It's a wedding day today, 31 May 2007

Two of my friends get married today, 31 May 2007!



Hồng Vân, a friend from high school, and is one of my closest friends marries a guy who might make big changes to her life. Being friends for a long time, Vân and I have many things to talk about. I just talk about one of them. It was in the summer of 1996 when we were in high school; one day, when I was studying at my seat, she came and put a small bag of something in front of my face to threaten me but I was not threatened. Instead, I snatched the bag and put it back to her ^_^, she was so scary and waved her hands, breaking the bag and there came some terribly ugly worms. She burnt into tears, I and the rest of the class laughed funnily at her... Vân, do you remember this story? :-D



Time went on and we became very good friends. It's a big, big pity that I'm unable to be in her wedding. Vân, I do wish that you have a great wedding and a sweetly happy life. Be friends forever!



A guy in my lab is gonna have his marriage today. Costas, his name, is from Greece and his wife is from Malaysia. We all bioinformatics students (Martin, Qiong, Simon, Richard, and me) are going to his wedding and the party afterward. I have never been to an international marriage, so it's will be an interesting time for me, too. Costas is a very funny and open guy. He was so nice when I first came to the lab and he is always enthusiastic with friends. He talks much ^_^, sometimes I don't really understand all that he says, but it's always fun talking with him.



Vân, Costas, have a happy life with your partners. And with us.

Complete the annual report

Today, my research team had a formal meeting to complete my annual report and discuss my plan for the next time.

Basically, my supervisors and adviser are happy with what I've been doing, both theoretically and practically. I have done my part concerning Euclidean Steiner tree and Mantel test in the initial project and we are waiting for a paper, written by another student. Now I am working on genetic diversity, which is widely used but, surprisingly, has NOT been defined formally by mathematical formulas - or at least, I haven't found any!!! This makes an unexpected problem to me since my principle supervisor and I believe that the co-supervisor has something readily on that topic so that we could evaluate the methods we work out. Now we have to do a more intensive literature review and practical experiment and comparison to fit my results into the world of biologists. I'm a bit worried but not disappointed though because I have learnt a lot from what I've done and I think that things will be fine. Anyway, really have to work harder next time.

Just remember that a couple of months ago, a guy asked me if I believed in what the supervisor said and smiled when I answered, truthfully and naively, "Yes" ^_^, then he told me not to be so but had to check everything myself. Now I'm just gonna follow his advice.

So, one year has been passed. Have done some but there's a lot to do. Cheers up and work hard, man!!!

Especially for my uncle in law

My sister just let me know that my uncle in law Minh, who married my aunt Nhung, got a traffic accident last night. He had to be brought to Hanoi in the midnight and got there at about 3 in the morning in a terrible condition: A shoulder bone was broken and needed to be kept in order, innards were stirred so hard that made him kept vomiting blood and fainted. Now he is perceptible but still sharply painful and can barely talk or eat -_- Besides, being hurry to get to a good hospital which was more than 100km far away, my aunt could not bring any necessary stuff but few clothes. And two days in the hospital cost them some 10 millions VND which is roughly equivalent to 8 months of their income!!

My uncle and aunt have always been optimistic and I love them so much for that. Their life in a rural area, with three small daughters and an old man (his dad) has always been hard. But I've never seen, or heard, about their complaints. They just keep smiling, laughing and making funs :-). My aunt Nhung helped take care of me when I was an infant and small child since my dad was far away in a period and my mom had to work. She now works as a peasant and takes care of their ponds, gardens, and farms. Her husband changes his job drastically: from working on farms to fixing clocks, then working with builders, or street workers - he just does everything to keep his family's life in order.

Their family and mine live far from each others, therefore we don't meet very often - only twice or three times a year but I am always impressed by their love of life and cheerfulness. I think that they are intelligent and if they had a better condition, they would much success than they are now.

Writing this, I wish uncle Minh would get rid of the problem soon to get back to his normal life. And I wish their life would be better.

