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It's such a freaking long day for me, good and ugly things happened make me both tired and excited at the same time.

Ugly thing was sometimes people just cannot stop arguing and conflicting with each other. It was even worse when they have to stay in the same house... . What should I do? Keep shouting and easily get angry with all the shit happening around? Or pretend to be very smart, charming and calm gentleman talking nonsense doing stupid stuffs to stop the quarrel ? Or simply just keep silent like a loser and pretend the world is still peaceful ?

Oh my God, I really don't know what to do and how to fix this damn situation. Shit, I even don't have a God to praise... Maybe I just stop thinking about it and take some rest. Tomorrow solution will sure pop out from my empty head. And the sun will shine again

Oh yah, so forgetful, I suppose to show off the good things first , no use to keep complaining about unlucky things right ?

First, Professor Edmond Prakash, Chairperson of Cybergames Conference 2007 sent email to inform me that my paper, titled Hierarchical Pathfinding and AI-based Learning Approach in Strategy Game Design, has been selected for possible publication in a special issue in the International Journal of Computer Games Technology (IJCGT) ! (This email I read while arguing with my friend... so hilarious !) Now I need to revise my paper again to suit the format of the journal. The revised paper will go through a journal review process which may take up to 6 months.

Well, to some people, there is nothing fancy to brag about, but for me, simply the fact that this is my very first paper really means something. Based on my FYP, I wrote that paper in the darkest time of my life when everything messed up: my father passed away, my FYP presentation got delay, coming projects got cancel, existing projects got dump, and future plans became rubbish... I still remember how lame it was when I even spoke Vietnamese sometime during the FYP presentation ! Maybe it sounded like encrypted language or about something really difficult to understand that my supervisor, the examiner, and some PhD students there did not notice (Or they just ignored my mistakes ). Anyway, at that time I did not give a shit about my academic result anymore, the presentation was prepared carelessly one day before and things did mess up. That terrible May ... I will never forget. Thank to my prof and my beloved girlfriend's encouragement, I managed to write it in about 7 days before deadline, and able to submit it in the last minute. I even had to keep writing when attending the MIT orientation weeks at NUS .

Seriously, I knew my work sucked ! I was ready to see it get rejected badly from the Conference.

But it turned out too good to be true . People read it, accept it and acknowledge my work in a way I never can imagine. It brings me more confidence, belief in life and helps me get back on track again.

The funny thing is: it was never in my plan to become a researcher one year ago, and now I'm studying PhD ! Some of my freaking old buddies laughed their ass off when they heard this news. "What? PhD? Oh come on, stop joking! man, MD takes PhD when pigs know how to climb trees !" 

I did not know how to answer them, I find it funny too. My plan one year ago is very steady and passionate: get out of this damn boring university life asap and start doing serious business ! 

It was always my goal, I even dreamt about it sometimes. Big plans were sketch up in detail...

But now, things have changed. 

The second happy news for me was : prof Seah and prof Tian Feng had a meeting with me. And they ask for my opinion in how NTU and PlayFirst can establish some collaboration. I haven't received reply from Brad yet, but I do hope he will get interested. Things get excited now already . Profs asked me to give a presentation about my game I did at MIT to their PhD students. So I went there and give a small talk. It was so fun and excited to speak in front of many top graduate students like that . I keep speaking and answering questions for almost 2 hours. Hopefully they don't think I was too talkative. I also hope that the presentation will be helpful for them too.

On the 3rd Sept, I will attend the Master class for Invigorate for Casual Games. Invited speakers are mentors for this program, including Big Fish, Playfirst, Boomzap and Playware. I will meet Brad again here, and try to talk to him about it.  

And On 6th-9th Sept, I will be a GameBIT helper for Games Convention Asia Conference 2007. This big event will attract a lot of giant companies like Asiasoft Online, Blizzard Entertainment, Cherry Credits, EA, Nokia… Together with other Singapore students and MIT students, I will have to ensure our booth run smoothly. Thank to MDA to give me free tickets to attend those great events.

Yeahhh ! I cannot wait to see Trey again !!! He and Edmund were my wonderful drink buddies in MIT. Trey will flight to Singapore to attend the conference. I will try to get free time to bring him around Singapore, ensure that he will eat and drink until he crawls on the road . 

And the last happy news was....  I feel much better now , maybe I should write more frequently. 

Oh yah, I came across this funny song on YouTube, it's in Vietnamese...

I love this part : "Vậy thì em code để làm gì? Deadline rồi còn gì. Code để rồi lại fix bug ư? Trả lời em đi! Người ơi người chớ design lại" . Who say programmers don't have sense of humor ? (I'm gonna learn the lyric to torture my roommate, hehe. Oh shit, he slept already, I think should sleep too, it's freaking late now... )  

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Yesterday, GAMBIT puts our games on the offical website http://gambit.mit.edu ! If you are interested in what the hell I and my friends did in MIT, do go to LOAD GAME section to see all the games' information and download them !!! My game is The Illogical Journey of Orez. Hope you will like it .  And the brief introduction of all developers involved in this program is shown at CREDIT section. From there, you can see me too

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