Waking up from my long hibernation

I haven't written a blog for quite a long time, 10 months, almost. Ever since we came back from our exciting safari trip last July (which I haven't blogged about either), I have been in a fairly lazy mood.  Not I am lying in bed doing nothing for all this time, I did go to work, garden, feed Mr Hippo and all that.  But, I was lack of the energy to engage in non-critical but creative activities such as wring a blog post.

Call it a long hibernation or mid-life crisis.  Whatever the name is, it is not a very satisfactory mode.  I did enjoy taking the break, or a mid-life recreation (as termed in the cartoon) but as those who feel tired after a very long night of sleep tells you: Too much rest makes you feel restless.

Many things triggered me into this mode: Some family drama and its ripple effect last year, fatigue from the exciting trip (I need a vacation after the vacation!), too much international traveling (4 last year), and most likely, hectic tasks at work...I span from fire-fighting activity 1 to activity 2, urgency was my first and foremost criterion of investing my time and energy.  In between the activities, I dropped and didn't think much about and act on those things that were important.  I read novels but didn't write much of my diaries.  I consumed but didn't create enough.  I was in a busy-lazy mode, if you know what I meant.

I think I am finally pulling myself out of this mode, at last.  Still yawning, but at least I am stepping out of my cave/burrows (do hippos live in any??) finally...Time to think, act and be creative again!!

Confidence: the stuff that truns thoughts into action

One friend of mine recently talked about how she suddenly realized she had been lack of confidence, after a senior colleague, also female,  pointed it out to her.  In my friend's proposal, she used the words like "I was lucky to..." as if she didn't deserve all her achievements.

I, too, have the same issue, probably even more so because of my cultural background.  In China, we were taught to be modest and contribute to our accomplishment to some collective efforts (集体的荣誉）....  

To some degree it is soothing to know that this issue of lack of confidence is almost universal for women, not only me and my girl friend.  This recent article in the Atlantic claims research after research shows the same result.

What is the solution then? The article doesn't really offer much but it does point out "The natural result of low confidence is inaction.  when women hesitate because we aren't sure, we hold ourselves back..."

So, stop thinking too much and just ACT!

Prepare for the 1st election in life

My 1st election in life is coming up!  I'm a citizen now and Australia has the system of forced compulsory voting, so I will be casting my votes in the coming Federal election on Sept 7. 

Mr Hippo sent me the link to this Vote Compass on ABC's website, which is a great tool in mapping my position relative to that of the three Party.  Here is my overall result:

The tool also shows my positions on each of election issues (Health and Climate change etc) relative to those of the parties. 

I just practiced voting as well with the help of Mr Hippo, so I am almost ready to go!

The downside of diversity

An article in the latest Science explains why traditional way of cancer treatment has not been as effective as they should be.  Tumors are recently found out to contain subsets of mutated cells that are related but genetically distinct, which explains why drugs and therapies stop working after a while.

One would think the problem of diversity demands a solution of diversity, but currently, it seems to be too daunting a challenge to keep up with the speed of mutation.   

Ms Hippo's 2012

又是一年了。真的是时间在洗洗手，喝喝茶的不经意间就悄悄地流走了。老公前几天也说，"When I was rather small, 21 century sounded like FAR away, but now we are going to step into its 13th year!" 

好在2012还是有几个小小进步的， 比如说我申请到了个永久职位，在个相当不错的杂志上发了篇文章，成了澳洲公民 (so called top-three achievements :)。  还去了个以前没到过的国家玩（虽说并不远），我们也开始慢慢的找房子 (so called worth mentioning :)...

当然也不是没有遗憾的。年初的时候信誓旦旦的要减肥和锻炼身体来着 (至少体重没增加:)，还有就是在写papers 上的时间用的不够 （这个blog也有好多想写而没有实施的pieces)...

不过，这一年里最大的变化还是心境上的吧。如今，最能描述我心境的一句话是“择一城终老，携一人白首，此生足矣 （这是 '长着翅膀的大灰狼' 说的).  也许是因为事业和生活都渐渐稳定，又或是最近颇有些对生老病死的感悟和体验 (看了个关于瑞士安乐死的纪录片, 国内有家人忽然被确诊为癌症...), 现在觉得人真的没必要太贪心, 有个爱人和你一起慢慢变老, 有份自己喜欢也对大家有益的工作, 再有片可以惬意生存的天地, 就真的很幸福了.

Spotless or Business as usual?

My Hippo and I have different opinions regarding how much efforts we should put into cleaning before inviting friends over.  I like to try my very best and make our place spotless (or as close as we can), Mr Hippo, on the other hand, thinks there is no need to try that hard and some improvement over the business as usual is enough. 

Obviously we are not the only couple who disagree on such a matter.  According to Mr Hippo, his parents argued about it too when he was rather small.

