Leaving ...

The day is approaching, 3 days more (28 December 2009) I'll be leaving Malaysia to start a new journey in a whole new place, Hong Kong, for at least 3 years. There are so many things I wanted to do before I leave. However, I only managed to do portion of those in the wanted-things-to-do list due to time constraint. Below is the managed & unmanaged things:

Managed:
1. Farewell with my colleagues and students. Thanks for all the wishes.

My colleagues

With IB students I taught earlier

S.H.E?

The memories

2. Visited my Karate master in Malacca.
3. Managed to move to new office for about a week :p

My new office

4. Paid a visit to some friends who are working in Singapore including a friend whom I've lost contact for more than 3 years after we graduated from MMU.

Friend whom I lost contact for many years

Secondary school's friends

Snowman standing on Orchard Road

Unmanaged:

1. Failed to meet a friend due to I had to rush to airport to pick up my uncle.
2. Failed to meet up with one of my mentors in MMU Malacca.
3. Failed to meet up with some buddies from MMU in KL & Penang.


Goodbye, Malaysia ...

The belated cake ...

Dol hareubang

Sorry to deliver the birthday cake 6 months later as I promised to buy one on your birthday. Sorry for failing to do so on your big day. Unfortunately, it was another regret for not being able to pass you the belated birthday cake personally. Anyhow, wish you all the best and hope able to meet you again ... take care.

An Unforgettable Trip to Penang

Yesterday I was attending to a wedding function of my colleague at Penang. The function was scheduled at 7pm at Sunway Hotel, Seberang Jaya. However, a few colleagues and I had planned to go there earlier so that we could have sightseeing before attending to the function.

Sunway Hotel, Seberang Jaya

We were car pooling and depart to Penang from Kampar at 9am. The traffic was smooth on the way heading to Penang and took us about 2 hours to arrive at the Auto City. After that, we met Dr. Lee LH at Sg. Dua and had our lunch at a Thai Food Restaurant before crossing to the island.
After lunch, we departed to the Penang island to meet up with Dr. Cheng and his wife at Queensbay Mall.

From left: Dr. Cheng WK (Michael) and his wife, Wong CS, Dr. Lee LH

Performance show at Queensbay Mall

At around 5pm, we (Dr. Choo & his wife, Dr. Lee LH, Wong CS, me) were heading to Sg. Dua again as Dr. Lee needed to fetch his wife to attend to the function later. As been recommended by Dr. Lee, we paid a visit to a temple which has been known to be built at the cost of 8 million Ringgit Malaysia. Here are some photos taken.

The function started at around 8pm and ended at around 10pm. We departed from Penang back to Kampar at around 10.30pm. The trip back to Kampar was unexpected longer than I thought in term of time spent on the traffic. It took me 6 hours to get back to Kampar as the traffic was terrible in the North-South highway. The traffic started jamming just passed after the Tambun Exit and the flow was almost not moveable at all. We were trapped in the traffic for a few hours and decided to exit at the Kuala Kangsar to take the normal road back to Kampar. It was around 2++pm that time. It took an hour plus to get all of us back to Kampar including sending my boss and his wife back at Mambang Di Awan. I was home at around 4am and that time I was almost exhausted as I had not been slept for more than 25 hours.

Insane, isn't it?

Taken during the function at Sunway Hotel

PhD Studies

Soon, I'll be leaving my current position and off to oversea again to further my PhD study as a full time student with full scholarship at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). Having back to Malaysia for just a year and 4 months, I'm leaving again, for at least another 3 years. Initially I was planning to go at the end of November, however, the plan has been postponed for another month due to the delay of the visa application.

Department of Computing, PolyU

Some people have asked me, why can I just leave my family, friends and career behind and go oversea? The answer is quite subjective and depends on how you look on the issue. I'm leaving none of them. Although I'll be in oversea but it doesn't mean I'll never come back. Family and friends are the one who always giving support to you whenever you need helps from them, although we may not meet that often. I'm not forgetting anyone of my friends, but just expanding my network to knowing more friends from around the world. I've left my career as I prefer to be a full time PhD student so that I can pay full concentration on doing research and hopefully can get my PhD done on time. I've heard from some of my friends their supervisors have promised the PhD could be done in about 2.5 years, on a part time basis. I hardly can believe that as when come to the world of research, there's no guarantee that you could find your answer within a specific period. I'm not sure about the requirements to be awarded for a PhD degree in that university but I believe most of the universities having almost the same criteria - at least 2 Thomson ISI journals. Unless someone has extended his/her master's research otherwise is somehow difficult to complete the PhD within 2.5 years, at least not applicable to me.

