Friday, May 13, 2005

Thai University curriculum improvement

I went to give a talk at Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, yesterday, about my idea of improving life science curriculum, esp. undergrad ones. Now the organizer gave a letter to me asking to broadcast mine and others' lectures over a radio. Oh oh ! I did gave some uncanny remarks in the lecture since I didn't expect it. Nevermind that I did not name any names but it 's stillk an awkward feeling, esp. in Thai culture, to mention of third parties, no matter that my intention was just to examplify and not really criticising anyone.

Essentially, I proposed that life science undergrad programs should adjust their curriculum to have at least 3 more math subjects and 3 computer subjects (programming, database, alrogirhtm) not to mention intro to programming class. I also talked on problems and admin aspects in university education. I also propose that they hold a 7 day long camp on Buddhist concentration (meditation), but not as part of the curriculum but just extraculicular activity, among others. I don't know if they would bite it : I had proposed my ideas anyway.

Now coming back to work in my office again. My assistant just came back from attending a bioinformatics workshop at Kasetsart for 4 days. Luckily, he is among few life science M.Sc. graduates in Thailand who knows enought to use Linux and Unix so he seemed to gain some experience from the workshop. I did not bother to go to it althought it's free (sponsored by the Thai government) since I have had a lot of reading in the queue already ( I mean 100s of papers in PDF). Now I prefer to view the papers, not printing out on papers, on my "new" Linux machine at home.

Although I bought it over 10 months ago, my Linux box has been a relatively rarely-used machine until recently. It 's a Pentium IV 3.0E, with 1 GB of RAM and installed with TLE 7.0 Linux, with a 1280x1024 pixel 17" flat screen monitor. It 's fast enought, and much faster than the rest of my older computers at home. I think I start to lose count on how many PC's (and Mac) I have at home. I plan to buy a new laptop Mac soon, but a guy from a local dealter just suggested that I wait for a couple of months since a dual core G5 laptop was rumoured to come out. Also I'd rather wait until more of the Tiger's bugs are cleansed out for a month or so. Now, a new version 10.4.1 is heard over the Internet news to come out in a week from now. Good news for all Mac enthusiasts around the World.

It looks to me like I am a rare Thai user who uses numerous OSes interchangeably, from Windows, Linux, Sun's Solaris, and soon will go back to Mac's OS-X again. After my long departure from Mac OS 6 a few years back.

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