This blog has been discontinued.

Kindly visit my new blog at Scrapbook in the making…

It’s a new beginning, new chapter of my life.

Thanks for all your support all these while. Really appreciate it.

Hope to see you again ~~

Outside the rain begin, and I’m feeling blue.

Yeah. I can’t help myself. It’s been an emotional July for me after the incident on my study approval. I don’t want to elaborate much, just want to thank those who had supported me during one of my darkest period, perhaps in my life at this point. Thank you for your support, and I shall fight till last! May the FORCE be with you too, guys!

Still sitting in my office, at this very moment, trying to get something out of my thoughts, filled with so many forgotten memories that just keep coming back, and I’m trying to sort things out. My brain is just another corning ware waiting to be heated, inside the cabinet, cold and lonely. It’s time for me to relocate every bits of my memory.

It’s been raining cats and dogs outside, and our nation’s capital is under the risk of flash floods. Suddenly I thought of you. Are you soaking wet because of the rain? Are you hungry dear? Managed to tapau nice food? A glimpse outside my office now shows the condition doesn’t improve much too. There’s already places where small floods are accumulating, and drainages are full. Well, here I am,with the Linkin Park music open up loud (purposely and for obvious reasons), trying to shake my office and break the silence. Seems like returning to my rather cold and quiet resting place now is not a wise decision.

What am I going to eat tonight? For that is another tough question. 88? 99? or Feng Jiao or Wooden House? Sorry that just flashed through my mind. I’m kinda bored of what I’ll be eating tonight, dear. And I miss your cooking. I really do.

Tomorrow is the 15th day Chinese lunar month. Be a vegetarian again. Trying to be healthy and stay in shape, and of course with a strong good belief that things will turn out to be good and smooth. I will go to temple tomorrow, devoting myself to Guan Yin Bodhisattva. I know worry won’t help in my situation. I know worry won’t help my mum to get through her radiotherapy. Besides praying, sometimes, you just need to have a little faith.

Up to this point, it’s still raining outside, and getting smaller. My rather poorly setup office sprinkled water from the ceiling again towards my table and worse, my face. Guess this is what they called first class facility with the third class maintenance huh. Called the contractor many times but the problem is still the same. Fed up. It seems that Linux is the best option for my rather problematic notebook too without any delay.

OK. Is it time to go? Still bored over the undecided dinner. I’m gonna hunt on the TV sites for some nice program tonight. That might be interesting. Couch potato tonight. Tomorrow is another new day.

Sunny days ahead! I’m going home!

After all the training and supervising period, I flew back to Parit alone. My housemate had left the house dirty since his last departure and I still remember I have to sweep the floor twice to clear out the dust. The toilet are dirty too, and left some clothes not washed and some not ironed. It tooked me almost 3 days to sort things out in my house, throwing out rubbish that I could find. What a total housekeeping engineering….

End of May is still holiday period, but I still have many things to cover in my work. But despite all the work tension, I’m equally excited to do a little project of mine: Refurbish an thrown PC! On this matter I would like to express my gratitude to Ron Lim, the owner of this “thrown” PC, for his willingness to dump his PC to me while playing with his latest Core 2 Duo PC.

And I wouldn’t say it’s a total trash…. It’s a P3 667Mhz with 320Mb RAM…. not bad huh! This PC can do a lot of things already, at least can do some office application. So I give it a new house (casing), a new DVD drive and a new HDD (cost me around 300 bucks… ouch!) and give it a  nice kick with my “slim edition” Windows XP and it runs flawlessly! With my “slim edition” Windows XP it only boot after two bars loading! Fast leh! I created this Windows XP with a software called nLite… and it’s a great free software. Feeling your computer too slow to boot? Try nLite…. it does magic to my P3!

Last night I installed Sabayon Linux too on the same PC…. and it’s slow loading. I think this Gentoo-based linux distro is too heavy for my PC…. and not really used to the K desktop environment…. maybe I’ll try to install back Ubuntu which is more friendly… actually I’m more accustomed to Gnome. But since I already installed, so I think I should give it a try lar at least… But it’s really an “out-of-the-box” experience linux distro cos a lot of software is bundled inside. Need some time to explore the thing first… Then I’ll try come out with some updates on wat I found….