The photo below was taken in September 2006 when I was back to Vietnam. My parents and I were visiting my granddad and we made an appointment to see aunt Nhung there since I didn't have time to visit her. In the photo, aunt Nhung laughing besides my dad when we were having dinner - on the veranda floor, some sat on their sandals, dark because there was no electricity, and narrow. But above all, it was love and happiness.

Be optimistic, uncle and aunt...

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Blogging from desktop

Hello there,

I'm back, but just to test blogging from desktop. These few words are written and published using Qumana - a Mac OS X blog editor. If things are fine, I'll use it in the future.

Test listings - Five movies I watched recently:

1. City of Gods (Cidade de Deus)
2. Malèna
3. The Lord of the Rings
4. Brotherhood (Taegukgi hwinalrimyeo)
5. The God Must be Crazy ^_^

Test photos - One from SVUK qualification round, London 10th March 2007

Guest, Minh, Hieu, Hung

Dang, Binh, Nam, Dung, Quynh, Thang, Khiem, Guest, Guest

At this point it is noticed that Qumana does not support Unicode, specifically Vietnamese, very well -_-! This is really a shame since both Mac and blogger.com support Unicode fonts natively.

Anyway, will check things later.

Had problem publishing with Qumana, so fairly removed its small ad.

This blog is retrieved and updated using MacJournal which will be my favorite blog editor, hopefully :-). There’s still a problem uploading photos but since it can upload texts properly, MacJournal’s the best choice at the moment.

A (not so short :-D) introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog,

I am Binh Nguyen, a Vietnamese student doing a PhD at the School of Computing Sciences (CMP), University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, UK.

Something about me? Well, I've been working with computers since 1994 but I am even more interested in history and literature. I've read (and remembered ^_^) a lot about the history of my own country Vietnam, and China - for the unavoidable historical relation. But I'm not of the guys who remember Chinese history more than Vietnamese history. I've read some, not really systematically though, about the world's history. Now I'm collecting writings and movies, documentaries about the 2nd world war. It's really hard to think that such a terrible time is not far ago at all and there are many people who have experienced that time are still alive. Wish that the world will never see any thing like that.

On literature, I like poems, especially Vietnamese student/romantic poems and ancient poems in Tang's style. I even wrote some, would publish here in this blog sometimes ^_^. I'm always excited with world classic literature. To name some of the books I read, one for each country, I'd randomly choose Three Musketeers (France), Wuthering Heights (Britain), Gone With The Wind (American), Don Quixote (Spain), Quo Vadis (Poland), Sanguo (The Three Kingdom - China) and "Đống rác cũ" (Vietnam). Well, to be honest, the Vietnamese title listed here is not a world classic and has not even been translated into English; but I strongly believe that if it is, it would be accepted to be of that standard!!! I personally think that this story could be compared with Vanity Fair by William Thackeray.

Besides, I love music and sports. I usually listen to pop but can also enjoy other styles. Now I'm trying to listen to jazz - thanks to my friends' recommendations. Times ago, I always tried to understand the music, to image what it represents and that made me confused with jazz. My housemate suggested me just to listen and enjoy it and things prove that his advice is reasonable. Loving history and romance naturally makes me like our old and romantic Vietnamese songs. I don't like contemporary Vietnamese music since the lyrics are just cheaply light-hearted. I love The Beatles but the story between them and me would make another blog. I love Trịnh Công Sơn who formed his own style in Vietnam. Well, just when writing these, I find that I am could be said to like things that are meaningful.

Sports, yeah! As most Vietnamese people, I do love football. When in Vietnam, I couldn't stay up too late to watch matches (like most of my friends did) but here in the UK, very few matches are ignored. I'm an active member of the Vietnamese football team in the UEA. I play attacking side forward and usually score and that's an amazing feeling!!! My other favorite games are table-tennis and shuttlecock. These two kinds are not popular here, so I have to play badminton instead.

There could be other things that I'd like to share, but it'd be better to keep them for another time.

Again, welcome and be my guest!

Cheers,
Binh