My experiences in Singapore - Iulian Topor

The first week in lab was a nice experience. I met all the people in the lab and found them very friendly. Especially I must mention somethings about Iulian (pronounced Julian), with whom I was going to work. The project is called UNET - which basically means Underwater Networking.

Iulian is from Romania, and works here as a Research Engineer. He would be around 27-28 years of age I guess, so it was nice working with him. The first day itself, we were talking about the project, mostly it was him trying to explain lots of things to me ... some of which I could grasp, the rest was all Greek and Latin ! We were at the lab till almost 11:30 in the night, but it wasn't a problem as I was staying at the hostel in campus itself, so just had to walk down. Iulian was the only person in the lab probably who worked at odd hours ... or maybe I should say, the only person working at odd hours IN the lab. His workplace was a good sight ... 3 monitors kept side by side, he used them with 3 different machines working as 3 different "nodes" in the network. It was quite impressive ! That was the reason he had to work at the lab, he couldn't really go home and keep working. Slowly that week, I started getting adjusted to the lab environment. I met Mandar a couple of days later, as he was in India for some meetings. That person is a genius - and everyone here at the lab has the same impression. He is working on almost all projects, has tremendous knowledge about the things which we works on and most importantly, is a great person to be with. This project that I am working on is also under his leadership. Ok ... so back to Iulian ... he came late to lab everyday almost ... at around 11 or even later, but then he kept working until 1 or 2 in the morning. He was really putting in great efforts to try and do as much as he can in the days that he had here at ARL. He is now leaving for Bangkok on 1st July and plans to take a long holiday there, or go back to Romania to be with his family for some time.

So now, everyday, I started working with Iulian, sitting with my laptop just beside him and trying to understand the things involved in the project. I started off with testing some of the modules which he had developed so far, in the process learning about them. Then after a week or so, I started getting a fair idea of the things that he had done, and now after 3 weeks at the lab and with Iulian, I must say I have quite a good idea about the UNET project, atleast at the software implementation level. Still, I don't have much knowledge about Networks in general, so how things should be I need to ask someone around, but the implementaion part Iulian has helped me to understand to a great extent. The routine was set then for the next few days - go to lab at around 9:30-10:00, then get started with some work. At around 1 p.m., all of us at the lab go to lunch together, at one of the canteens in campus - they have a canteen at each "Block", and there are blocks like Engg. block, Arts and Social Sciences block, Business Block and so on. Iulian, having come a bit late, was not always there for lunch, he sometimes skip lunch when he had a heavy breakfast or he would have lunch a bit late - he was a bit arbit to sum it up ! Then, back after lunch, continue to work on something, with discussions with Iulian about various aspects of the project in between. Sitting close-by was a great advantage - I could ask him any simple doubts that I had immediately, and he too used to tell me anything interesting that he did right away so that it would be easier for me to understand the purpose behind doing it. Then, at around 6:30 p.m., Varun, Iulian and myself would go for dinner again at some canteen - Iulian's favourite was the Arts Canteen, he liked the Japanese food there apparently. But unfortunately for him, that used to close early and so eventually, almost everyday we started going to the Engg. canteen, which also happened to be the nearest to the lab. While having dinner, we had nice discussions about our foods back home and he used to tell us about different types of food he has eaten in Singapore, and the kind of food he gets back in Romania. Then we would discuss with him the things we are planning to do next weekend and he would give us some suggestions and then tell us his plans for the weekend - which usually were to work at the lab to try and get somethings completed. After coming back from Dinner, if I had the enthu, I did some work, otherwise it was mainly other things, like Photo uploading, emails, chatting, general browsing etc. Iulian called me now and then to explain some things which he felt important to me. Then I would finish whatever work I was doing in the day, and wind up and leave at around 10 - 10:30. Somedays it was even later if I had something to talk with Iulian, but otherwise, this was the generally decided timing !

So, this was my experience with Iulian (incomplete description, of course ... his name will keep appearing in future blog posts of mine I am sure) at the lab. And in a very short time span, he had become somewhat a part of my life here at Singapore.