Talking from Nobel Prizes

 The Nobel Prizes in 2026 were announced last week. As usual, the announcement of the Nobel Prizes can always be controversial and trigger much discussion. When the Nobel Prize for Physics was announced in 2024, a familiar name caught my attention: the winner, Geoffrey Hinton. He is, of course, one of the most famous machine learning pioneers alive. However, shouldn't his research be in a field other than physics? Yeah, the name of his machine learning model is the Boltzmann Machine, but there is little connection to the physical world, which is similar to two different people with no connection sharing the same name.

In late 2013, when I was conducting research in computer vision, Clinton suggested a reference about facial expression recognition to me, which was based on a variation of the Boltzmann Machine. I found Hinton's paper published in 1984. This was the first time I had encountered a paper that was too challenging to understand in a short time. Maybe I had too many challenges to tackle during that period, making my progress slow. In addition, Sridha seemed to have changed into another person since I came back from attending ICCV 2013 in Sydney. He no longer appreciated or supported me. Nevertheless, the difficulty of understanding the Boltzmann Machine made me lose some confidence. I was very glad in 2024 to see Hinton awarded a Nobel Prize, which meant the paper itself was hard enough.

During my days in academia, I was grateful to work with someone who had the same capability as any Nobel Prize winner. I mean Professor Wil van der Aalst. He was the first author of the C-YAWL paper, but I didn't know he was that famous when I was working on C-YAWL. In fact, his contributions could definitely be awarded two Turing Awards. At the end of 2014, he visited QUT. I told him that I was the master's degree student from several years ago who did the C-YAWL development, and that I was glad to meet him, the first author of the paper.

"Ah, I see! You did C-YAWL!" He sighed and said he was really very glad to see me in the BPM team. I told him that I'd finished my studies and migrated to Australia.

"You should be very glad to settle and work here. I know many people in China want to migrate to Australia, as I often visit Tsinghua University," he said. He gave me a gift, which was a school bag that QUT had given to him.

My job in the BPM team at QUT was not going smoothly. Rather, I thought I had been bullied by my supervisors again and again. I didn't know why. In the end, I lodged an official complaint—not about the bullies, but about the authorship matter of the C-YAWL paper. I thought Wil would stand by my side. However, he denied my contributions, which left me rather shocked. In fact, I just wanted to have a reconciliation on that matter at the time. I think the authorship of the paper will eventually damage his reputation if he cannot achieve a reconciliation with me.

One day, in my university dormitory roommates' WeChat group chat, I said I didn't think those with Nobel Prizes or Turing Awards were really all better than me in research. At the very least, I was better than Professor Wil van der Aalst in process mining, and much better than Professor Simon Lucey, who led the Australian Machine Learning Institute in Adelaide. My roommates laughed at me. I found it hard to explain it to them. I was disappointed that they didn't believe me, so I quit the group without any hesitation.

Outdoor Painting

Yesterday we went to the Emergency Services Expo in 7th Brigade Park, which was not far from home.

I noticed this event through a painting group on Facebook called “Urban Sketching”, which organises outdoor sketching from life around Brisbane every week. Since I picked up my painting brush again last year after abandoning it more than 20 years ago, I have mainly painted individually, with occasional play sessions with my young sons. I have longed for communication and discussion. That’s why I suggested going there, imagining I could even make friends with the same hobby.

It was hard to park our car. We drove along the edge of the park and parked our car in a quiet street nearby. We were surprised to see so many activities and various types of vehicles, including police cars, ambulances, fire engines, and bin trucks. My toddler was most interested in playing on the jumping castle, and my older boy was excited to get lots of toys from each organisation, which were positioned under umbrellas.

“Where are the painters in the Facebook group?” I puzzled. After a while, I found an old man sitting on a bench in a pavilion, with a large sketchbook on his lap. I wanted to say hello to him but decided to hold off for a while, as I thought I should finish those activities with the kids and then went there to draw together. A pavilion with a water tap next to it and surrounded by trees was a wonderful spot for painting landscapes from life.

However, I underestimated the number of organisations at the expo. When we finished walking around and participating in those activities, it was already afternoon. When I arrived at the pavilion, nobody was there. Later, I saw a group of people gathering underneath a big tree where there was a great shadow, which was precious on this very hot summer day. On the ground, there was a pile of sketchbooks lying around.

I went to greet them and said, “It is a pity that I missed the painting session as my boys were attracted to the games.”

“Yeah, you cannot paint anything with young kids. Members in the group are basically in the retirement age range, but we organise events every week. You’re welcome to join the next activity.”