But now I’m in dilemma…. should I install my old Ubuntu 5.10 (the breezy) or wait for the feisty? Hmm……

I’ m sitting here in language lab again for my second day course on Blackboard 6, a Learning Management System (LMS). This particular piece of software is not stable to me. You’ll find error pages at times (“page not found”). It’s using JSP, and the license need to update annually. I wonder why they never consider open source solution, such as the PHP based Moodle or other LMS…. that can significantly cut down the cost plus assuring stability. What’s the point paying for a lousy software while you have better free alternatives? So, i think it must be the contract…. right, Uncle Siami?

OK now during my course at OSCC, I’d come to realise how’s the traffic jam it is at KL. The LDP is so packed in the morning, and not to mention federal highway. I’d had the experience of stuck in the traffic for more than an hour on the federal highway…. and during that time I just merely move about a kilometer. So the lesson learned during that traffic jam is that if you want to buy a car at KL, buy an auto transmission car… if not, patah kaki man!

Then the following week I flew back to my hometown to supervise 6 training students. Meeting my old friends at Politeknik Kuching is nice. We had tea and lunch together, and and shared updates about our friends and of course on their alma mater, UTHM. It’s nice to be home again, and my mum looked tired after the chemo. I bring her to chemo session and suddenly I felt pain in the heart. I really do, especially to learn that she had hair fall that can never be saved by Pantene hair fall control. But I do admire her strength and courage to live on. She’s weak after the chemo, and she told me not to be like her. Consume only healthy foods, and avoid poisonous and junk food. Live a good life. I heard you mum. I will. That’s why nowadays I’ll always try my best to eat healthily.

As for my dad, he’ll have his eye surgery soon. He went for checking last week and now waiting for report. Hopefully he will have a clearer vision then. I’m glad to see my sister already went for industrial training, already like a working adult. Haha what am i talking about… i’d never been home for quite a while. Just, surprise to see changes here and there. My friend KS is applying for Canada PR and planned to work there for 2 years….good luck to you man!

Stay tuned for Part III~~

Entering the sixth month of the year still seems exciting for me. Why? Cos I’ve got a lot to share since my last post, but don’t really know how to start…. hmm let me think….

OK I’ll start to use a little flashback. After my last post I’d went to Open Source Competency Center (OSCC), MAMPU at Cyberjaya for a PHP / MySQL programming course. I still remember that I’m very excited about the course, since learning about PHP is really something that I wanted to do since my last course on building Content Management System (CMS) using Mambo, the Joomla predecessor, which is also based on PHP. using PHP based CMS had let me witness the great functionalities of PHP, of which when combined with open source MySQL, becomes a very powerful web applications.

So, I decided to learn more than just deploying CMS and WordPress. The instructor, Mr. Foong at OSCC is really a nice person. He’s very helpful and constantly offer assistance and useful tips to us during the course. It may seemed hard at first, but after the first day I’m still very excited in coding stuff using PHP. Trust me, if you know the basics of programming (like variables, functions, array, etc.) then it’s not as hard as it seems. PHP is almost similar to C / C++ programming. Since I teach C Programming, so I don’t have much problem following the course. Thanks again to Mr. Foong for the good headstart.

On the second day we’d learned about MySQL operations, on how to create database using PHP and also using the popular phpMyAdmin. Then, we’re required to do a simple project by building a chat room using PHP. On the third day, I think we’re running out of time, so we’re not given any mini project since there’s a lot of topics to be covered. I’d learned advanced features such as email, date function, spam filtering, etc.

This course had really given me a good head start in PHP. Besides, I’m also happy to meet with other participants from various government agencies. Then I only discover that I’m the only Uni lecturer there… the rest are mostly IT support admin or technician. So, I’m consider rare to them. Anyway, I would like to have another PHP course over here. Hopefully they offer the intermediate course by next month.

And yeah… not forget to mention also that I really like their operating system which is based on Ubuntu Linux, and using the feisty distro (ver 7.04) . Now that’s what I call cool! I’m now waiting for my free Ubuntu CD from Carnocical Inc… Can’t wait to have my fingers on this cool OS…..heheh!

Part II coming… stay tuned on the same channel!

