The End of The First Year of My Master Course

This gonna be the last report of the first year of my master study. So earlier this month, 3-4 Sept to be exact, I went to Kyoto. My previous research partner was going to present her study at a local conference in Shiga (ASJ, Ritsumeikan?). So I booked an airbnb room with her. But since she insisted that her campus really wants only one name on the receipt to be reimbursed, I couldn't book for more than one name. So I took the risk and booked the room for 1 person, but I stayed there for 1 night and 2 days. Basically, I feel guilty about that, moreover, I changed the name on the receipt to her so that her money can be reimbursed by her campus.

I went to Takanohara sta. using my old bike and had a flat tire half-way to the destination. However, I parked my bike for 2 days and asked my labmate to bring the repair tools on the next day. Well, to be honest, it was my first time I met my research partner again since she went to Japan in April 2017.

Nothing much happened there, I just visited a bunch of places in Kyoto (not that much, just Nishiki market, Kamogawa, and Sen-no-Kaze ramen) for the whole first day and stayed in my room the whole second day after all-you-can-eat vegetarian breakfast since she got a presentation to be done. Then at the last night, we had dinner in an Oyakodon chain restaurant in front of Kyoto sta.

Then for the next week, I had to prepare my presentation for my oral-session in Interspeech 2019. This time, it will be held in Graz, Austria. Before that, I had to do a rehearsal in front of several staffs and students in order to find any mistakes or flaws that could lead into a disaster for me and for the lab's reputation since in this conference, there will be a lot of people of the speech community and not to mention the giants in tech such as Google, FB, Alibaba, Apple, Amazon, etc. which has their own speech-related product.

Well, as expected I got a lot of critical points that I shouldn't mention during the oral session. But I'm not going into the details there, but yeah, it was really made me nervous to the end of the session.

September 13th, I walked to the nearest station around 2pm, well, my flight was at 6.30 but, just in case. I flew together with one of the supervisors, one doctoral student, and one master student (who came from the same country as mine). We made a transit in Taiwan for 2 hours, there 3 of us (students only) walked along the transit hall and found a duty-free liquor shop. The doctoral student is known well to like alcoholic beverages. Well, to be honest, I also like those, but I tried to cut alcohol intake since I don't want to have liver problems in the near future. However, I found this liquor so delicious. Seriously, it tastes like umeshu; but despite it is stronger, it somehow tastes better.

I can't read. But this is the one I talked about.

So, because we went from the east to the west, we can basically saw the sunset from the horizon 35000 feet above the sea level.

Sunset from 35000 feet above sea level

We arrived at Vienna airport and waiting for a bus to Graz. It was 16C degrees outside in the morning and 22C in the afternoon. We met the big boss of our lab together with another person (*Japanese, but I don't know who). It was a 2 hours bus trip from Vienna to Graz. I saw a lot of people on the highway with their bikes and small trailer attached to its rear side. I guess they were either going back from their summer holiday somewhere.

Honestly. I was dead tired due to the long travel. My airbnb host told me that there was a local festival in Graz near the city center from 13-14, but I was simply too tired for those so I just slept. But the doctoral student went there and had some good time. I checked my laptop and tried to remote access the computer in my lab, but apparently, it turned off. There must be something wrong. 

16 September I went to the city center just to see what to look for the next days after my session. I got a bike from the host, so I can simply go anywhere for free! [FUCK YEAH!]. I went there with my supervisor who came one day later with the other master student. Since we had 2 hours spare time that afternoon, and my supervisor's hotel is apparently located near the area, we went to the Clocktower in Schlossberg which translates directly to hill-castle.

Now you know the reason why it is called a hill castle?

The clock tower.

One fine afternoon on top of the clock tower. A perfect place to read a book with some tea.

Graz city view from the other side.

After that, we went back to our places and the next day is the day of my oral session. I always so freaking nervous whenever I have to give an oral presentation. During my session I tried to speak as slow as I could to avoid unnecessary mistakes, however, my tongue slipped several times. But luckily, it made the audience laugh! I never attended a scientific talk session where the audience laugh. It made me feel relieved because not only the big boss and 3 supervisors came, the room was also full of experts from the speech community including those who studied brain activity during speech listening and production. I wish I had taken a photo from the podium to show you how crowded my session was. Seriously. Damn.

That night, the big boss invited us to dinner. One supervisor came with his wife and she couldn't eat much (you know western portion size is huge compared to Japanese). So they gave me the leftovers. I was happy but at the same time a little ashamed because I looked like a scavenger. 

Graz style schnitzel (Tonkatsu LOL)

The next day I went to the city center again, but this time I went with the master student only. We went for some chocolates, Graz cathedral, a double-spiral tower, armory museum, and Swarovski (for our moms). Nothing much happened. 

How much time they spent on these (and it is clean, no spider webs or whatsoever)

Double spiral stair; bottom view. Confused?

Double spiral stair from the other side

Understand? Hahahaha

Double-barrel ancient gun. There were no magazines, and you need to put the gun powder first followed by the bullet.

Iron horse

5 musketeers?

On the next day, we went to Basilica Mariatrost. A church on top of the hill. From outside it looked like there is nothing inside, but once we were inside, I was mesmerized by how much effort they took to build and paint all those.

Basilica Mariatrost front outer view.

View from Basilica Mariatrost

Inside the Basilica Mariatrost

The trip back was terrible. They set the flight to Thailand first and then Taiwan. There was a typhoon in Taiwan, luckily, the flight was going as scheduled. But I was dead tired. I arrived in my campus around 1am. I went to the lab to take care of several things. I found out that the lab was very hot! They set the temp to 25C, therefore my laptop did a thermal shutdown. The filter sign showed that it needs a cleaning, I told my supervisor and you know what, they put an air purifier. THAT'S NOT IT! GOSH.

Finally, I got pharyngitis and severe cough for the whole week. Ugh.