Rop's Reflections

Had a nice shopping day yesterday @ Central World.
Saw a nice and funny dog spa.
Also a 280k baht pen. Pretty amazing.
Played tennis this morning. It was very hot. But it was a good workout.
A pretty good weekend.

Protons will collide soon, 100 m under Switzerland.

There was an interview by Matichon (in Thai) a week ago.

Lots of questions from people around the world. LHC is not a big bang machine. Much less is it a black hole generator. No need to fear. It’s such a small scale collision.

Great exciting experiments may lead to good useful results, or they may not. That’s science.

Been in a long meeting yesterday. 3+ hours.

Why do people need to sit in a room talking for 3+ hours?

I think that generally meetings are total waste of time. Bunch of people sit there listening to someone else talk. Majority of issues do not concern majority of people.

It’s even worse when people go off-topic. Time is spent and no work is done.

การเลือกตั้งผู้ว่า กทม. is coming up on 5 Oct. No idea who to vote for. Hard to find info and find the difference between candidates. Where is the official website?

There are 16 candidates. Way too many. Not too impressed with Apirak. Considering Dr. Kriangsak. Seems like he has some good ideas.

I want bike lanes. Anybody campaigning that?

There are lots of distractions in this world. People and politics. What’s pure is science. Stay focused. Stay on course. Think for yourself. Disregard dumb stuff.

Learn good stuff.

One life. Live it.

Took a long drive to Wang Klai Kang Wol School (ร.ร. วังไกลกังวล) in Hua Hin, ประจวบคีรีขันธ์ today to teach a class. The drive took over 2 hours one way. The class only lasted 45 minutes or so.

Teachers had to wear a suit. I didn’t know that so I had to borrow one from the EGAT staff who accompanied me.

It was a nice experience. It was my first time there today. I haven’t taught high school students much. And also of course the class was broadcast live to many other schools around Thailand. We learned about nuclear reactions today. I was under the weather, and got a sore throat. So it was a bit difficult to think or speak clearly. Not the best day to teach. However, I think it turned out all right. Students were great.

A key to happiness in life is to be happy.

Be happy with what you are.

Never compare yourself to others. Each of us is different and contributes in unique ways to the World.

Don’t worry about what others think about you.

Live your life. It’s short.

Today is the day. First beam was launched into the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Seems like a fun time in Geneva. Never before, perhaps, that a pure physics experiment has gotten so much publicity. Perhaps it has to do with all those lawsuits and death threats due to fear of black holes destroying the Earth.

Let the protons smash. Let the lead ions collide. Let the new physics emerge.

Some pics from CMS page.

Google Chrome is lean and fast, but at this stage it lacks add-ons that Firefox has. One of my favorite add-on is Ad-blocking feature. Here is how we can use Privoxy to block ads.

Gave a 1-hr lecture today in Ongkharak Nuclear Research Center. It was my second lecture this week. The focus today was onl basics of nuclear science. The audience is ~90 of teachers and education administrators in the local area. This is the second class of this course (the first class is pictured below).

I think the reception today was good enough. They could follow the lecture well. I made many changes to the slide from the first time I taught a week ago to make it more relevant to the audience.

The opinions toward nuclear power in Thailand are not surprising. People don’t trust the Thai government and they feel that educational system is a failure. When they hear the word ‘nuclear’, they fear.

We need a large scale PR campaign. We need leaders with vision and determination.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is an education reform. Thai students and public cannot think because the curricula encourage them to memorize and groupthink. We have to revolutionize our education.