Bye bye Philippines..hello China…

Hello World,

So I am currently sitting on the restroom floor of the airport in Manila, while two flight attendants brush their teeth. Cool right?

Last night we had a going away party, it was pretty great :) The music was being played through someones car stereo system and everyone had a good time! It was so hot in there that my glasses kept fogging up, kinda awkward when you are talking to people lol. Anywho, We leave around 5am and the others leave for there 9am flight back to the States. My flight is at 11:55am…or so I thought…

I hop out of bed scrambling for my life because apparently I turned off my alarm sometime during the night/morning. Somehow I manage to get dressed, and drag all my bags up the million stairs that are between our housing and civilization and into a cab in less than 15 minutes (dont ask). …if one more person walks out of this restroom without washing their hands…. The cabbie tries to play me (as usual) but I make him turn on the meter, we have a great convo on the way to the airport as we fly through traffic dodging buses and center dividers. It takes about an hour to get here since there was a traffic jam on the EDSA (a freeway similar to the beltway). I get past security and begin to look for the China Southern Airline (CSA) check in desk only to find out that my flight has been cancelled….and had been since JUNE! (Mind you I did go online the night before and saw no such notification). Sherrie the CSA receptionist was very helpful and friendly, she put me on the next flight to  Guangzhou, China and had someone buy me lunch :)  Guangzhou is not my final destination and I will miss the connecting flight so CSA is going to accomadate me in a hotel near the airport and I will leave for Guilin at 8am. Hopefully everything goes well with the hotel and my arrival to China. I will keep you all posted. 

Oh did I mention all my cards are cancelled (long story) Sooo its kinda rough on these streets for me. Im currently dehydrated and might slip into unconciousness pretty soon.

I miss my filipino family already :’( We plan to have a reunion in January! YAY!

Officially the last day

Today is now the last day. I am going to spend my morning picking up laundry and sending post cards. I’m still excited about this opportunity, especially because this was my first time out of the country. Now that it is time to go, I plan to spend the afternoon concluding all work. Following, there will be dinner with Didith at 6 p.m. The other lab attendants are gathering today at 5 p.m. to depart for this outing. I have finished packing and will enjoy my last night in Manila.

Until my return,

QK

Quick Recap… Quick Vent….

Anyways… this past weekend we went to another beach. This time we took a plane to the island of Palawan and it was definitely an island; we got out the plane outside and had to walk inside to leave the airport. We checked into our hotel which was more similar to a hotel than the one that you seen pictures of, we actually had a toilet and a real shower this time but still no hot water -___-. Not to mention there was some type of insect or bug in there every night, the first night was mosquitoes, then an gecko the next night and when we were leaving there was a huge dragon fly… Ugh. I am so over this already, It is definitely a great experience but I think I have over stayed my welcome. This beach was eons better than the previous ones that we have been to but we didn’t stay for long because we decided to go to this cave/river tour. It took us 3 hours to get to the beach by bus and let me tell you, this bus was soooooo dirty and rotten it looked like it was at the bottom of the ocean and they decided to recycle it lol! The cave tour was ok, we got to see bats in their natural habitat but by midway I think we would all have rather went zip lining in the forest. Though things are fairly cheap in USD things are quite expensive now that we have been living here and running out of money. Now that I have $0.00 left its kind of hard to do much of anything.

On top of that last night my power went out in my unit, I don’t know how only my apt unit doesn’t have power but yea that happened but I could only use one outlet in my WHOLE unit since I been here so that also means I didn’t have an outlet for my fridge so I never had a working fridge. SO I have been basically been going thru it over here… “It’ll be over soon”

-TheJonMurph

July 22,2011

Good morning, 

I am currently in the lab making revisions to the questionnaire with the aid of Didith. So far it is more than half way done and I will soon be wrapping this part of my day up soon. I am still thinking to myself that I can not believe that there only remains 2 more days. I’m truly excited to see the outcome of my work and how the group would be able to utilize it in the remainder of their thesis. As for the remainder of the day, I will finish packing and getting things together before departure early Saturday morning. Tomorrow is going to be a really nice dinner. Didith has invited a lot of the Ateneo research students as well. I really look forward to this and can not believe that this is one of my last days at Ateneo. :-(

Until next time…

QK

shonblogs:

Point is, it’s unproductive and pointless in my life. at no point will yelling at me work in your favor :)

Who did it??

Good Research Vibes…

Kumasta,

I just realized that I didn’t tell you how my meeting with my advisor went. Maybe my messages haven’t been sending because this internet SUCKSS!! What I thought was going to be was a one on one update meeting was actually a three on one meeting with the heads of the University’s networking group; which is basically the IT department.­ It actually went very well and they were pleased with the results I presented. I picked the best 10 bug tracking software and then narrowed them down to 5 of which I presented to them. Now the next step is to figure out the pros and cons of each one as well as which one would be the best fit for the university, given the software already being utilized. 

Less than 2 days left! Can’t wait to take a real shower….

-TheJonMurph

Murphy’s Law…

Yesterday, I felt like I was dying literally. Two words: Teriyaki Boy. Well the team decided to venture off and try something new that wasn’t on campus. BAD IDEA!!! So I decided to lay in my bed all day because my whole body was going through it. And to make matters worst we had a ‘brown out’. What is a brown out you say…well its when the electricity goes out out for a period of time. No electricity = no air conditioner, no hot water, & no internet. I wanted to have a breakdown but couldn’t muster up enough strength to bring myself to one. Some how I managed to go to sleep but when I awoke, I felt a lot better. 

I will meet with my advisor today to discuss my game development timeline. She thinks it will take 2 to 3 months to actually finish the game. I’m excited to continue this project when I return to Howard in the fall.

-CDB

Change of Plans

So today I had my usually meeting with my advisor and due to some major complications my research project has been changed. It kind of unfortunate because my journal was mostly complete. So today I start from scratch! I don’t mind though because this new venture seems exciting. I need the assistance of a server for part of my experiments so that part will have to wait until I return to Howard. 

We enjoyed our weekend on the island of Palawan, it was good to get away from the congestion of the city and see another side of the Philippines. We ventured to the Puerto Princessa Underground River which is nominated to be one of the new 7 wonders of nature!

Only 3 days left, im sad to leave. Where has the time gone?

-RD

Wednesday, 3 more days…

Today I am completing the questionnaire and watching my project mates give a thesis proposal defense. I am really looking forward to their presentations at 3 p.m. today. I sent TC a list of resources yesterday and truly hope that they can utilize my research. Unfortunately, it is time to go back. In preparation, I have been communicating with the International department about taxi arrangements and more! The taxi will be here at 5:30 a.m. I suppose I will not be sleeping that night. Wow, does time fly? Currently, Didith is reviewing scanners, arrays, array lists and loops. It’s pretty interesting to sit in on this and a great review of Computer Science concepts. I will update again tomorrow. Have a great morning.

Sincerely,

QK