[Vancouver, BC]

1. It can rain at any time in Vancouver. One joke is that the "Vancouver Rain Festival" runs from Sept 1 to Aug 31 every year. In fact, at many conferences in Vancouver, the "conference swag" you might get is an umbrella with the conference logo on it.

 

2. A sim card is about $10 and most pay as you go type plans in Canada will charge about 40 cents per minute and 25 cents per text message. Alternatively, if you plan on using your phone a lot during your visit, you can get a single month plan. Here is an example from one single company, but they are all going to be similarly priced: http://www.fido.ca/web/page/portal/Fido/PrepaidPlans?forwardTo=prepaidPlans&service=addons&lang=en. I am not certain if you can get these at the airport though, especially if you arrive at a time where the shops are closed. You can check the YVR (Vancouver Airport) website to see what retail stores they have.

 

3. This depends on where the conference actually is and what your budget is. I don't know if I can really say anything useful without more information! 

 

4. In the evenings, I think downtown Vancouver is quite fun. There are a lot of restaurants and shopping along Robson Street downtown. I like to take visitors on a walk to English Bay and there are good places for ice cream near the beach. You can sit in the sand, eat ice cream and watch the sunset! There is also a great cupcakes bakery called "Cupcakes" (http://cupcakesonline.com/) near English Bay. Another fun walk is to walk along Davies St (from English Bay). It's the "gay/pride neighbourhood" in Vancouver and I think it really captures the spirit of what Vancouver is about. 

 

Other places that are nice are: Lonsdale Quay (at the Waterfront subway station, take the seabus across the water), Stanley Park/Coal Harbour (Cardero's is one of my favourites but it's pricey), Gastown, and Granville Island. If you have time on the weekends, there are mountains just north of Vancouver that you can hike. Capilano Suspension bridge is the famous and expensive one but you can also visit Lynn Canyon for a much smaller but free suspension bridge and hiking area.

 

5. You can take the "Canada Line" light rail train (built for the Olympics) from the Airport to downtown Vancouver pretty cheap / quick, and there are a lot of connections you can take along the way if your hotel is somewhere in Vancouver close to a train station.

 

 

Thanks a lot Takeruk for the detailed reply. You gave me more than I expected. I think I will carry a printout of your reply with me.

 

The conference venue is hotel Westin Bayshore at Bayshore drive, which, I guess, is a pretty expensive district. I will like to stay somewhere near from where I can travel easily. As for the budget, I want something within 70-80 CAD per day, maybe I have to stretch a bit if necessary. Since I have never been there, it is difficult to decide the budget beforehand.

 

For the SIM, I will consider options from the carriers. Of course I don't want to land in a new country at an awkward hour and will book my flights accordingly. I hope there will be some outlets in the airport and will check the site.

[Vancouver, BC]

Hi everybody,

                      I will attend a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia for a week in the middle of September. This post is not about moving to Vancouver as a grad student (like most others). But still I thought some pointers from the natives of that area can be of help, especially the grad students' viewpoint. As everybody knows, grad nerds think alike. I have a few specific questions.

 

1. I guess the weather will be pleasant. Does it rain in September?
2. Is it advisable to take a prepaid sim from the airport just for voice calls? (Who wants to pay for international roaming?) I want to know the usual sim activation charge in Canada. If that is too high, probably it's not worth the money.
3. Any suggestion for accommodation? All I need is a clean room with a bed for myself and in a safe locality. (My department budget is not very generous, as grad students will understand.) If you know Vancouver or travelled there, recommendation of any specific hotel, lodge or some locality will be great.
4. In the daytime, I will be attending talks, which will go on till almost 5 pm. Any suggestions about nearby local attractions which I can visit in the evening-the dining, the entertainment districts etc.?
5. Anything else you think I should know about?

 

Be as specific or generic in your suggestions as you want. Thanks in advance. Cheers!

[Paper Authorship and Importance of Publication]

I am doing PhD in telecommunication, networking and want to pursue an academic career. I understand that to get a good post doc position, I need good publications. Unfortunately, publications became the de facto scale to measure one's performance. But authorship is a tricky issue and must be managed diplomatically to get maximum mileage from your research. In this regard, I have a few questions for experienced researchers. I know that this forum is primarily for graduate school applicants but still I believe there are some senior graduate students, research fellows or may be even faculty members. A lot of current or prospective graduate students may find the answers relevant.

