I am so so so so pleased about my Final Year Project. I will be writing a thesis on something that I feel has a real purpose.

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Yesterday I went to see the lecturer who is offering the topic and discussed it with him. Feeling the super urge last week that this is the project for me, I quickly had emailed him to put my name down for it. And thank god for that! There were four other students who wanted to do the same topic but can't because I got there first. As a consolation and a response to the popularity of the topic of tsunami damage mitigation the topic itself was extended to incorporate the study of the tsunami wave. Surprisingly there isn't much study conducted on this.

So my topic of The Role Buildings To Reduce Tsunami Heights will include building a huge model of a stylised beach with my strategically placed buildings and test it in a 1.6m water flume - basically a huge wave generator that is almost 30 meters long, 1.6m deep. Now let me tell you. There's this big mother f****r of a wind tunnel at Monash. Right next to it and in the ground is this massive 4x6m 30m water wave generator that does 60% of the world's experiments to test underwater piping systems, etc etc. I have never noticed it!! I blame the big wind tunnel for stealing the thunder. Anyways, the water flume that I will be working on is the baby version of this mother flume but it's still very big... for me anyway. Imagine little George operating some massive thing. Yeah. No more asking tutors to help - the final year project is a lot of independence. I'm rather intimidated by this.

Apart from the physical side of the project, I will have to do a few fluid dynamics calculations such as the coefficient of drag that the buildings cause on the wave. How the formation and shape will affect the energy drawn from the wave. Now, fluids was never my strong point but it will have to be! Well, I blitzed 2nd year Fluids but did rather dismally in 3rd year. All this wave stuff will be rather new for me. I have never concentrated on ocean waves. I hope they are similar to sound waves in a way.

Now for the more exciting part! If my project is any good, it will be actually used and put in to print. Unlike all the other projects on offer, this has such direct and immediate application. As I mentioned before, this is in conjunction with The Joint Working Commission for Disaster Reduction on the Coasts of the Indian Ocean. I feel as if I'm doing an industry based project and in a way I am. The lecturer who I will be working with runs an Coastal Engineering consulting firm and works closely with final year students to research and experiment on various ocean engineering related topics. He's also part of the committee for the upcoming symposium on natural disaster mitigation being held at Monash (of which I hope to attend as it is very expensive to get into). So not only is this just a final year project, it extends much farther. Maybe I'll get a job after I finish, who knows! He already offered me for this summer! But unfortunately, there aren't any places available at this time.

What I'm hoping to get out of this project most of all is my purpose (ah, Avenue Q). Doing something useful and good for the planet on a larger scale (as opposed to just recycling, donating to charities, volunteering, supporting campaigns) is something that I REALLY want to do and can see myself spending my life doing that. This will be a good way to test that passion as the project is indeed a very challenging, highly analytical and intuitive one. I really want to impress people with my work because that means it will be used - that is what I will be striving for.

Looks like I will be having a busy summer then. My professor has advised me to basically start on the project and do background research and readings as well as be a student representative for Monash for the Indian Ocean symposium. I'm just buzzing with excitement within just thinking about it. But first, I have to get through my exams.

Speaking of which, I tried to do finance today but it is so boring. Well, it's not boring in the sense that I don't want to learn it. It's just so repetitive now that I don't feel I am doing anything beneficial by repeating the questions and doing them all over again. I feel weird now that I have basically nothing to study. I should start on my other subjects but I really cannot be bothered. *Sigh* What to do what to do. You that feeling when you should be studying other subjects but because you have another subject before it, you think you should concentrate on the one coming up soonest? Yeah, like that.

Truth + Love = Wisdom
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