Language Does Matter

I went to another series of ISM Graduate Seminar yesterday at UDEM (University of Montreal). I have missed twice seminar for this venue as it was a French University. This time, the speaker was my friend, Valerie. Her talked was on how to compute the coherent state for a Poincare (2+1) group which is related to my future research (I believe). I asked Valerie earlier wherether she would prepare her presentation in English or French. She said that she not sure yet, not that if I insist. She kind of preparing a bilingua for the presentation.

At the first place I just want to cancel my present to the seminar. Because I don't want to put her in an awkward way. To just speak in English just because of me alone. But again, there's nothing wrong to have the English version as English is our FIRST language ever. So I decided to go and just see what happened. I sit at the very front of the seminar room. The speaker made an earlier announcement in French that she will present in English since there's one student here who don't understand French. Funny that I actually understand her, since she point me to the rest of the room and I can here she pronounced Anglais (English). That obvious huh...

The presentation went on slow. And question and answer keep on popping up in French, until the end of the session. I asked one of my friend from Greek who speak well French. She told me that it's difficult for a French student here to actually understand the English especially the scientific terminology and others. It takes time for them. This remind me of the same situation happened to us to understand the terms in English when we're learning in our mother tongue Malay.

The way that I saw it, the rest of the student who learn science in French has the same 'level' as if one learn in English. Not even far by an inch. In fact some even better.

Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa

Satu perkara yg cik salma rasa seronok ialah bila secara realitinya dapat mendengar ragam ramai bangsa lain dengan bahasa ibunda masing-masing. Mungkin sebelum ini cik salma terbiasa dengan cerita-cerita korea, jepun dan china kantonis tak lupa juga venezula di tv3, ape tuh..ya telenovela. Sekarang di dalam metro boleh dengar sok-sek beberapa bangsa mexico berborak. Tidak cukup dengan itu, ramai lagi bangsa lain di Montreal ni. Korean, Sepanyol, Mexican, Hungary, Chinese (mandarin), Greece, German, dll. Hari ni di lab cik salma, satu lagi bahasa yang cik salma tak pernah dengar. Bukan French atau Italian, Mungkin Poland agaknya. Mereka bercakap, tapi mulut seakan tertutup. cik salma curi-curi dengar tapi tak dapat sahkan bahasa apa. Rakan lab yang sorang ni selalu sibuk, tak pernah duduk di meja nya lebey dari 15 minit. She's always on the move. Kami biasa tegur gitu-gitu jek berbalas senyuman atau angkat kening masing-masing. To me she's look like a Polish.

Semacam seronok mendengar bangsa lain bertutur. Pada cik salma. mungkin mereka-mereka juga rasa terkesima bila dengar cik salma dan keluarga berbahasa Melayu. keh keh...

Note: Rupanya Julia dari Ukraine, she's going to finish this coming Spring for her PhD...

Math Physics Seminar

We had our very first of Math Physics Seminar of this fall term. The seminar was given by a visitor from Palermo University. His talk was on SUSY, intertwining operators and related vector coherent states. It was a nice feeling that the group who also attend this seminar is quite a number of people. Some were from other universities as well (the group of physics and mathematics).

For the first part of the seminar, I can actually follow the speaker and his content. His talked very clear and slow (I think this is why I found that one of the audience fell asleep) . He touched on the operator of the hamiltonian and stuff like that in quantum mechanics. The idea of susy QM came from when you can find other hamiltonian like H_{2}, H_{3} and so on when you already have your H_{1}. This is what he called the partner of hamiltonian operator. He later relate the idea with the coherent states which is closely related to what my supervisor is working on. And at this point I lost count. hehe...

At the end in the QnA session, the professor who actually fell asleep during the seminar was being the first one to ask. Oh oo...

ISM Graduate Seminar

Hi,

This week, the ISM Graduate Seminar was held at the Concordia. The presenter was from Universite de Montreal. I can assumed that it will be in French (since it was a French university) but looking at the announcement and the abstract, it was written in English. I also thought that it was a female presenter, so it would be nice for the first time to have a presenter from a lady. Then I found out that I was mistakenly took Alexandre as Alexandra. Hehehe...

The topic was interesting about Grounding the Meaning of Words in Dictionaries. No high complicated mathematics needed as he mentioned it, since he was a student of mathematics and linguistic. He used graph theory a lot in his research. Before he started, he was asking if the audience would prefer to listen he's talking in French on English. Without hesitate, I just say I prefer if you can present it in English. (From my last experience, I sit for the whole one hour seminar listening to a french speaker. Owh how that possible if that kind of situation happened again). Everyone was looking at me making a face...and thanks to Valerie when she mentioned that "well, it's not wrong to just expressed yourself". And yet the speaker did present it in English though he apologized that his English is not very good. Personally I think it was more than good. Thanks.

Note-This is not a boring seminar. I kind of love it. I really do. Using dictionaries to work on with. Where you generate and find the roots of the words (meaning the keywords using graph theory and other related algorithms).