Wow it’s May already… how time flies! I still remember my last post about thesis, since then I’d been marking thesis, and then marking papers, and just settled my final exam papers… what a relief! Then I started to receive calls from student about why they did so bad in their exam…. so I just tell them you did badly in your finals lah… that’s why…

Just finished video chatting with Michelle, who’s 270 kilometres away from where I am now. She’s doing fine, just feeling tired after a hard day. Having a life where going out early and coming back home late must be something unusual for a start. But what can she do? That’s the working life in the metro. She’s heading to another town again tomorrow for another business presentation. Can’t help her much except getting her settling down during my stay last week, and that is the least I can do besides giving her motivation.

As for me, yeah, I’m getting a little unusual too, without her. It’s a strange feeling like you’d lost somebody. She’s so near too you, and yet also far from you. I’d never need to wake up so early again to fetch her to work, and life after 5pm is different now without the need to rush through the hectic traffic of industrial area near PCCS. These few days when I wake up I feel empty, and I just let the voices of 988 morning talk show fill up the emptiness of my room. No more lunch hours together with her …Don’t dare to go to our usual coffee shop for lunch, afraid the auntie will ask about her whereabout. This feeling of missing somebody you cared so much is especially strong during the night when everything started to be cool…. and in short, I really missed her. I really do. That’s why I can’t wait till this Saturday where she promised to watch Spiderman 3 together…

I still remember I had complained before that this semester I’m not so mobile after all… and been doing my “core business” that is teaching. Now, I’m mobile again. Since the end of last month I’d been traveling around, and this whole May is a traveling month for me. Since I’ll start traveling this weekend, my job this week is to settle the task for the next two weeks! So this week I’m really really busy, compared to my other colleagues who still stuck in marking papers I’m already doing other things…. no choice! It must be the complaint…. it works after all… so the next time I will have to complain and complain until things turn table…

And if you ask me is it good to be mobile again…. I would say YES! It’s good to be mobile, again.

p/s: and to Tee, it’s nice to hear from you again from Cambridge! Nice scenery there…keep in touch bro…. can’t wait to add your link to my blog!

From last week until now, I hardly have time to breathe. I think I’d almost buried myself in the sea of thesis… reading ridiculously done thesis over and over again. Ridiculous? you might ask… well, the normal thing:

1) never justify why they need to do that research (like want to simply do the research without proper reasons or rationales),

2 ) using the wrong method to measure something impossible (like using 5 point likert scale questionnaires to measure the soft skills of student, or worse, “hubungan sosial pelajar”),

3) dubious references (I found one thesis where not a single quote is found in the reference at the back page),

4) wrong analysis (with mean score 3.5 and they still say the “tahap is sederhana”, and yet if refer back their questionnaires, 3 = tidak pasti and 4 = setuju, so what is “in between”, and most of them having standard deviation of almost reaching 1.0, that means the dispersion is big statistically!)

5) and so, making the wrong conclusion that ALL the respondents “agree”, and their “tahap” / level is very high in certain skills… what a crap!

As evaluation panels for a few semesters, marking and examining numerous thesis ( definitely over 50 thesis) is really a tiring process. Every time when I received thesis from students, I accept it with open mind, and hope that I can learn something from it, but the reality is really far from what I expected. I’m not actually complaining about the examining process actually (as it’s my duty to do so), but it’s a sad thing to see that the problems aforementioned can be found almost every semester. Students have a perception that questionnaires is multipurpose, that questionnaires can be used to measure almost everything. I think I must clarify here that the questionnaire that I meant here is those with the likert scale from 1 to 5 (strongly agree to strongly disagree). They tend to use these kind of questionnaire for almost everything, from measuring “kecekapan matematik” (which a secondary student also can tell you that you need to use standardized mathematical questions and not questionnaires) to “hubungan antara pelajar” (which you might need to use observation and not questionnaires). I almost mentioned the same thing over and over again, and I’d been termed “anti-questionnaire” person by one of the panels… haha.

But to me, you just can’t measure everything with that kind of questionnaires! If you want to know someone can sing or not, you ask that person to sing, or you give that someone “a validated questionnaire” to fill in whether he can sing well? This is a very common sense question right? But sadly those students seems to have blurred vision in this matter. I’m really worried about the quality of these kind of thesis in the long run. These trend is going on for a really long time already (early 2000 till now) and I don’t think we can really go far with these kind of research. That might explain why we’re not in the top 3000 best university in the world.

