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.