Enron Emails; PhD Candidacy; Singapore Dreaming

Think your email is safe and the DELETE button will remove everything? Think again.

Some of the Enron emails are hilarious. Thanks to the FERC for releasing them to the public, we can now have a first peek.

If you do not want to register with Inboxer, you should use the database set up by UC-Berkeley to read the emails.

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Blogging shall take a back seat and new posts few and far between (or none, depending on my mood and schedule) in the coming weeks as I prepare for my admission to PhD candidacy. Approaching another milestone in Graduate School. Thanks for reading.

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Friend: Grad School is like OCS all over again (except this time it is almost purely mental).

Me: Why do you say that?

Friend: You have first year, where they (the department) purposely overload you with horribly tough core courses. At the end of it, just when you think it is over, it's time to sit for your Quals (Ed: Some schools call them prelims). Dropout rate is high, as they try to weed out the weak students from staying. You also have the upper-years looking down upon you like some kind of "plebe".

Post quals, we will have to start making progress on our research to be on time for the PhD proposal (Ed: basically convince the committee that what you want to do makes sense and is reasonable from your prelimary data), then complete requirements for the minor and finally face the committee for the dissertation defense. All this while with the advisor breathing down your neck to publish more papers. You work 24/7.

And when you graduate with the PhD, it only marks the beginning of your (academic) career, just like OCS commissiong marks the beginning of an officer's life in the military. You might also have to go for more training in the form of a post-doc. Not forgetting your fellow grad students are overwhelmingly male, just like the military!

Me: Haha, such fertile imagination. You miss SAF that much huh.

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A new blog, by Colin Goh (and Jocelyn Woo) of Talkingcock.com. I actually attended their talk on “How Not to Make a Movie in Singapore” at the Library@Esplanade on 31 July 2004.