Besides thesis, I still have a whole stack of test papers yet to get marked. Today I met with one of my project student, a nice and hardworking Chinese girl. She’s telling me her progress about her seminar, which just need a few minor correction (as I expected) and some “observations” about me.

She said:” Sir, I’d notice something about you.” “Really?” I replied. “Yeah, sir, you’re walking faster than before in the faculty, and at the same time you’re holding a lot of things in your hand.”

Wow… haha. Since when I’d become so fast-paced? “Sir are you tension with jobs? it seems like a lot of responsibility has been given to you…” She added. “Yeah, you see,” then with my fingers pointing at the stack of thesis, “I’d been reading all these lately, and at the same time have a few things to do…” Trust me, I can only see that she’s shocked with the tasks and positions I’m currently holding, and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t freak her out as she’s planning to join the teaching workforce as well. She’s one of the first class student in my faculty.

But thinking back… yeah,I’d been walking faster than ever. A lot of things need to accomplished in shorter time. And my student tease me that I’m like working in Singapore or Hong Kong, where those people are walking fast as hell. OK, is that a good thing? Haha… Maybe I’m giving her a false impression that walking fast = productivity…?!

Talking to my friends over the lunch time makes me wonder, as two of my friends experienced distance relationship, am I ready to take that up? It’s not as easy according to them, and each of them have their own story and dilemma. I’m going to experience that very soon. I don’t think I’m willing to let go, but I believe I need to live with it. Not easy, but I’ll try…

The greatest distance is that you don’t know I love you while I’m just beside you.

Saw this news on The Star today… hot off the press. According to the news, our famous “black water town” MP Dr. Wee Ka Siong had questioned the need for Public Universities in Malaysia to send in their inventions in Geneva International Exhibition on Inventions, Products and Services, as the standard of the Exhibition is questionable. And according to him, Malaysia sent the most entries. Well, it’s not a new thing to me as I already know that Malaysia sent the most entries. My University is not listed in the news anyway, although had sent and won several awards before. Here’s the news:

Universities forking out millions for dubious awards

BY ZULKIFLI ABDUL RAHMAN

KUALA LUMPUR: The credibility of a Geneva-based international science exhibition, where Malaysian universities have won numerous awards, is now under scrutiny.

The universities are said to have spent millions to take part in the exhibition which showcases new products and inventions, but an MP here doubts the worth of the awards given out.

Dr Wee Ka Siong (BN – Ayer Hitam) questioned the need for public universities to take part in foreign exhibitions that showcased the universities’ findings and new products, such as the Geneva International Exhibition on Inventions, Products and Services.

He said many Malaysian universities submitted entries for such exhibitions where they stand to win gold, silver and bronze medals for their products.

“These awards are not judged by a panel of experts but by the exhibition organisers themselves.

“Hence, it’s no surprise that each year, more than half of the participants receive awards,” he said during the motion of thanks on the Royal Address at the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

“I met a professor from a renowned European university while on an overseas trip.

“He laughed and told me that such awards offer no academic merits,” said Dr Wee, adding that most of the products showcased in these exhibitions were from Malaysian universities.

He singled out the Geneva exhibition as a favourite among Malaysian universities.

“We submit the most number of entries each year. In some years, Malaysia had submitted 30% of the total number of entries.

“Last year, about 680 inventions were exhibited. Of these, 152 or 23% were Malaysian exhibits ,” he said.

Dr Wee said Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Unimas, among others, had submitted their products or inventions to the foreign exhibitions over the past few years.

“It is embarrassing that our universities are spending millions to participate in these low-standard award competitions.”

Dr Wee alleged at one foreign exhibition, the organisers imposed 650 euros (RM3,200) for participants who had yet to commercialise their products, 180 euros (RM831) for each metre of exhibition space used and 370 euros (RM1,709) to rent a display counter.

He described such exhibitions as “profit making shows.”

Malaysia’s history with the Geneva event stretches back at least 15 years. In 2005, 11 public universities sent exhibits, winning 46 gold, 41 silver and 23 bronze medals.

The international 72-member jury judges each invention on its own merits, which means that there is not just one gold, one silver and one bronze medal per category of invention.

The next exhibition is due to be held from April 18 – 22.

What do you think?