We returned to the pavilion, brought out the painting tools and paper, and the two boys merrily started to create their artworks. It was still fun to paint in the open air, despite still only being with my two young boys.

My Journey to Cantonese Opera

My classmates did not believe I could speak fluent Cantonese when I had just started my bachelor's degree course at Xidian University. "We know a lot of people migrating to Guangdong Province!" they said. In their minds, I was one of them. I then explained that my ancestors had been settled in Southern China for a long, long time. There had been at least several generations in my hometown before I was born. They didn't believe this, as they thought my Mandarin was too good, and most significantly, I didn't know any Cantonese pop songs from Hong Kong.

Until one day, we went to a KTV, and I was urged to sing a song. I browsed the list of songs on the machine and couldn't find a song I knew, as I seldom sang pop songs. However, I quickly glanced at the category and found the item "Cantonese Opera." I then sang a piece of famous Cantonese Opera—Fragrant Sacrifice （香夭）from Princess Flower (帝女花）. From then on, everyone in my class knew I could speak Cantonese, as everyone knew Cantonese Opera had higher requirements than normal pop songs. In reality, Cantonese is my mother tongue. The people in the area where I grew up speak standard Cantonese, whereas people from my hometown village speak a different dialect. But I had left the village at the age of four years old.

Mum and her mother, who was my grandma, were enthusiasts of Cantonese Opera. From an early age, I was submerged in Cantonese Opera music. Traditionally, in the region where I lived, both Cantonese Opera and Cantonese music had flourished in history. Despite this, those traditional cultures had declined, especially in our generation. Grandpa often bought us a large volume of cassettes of Cantonese Opera from Hong Kong. Almost every child has a period of rebellion, especially around puberty. I know I was an exception to this. From childhood to adulthood, my mum has been the most important person to me, and I always listen to her. Her influence on me is always much stronger than that of any of my friends.

Therefore, when all my friends became interested in pop music, I still stuck to Cantonese Opera. Intrinsically, I think there are other reasons which may be more dominant. First, I loved traditional literature, especially poems. In senior high school, I was the best student in this area in my class. The language used in Cantonese Opera was close to traditional poems in China. Second, I was keen to listen to complicated music. The structures and melodies of pop music are simply too simple to my ears. Third, I liked to play Chinese bamboo flutes, dizi and xiao, which traditionally are used for Chinese traditional operas. Fourth, I have a good voice with a wide pitch range that allows me to sing both the male and female characters.

I had been addicted to playing the xiao during the time when I lived in Xi'an. Mostly I played Cantonese opera music. I keep this hobby as my daily routine until now. The stories in Cantonese Opera have given me much inspiration and taught me a lot, which includes history, traditional values, and literature. In the days of research, I often listened to Cantonese opera music while conducting research.

In early 2012, I applied for a tutor position at a university when I was studying. A programme leader said he wanted to appoint me as a lecturer. However, this triggered huge objections from others in the same research group. "He is not good at English!" "Opportunities should be first given to people born in Australia!" "He doesn't like to work with others." "It seems he is rather confused." "How ridiculous to work on weekends to try to graduate earlier, which I've never heard of!" "Why give that many opportunities to an overseas student from China?" As I didn't want to hear any of these words, I put on a headset, opened YouTube in the browser, and listened to my favourite Cantonese opera music.

In recent years, I've read some books to know more about this traditional art. I noticed that the education systems for Cantonese opera were different between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province. 

I like Cantonese Opera. It is the traditional culture of my hometown. I'm proud to be from a place with such a treasured culture.

Sowing

Mum had harvested vegetables in the vegie patch of our front yard, leaving an empty space with no plants. "Do you want to plant some flowers?" I asked the two boys. "Yes, to plant flowers!" they agreed merrily. "What do you want to plant? Sunflowers, bougainvilleas, roses, or others?" "Sunflowers! Yellow flowers!" Sunflowers seemed to be their preferred choice.

The other day when I was at Woolworths, I purchased two bags of seeds: one for sunflowers and the other for wildflowers in various colors. After the older brother finished school, I led them to the garden patch. I showed them how to use a spade or a shovel to dig a hole and then put seeds inside. Finally, I told them to cover the seeds with soil. "In this way, the magpies will not be able to find them. Otherwise, they will fly here to eat them," I said. The last step was, of course, to water them.

To encourage the boys in their gardening work, I purchased an elephant-shaped watering can from Kmart for them. "To have flowers, you have to water them every day!"

I think it is very meaningful to guide the boys in sowing flowers. Sowing is the effort that we devote. Don't envy the flowers in your neighbors' gardens. If you want your garden to be flourished with petals, you have to first sow!

