Friday, July 21, 2006
Today was an enjoyable and fulfilling day of faculty camaraderie and artistic practice. I went to a couple of well-attended “work completion” seminars by Masters degree students, and enjoyed seeing how the academic review process works here. Afterwards a lunch was prepared and had a chance to visit with a few colleagues I haven’t had a chance to speak with much lately, and made plans to meet with a few of them again next week. I had a really positive sense of knowing and liking these people. Afterwards reviewed images, and over the course of the afternoon selected 165 pictures to present in animations on various surfaces tomorrow night in Cheras. Made shortcuts on the desktop so that works can be accessed quickly and burned a cd that will accompany the reading of the poems, etc.
Had nice visits with both the outgoing Dean (who is taking over my office after we leave) and Sau Bin (who is feeling much better) this afternoon. I think I finally have a clear picture of what my role (as an “external consultant”) may be in the future. I’m hoping, needless to say, that it brings me to Malaysia from time to time between now and the next Fulbright (or whatever other opportunity I can create), which I’ll probably have to wait a few years for. That we have to leave is a fact I can handle, but I refuse to see it as any sort of endpoint. In any case, by afternoon’s end I was riding high on good vibes all around, and though packing up is not exactly my idea of a good time, it has to be done.
We’ll print some more pictures tomorrow, and looking forward to the evening gig at SicKL.
The strangest thing that’s happening at this point is that my NJIT email has been down for nearly three days—and it is not the first time this has happened this summer. Because I rely on this communications tool for so many reasons it is a bit frustrating. Life goes on and everything but one would expect that a major research institution would be able to prevent such occurrences from occurring…
Had nice visits with both the outgoing Dean (who is taking over my office after we leave) and Sau Bin (who is feeling much better) this afternoon. I think I finally have a clear picture of what my role (as an “external consultant”) may be in the future. I’m hoping, needless to say, that it brings me to Malaysia from time to time between now and the next Fulbright (or whatever other opportunity I can create), which I’ll probably have to wait a few years for. That we have to leave is a fact I can handle, but I refuse to see it as any sort of endpoint. In any case, by afternoon’s end I was riding high on good vibes all around, and though packing up is not exactly my idea of a good time, it has to be done.
We’ll print some more pictures tomorrow, and looking forward to the evening gig at SicKL.
The strangest thing that’s happening at this point is that my NJIT email has been down for nearly three days—and it is not the first time this has happened this summer. Because I rely on this communications tool for so many reasons it is a bit frustrating. Life goes on and everything but one would expect that a major research institution would be able to prevent such occurrences from occurring…
# posted by chris funkhouser @ 7:48 AM 
