PhD: 6 Months Already..

It has been 2 weeks since last I updated this blog. Sorry to all regular visitors and thank you for keep on visiting this blog. But I'm back. Talking about my PhD, it has been 6 months now since I started my study. Time flies so fast and indeed they are very precious. In fact, I have already submitted my 1st progress report to one of my funding agency-UTM (which requires a progress report for every 6 months). For this past 6 months I have been 'busy' reading journals to try to understand the ideas surrounding the project that I'm going to proceed, meeting and communicating with my predecessor (whom PhD project I inherit), attending courses, seminars, annual meeting, assist labs and of course now I'm focusing to further analyse the developed property prediction to improve its performance

Decorating picture: Autumn in Denmark @ Sophienholm

However, I need to understand a lot of new things and knowledge as this is quite new for me. Property prediction, parameter optimization, product design, modeling. Everything is new for me other than Thermodynamics and VLE, LLE, SLE systems. It is frustrating most of the time. But people would ask, if its new why did you take the project in the first place. For your information, the research area of my project is very interesting especially when the expertise is not available in my department back home in UTM. Therefore I think that it is good that it can a niche area for me and bring it back home. Eventhough it is new for me, it should not stand in my way. Here, I always have the chance to learn, but I need understand it fast and firm. My supervisor did say (before coming here) that eventhough you don't have experience but if you are interested (with the project/research area) than it is good enough.

On the other hand, self motivation is also very important as this is also one of my weakness. I can be easily distracted by many things. This I need to improve. Luckily I have good friends here especially my beloved wife. I'm lucky to have her here, she helped a lot both daily chores and motivation. Plus we will have our first baby here. This will surely boost my motivation. Finally I hope that everyone will pray for me for my success here. May success be with you also. All we need to do is to put a lot of effort in whatever we do and pray to Allah to give what is best for us. InsyaAllah.