It seems to me that the difference is more of a cultural origin.  In general, I am a messier person than Mr Hippo, so it is not because I had a higher standard to start with.  More likely, it is because I am from a culture where people will give their best to guests.   In the case of my parent-in-law, Papa Hippo was from Germany, and Mama Hippo is from Australia--now you see my point?

At least we agree on when to invite friends over--rightly after our house inspection.  We are still (happily) renting, and once in a while (six months?), our landlord will send an agent to check us out, which means we will have to clean the house,  whether we will like it or not.  Over the course of five years, we have formed the habit of turning the lemon into lemonade and inviting friends over rightly after the inspection.  This way our friends will enjoy a cleaner and more orderly environment (at the condition halfway between spotless and business as usual?).

We invited four people over today, two visiting from Sweden and two of our American friends from ANU.  The top picture shows how neat we set the table for a change (um, minus Mr Hippo's glasses).  Someday when we buy a house with a proper-sized kitchen, I will buy a set of serving plates with more than four.  For now, Mr Hippo and I get to use our special Moomin set to disguise our identities (you have to know the Moomin story to get the joke). 

What kind of food did I serve?  That is always a bit challenging to summarize...OK, how about "Hybrid Swedish food with an Australian theme?"

I prepared Swedish main course because our Swedish friends had been away from home for a while and they were going to have dinner with a Chinese colleague tomorrow night.  The main course was grilled ocean trout with asparagus, tomato, pine nut and potato salad in home-made pesto sauce.  I used this recipe from Curtis to prepare ocean trout (minus Buk Choy part) and it turned out pretty good (it would have been more Swedish, if I had added dill to the herbs though).  Gordon Reamsay's video also helped but it was more about how to intensify tomato's sweetness by roasting it first.

My cooking is always hybrid because I enjoy mixing things together and creating a symphony of flavors.  For Hors d'oeuvre we had home-made guacamole and hummus.   I was happy when one of the American food commented how great the guacamole was.  I was even happier when Mr Hippo, who lived in Israel for years told me the texture of the hummus was about right; I had worried it was a bit too dense.  The only Chinese touch of the meal was the Chrysanghdmum and Goji berry tea as shown in the middle picture.  It is not tasty but supposed to be good for tonight's crowd, who sit in front of computers most of our days.

Last, the dinner was of Australian theme because I tried to stick to Australian ingredients as much as I can.  I also bought a beautiful bunch of native flowers (the last picture).  For dessert, I served three OZ cheeses (Mr Hippo's favorite triple-creamed brie, my favorite goat cheese, and an aged Cheddar from Margaret River that was appreciated very much by our Swedish friends), along with three types of fresh fruits (strawberry, kiwi, and mango), three dry fruits (date, fig and prune) and three nuts (macadamia, pistachio, and walnuts).  In theory, there were 81 combinations of flavors and the idea was people might found another crazily fantastic combination such as bacon and milk chocolate (dark chocolate is a no-no, according to one of the American friends) .  Not sure that was accomplished, but people were certainly quite into the three of a genre thing, because they were very disappointed when I told them there were only two kinds crackers to choose from! 

Citizenship test

I finally took citizenship test today, which is the last step of becoming an Australian citizen.  The test was quite easy, and there was only one question that I wasn't sure about.   In the end, I got all 20 questions right, using about 1/5 of the time required.  It was more like a test for English rather than for knowledge, really; that being said, yesterday I did read a guidebook and prepared for the test for a couple hours.

Nothing unexpected, I should hear from the Immigration in 2~3 weeks.  Then I will have to attend a ceremony in June, where I vow to become a citizen...

I do have a mixed feeling of becoming an Australian citizen, because China does not allow dual citizenship.  Even though I have lived outside China for over 10 years, and every time I went back it felt more foreign to me,  I still hesitated and did not move on to apply for the citizenship as soon as I could (one has to live in Australia for four years and two of which he/she was granted permanent residency).  I cannot explain exactly why, apart from my par for the course laziness.  But I know there is more to it; perhaps it is the education I received when growing up, the word "homeland (祖国)" still carries a lot of weight, somewhere down under...

Indefinite position as a research scientist

It is final.  I signed a contract and accepted an indefinite position of research scientist in CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences. 

I am certainly happy; but I am not outrageously happy.  In fact, I was more excited when my paper was accepted by Conservation Biology lately.  On the other hand, in this case the level of excitement is probably not a good indicator for my happiness.  I learned that I got the position a week ago from an unofficial source, and I had known that I had a big chance of getting the position when they asked me to apply for it. 

The indefinite position means stability than anything else.  Now both Mr Hippo and myself got a tenure position, we can finally settle in Canberra for a while, say, the next 10 years?  This is a pleasant change from our previous nomadic lifestyle--we both did our PhDs in a foreign country/USA and then had to move again, across continents, for jobs.  Even in early 2011, I remember telling my friends, "We could be anywhere in the world in about a year's time because Mr Hippo is hunting for jobs all over the world."

