One month on ...

I have been here for a month!!! yeayyyyy!!!! after such a long process and delay to get here, i am finally here ..the first week was hard - as I was missing the boys so much ..but four weeks on, I felt like I have been here longer than these measly four weeks :-) 

once upon a time, when I first started, my study desk at the flat was like this ...now, you could barely see the surface as it is covered with lots of things ...papers, books, maps, photographs ..the occasional food wrappers (for survival, eating is a must!)

I have been rather preoccupied with works ...with readings and various tasks ..my SV have been piling up a lot of reading materials on my desk, and me being the perfectionist, always wanted to do those reading as soon as it was given to me. So far so good ..i managed to get things done the way i wanted to ..but as the weeks get on ..i find that it is harder to do so ..not that i don't know how to do it (i mean it is just reading) ..but the more i read, the more i discuss with my SV, the more complex the issues become ....and the more confused i become ....i thought i had everything nicely done before ..thought i know about what i wanted to do ...know the area of study ...hahaha what a joke ...within 4 weeks my SV and i had meet 5 times ...and we have managed to dissect my proposal  ... i am happy with it now, and so does Phil....but it is far from over ...i still need LOTS of work to make it presentable, logical, academically sound bla bla bla ....

I was confused a lot of time hahahaha but luckily i remember what Dr M taught me before ..he said that you will bound to be confused - dont know what to do - have to redo things a couple of time -but that is all good ...as it means that you are thinking ..if you are not confused, that means that there must be something seriously wrong hahahaha the wise words from my mentor! And when i was so stress out, i had a talk with him ..hahaha and guess what, he told me not to work so hard at the early stage :-) so, here i am updating my blog, doing some blogwalking, and relaxing in front of boring Kiwi telly programmes ..basically doing nothing at all hahaha ...and it feels good!

and next week marks another chapter to my road to PhD ...was advised to enroll in a statistics course ...coz it will be very beneficial to me later on when it comes to my data analysis stage... i am using mixed methods but i am not so familiar with quantitative methods - especially in constructing composite indices ..and my SV had managed to persuade me that composite indices are very significant in my research ...ergo, i have to attend proper statistics class ...and it is not just a "sit-in" exercise - Phil said that if it is just a sit-in exercise, I may not pay as much attention to it ...so I am enrolling as a "proper" students ...and there will be assignments and exams ...if i am not mistaken the final exams will either be 100% or 75% ...arghhhhhhh ....not something that I am looking forward to...but, like fendi said - aku kan suka cabaran - hahaha so I am giving it my best ....the classes is 3 hours a week but they split it into 3 one-hour classes ...and on top of that I will be sitting in another theory class ...it is a three-hour lecture and finishes at 7pm ....so definitely getting busier starting next week ...

and it will only be my second month of PhD ..still a longgggggggggg way to go ...