The beginning of the new age

Before I write more on my stories, I would like to tell a bit of introduction. I have been wanting to write a blog for couple of years now, I created this account like 2 years ago but nothing was written till last month. The contents hopefully will be on the several subjects that interest me: science, engineering (especially chemical engineering, control engineering, signal processing and stuff, robotics, some computer science as well), religion stuff (especially on catholicism and ecunumical stuff), on how science and religion interconnect. Then a bit on study and teaching, you can say something like education. I like subjects like music (esp. choral), food, world history, lifestyle, psychology and how politics sucks, computer games (civilization series, blizzard games, strategy games, RTK series, simulation). I also like the topic on 'How stuff works'. You can visit www.howstuffworks.com to get some idea.

Counting all the expenses of relocation

I just moved into my new house (still rented, I wish I could buy my own home sweet home some time soon) last Saturday (9th of October) making me still a little bit of tired couple of days after that. My today's topic is on the expenses when you move into a new place. I didn't have many furnitures in my previous place since I sort of sublet from my ex-flatmate. So here comes all the expenses: Fridge, Washing machine, sofa, dining table and chairs, coffee table. Luckily I got a friend moving to a new place and he wanted to sell his old stuff, so I got quite a bargain, maybe around 60% of the new price. Then come stuffs like all the kitchenwares: pans (can you imagine all the kinds), then electronics (dvd, phone, luckily i had my own tv before, so a bit of saving there). Then there are all small appliances like vacuum cleaner, iron, water boiler. Finally all the consumables, they too cost a lot, salt and spices, sugar, all the stuff you put in the fridge lol. Anyway just to sum up, I'm broke now haha.

When students care only about marks

Studying at school and university is supposed to be a fun experience. People should be able to learn the philosophy behind everything existing in this universe. I have been tutoring university students for almost 3 years now. I am always excited with students who keen to learn about stuff albeit they are not that good at the subjects in the first place, but at the end of the session, they are able to appreciate what they have been learning and relate the knowledge to the real world. However, lately I am quite dissapointed since some students now seem to only care about 'marks'. All they know is how to answer the questions, how to finish the laboratory reports while gaining almost no knowledge. I feel in a way that I have failed them.

Just a final recap, when people only go to educational institutions for marks only, what are all the graduates going to be like in the real world?

Research in Process Control

So many people are confused at what I actually do. To be honest, I was confused myself in the beginning of my postgraduate career, having no idea of what I was actually doing. Frankly speaking, I felt like I have wasted my first year of PhD. study achieving nothing. This is mainly because of all the mistakes I did and all the fail propositions I have come up with. But now in my third year, when I look back, it seems quite different. One quote from Edison has helped me realize that doing mistakes is part of a research life "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Now, lets go into more details on what my PhD. study is about. The current title of thesis I have is "Operability Analysis of Plantwide Chemical Processes". Out of so many people I have met throughout this 3 years, I have met only few (~1%) that can understand that. Of course, this number excludes my supervisor, colleagues, and other researchers in the same field.

To start, I better explain where we can find 'control engineering' in our daily lives. Electrical appliances are stuffs that utilize control engineering the most I would say. Take an example, air conditioners. Have you ever thought about what is the mechanism behind how air-conds can manage to cool/heat the room to the temperature you set. Some of you might have. The simplest way to explain is there must be a temperature sensor in the machine that tells you what the temperature of the room is. Then using this knowledge, a computer logic inside the air-cond will work out how much cooling/heating is needed to achieve the temperature you set. It's simple right? That was the idea behind 'control engineering'. So process control just refers to the control engineering of chemical 'processes', like reactors, distillation columns, even simple stuffs like mixing tanks.

Of course, in reality it is not that simple of just measuring and calculating. It involves very complex computations in a real control engineering, especially in a chemical processing plant. One obvious reason is a plant is just large in size (imagine the amounts of pumps existing). But the actual difficulty comes from because all the units in a large-plant are connected to each other.
That's what my research is all about. "Operability Analysis of Plantwide Chemical Processes" means that in a big chemical plants with so many units interconnected to each other, can we operate the plant to achieve what we want. It sounds simple, but I tell you it's NOT.