This sounds more like what I felt when I was in the previous relation. But it was like a decade ago! However, I also feel that I am emotionally distant, and I am only open to a few people.

Your Desired Objective

"Highly optimistic and outgoing personality. Loves to learn new and exciting things, and craves new interests. Looking for a well-rounded life full of success and new experiences. Does not allow herself to be overcome with negative thoughts or self-doubt. Takes life head on, with enthusiasm. "

My comment: yes, yes, yes! Well, I have many negative thoughts, but I fight them.

Your Actual Problem

"Fights resistance or limitations, and insists she is free to develop in her own way. Rewarded by accomplishing things on her own, with little to no help from others."

My comment: Is this a problem?

Your Actual Problem #2

Is afraid she will be held back from obtaining the things she wants leading her to act out with a hectic intensity.

My comment: yes, I am afraid to be stuck.

Emptiness

Empty.

I fell rather empty and clueless. So I decided to write to keep my mind flowing.

Still no job. I haven't had any worthy interview since last year. However, I keep on trying. There are not many jobs around that suits me. I also feel that I am thinking too much in making a CV and a letter. Speaking of which, at this moment I am not very satisfied with my CV. It is always like this. So I am satisfied, then become dissatisfied, then perform an overhaul, fix the CV, satisfied, become dissatisfied ... I guess that's just how people grow.

Lost.

I have two CV formats, one for industrial job, and another for postdoc job. I don't think I am going to apply for postdoc job, but I like my postdoc CV so much. It is compact and looks very smart. An overhaul will be required to give my industrial CV the similar feeling as my postdoc CV.

Another important milestone: I officially own a company now. Yay! I decided to make it official when Lrrr asked me if I would like to help his company setting up a experiment design to check if their new idea can be realized. As a company owner you can have a tax deduction. Maybe I should be happy and enthusiastic with this idea, but I cannot help thinking that finding a paid job is my ultimate goal. Maybe I needed the external approval. Geesh. Shame on me! Counting on external approval to prove my self-worth! Maybe this is my problem that I need to solve at this moment.

I also have found that expressing my unhappy feeling works. I have quit mentioned it to Lrrr as he has seen enough and I don't think he can take any more of my negative emotions. But expressing can also be done by writing, or in my case, drawing.

Fall.

Another thing that I still need to find out is my story. I think I am lacking a personal story - who I am, what really interests me, what can I do. At this moment I am just chasing approvals, as I am lacking the self-esteem. But I am working on that.

To move on?

I visited my PhD supervisor today to talk about his postdoc offer. I haven't make up my mind yet, so I wanted to see how I would feel there. I did not feel really good there - walking through the lab gave me a kind of dark feeling. I have seen my former colleagues who are still struggling to finish their thesis - my competitors in the job market. I also met the professor who was one of the main examiners for my thesis defense. We have dinner together, my PhD supervisor, the examiner, and me. The examiner said that he was not surprised to see me there, and he will be surprised if I stayed as a project engineer (thank God, so it is not only my illusion that it was not for me).

Despite the good things that I learned - if I took the postdoc there then I could teach a class, supervise a PhD researcher, and maybe take a teaching qualification - I feel like coming back is a backward move. Please remember that this is my feeling, so not a well-reasoned thought. I had a great time there, but going back seems like a desperate move. I also feel that the postdoc will be too similar with my PhD.

Feeling should not determine the decision, but it is still a part of the reason of decision making. I read somewhere that people take better decisions if they based it on their feeling, as our feeling contains many information that we save unconsciously.

My feeling is however biased, troubled, murky. Actually I want to scream: why on earth can't I have an interesting company research job? (imagine all capital).

By the way, are you doing a PhD? Start looking for a job one year before you defend, so you have enough time to reject jobs you don't like. Plan one evening a week to work on your next job.

Less stupid mistakes, please!

