Sticking to it

I am thinking to find something interesting to do in the future. One of them is doing contributions for the opensource project. To be honest, the experience of GSOC'08 was very memorable as I learned many useful things from the organization and the most important thing was, I got paid to do something that I really really love. As it's not possible to do something that I "really" love from 9 AM to 5 PM, perhaps to explore the interesting projects in open source world (outside the office hours) is the best solution for now. I keep talking to myself that I can make "something" from "something" that I love and I'm still sticking to it.

Another thing that I've done in the last several days was browsing through the SIGIR, WSDM, CIKM conferences and looking for interesting research papers. It's always fun to see how the researchers, computer scientists make something that doesn't exist to be exist, something that seems impossible to be possible. Implicit message: a dream to pursue PhD. It's not a dream actually, but it's a bit more like a plan that cannot be executed now because of my circumstances. But, I'm still sticking to it. Who knows, in the next 2 years it's possible for me to continue PhD.

Hi, I'm Samuel Louvan, and I'm still sticking to my hopes. How about you?

As usual, the after office hour moment has always been the blissful moment for me everyday.However, in the same time, it is also a time when I try to contemplate about things concerning my life such as how's my feeling today, what I've been doing in the office, what am I going to do for the rest of the night etc. Despite of many things that usually pop out in my mind, most of the time I only think about my mood, my bad mood.

Yesterday was the same routine, took the 149/150/174 bus to the station, tried to sleep along the way, but didn't manage. Arrived at the station,I was hungry, went to KFC to have unhealthy moment with those spicy chickens. Right after that, I decided to go to TU/e's library. As usual, I only browsed the Internet there. It's been like a ritual, go to the Internet, try to find something that can direct my life. I was not happy, I wanted to find something that I really like, something that I really passionate about. What kind of subjects do I like? I like IR Technology, machine learning, data mining related areas. I think if I could work in this kind of subject I would be very happy. But sorry to say, not many companies are in this business, but there is one, and it's really big. Google. When I tried to search something related to Google in youtube, I found one video that showed the graduation speech delivered by Marissa Mayer,a woman who is one of the Google's Vice President. In her speech, she shared her experience during her early years in college until she joined Google. To make long story-short, the main point of her advice is that you have to do something that you really love. In the beginning of her education at Stanford, she majored in medical education, she believed that she would be a doctor in several years. But one day she attended an intro ductory course in Computer Science and right from that moment she knew that it's the right path for her. After she graduated, she rejected offers from other companies and decided to join a company called "Google". Her parents were like,"What? Google?" But who knows that Google would be a giant internet company like today.

Not only Marissa, other people such as Steve Jobs the founder of Apple Inc. also had similar experience that he kept looking to everything that may interest him. He did not settle down until he found it. Stay hungry, stay foolish. Looking at these people's experiences, despite of their extraordinary skills I think that they are very lucky to have such life. As for me, it's only a dream except if I dare enough to do something that I really love. In reality, most of the people are willing to do something they don't really like as long as they can survive.

The Best Healer in The World

Grew up together with her, I never expected that she would be a person to whom I relied to. I must admit that she thinks faster, smarter than I am. It's like she resembles my father. A person who was the best healer in my ups and downs in life. Like Laura's status said "My sister is the best healer in the world", it happens for me as well.