See that activity to the left? I'm bidding it good-bye for a while.I'm doing a PHD down in Tainan, commuting a couple of days a week. Hence on Monday I rose at the ungodly hour of 5:00 am, drove madly to train station on my new scooter, got on the train at 6:00, got to Tainan at 8:30, and found myself sitting in a class on e-commerce. Whoa! In the afternoon I attended my seminar class, which will bring in experts to speak on topics of interest, and then hopped back on the train, zoomed back to Taichung, hopped on my scooter, and zipped down to Chaoyang for a night class. Whew! I sure hope the physics guys get the quantum teleportation thing going soon....sitting on a scooter for an hour is worse than riding camels in India.
My PHD courses are all in Chinese, although for some reason I had developed the impression that they would be in Anglais (Ministry reform policy, for example?). I personally have no trouble with the lectures, though sometimes there is a bit of technical vocabulary that I don't know the English equivalent of, but apparently none of the other international students except a couple of overseas Chinese have anything more than a rudimentary ability in Chinese. There is even a Japanese guy who has almost no English, and only halting Chinese. I have no idea how he is going to survive. Only two courses, risk management and questionnaire construction, are in English.
On the other hand, the university means well and is obviously trying hard to accommodate us. Taiwanese bureaucracies are like elderly men -- always willing, but of limited flexibility. The other PHD students have been warm and welcoming and I look forward to getting to know them. The campus is gorgeous. old university and has real old uni feel. Beautiful and well-stocked library. Lots of old trees and even a little grass, and filling with a milling, moving, masss of students out practicing martial arts, drawing, walking hand in hand, and exchanging joyful greetings.
Ah. campus life. Anybody know a good text in English on multivariate analysis?
[Taiwan]
"There is even a Japanese guy who has almost no English, and only halting Chinese. I have no idea how he is going to survive."
ReplyDeleteIt seems like there always is a Japanese guy like that.
Don't you have a PhD already, you being a professor in an university? What are you studying?
ReplyDeleteTim
Good luck. I am deeply impressed by your taking a course of study in Chinese at such a high level.
ReplyDeleteAnd this: "Taiwanese bureaucracies are like elderly men -- always willing, but of limited flexibility."
I have been looking for such a phrase! A perfect description, which I shall share with all.
I hope you mean drinking beer and not hanging out with me.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and good luck with the PhD. Seriously.
ReplyDeletehah, you're commuting from Taichung to Tainan for your PhD, and I'm commuting from Taipei to Taichung for my BA....sigh!
ReplyDeleteIt's a pity that I don't have your class this semester....well, you probably don't want to see me anymore....hah
Anyway, good luck with your PhD.
I can't understand your giving up beer. That is something no true graduate student would even contemplate.
ReplyDeleteI would even go so far that is is practically impossible to successfully complete a graduate level course without beer, and lots of it.
I pray you rethink this decision, sir.
haha, mark said:
ReplyDelete"It seems like there always is a Japanese guy like that."
Yes, isn't that the case! I had a roomate like that in Montreal. Well, Montreal is a French place, so his French was non-existent (he took courses in French at McGill) and his English was only halting.
I think the purpose of Japananse guys like that is to make foreign lunatics like me always feel at home, even we live in endless series of parallel dimensions!
Long live that Japanese guy. I hope he survives. We need him!
Prince, I'm not giving up beer, just nights out.
ReplyDeleteMichael
You have often warned people about the drawbacks(i mean really good parts) of living in Taiwan. Why come here?You said when I emailed you about living in Taiwan with my kids. Hasn't anyone warned you about the human desolation that is writing up ones thesis? Years of lonely work, without any indication that anyone cares what you have written, or that it has been worthwhile to have written it? Your gonna need alot of beer--or something stronger.
ReplyDelete"Using Maultivariate Statistics" by Tabachnick and Fidell is a great, comprehensive guide for quantitive social research. To my knowledge, it is used in a few management PhD program as the "Comp Book."
ReplyDeleteI got recommended Multivariate Data Analysis Hair et al, so I going with that. Thanks, though.
ReplyDeleteMichael