Did I so lucky to obtain a scholarship? In some sense, I did. I'm lucky to have met with a few person whom have changed the direction of my life since I was an undergraduate student and they have been my mentors since then. Without them, I definitely wouldn't have the courage to pursue higher degrees. So to some of my juniors from MMU, the scholarship won't automatically come to you, please try to move your first step. Do you know how many emails I'd sent to approach the potential supervisors and also to seek for the sponsorships? The opportunity you must seek by yourself, but not the other way round. There's no harm to have a trial and I see no point of what are you worry and scare of? Worry or scare of being rejected? Worry or scare of lacking of knowledge to pursue higher degree (master)? Those are nonsense. Life is full of failure, more importantly is how to face the failure. You would find yourself know even lesser after you've done your master's degree. Confuse? But is truth.

Good luck.

An unpleasant day ...

Today as usual I went to campus at around 7++am. I had a couple of things to do before noon, and I had hoped could be done latest by noon. First, to draw lots to pick a room in the new building. Luckily I've chosen one facing the lake as it would not as noisy as those facing the corridor, I supposed. Anyhow, I've planned to swap the room with Dr. Cheng due to personal reason, but that would happen only if ... The first thing wouldn't take much time actually, just randomly picking a number in a box only.

Mr. Matahari

However, the thing really bothered me was the meeting chaired by an old man - a "veteran" known as "matahari" has been with this institution for so many years. The meeting as said supposedly to be started at 10am actually, but ended up nobody had shown up on time. I had no choice but got to wait for the rest of the committees. Finally, the chairman came at around 10.15am. However, the first thing he did was not initiate the meeting but went to draw lots to pick his new room, great !!! Then, the next wonder he did was to PREPARE the materials to be used in the meeting. The meeting was supposed to start at 10am, he came late and was just want to preparing the materials for the meeting >_<"'...

Frankly speaking, I don't really like to attend the meeting held by him as I've had a few bad experiences earlier. Just take the last meeting held last two weeks as example, he spent about 1 hour and 45 minutes to discuss only 2 simple issues. He likes to talk a lot of nonsense and more importantly, he don't want to make decision. Can you imagine as being a leader and don't want to make any decision as he don't want to bear any responsibilities on any decision made, what the ... that's why I said he is "veteran", indeed a Tai Chi master.

Tai Chi Master

At around 12.30pm, the meeting was still like endless story and I really couldn't stand with my hunger and anger anymore, felt like going to have gastric soon, and to slap the Matahari.

Can I slap you?

The things discussed in the meeting again were not the big issues but he did not want to make any decision even asked by one of the deputy deans (DD) how he handled the similar kind of things based on his past experiences. The Tai Chi master again showed his power by replying to DD that he couldn't recall anymore and pointed to me to make the decision. I really fed up with the meeting and therefore I just pulled myself off from the meeting without seeking his permission and went to have my lunch. Do not want to bother anymore!!!

Hopefully I'll be relieved from this committee soon!!!

September ...

1. I went back home for a couple of days due to the Merdeka Day. Luckily this time I had some companies followed me back to my hometown and most importantly they shared the traveling cost with me :D. They are actually the students of UTAR from the same hometown as me, and one of them is actually the sister of my friend. On the way back to BP we stopped by at Melaka and had our dinner there. After dinner, I showed them to Jonker Walk which is one of the attractions in Melaka. It had been years I did not put my step to this place after I graduated from Multimedia University.

Jonker Walk at Jalan Hang Jebat, Melaka

2. I've got myself a new handphone though not an advanced one but have got all the features I wanted like GPS, WiFi and 3.5G. This new toy offers a lot more features like it supports *.pdf, *.doc, *.xls, and *.ppt file formats. However, the GPS software was not come along with the handphone itself although I'd requested the seller to install for me but got rejected by him as the shop is selling only the genuine handsets and never provide such kind of services. Of course you can pay for installing the GPS software from any of the handphone accessories shops, but the software installed is a pirated copy and they will still want to charge you from about RM50 - RM100. I don't really want to pay such amount for just getting a pirated software so I spent a couple of days on researching how to install the software myself. Thanks to the Internet and now I've had the GPS software installed on my handphone :p. Not only that, I can start to do the "dirt" job to install the GPS software on your mobile devices and charge you at a cheaper rate than other shops, haha ...