Satu Jam Ke Belakang

Kalau ada movie masa di Malaysia dulu bertajuk Jangan Pandang Belakang, well semalam semua penduduk Canada terpaksa pandang 1 jam ke belakang. Orang biasa panggil DST (Daylight Time Saving). Malam tadi sebelum cik salma masuk tidur dalam pukul 4 pagi, cik salam dah siap-siap awalkan jam tangan ke pukul 3 pagi. Difikir-fikirkan semula rasa kelakar la pulak. hehehe... Ini kira pertama kali cik salma buat benda pelik macam ni. Almaklum, profesor cik salma kata nk jimatkan masa utk waktu siang. Sebab masa malam lama sangat, so terpaksa pilih cara nih. Nanti bulan April nak masuk Spring kita anjak semula 1 jam dari masa sebenar ke hadapan sebab waktu siang nanti lama la pulak. Oh yeah...

Satu perkara penting yang cik salma harus perhatikan ialah waktu tidur si kecik Ain nih. Kalau dulu pukul 9 atau 10 p.m. dia sudah menunjukkan tanda-tanda mengantuk. Yelah waktu gelap pun waktu kat Malaysia dulu tak berubah. Lebih kurang sama jek. If ada pun beza dalam 15-30 minit sahaja. Ikut waktu sekarang pukul 6 sudah pun gelap. Dan si Ain if nampak gelap mula nk masuk tidur. Bayangkan kalau dia tidur dlm pukul 7 atau 8 mlm. So nanti pukul 5 atau 6 pagi dia sudah bangun. Walhal, pukul 7 and 8 pagi masih lagi gelap. Hahaha... Kami terpaksa memerah idea supaya dapat melekakan si kecil Ain selama 2-3 jam sebelum dia dibenarkan tidur. Cabaran...cabaran.

Sebenarnya cik salma pun tak berapa gemar, waktu malam panjang sangat. Agak payah untuk memfokus kepada study dan kerja biasa. Gelap kat sini pun semacam jek bagi cik salma. Dengan hanya lampu yg kekuningan, mata begitu rasa perit, ditambah pula dengan rasa sejuk, mulalah rasa nk masuk dlm selimut. Walhal kerja-kerja yang perlu diberi perhatian begitu banyak. Progres seminggu sekali tajuk-tajuk research begitu lambat cik salma nak hadamkan. Ini belum ditambah dengan assignment yang bukan seminit dua untuk disiapkan.

Come on cik salma, sini bukan ruangnya untuk mengomel. Buat dulu sampai lebam (bak kata en. salam)...InsyaAllah

Totally Paranoid

OK...I am totally paranoid because of nothing!

It turns out that I'm not doing so so bad at all for my midterm. I am so relieved. It was more than half of the total. Which is OK for me. All my furious and other bad feelings have gone now. Nothing to regret for being left out from the 'discussion' during the running of the exam. I have actually tried to answer everything towards the end and believed it that it is lucky that some of them is actually correct.

However I learn it here that when you are trying to answer a mathematical problem. Please please make sure everything is written up. Don't left any tiny single idea that you had in mind. NEVER. Justified everything...

My level of courage is up now.
Thanks

Paranoid

OK, lets face it. Am I being paranoid or what. Is it just my feeling or it's nothing to do with anything. It's happened that exams over here is nothing the same like with exams we had in our country.

1. We can bring in formula (in only one piece front and back of a paper). So I wrote exactly the formula needed. But towards the day of the exams. I found out everyone wrote not only formula but also notes. Of coz in a very tiny little handwriting just to fit in both sided of the paper.

2. While exam is running, we usually don't discuss any of the question. Thus we don't even talked loud. Yeah maybe we can asked if the question really really confuses us. However in my midterm, everyone keep questioning the lecturer until they get to the answer.

But what really pissed me off is, the lecturer actually go one by one asking if they have came to point of question 2 for an answer. AND AND she didn't even asked me. Nope...she didn't stop at my place. You will never imagine that the class was actually were having a discussion instead of an exam. And it worst that I've just been left out. Totally left out.

There were just 9 of us in the class and to me its pretty small. I can hear a student and the lecturer was discussing the question in a very loud sound. For e.g.
Dialogue 1:
the lect - "Have you solved question 2 part 2?
student-"Not yet I've just finished part 1 (and she showed the lecturer her answer sheet)"
the lect-"Owh you actually has already the answer. Just write it in the form of Psi(s) and Phi(s). Now for part 2 you need to...bla..bla"
I can't help to hear again since time is running and I have another 2 parts of the question to answer. The the lecturer just went around the table asking everyone if they have come to answer question 2 part 2.

I was so confused and at the same time feel terrible about it (that shed didn't asked me) but I still want to make an effort and I just raised my hand and asked. And guess what, the lecturer just told me that "you need to make a change of variables" then she left. The discussion just continued. the lecturer even used the board to show everyone the idea. And I was so 'like terkapai-kapai', running towards time and in the same time stretching my brain to get an idea for solving the two parts. I again raised a hand to ask the lecturer, again the lecturer was just pointed very tiny ideas which don't really helps. Or maybe I asked in a wrong way. I'm not sure. But the lecturer never border to see how am I doing like the way she did it to the other student.

I just give up and wait for a stop sign to hand the paper in. I don't even bother to ask again. I am lost. So lost and mad.

So, am I being paranoid?