Academic Supervisor Visit

My Academic Supervisor, Ms Rohana, paid me a visit two days ago. Throughout the course of my attachment, there will be two visits. The first was by my faculty Dean (who came to Singapore with his family) Prof Razali. He just chatted with one of my bosses and gave me some forms to fill up. That was about three months ago.

This time it was Ms Rohana. While she was here I learned that the Dean has changed to En Rizal and Prof Razali was promoted to some other position that I didn't catch the name of. She was in charge of doing the layout for our temporary faculty, which will be shared between a few buildings. I asked if there will be night classes, and she said it could well be, due to the space and time constrains.

I realized that it will be a tough semester next sem. I have about three more weeks to figure out a final year project to submit in. If I miss that date then I will have to choose from predetermined subjects from the lecturers. I haven't really given this much thought yet. I thought to do some simulation regarding skirted spudcan extraction and effects of jetting system but I realized it would be difficult to find a centrifuge to run the experiment. Furthermore, it would be hard to get data from my company as it's in a different department which is more secretive.

I suppose one of these days I will have to approach my boss for his thoughts. I hope there are some experiments or data crunching that he can provide that the department has been meaning to do but didn't have the time. That would be perfect.

I did my presentation for them and had a little chat and that was it. I only did the slides last Saturday (presentation was Tuesday) so I barely scraped through, haha. I guess then again I didn't talk about much, just about the company business and talked my way through some pictures. Pictures are always a nice thing on a slide, I realize. If we have words up there, we end up most of the time just reading them. It also helps that literally hours before the presentation, I was practicing by whispering under my breath. I bet that scared my co-worker who was sitting next to me.

So that's that. All the official crap is out of the way. Only one more thing left and that's my report. But my supervisor told me not to worry about it, as long as the industry is happy with me, they are satisfied. So after I clear out that last thing on my list, I can finally get back to doing some real work and learning some more new stuff.

I told Pn Rohana that there's not a day that goes by without learning anything new. It has been some 15 weeks now, and that's still true! I know how absurd that might sound, but its really not that unbelievable. During my first two months or so here at Keppel FELS, I didn't really do much. Basically showed my face, read a few documents (you have no idea how much effort it takes to stay awake doing thing), write stuff in my log book and go home. Most of the things I don't understand so I have to go home and look it up on the Internet, and I can't do that at work.

But I am really really glad that introductory phase is over now. Engineering is definately something with a steep learning curve. No wonder most of the attaches who are here for a short duration (2 to 3 months) gets sent to production. No doubt with that kind of time frame, they stand to learn more doing the actual work and witnessing on-site operations rather than sitting in the office reading.

But I feel that the time I have invested in all those documents are paying off. Finally I am no longer bewildered by the massive information overload. It also gave me some measure of hope when I realize that some of the things that I don't know, the other engineers don't know as well. So we're all still learning and this is not something that you can master quickly.

Maybe in 10 years, that will come.

Sometimes, as I stand in the corridor at the ground floor outside KOM Tower, I can smell the salt in the air blowing past. The breeze would slam the door close and bring me back to the tiled floor of Wisma Merdeka in Sabah. The breeze reminds me of home, something that is long gone now, shattered and lost in the wind, only fragments remaining in the depths of memories long lost, but not forgotten.

We all go through life with goals that we want to achieve. Dreams and futures we want to pursue. Everything has to have meaning somehow, otherwise, what would be the point of it all?