Today marked the first milestone I had to accomplish for my stay here in Japan as a PhD student. At 4:45pm I was scheduled to discuss with the Professor about my intended thesis topic. Actually at 4pm there was someone scheduled to meet with him and they took a little time so we started late. And then we took some time so the one meeting him next to me started even more late. And the one next.
Anyways, in summary this is what happened. I thought of doing research, say let's call it Research A. So I presented it to the Professor and then he said, no do Research B instead.
Failed? Of course not. Success? Obviously not. I sort of expected that one possible outcome of our discussion was that my idea would get rejected and so I had to look for other ideas. And so it happened. But actually, I also think that depending on the results of Research B I would end up doing Research A in the end.
Basically now I need to do some numerical modeling (by hand for the theoretical part, and using software to be able to repeat the process particularly for more complicated systems), and also to design a physical experiment. Those two, the professor said, are equal to two papers. The professor also reminded me that we have to submit two journal articles - hopefully those two papers could become my journal articles. Anyway, the professor also said that, after completing those two things, we could probably come up with another thing to do depending on the outcome.
But first things first, I need to define exactly what I need to do so that I can prepare a schedule of activities. And then I should come up with a design for the experiment so that the necessary materials can be fabricated.
Busy bee, see!
Anyway, right after the discussion I felt that a celebration was in order. So I played basketball. Yay! But we lost badly on the first game (maybe 20-13? I forgot), and we were winning in the 2nd game but it was still too early (4-2? I forgot) and someone was going to use the gym already.
Anyways, that was "Milestone #1," and I'm assuming every 2 months I need to come up with something and so I think with 36 months here (3 years), I have 17 more milestones to accomplish. Good luck with that. Actually, the next thing I need to do is prepare the Professor's journal article.
Today when I woke up, guess what was the first thing I did.
I fried my overnight-marinated beef tapa! It smelled great, and tasted great. One problem though is with so much sugar in the tapa marinate, there was a lot of burnt sugar left in the frying pan. Oops, actually I don't have a frying pan yet. Ehehehe. I just used the same pot I cooked the Picadillo in. :-D I plan to buy a real frying pan... Definitely within this week. And that flat tool you use for picking up fried food. What is it called? I also plan to buy a stove-top grill. My next project: Pork Kinilaw.
Anyways, I also fried me a couple of eggs, together with rice - to complete my Tapsilog (TAPa, SInaing, and itLOG). I think this is the first time in a very, very long time again (or maybe first time ever) that I tried to make sunny-side-up fried eggs. I thought it was easy enough to do, but no! My fried eggs looked so novice. Maybe I should settle with scrambled eggs next time. Much easier! I think I had the fire too hot. Actually I also thought that the egg will cook fast. It's not like that apparently. Maybe the non-use of a frying pan also contributed to my failure to perfecting the fried eggs. Anyway, eggs are eggs, and together with the beef tapa, and the rice (which was almost like fried rice because the tapa and eggs rested on it), they all tasted great. Thank God for Filipino food.
Initially I was contemplating on taking the tapsilog for breakfast but I was going to arrive a little late in school if I did. So I packed it for dinner, with the intention of eating lunch again at the by-the-pound cafeteria. Time flew fast and it was 1:20pm already - I might not get to that cafeteria in time (they close at 1:30pm). So I had tapsilog for lunch.
And then I had sinigang for dinner. Yummy.
Picadillo last night, tapsilog for lunch, then sinigang tonight. Pinoy food trifecta! Three straight Pinoy meals. I love it.
I'm excited now for my Nilagang Baboy, Pork Steak, and Pork Kinilaw. Yikes, I'm gonna become a porkupine! I should learn how to cook Tinola. What other Pinoy food can I prepare that is not pork-based? Actually for chicken and fish, I like them best fried. Maybe instead of frying, I could grill some chicken and fish. Maybe I could have Chicken Inasal! :-D
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