About Simulation Techniques

The final project of my undergraduate degree, which was entitled "Multicast Switching Technologies in High Speed Routers", was supervised by Associate Professor Fan Yang. I chose him to be my supervisor as I had a very positive impression of him in his lectures on switching technologies. One day I sent him an email to discuss a statement from the textbook, which had made me rather confused. "Your understanding is correct, and the way to express the idea in the textbook is a little misleading," he responded quickly. "How would you like to do the project?" he asked me. "If you really want to do an excellent project, I can guide you to use a couple of network simulation tools such as NS2 or OPNET." "Yes, I want to try my best and learn as much as possible from it!" I said with a determined voice.

However, I soon became regretful for this. In the final semester of university, I first devoted myself to finding a job. I wanted to find an employer who could allow me to break the contract with ZTE. After many unsuccessful attempts, I had given up. Instead, I used almost all available time to prepare for taking the IELTS test, with a plan to study in Australia. After finishing the examination, it was merely a week or so before the due date of the final project. At the time, it had no longer been enough for me to learn those simulation tools. I was thinking of writing a program by myself from scratch. I wrote an email to my supervisor about the basic idea, and he confirmed with me that the basic idea was rational. Therefore, in my final project report, there were a number of pages of a C program appended, which simulated an algorithm from a paper. It was a console program without any visualization. What the program did was simulate the algorithm to calculate throughputs.

In July of 2008, when I'd just graduated, I was engaged in the training program for fresh graduates in ZTE. I was assigned to the department of CDMA network planning and optimization. In the real world, network planning typically relies on simulation as the initial step. This is because setting up a wireless network is of high cost and complicated. Many calculations are done inside the simulation tools. After the installation of network facilities, a road test is compulsory to test the signal strength in every corner of the place, and adjustments are usually needed as a later step.

In 2009, I enrolled in a course at QUT in Australia. In the second semester, I enrolled in a unit about operating systems. The virtual machine is a type of simulation which simulates the hardware from the ground up. At the same time, I was doing a project in the Microsoft eResearch Centre. The project was related to the Windows CE embedded system, where simulation was used as a tool for development.

In early 2010, I enrolled in a unit called "AI for Games", which taught computer games agent development. This was probably my favourite unit at QUT. In this unit, we explored the OpenSim platform, an open-source project written in Mono.NET. It was a Second Life simulation platform. Various algorithms had been learned during this time, with the honey bees optimization algorithm, the Mini-Max human chess competition algorithm, and the distributed behaviour models that used to model collective behaviours among the most impressive ones.

Several years later, I began to draft a thesis on the topic of "Unusual Event Detection in Crowded Scenes" in the area of intelligent computer vision. I realized that many abnormal events with security interest are impossible to obtain with a sufficient number of instances in real-world surveillance footage. "When we can't get them in the real world, how do we test them?" I wondered. Then I suddenly thought of the OpenSim simulation that I'd learned before. If the videos generated by computer graphical simulation were not looked as real enough, I thought we could also use a set of robots to simulate. While a group of robots moved together, we could apply the distributed behavior models to simulate movements in the real world. Then in the conclusion chapter, I said cross-disciplinary research, such as including simulation techniques, was compulsory in this research topic.

In 2015, I was working on a paper on resource allocation management in the area of process mining. We first used simulated data with a well-known ground truth to evaluate the algorithm in ideal conditions. Then we applied it to a real-world dataset, and verified it with business feedback. Professor Wil van der Aalst, who was the "father of process mining", had given the section I drafted very positive comments, which I had been very proud of until now.

However, I do believe simulation is overused in telecommunications engineering research. I've read many papers in these areas, and many of them only have simulation-based results. I've always considered those papers as incomplete. "When are you going to start simulation?" Professor Huang urged me when he was pushing me to have a paper in pattern recognition, where simulation was rarely used, when I was working in Shenzhen University.

In around 2020, I started some development for mobile applications. Simulations for different models of mobile devices were used extensively to develop mobile apps on a desktop computer.

My University Roommates

The summer of the year 2008 was full of both amusements and anxieties. I knew that I had been deceived by ZTE but I couldn't do anything to change the result. The study in the final semester of university was rather relaxed, as we only needed to finish the final project, which everyone would be able to pass, whereas we couldn't get the highest rank no matter how well we did, as the highest rank had to be given to those who would continue to study postgraduate studies at the same university, which was a ridiculous policy. Games, dinings, parties, and various farewell activities had fulfilled the life of a student at this time. I was not sure when I would be able to meet those who lived with me in the same room for four years once we departed from the campus.

