Proceeding at a Snail's Pace

I didn't leave my room until after the Presidential Debate. Consequently, most of my planned projects were left undone. I intended to start the day by writing my final exam. It will be on 5 November, Apparently I need to send the exam to a staff member who will put it in the appropriate format, and I should have done it by now. Last night I listed out the topics and how much weight each should get. Today in addition to finish writing questions I wanted to prepare an answer sheet. If I try to answer the questions I feel more confident that I have gotten rid of ambiguous or overly complex questions.


Another planned project was to make major progess on arranging for meetings in KL, but the people I needed speak with were out. I also sent e-mails to other groups that I want to see - I figure that proceeding a call with a message is helpful. Perhaps tomorrow I will have filled in the various blank spaces in my schedule.

Next week there is a conference AIDS being held here next week. I was told that some groups that I have been trying to survey would be there. After three days of trying to get the list from the AIDS research office, I got it - not one of "my" groups was on it. So I spent the end of the afternoon preparing surveys to mail to non-respondents (about 905 of those contacted by e-mail). I got labels for the return envelops and went to the post office for stamps. Tonight I will hand addres envelops. I hope that it encourages responses.

Let me brighten up this message with pictures from this weekend. Wen, from Taiwan, gave me the umbrella. He made two presentations - on Saturday we saw photo graphs of Friday night's dinner. He also had an arrangment of umbrella which starred in his Sunday presentation. He said that there isn't a day that goes by when he doesn't enter pictures on to his computer. His last words to me were "next time get a lighter laptop." So in his honor I have included a picture of stuffed tofu from Sunday's lunch.