I
never had to say goodbye to many people in my life before. As long as we are in our motherland, the goodbyes are not that strong. We will meet again someday for sure. But in an international environment, we are not quite sure when we will meet some of our friends again. I made quite
good friends in 2012 to whom I had to bid farewell to (and they to me)
in 2013. Each year brings me its own set of friends. This year, I made some good friends - from China, India, and all over the world this year.
The end of this year was interesting. Remarkably, I was leaving Stockholm and returning to Lisboa. We just returned from Copenhagen from a short trip, before flying back to Lisboa. This was also my best new year vacation so far! I hope I will have better ones in the future though.
This was my first cruise, from Stockholm to Helsinki using Tallink
Silja line (M/S Silja Symphony to Helsinki and M/S Silja Serenade to return, though both are identical cruises and they look the same). The wave was strong as there was a storm. Planned acrobatic activities on the cruise were canceled due to the bad weather during the return trip which was on Christmas day. Shaking cruise made me a bit uncomfortable - but that was a comfortable sleep with the rhythm, once I
got onto the bed. :D
I also made a mistake assuming the Helsinki weather will be similar to that of Stockholm, based on the temperature predictions.
Helsinki was much wet and windy, which made the weather more unpleasant. Consequently, I was suffering from runny nose during the whole trip. That was also a wet Christmas - not a white Christmas!
[19/12/2013] Today was the last day at KTH, marking the completion of the semester 3. We did the final project presentations yesterday and today. My presentation slides on my project "Application Scheduling in CloudSim" are given below. I will miss my friends in the coming semester, as I am the only one EMDC guy returning to Lisbon.
[15/12/2013] - Finally we are completing our 4th month in Stockholm tomorrow. Few more days to complete the third semester, when all of us will disperse to different countries from Sweden. This month was interesting, but was dark with very little sun shine. Interestingly it didn't snow much yet here. Just snowed twice. Earlier this week once and today with rain. No evidence of snow remains either. All the snow has melted down.
At the examination
[12/12/2013] - Today at the examination, the invigilator looked at my Swedish
Residence permit with the photo taken just 100 days before, and then
looked at me. Then again at the ID, then at me, and then asked me, "Is
it really you?" (with a big smile of course). I said, "yes, it is me.
Now I look older in the winter". She certainly was not satisfied. She
asked from her colleague. He too was kinda confused. Then they decided to trust me. Probably they were just
playing with me, because they were smiling. Probably my appearance has
indeed changed drastically over the 100 days, away from the motherland
of Sri Lanka and the loveland of Portugal. haha.. Nevertheless, that was
fun. Blame my laziness for not shaving even past the Movember-deal.
Philosophy of Science
We have received the results for the Philosophy of Science. An "A" for my essay, "Creation-Science vs. Evolution. An induction based analysis". I am happy about that, as I had done a considerable research on that area for the paper. We had so many presentations. I love student presentations. :D
Lots of Music
I have spent lots of time listening to music, or I often do other things having the music as a background. In the city of darkness, music keeps me alive. ♥ I am listing some of the music I enjoyed most in 2013 below. These songs are pretty old and not really released in 2013. But I happened to listen to them for the first time in 2013. So for me, they are music of 2013. :D I hope you will enjoy these songs, as much as I do.
1. Inna (Romania) - Amazing (video in Praia das Maçãs (The Apples beach), Sintra, Portugal).
2. The Myth (China) - Endless Love. [bilingual song - Chinese and Korean].
3. DaiQing Tana (China) - Qinghai Lake (video in Qinghai Province, China). [bilingual song - Chinese and Mongolian].
Today we did a presentation showing how not to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for our Scientific Writing and Communications class. As an example, we created a presentation titled "Death by PowerPoint", depicting the improper use of PowerPoint. We discussed Cantopop, Cantonese Popular Music.
We intentionally made the presentation to be a lousy powerpoint presentation to make a point. Although we made this presentation as a joke, we firmly believe that Chinese pop music is the best. :D
Yagheli da?
I am Pradeeban, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Alaska Anchorage. My research focuses on networking and big data innovations for healthcare and Circumpolar North.
Before moving to Alaska, as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Biomedical Informatics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA. I researched and built efficient frameworks to schedule and execute biomedical informatics workflows.
I have an EU Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate in Distributed Computing (EMJD-DC) from INESC-ID Lisboa / Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal and Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. I received my MSc degree, Erasmus Mundus European Master in Distributed Computing (EMDC), from Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
