Noise, noise, and more noise

I was awakened this morning around 6:30 AM by constant blasts of sounds from a loud speaker. I live close to a middle school about 5 min away from it. I have found that they still ask students to gather in the open field in early mornings in Taiwan and listen to what the school administration has to say. That would be fine with me, except that their sounds are really loud and become a constant noise to me. The noise does not always stop there. I went to my office early this morning since I could not get back to sleep any more. I was just about to get settled, ie, ready to work. There it goes again. The sound of construction. Unbelievable! Since I came to my host institution this September, there were not many days that were quiet. There has been construction going on, and on, and on….

What is funny is that the construction workers use loud speakers to communicate with each other. Oftentimes, I can hear they joke about something. It is ridiculous. Mind you, we are in a building where students attend their classes, and it is not just my building that is affected but also the nearby buildings too where classes are going on. I can’t believe the university would let the construction go on during the semesters. A student told me that he can’t hear very clearly what the professor says when the workers are working. Even so, this thing goes on and on and on….I guess people in Taiwan have a high level of tolerance. I have an urge to complain, but since I am just a visiting professor here and I already have complained about something else to the president of the university that I think I would learn to adopt the attitude of tolerance for a change, and hopefully the construction work will end soon. How soon? ASAP!! Speaking of complaining to higher-ups, it is very effective. After I complained, the things I complained about were dealt with promptly. Why can’t things be handled this way before people complain?

To be or not to be a scientist

After being in the business (ie, conducting scientific research) for long enough time, I started to think maybe I should do something else. I have had the thought since 2007. It all started from experiencing a hard time to get my ideas accepted by my peers. I wouldn’t give a damn (pardon my language) if my ideas got accepted or not if it weren’t for the fact that our career status critically depends on the number of publications and grants. It has become increasing annoying to see crappy papers get published while I have to work extra hard to get my ideas/work accepted published. It is also getting annoying that I have to educate my peers on some of the subjects that they should be familiar with. It is even annoying to find errors in the publications, and I have to ask myself why reviewers did not pick them up on these mistakes. Some mistakes are very obvious. I used to write short papers and tried to be succinct, but have been forced to elaborate on things that I thought my peers would surely know.

Now I just think the whole peer review process is nothing more than a joke. The journal ranking is also laughable. I think I should do something other than science. Doing scientific research is hard but supposedly fun as well. Now I just feel a bit sick of the mentality of the scientific community. Scientists are merely a bunch of close-minded people with a subjective view and they think their views are always in the right. Most of them don’t even dare to think outside the box. Scientists are supposed to be open-minded with an objective view. I’m simply disappointed in my peers and wonder if I should do something else that is easier to get satisfaction.

My New Year’s Eve – The Celebrity Style

These are a few pictures of fireworks taken from a mansion at the New Year’s Eve. The mansion is on top of a mountain (I think), thus providing a vintage view of the Taipei city. The tall building in the pictures is Taipei 101 building, the second tallest building on Earth (as I understand).

We were invited to attend the New Year’s Eve party hosted by the owner of the mansion. We arrived around 8 PM, and didn’t get back home until 5:30 AM the next day. I don’t recall ever being staying up so late in recent years. When we arrived, the tall gated doors were wide open. At that moment, I felt I was in a movie. Here I was in a mansion that you only see in movies. The furniture in the mansion was the French court style, very delicate, expansive, and fancy looking.

That was quite a night, eating great food (lobsters, oysters, choice meats) prepared by a restaurant chef, watching fireworks in the courtyard of a mansion on top of a mountain, surrounded by like-minded people. We had BBQ (the Chinese style, no BBQ sauce) in the rather chilly weather. It was fun, especially when I didn’t have to do the work. There were some other guests coming and going. The fireworks started at 12:00 AM exact on Jan. 1 2009, and it lasted about 180 seconds, I was told. After watching the fireworks, we went back into the mansion and stayed until close to 5 AM.

We were invited to attend a traditional lunar year-end banquet by a company’s president who was at the New Year’s Eve party and is good friends with the mansion owner. It was nice. We were sitting close to the stage. We won the 3rd prize raffle. We went up to the stage with other winners to have a picture taken. We were invited to watch the live recording of a few shows hosted by the mansion owner. It was fun. I had a good time in Taiwan. I worked during the daytime and enjoyed these activities after the working hours. My winter break ended with a flight on Business back to the States. There were too many people on Economy so I was bumped up to Business. I was praying to be bumped to Business, and my wish was answered. ;-)