I just realized I made a stupid mistake. A professor emailed me to arrange a Skype interview for a postdoc position, and in answering him I misspelled his name. Very, very stupid. He has not answered my email, hopefully due to the number of appointment he needs to arrange. Hopefully he is forgiving.

But I was really nervous yesterday and wanted to beat myself. Sometimes I just lost my focus and making these small yet annoying mistakes. However, I remember that that is not very good for my self-esteem, so I cleaned the house instead. Today I decided to look in the internet if there is a way to reduce such stupid mistakes.

And I found this article. Basically, Mulainthan and Shafir suggested that we sometimes forget that we are doing activities that need huge "bandwidth" that we don't have enough space in our brain to remember that we need to bring the keys before leaving the house. Realizing this can help us to prepare and prevent doing the same stupid mistakes in the future.

Here are the mistake-reducing steps they suggested:
1. Realize it's not you.
2. Understand when you are "drunk" (i.e. have used all your bandwidth)
3. Plan your mistakes in advance.
4. Identify your repeaters - yes, we tend to repeat the same mistakes!
5. Revamp your calendar - or throw it out.

Interested? Just read the whole explanation in the original article.

Update 22/1/14: I received a letter saying that I am rejected. I refused to blame myself.

I took a difficult decision, should I repeat it?

It has been a while. What happened? Lrrr was ill for a week in December, then I caught a cold, and I was busy writing some job applications, then the holiday season came.

Lrrr gave me a beautiful paint set from Winsor&Newton for my birthday.

I also made an important decision to halt an application process as a process engineer for an engineering company (I mean not a production company). An agency asked if I would try the position. I did the interview. After the interview I sent message to my parents, pray in a church, and called the agency to mention the decision. There. Done.

Now I am sitting with the same thought: my PhD advisor offered me a postdoc position in his lab. Although I would like to do research (also as postdoc), thinking about doing research with the same professor who knows me from deep inside, whom I know from deep inside, is rather disturbing. I know him too well, and our hierarchy has been carved by years of working together, that it will be difficult for me not to see him as the almighty boss.

But a job in research is a job in research (is it?)

Ok, I need to meditate further about this. Now I want to share some drawings. I have been inspired by Heleen Cornet who made beautiful watercolor paintings of the rain forest of Saba Island. She spent several weeks in a tent in the forest to make the paintings. I admire her capability to capture the colorful shades of the forest. You can see the banana tree and heliconia that I made based on internet pictures.

Maybe I need to go outside and bring my paint set with me.

A farewell

My uncle, the youngest brother of my dad, passed away yesterday very early in the morning, just at the time when you see that the sky starts to become less black and more blue. No, I wasn't there, we are too far apart. He was my favorite uncle and the reason to visit grandma when I was little. He was tall and skinny and he wore broad glasses. And he laughed a lot.

Have a great journey, dear Uncle!

I kept on biting

In the Dutch language there is an idiom "doorbijten", which literally means to bite through. It is a metaphor for someone who keeps on fighting regardless of the bad situation he/she is having. I like to translate is as "to keep on biting".

This idiom came into my mind about one and half years ago. After my PhD contract was ended, I decided to take the job as a project engineer. My experiments were finished but a lot of major corrections on the draft still needed to be done. But my professor had many other overdue students, and there was no sign that he would have time to check my papers soon.

So I took the job. I had to commute with public transportation as I haven't got my driving license yet. The route is: bus + train + train + bike. It took two hours and a fifteen minutes for one trip. It was tough. I was exhausted. It was cold and the days were gloomy. My memories of those days are of me sitting in the train. It was dark outside. I was trying to do a bit of work on my tiny laptop. Waiting for the train in the cold was unpleasant so whenever possible I would look for a shop and entered it. (Some shops forbid people from doing this).

At home, I still tried to write for unless one hour with the help of energy drink and hot tea. The endless supply of hot tea was the one keeping me moving.

I kept on moving. I "kept on biting". It seemed hard and impossible, but I didn't want to let my thesis go.