The time in ZTE passed quickly, as every day I would be heavily engaged in the training organized by the company for fresh graduates. I didn't realize the days would be that hard to spend after I quit the job.

I missed the many nights I chatted with roommates on bed until falling asleep. We shared many experiences in life. While they were jealous of my family background as I had a grandma living in Australia and they sometimes said I would go to Australia sooner or later, I was in my deep mind jealous of those who grew up in the countryside. In my blurred memory, I had longed for the natural world since my family moved to the urban area from a rural village when I was still a toddler. Chen Chao said his hometown was surrounded by mountains and there was a river that many students had to swim across to go to school, which sounded like the most romantic style of life to me. Many a time I urged Liu Zhengqiang  to ring the phone number of the dormitory opposite to ours, only to get some excitements when hearing someone from Room 317 get up to answer the phone while the call suddenly stopped. Most of the time, Mo Can was silent. But suddenly he would utter one to two wonderful ideas that impressed others to remind us for his existence.

I missed the many days we went to classrooms together, we went to library together, we mischievously peed in the bush on the river bank together after dining out, we fought with each other with snow balls in winter, and we played in the swimming pool together in summer when Zhang Dehao pushed me to the pool unexpectedly only envying I could swim. They didn't believe I could speak Cantonese simply because I had been seldomly interested in pop music from Hong Kong until one day I sang a piece of passage from a famous Cantonese opera in a KTV, which had made them startled.

In the several months after leaving Xi'an, I often thought of the old days and was eager to know how others were. It seemed that I was just on a holiday that was longer than a normal summer vacation rather than having permanently leaving Xi'an. I occasionally felt a bit regretful to leave Xi'an too early, but if I continued a postgraduate course there, many of my friends had departed and lived elsewhere. 

“Are they talking about me?" I wondered. "Do they still remember me?" I wondered. "Do they know I am under huge pressures?" I didn't wonder, as I knew they weren't. They envied me for studying in Australia but they didn't understand the pressures I was suffering. They had always thought of me growing up in a very rich family, and they couldn't believe that every step I'd taken was in fact full of challenges. 

One day in a forum of our university, I read an anonymous post about a fresh graduate's half year's experience in a small, non-capital city in Sichuan Province. "Is it written by Chen Chao?" I wondered. Not sure why I would think it was written by Chen Chao, as it really didn't expose the author. However I did have a feeling from the way of narrative that it must be written by my roommate Chen Chao. I was mostly impressed that the article mentioned that one of his very good friends had gone overseas, making him rather lonely. "Am I the one overseas? His very good overseas friend must be me."

Time passed fast. Several years had been passed before I had the opportunity to meet one of them. In December of 2016, more than eight years after our graduation, I met Mo Can again in Shanghai. Despite he still remembered and was concerned about me, he'd lost ideas about many topics I discussed with him, including academic life, Australia, and immigration. I had felt the distance between us, despite the Shanghai gathering was the best among all that I met my old classmates! I met a few friends from Room 317 in Hangzhou, and felt rather disappointed with the coolness.

In 2017 I returned to China to work for a year and a half. In 2018, unexpectedly I met my French roommate Zhang Dehao and my Hebei province roommate Jia Chenggang. I had to confess that there had been a wall among our minds. The wall was caused by time and physical distance. I then realized that I was even more comfortable with two of my closest Chinese friends in Australia, as at least we could understand each other's lives better.

Classmates from our dormitory room have set up a WeChat group. At first we had discussions regularly. However, as time passed, I found my mind had become more and more distant from theirs. Eventually I decided to quit, as I had been tired of arguing with them.

Friendship is always unable to fight with time and distance, no matter how close you once were!

My Little Sketch Book

I have a sketchbook that is so small that I can even put it into a pocket, and as a result, I can easily carry it everywhere and sketch whenever I am interested in something in my view. Last year, when I resumed my hobby as a painter, I typically started painting from photos. However, I later found it a very bad idea. The photos contain too much useless information, while they often miss those important details. Through this process, I could understand in depth that photos are very different from paintings. Later, I found that fine art paintings from rapid sketchings from life are a good approach. That is, we first use a pen to rapidly draw when we are physically on the scene, then when we have time and settle well at home, we can paint a bigger picture with more details and in a more finished style.

I switched a few types of sketchbooks and eventually narrowed the small one. If we are going to sketch a complicated view, we can separate the view into a number of sketches. When we paint the full picture at home, there is a process to composite them into a single picture. I think this a suitable way for me to create art works.

From then on, I put my little sketchbook in my handbag. Whenever I am boring or see something interesting, I will use a ballpoint pen to sketch one to two pages. Gradually I found that life is full of curiosities, full of excitements, and full of hopes.