Work is back

Work is back. It didn’t really leave me, just that I forgotten how work looks like, just like how I completed forgotten who that Russian bird who waved at me at the café was; I made a complete donkey out of myself that afternoon.

So work is back just sitting on my desk. I somehow managed to overlook it for the last couple of days. I have been a bit more than clouded lately that my worldview has been somewhat skewed. Work became the least of my worries, but now that much of the other aspects of my life have been sorted, work is now waving at me like a blinking lunatic.

My application for ethics approval did not go so well. As part of the ethics committee’s mission to create hoops for research students to jump through, I have to resubmit my draft questionnaire. Well it is not like there is anything fundamentally flawed with my initial draft. It was highlighted that the draft questionnaire was littered with typographical and grammatical errors. I have got no problem asking my mom to read through my questionnaire again, but I’m still perplexed as to how grammatical errors have become an issue for consideration by the ethics committee. I mean, since when has subject-verb agreement become an ethical concern? And I thought the bureaucracy of the armed forces was bad.

The better work-related news is perhaps that I have a paper accepted in a conference in Perth. Fine this conference is probably as prestigious as TCS Star awards, but the point really is that I have never been to Perth. A five-page paper for a ticket and accommodation to Perth ain’t that bad. The reviewers’ comments were quite interesting. The first reviewer actually rejected the paper claiming that it was too conceptual and boring. If I know who this reviewer was, I’ll just like to let him/her know, it is only a local conference, not a nomination for the Nobel prize. The second reviewer recognized that it was an obvious cheap attempt to get a free flight to Perth gave me two thumbs up. Whoever you are, bless you.

Back to the office for the weekend. I ain’t complaining.