Eventually found this article from Stupid Malaysia Blog… the essay is in Malay Language…

Setelah Agama Islam dipupuk, Penganut Agama Islam mengenal sistem tenaga nasional. Iaitu sebuah penjana kuasa elektrik yang memberikan masyarakat Melayu lampu. Dengan adanya cahaya dari lampu, masyarakat Melayu tidak akan hidup dalam kegelapan. Pertahuan seperti zina, riba, judi dan sebagainya tidak dilakukan lagi kerana mereka malu adanya tiang lampu di merata rata yang menyuluh tingkah lalu mereka. In English, they are too shy to do tat stuff in the light. Scared people see ma. Stupid.
Mereka akhirnya dapat belajar kerana menpunyai lampu meja dan ini menjadikan mereka bijak. Mula mula mereka mengambil UPSR kemudian PMR, SPM dan akhrinya STPM. Banyak telah pergi ke Universiti cahaya langgit kerana di sana terdapat lampu untuk pelajaran mereka.
Perempuan tidak lagi di pandang hina kerana setelah ada cahaya, men felt shy because their body part are different. 1 bolt 1 nut. Really tiu lo. Adanya elektrik, mereka tengok filem cerita pokemon dan digimon.

Pada masa kegemilangan China dan Jepun, penduduk mereka mengamalkan kepentingan fahaman confucius di China dan agama Shinto di Jepun.

Agama confucius ini memang “confusing” entah bila masa mau makan dan entah bila masa bertapa…Let me explain le!? Sebelum adanya ajaran confucius, dunia di China adalah huru hara… Kerana raja syaitan dunia akan dilahirkan dan memusnahkan dunia. Dengan itu,…..Akhirnya mereka berjaya membina buah ampangan yang besar dengan jentera yang berkuasa tinggi.

… Dia terpaksa mencari pengikut untuk membantunya, iaitu seekor monyet, babi, koala dan hantu air. Selepas mendapatkan kitab suci, Raja Syaitan dikalahkan. Dan semua orang memahami ajaran confucius walaupun sangat “confusing” kalau tidak raja syaitan akan muncul semula…. Ajaran Shinto pula datang dari Tom Cruise. Dia ini seorang askar, generallah dunno wat pangkatlah. 4get liau. Dia mahu kill all the stupid Japanese because they samurai all so lazy stuff. Tetapi kena tangkap dan diberi fahaman samurai. Selepas dilepaskan dia tak mau balik pula kerana ada awek cantik ma. Lepas itu dia pun fang kuat chai lo. His people went to kill him pun tak jadi. Ini telah tersebarnya Shinto.

Conclusion: This kid is watching too much movies….and this fella must be a fan of Tom Cruise… Muahahah!

The following article is what I found on Engadget. It’s about the results from handphone survey in Australia that reveals a person’s personality. Original Text:

A survey of cellphone users in Australia, conducted by Panorama and released by Nielsen Media Research, has proved what pretty much everyone already knew: people are likely to base broad, stereotypical assumptions about you on your cellphone, just like they do with everything else you use and wear. We’re guessing this breaks down a bit differently in Aussieland, but here’s how mobile users tend to associate down under:

Nokia: Family-minded, middle aged managers, balance seekers, health conscious
Motorola: Fashion conscious, under 24, fun seekers, individualistic
Sony Ericsson: Ambitious young men, professionals, success driven, individualistic
LG: Favorite of mums, stay-at-home parents, success driven, harmony seekers
Samsung: Young women, career focused, success driven, fun seekers

The upshot of this research is that since most phone service providers rate the same, people are for the most part picking a carrier based on phone selection — again, we’re not exactly floored by the analysis here. Now all that’s left is how to pigeon hole HTC and Palm users. We’re thinking “good looking, fun loving, Engadget reader” would be a nice start.

And in Chinese:

Nokia：顧家、中年經理人、尋求平衝、注重健康
Motorola：趕流行、24 歲以下、注重玩樂、個人意識強烈
Sony Ericsson：有進取心的年輕人、專業人士、注重成功、個人意識強烈
LG：老媽的最愛、足不出戶的長輩、注重成功、強調和諧
Samsung：年輕女性、注重事業、注重玩樂

So, which handphone are you? Mine’s a SE…. hehe!