3. This would be the biggest thing happened in this month though today is still 24. I've sent out the PhD application. The entire process was just taken 2 days, from the moment I approached the professor, talked to him on phone, and finally sent out the application. Currently still waiting for the further notice whether I can secure the scholarship or not. Wish me luck then.

Finger-crossed

August ...

It has been quite sometimes since the last time I blogged here due to the busyness plus with a little bit of laziness. It was so many things happened within these period. Therefore, I decided to give a short view of what had happened in these 2 months.

1. I had moved to a new place, not too far from what I had previously stayed. The room is bigger and the rental is cheaper. However, the main reason was because the old place had the direct sunlight shone to the room from the afternoon till the evening. I couldn't imagine I had been stayed in an oven for a few months then only made up my mind to shift out.

2. First time in my life I attended to a concert named "Super Band" held at Bukit Jalil with my colleagues. SuperBand is formed by four veterans: Luo Da You, Emil Chau, Jonathan Lee and Zhang Zhen Yue. I've no regretted to attend to such a wonderful concert.

Poster - Super Band Live In Malaysia Concert

3. The first Korea gang gathering after I got back to Malaysia for 1 year plus. The gathering was intended to gather those had attended to Dongseo University no matter for doing their postgraduate studies or industrial training. However, the attendance was not as good as expected due to some "unforeseen" and "technical" and whatever kind of reasons :p. Anyhow, we still managed to have twelve person attended to this big event as shown in the picture below:

Daorae

(left) Seongyee, Rong, Shin, Wei Liam, Shiew Woei, Shin Keat, Della, Kok Shin, Shu Yun, Yu Shu, Me, HM

We had our dinner at one Korean restaurant named "Daorae" situated at Sri Hartamas. The taste of the foods was quite close to what I had eaten in Korea so I've no hesitation to recommend this restaurant to you.

4. I've been assigned to a new faculty with the department remained the same. The previous faculty I attached to had finally split into three new faculties due to the expansion of number of students. The former one was considerably too big to represent three major disciplines namely engineering, science and technology.

Basically these are the major events happened in August and I shall continue with the story for September in the next post.

FoxTab

This article is solely targeted for FireFox's fans. Don't worry if you're not one of them, what you need to do is to get yourself a FireFox browser by clicking here. Shall we?

Logo of FireFox

Have you ever thought of the dowdiness of tabbing experience when you switch between multiple tabs of opened websites on your browser? I believe so most of the people would experience the inconvenience of the conventional tabbing provided by most browsers especially when you've opened so many tabs and can't really remember the content of the pages have been opened. In that case, you've to switch from tab to tab in order to look for the content you wanted, which is for me a very unpleasant experience.

However, the unpleasant has been a history after I accidentally found a handy gadget (add-on) for FireFox - the FoxTab. This is really an awesome add-on for your FireFox browser which would definitely change your tabbing experience, believe me!!! The add-on behaves like the Aero effect in Windows Vista so you can "flip" between the tabs with the 3D effect. By flipping the tabs, you can have a glance on the opened pages and easily access to them. FoxTab provides six layouts to display the thumbnails of the opened pages for you. Besides that, you can also configure the 3D perspective of how the thumbnails are being presented on your browser. For the complete list of features, I would like to refer you to this page.

One Night In Ipoh

Few weeks ago a few buddies of mine had come to Ipoh to attend their colleague's wedding ceremony. Thus, we'd grabbed this opportunity to schedule a meet up after the function. This has been my first time to drive to Ipoh alone late at night as I'm not quite familiar with the Ipoh downtown except a very limited places.

Undoubtedly I'd spent quite sometimes to find the way to the restaurant they were having the function with the help of their friend by giving instruction through the phone. Perhaps with this time's experience has signaled me to get a GPS, so that at least I've something to refer to and wouldn't get lost easily.

After met up with them outside the restaurant, we first made move to the hostel the groom rented for them to unload their stuffs before we went out for drinks at a cafe somewhere near to Jaya Jusco. I like the decoration and also the ambient of this cafe and found it quite comfortable to have a few friends sit in to have some drinks and chit chat together. I think this would be the first time we all gathered together after got back from Korea, am I right, EY & SY? Should we schedule a gathering that summons all of the DSU graduates and trainees?

Friends Cafe

Sunset

On 24 July 2009 (Friday) at around 7 p.m, just before I left the campus I'd got the scenes of sunset captured by my camera at different settings. The God of luck was favored on me that day as I not always carry the camera with me to the workplace. Perhaps next time you should have sent someone together with me to cherish this beautiful moment.

Sunset (taken with different parameters)

Bridge towards the new phase buildings

The path way

New library (according to rumor)