The downside of being stable, of course, is to get bored, as the cartoon indicates.  Luckily, this is not a going to be a big issue for academics.  The best part about being a researcher is that I have to continue to update myself with new knowledge and techniques.  It is more likely, though, we get bored at living in Canberra someday, in which case we might move again.  To Europe, perhaps?   But before that day comes, we can also travel to different parts of the world for vacations etc.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder--I am sure Canberra/home will be a lot more desirable after a tiring trip far or near!

House hunting: a structured decision-making approach (Part 1.5)

I am teaching myself to use a new software for structured decision-making.  Of course, I have to use our house hunting experience as a case study during the process.  Below are the hierarchical structures of the seven questions we came out before (and documented in the last post).

First, it is the condensed version with four goals or criteria.

Then there is the expanded structure with the seven measures/indicators.

We have seen about 15 houses in the past three weeks so far, and now we have a much better idea about what we want.  There is only one house that meets all our criteria, although it is still not perfect.  So the house-hunting adventure is ongoing...At the mean time, I am so glad that we are not in a rush to move anywhere ;)

House hunting: a structured decision-making approach (part 1)

I learned structured decision-making (SDM) or multicriteria analysis (MCA) during my PhD and have published several papers on the topic.  When it comes to the tough decision of buying a hippo house, I just cannot help using the approach in my own life ;).

Step 1: I interviewed the other stakeholder and decision-maker, Mr Hippo and asked his criteria for evaluating a potential house to buy.

It didn't take him long to give me the three things on his mind: value for money, location and niceness of the house.  Well, this is a great start but these are rather fuzzy concepts, so we moved to the next step.

Step 2:  We had a brainstorming session to flesh out what exactly on Mr Hippo's mind.  The figure below, in the form of a mind map, shows the result of the session.  Now we got four criteria (cost, location, restriction on renovations, and quality) and 30 plus sub-criteria. 



No house will probably meets all the 30+ requirement (we are too lazy and architecture-challenged to build our own) and some trade-offs have to be made.

Step 3: We then ask ourselves what are the deal-breakers from the list of 30+ subcriteria.  Those in brown are Mr Hippo's top concerns, and the green are mine.  The ones in red are the common deal-breakers.

Step 4:  I asked the question of "why is it so important?" to try to find the root cause for our concerns.  This step is VERY important because some seemingly unrelated concerns are in fact due to the same underlying reason.  If we include all concerns but not their root cause in the decision-making process, we will commit the crime of double counting.  For example, I want a well-functioning kitchen and Mr Hippo refuses to look for houses that are "irredeemably ugly."    Kitchen's functionality and a house's ugliness seem to be very different matters, but they both link to the same root cause: the potential cost of renovation.  Neither of us is ready for spending a fortune on renovating a house, so I want good kitchen appliances that are ready for me to cook a storm with, and Mr Hippo doesn't feel like conducting a project to beautify our house from its roof to toe.  House-hunting itself seems to be lots of work already...

Anyway, here is the set of seven criteria we settled on:

1. Reducing the cost for house purchase,
2. Reducing the cost for house renovation,
3. Decreasing time spent on traveling to work,
4. Decreasing noise from traffic,
5. Increasing space for recreation,
6. Increasing living space, and
7. Increasing mental health.

Step 5: I then found an indicator for each of the seven criteria.  The selection of the indicators is also very important, and for our purpose, we need something that are heuristic and easily accessible.  Remember we only got on average 5-10 minutes to look for a house, and we need to find information to assess each indicator during this short of period.   So here are the corresponding indicators and their units:

1. Price of the house ($),
2. Can we rebuild kitchen (Yes/No),
3. Time to travel to Mr Hippo's work (minutes),
4. Level of noise from traffic (low, medium, and high),
5. Size of garden (m2),
6. Is main bedroom big enough for a king-sized bed? (Yes/No), and
7. Is bathtub big enough for Mr Hippo? (Yes/No).


Step 6:  To collect information for the seven indicators for each house.  I have put together a table with the indicator in one dimension and the address for each house we are going to see tomorrow in the other.  The idea is to focus on the things we really care about (the seven criteria) and avoid being distracted during house-seeing ("Um, that carpet is irredeemably ugly...").  I am confident that we could find all the information within 5 minutes (information for a couple indicators was gathered beforehand, including house price and size of the main bedroom).

I look forward to testing the effectiveness of my SDM approach tomorrow, and of course, this is going to be iterative process and we will updating our criteria and indicators as we trample new tracks!  I'll keep blogging about anyprogress, so stay tuned!

P.S.  SDM/MCA invovles many more steps than what I documented here.  

Does fortune favor dragons?

An interesting paper that was just published (perfect timing for the Chinese year of Dragon!) shows that "belief in the greater superiority of dragon-year children is self-fulfilling since the demographic characteristics associated with parents who are more willing and able to adjust their birthing strategies to have dragon children are also correlated with greater investment in their human capital (PDF of the full paper is here)."