 

1) Signing a research integrity declaration was compulsory at the start of my program and it specifically mentioned that only the people who contributed to the idea, analysis or writing should be included as authors and not necessarily the PI of a project or the professor who brings the funding. But as I see around me and for myself, the supervisors are frequently detached from ground level details of a research topic and yet, it's somewhat of custom to include the supervisor as a coauthor. In fact, I am yet to come across a single paper from anywhere where a professor isn't included. I don't know whether it's the same for all schools, but my question is whether a publication without my supervisor counts as part of my work towards finishing my PhD or it's my duty as a graduate student to give papers to my supervisor?

 

2) Suppose one person (whose name is X) forms the core idea, does the theoretical analyses and contributes to the actual development. But apart from these tasks, there are things like writing long codes, running the simulations and then writing a paper-tasks which require less intellectual capability, less knowledge but sometimes may be more time consuming, demanding a bit more familiarity with a specific software package etc. Very often, these tasks are performed by someone else (suppose Y) and when a paper is written, the author names are X, Y, <<Supervisor>>. Whether this practice is desired or not, seeing this around I got the impression that in general only the first authors are the true contributors deserving credits. I want to know from more senior researchers (who got more experience in different research institutes, universities and different countries), whether this is a common practice or exception? In any case, when I apply for a research position afterwords and my prospective recruiter glances upon my publications, am I supposed to have most of my papers as the sole author or first authorship will suffice?

 

3) My supervisor encourages me to do good research on interesting problems without giving much thought to publications. I may appear cynical but seeing some blog posts and hiring committee opinions led me to believe that research without publication is useless. It's like saying working as a consultant not for money but for love of the job. Off course all the PhD graduates (even from the same school) aren't worth the same in academic/research job market. So what's going to be my measure of performance after I graduate from a reasonably reputed university? Is a prospective recruiter going to read my thesis, understanding my ideas for himself/herself and then judging their worth? Potentially, each PhD thesis can open a horizon of new research and it's not a trivial task to go through a thesis in a short span of time, passing a quick judgement even for a professor. Again for PhD students off course you don't have GPA (as a crude numeric measure) like masters or bachelor students. So how exactly does it work?

[Can I Include the URL of References]

Thanks a lot Latte for your elaborate explanation. Certainly I can adjust the settings of my reference management tool, but I was just wondering whether the URL is necessary or acceptable or doesn't matter or undesirable. I am getting the impression that it's presence doesn't matter in most cases and so unless my reference is just an webpage or blog (which is rarely the case in serious research), I will just turn it off.

[Can I Include the URL of References]

I am a research student in Telecommunication engineering and majority of my references are taken from IEEE publications. As many members are aware, IEEE publications are usually closed access and I get online access to them through my university library institutional log in. The issue is my reference management software includes the URLs of the papers available to my bibliography list at the end of my papers or proposals. While going to the URLs will not really open the papers (unless you are doing so from specific IP addresses), does it in anyway violet any implicit copyright or terms my institute has with IEEE?

[Importance of Country]

Thanks for your answer. I know there is a stereotype of Europe being kinda laid back and less hard work even by equally skilled people. As for Singapore, I see the environment as an extremely competitive and healthy one although can't draw direct comparison with the US itself. Guess it depends a lot on particular student and supervisor.

[Importance of Country]

Thanks for your elaborate reply. For language, I feel I have almost native command of English, and now a days, after being away from hometown for so long I am more comfortable in English than even my native tongue. Additionally, for your information, English is the official language of Singapore and my medium of communication since I don't know Mandarin. So it's absolutely easy to travel/study/work in Singapore even if you don't know any other language (unlike Japan & some European countries). The country is excellent if you can bear the humid tropical climate. Good luck.

[Importance of Country]

I am a freshman PhD student at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore doing research on Computer Networking. My question might appear a bit out of track in this forum, still I felt like putting it. My point is a lot of people say that I should have done my PhD somewhere in the US, as if doing PhD in a country itself will make you a great researcher. Albeit my university provides excellent infrastructaral facilities, my supervisor is very friendly (and sincere at the same time), the above issues depress me at times. Do they mean that I could get more value after my PhD from a US university (I am not talking about MIT, Stanford grade, there are plenty of not so good ones.) even if I do good research here in NTU, specifically when I apply for a postdoc/assistant professorship (which may be in the US?)

[Format of Email]

As a masters student, I want to apply to for PhD openings in the US, UK and Canada. When I write an email for the first time to one of my prospective guides, is it necessary/appropriate to enclose my full dissertation/report with the first email? I am confused because at one hand, it will give him/her a ready reference to glance through the research work I have done so far if he/she is interested at all. On the other hand, some of the professors might have privacy concerns receiving an attachment from a hitherto unknown sender and the attachment may signal desperation of kinda show off. What do you guys say?