Another clear memory was the news about the suicides done by two teenagers by jumping on the train. They were bullied and could not take it anymore.Suicides happen frequently in the Dutch railways and are the main reasons for delays. Normally, I will be annoyed by those who were so inconsiderate to make other people to suffer from their weakness, but this time I understood that.

At the moment, what I was really hoping is that somebody would come to me and ask if anything is alright with me. And I will tell him the burden of my thesis and my job. He should be a stranger, a nice person who appears out of thin air, someone unburdened.

He never appeared. Eventually my thesis is finished, I get my driving license, I quit my job. Lrrr and I haven't reached the ideal life we desire, but I (and him) kept on making progress, one at a time. And we have each other.


PS. I am wondering if those with a very mild depression would benefit from a warm and unburdened conversation, offered by people who are just being kind but without any responsibility whatsoever toward the sufferers.

Life as a project engineer ... and why it is not for me (2)

After the post about the daily tasks of a project engineer, I will further give a view on what I like of being a project engineer. The next and last post of this series will be on the things I did not like from that job.

When I first started the job, I was thrilled that I would learn about the new technologies from the clients. The company does not own any technology to make sure that the market is as wide as possible. As the projects are relatively short and the clients are many, there are many technologies I can learn. I cannot expose them here as it is part of the secrecy agreement. However, most of the technologies are standard processing technologies in the oil and gas processing companies, but tweaked a bit - like using new catalysts or new separation technology. Now I really understand how they translate the concept into reality.

And then I learned how to design a plant. I can now arrange the equipment and instruments of a plant in a good order. Like when you connect a gas bottle to the plant, you will need to have at least a pressure reducer, a flow controller, and a pressure relief valve to protect the lines. Many instruments are required for one single gas line. To imagine that I have supervised plant design projects in my former job (I was a lecturer) without knowing any of these!

I learned about standards and norms. Working in engineering means that you have to deal with many safety norms. A few example here is API for the designing of pressure relief valves, and Pressure Equipment Directive for designing a pressurized vessel. Every type of industry has its own set of standards. As I was building a hazardous plant, I had to deal with a certified inspector as well.

I have learned to use Dutch properly. Albeit having mostly foreign clients, all my colleagues and most of the suppliers are from the Netherlands. I spoke quite good Dutch before start working there, but then I also learned how to write a formal letter. I used Google Translate a lot in composing my emails just to make sure that I did not make any embarrassing mistakes.

They treated me like human - they give compensation for overtime, clean and roomy office, fast computers, good managers. The salary standard for a construction company is lower than for chemical industries. I was not really satisfied with my salary. But unlike in the university, I was not expected to make more than 40 hours a week. And when I asked if I could work for 4 days a week to have more time to finish my PhD thesis, they allowed me to.

I brushed up my communication skill. There were a lot of culture difference here because nearly everybody working there were born and raised in the region. They have their accent and their communication style. And there were engineers, technicians, and suppliers. Each group should be treated differently, and I was trying hard to get along well.

I learn to work in a very organized way. That is the good thing about engineering. Because you are working in a team, it is crucial that everybody has access and could understand what the other was doing, so when somebody is ill, the others can pick up the work easily. So every email and every piece of calculation were organized in the Outlook or in the network drive. There is a rule on numbering. Every single step should be documented.

I learn to work fast. There is no time to think.

There were some nice colleagues. The colleagues were very helpful, they will answer any questions I had although I am distracting them from work.

Life as a Project Engineer ... and why it is not for me (1)

A project engineer is always in-between every parties working on the project.

I am not sure if it is true, but I think only two engineering fields have project engineer as a job option. The first is chemical engineering, the other one is civil engineering. Although the science involved were completely different, the nature of the "project" is the same: it is a building project. As a chemical engineer you build a chemical plant, and as a civil engineer you build, well, buildings. Or bridges. But you know what I mean.

