Winter Thoughts

 Maybe I was sent back here to face the reality

Warmth is when your hand touches my hand and we become warm

It is when loneliness meets loneliness and become coziness

When sadness meets sadness and become happiness

When cool breeze collides against another cool breeze and become a soft snow. That's what warmth is

Has life turned to the worst? Russia-Ukraine war is not their problem. It is our problem. Do you think it won't affect the prices? It already does. How this affect me? Well, I don't believe that the situation in EU is that better to be frank. I used to think to continue my study overseas for my PhD and settle there. But what can I do with this uncertainty.

My plan for PhD is kinda... vague at this point. I don't even have any good reason to do so. Why do I even want to go out there? There are some things that are obvious already;

1. I don't like my current place and situation. The environment, the people, the research facilities at the workplace, the life quality. The only good things are the foods and the fruits. Bountiful tropical fruits and I just eat bananas and pineapples, with occasional papayas. (Since those are the easiest to obtain)
2. No complains about my salary. It is okay (for now at least)
3. I just don't think that I'd like to settle with those people. Nope. Noppity. NOPE. (academia as in business side, duh. But I guess this happens everywhere)

Not very convincing reasons to do a PhD, huh? There is no reason for me to take a PhD except my duty as a lecturer in a private campus here that doesn't even care about research. Fuck. All they care about is rank and rank is everything since it lures the students (esp. who failed to enter the best national universities.). Accreditation and all shitty criterions the gov't and the ranking institutions set on the paper really grinds my gears. First of all, I am mainly here to teach and do research with some sprinkle of administrative duties. That's all fine until the reality is that teaching preparation for each class takes around a day (like a day or two just to rehearse and re-learn one session's material). Doesn't sound too bad? Wait until they set you to teach 3 courses a semester. 

The second thing is the administrative stuffs. It includes the duties of giving training or workshops, self-development training, annual events, managing student competitions, finding international guest speaker, and so on. Ah, don't forget they also do meetings to track the progress on each. Up to this point, I think it is not all that bad. Wait until I talk about the research duty.

Each faculty member should at least publish 2 Scopus indexed papers per semester (yes, they only accept Scopus-indexed ones) and not to mention journals. The other dept. which focuses on the research even put higher pressure; five fucking publications a year. Meaning that they have to publish every two months. What research could be published within two months? Expected, the quality is very very low. High redundancy, low novelty and contribution. Q1 journals, good international conferences? Forget it.

Then 2 papers a year sounds like a good one right? Not really. In my short experience in Japan during my master degree, two good publications a year is literally possible, it is also possible to publish an extra one poster paper at a local conference. That is given that I was equipped with adequate computing power and had nothing else to do. Neither did I teach nor do administrative stuffs. Purely research and enjoy my life with around 140k JPY monthly net income (yes, that's after deducting with taxes and monthly expenses, which includes leisure, rent, food, and transport). Here? Hmmm...

My parents came for my cousin's wedding this weekend. Got a new staff from the same campus but from different lab. Well, I am currently surrounded with people who are looking for PhD overseas. One already got several LoAs, I am still looking for scholarship. Ended March with a trip to a neighboring city. Mom drove a car with me, my dad, and my aunty led by my cousin with her two children, her husband, my grandma, and my another aunty. A 2-day trip and 4 hours driving.