For those who don't have an engineering background, this is the way I explain what a project engineering job looks like: it is like being a wedding organizer. You have the marrying couple as the client with a wash-list of demands. On the other hand, you have contact with caterers, designers, venue owners, whom you can use to fulfill the couple's demands. You are the middle person, who integrate the demands and the supply to create a beautiful wedding. This also means that when your supplier (caterer, etc) ruin their job, you are the one to blame and you would need to clean the mess. 

It is easier to imagine now, isn't it?

Now you can imagine how the work starts: I had a client with a list of specifications of the plant they want to build, and a set of budget. Let's say the client wanted to build a beer brewery. Sometimes the sales department has arrange the specifications and budget, sometimes I still had to compose it. I liked this part as I could learn the newest technology developed by our clients (although this is not part of the job). The specifications covers only the most important things required to design a plant, like how much beer should be produced in an hour, and what is the flow/pressure/composition of the feeds (water, wheat, nitrogen gas) that will be supplied by the client. Also mentioned were the materials to be used (steel? titanium? aluminium?) and the norms to be applied. I will talk about this later.

When all specifications are fixed, the next step is to draw. There is the more basic drawing, we call it process flow diagram (PFD), and more detailed drawing, which is the Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID). Imagine designing a house: first you have the drawing where only the rooms and the sizes are mentioned, and later on you will have a detailed picture with the lamp position, electricity connections, and wall thickness. PFD is the basic drawing and P&ID is the one you use to really building the plant. I would make the PFD/P&ID with pen and paper, and the drafter will use their charm and make them a beautiful drawing. The client will have a look, give suggestion, and a few corrections were required before I could start to "size" the equipment and instruments.

Then I started to "size" the equipment and instruments. Like the word says, I had to determine the required size of vessels, tubing, valves. Furthermore, I have to choose which supplier should deliver the stuff. Most often than not, the sizes were determined by the choices you have in the market. Many mails were sent and calls were done during this stage to ask for the quotes. Normally the first quote will not be the correct one, and revisions of the quotes were required. I also had to keep a list of the specifications of the equipment. As I had to specify every single valve, the list is quite long. 

During this stage, I wrote many emails with similar content: "Please send me a price and delivery time for type A valve, with maximum pressure and temperature of C bars and D celsius, with E inch nominal size, and F type of connection". When I took this job, I did not know that I should also specify whether I would like to have a G 1/2 inch connection, or a NPT 3/4 inch female connection, or a welded connection, from which class. It looked arbitrary to me, yet it can be very annoying when I got it wrong. Imagine you have everything is ready, and you cannot connect the pump with the rest of the equipment because fitting is not correct.

This "sizing" can take a while. However, you know that if you are organizing something, you are chasing with time. Here it is the same game. It can take a while to get a quote that finally match the demands, especially for large equipment like reactors. Then I could finally place an order, but it also took a while to have them delivered.  When you apply a fancy material or norm, it could take half a year to deliver a valve. Sometimes, the equipment was delivered with a mistake and I had to return it to the supplier to get if fixed.

The construction phase was started when most of the (correct) equipment and instruments are delivered. We will sit together, the manager, the technicians, and me. Here we would agree on the versions of P&ID to be used, and communicated the predicted difficulties. 

During the construction, I would regularly walked to the construction hall, and check if things were done properly. Here I would get many questions to clarify the P&ID. Sometimes I get complaints, like there is not enough space in the frame to place the equipment nicely. Or they asked if they could change the position of this or that valve, because it will make the construction easier. Not all questions were easy to answer. Sometimes I need to re-calculate the design, or ask the manager if this or that changes were okay. 

The last stage before the delivery was performing the tests to see if the plant worked as intended. However, before the real tests, many small tests should be done, like checking if all instruments were placed and numbered correctly, if all electricity connections are properly connected. Then the leak test was performed. Each section were leak-tested separately. Sometimes the test can only be performed after office hours, like the X-ray test to check the welded connections.

I made long hours in this construction and test phase. The planning was so tight that the sizing, construction, and testing phases overlap each other.

To be continued.