My Theory of Structures Lecturer

3 September 2009 12.30am

The result of the teams qualified for the bridge competition had finally come out. Yeah, my group’s proposal had been declined (meaning that my group can no more compete with others). Don’t know how to describe the feeling. Ambivalent. Am I disappointed? Yes, because we really hope can win the competition or at least have some experience with that, but now my group is not even qualified. So, just forget it. At the same time, I feel a bit (just a little bit) happy since I am now free again (need not spend a lot of time to design, build and present my bridge). Therefore, life goes on like normal. Study > Raya break > Test 2 > relax > study week > final exam > semester break > …to be continued.

This semester I have a very interesting lecturer, Dr. Airil, my Theory of Structures lecturer. I say he is interesting because he is a young clever (Malay) lecturer whose alma mater is UTM as well. But later, he pursued his PhD in Imperial College, London where he met his lovely and respectable supervisor, Prof. David A. Nethercot (Dr. Airil always says how powerful Prof. Nethercot is ,hence he is also power gila babi as well (the word babi does not mean any criticism, just simply a word to show how powerful he is, he himself says this sentence in class too)). So, Dr. Airil did go overseas to further study, experiencing western life there.(He likes to play guitar too).

In my opinion, Dr. Airil is clever and confident. When one has knowledge, he will be confident ; when one is diffident, he has no knowledge. Is the second statement correct? Think about it. Since he is open-minded, his way of teaching is different from the others. He does not spoon-feed us. He always ask us to read more and think. He very rarely uses PowerPoint. What he brings when entering the class are just two books (Structural Analysis by R.C.Hibbeler and Teori Struktur by Yusof Ahmad) and several marker pens (red, black and blue). That’s all he brings in. But, of course, he brings along his brilliant mind which is full of knowledge he gains from reading as well. His different way of teaching (asking us to read more ourselves) may not give us good result as we are so used to be spoon-fed (given all the notes and taught what only come out in the exam, however, this way of learning is too exam-orientated. We are pursuing for A instead of knowledge).However, something is much more precious if we get it ourselves. Do it the right way, not the easy way.

I hope that my Uni will have more lecturers like he so that my Uni (and also my country) education system will be better. Meanwhile, all the other lecturers who are teaching me are responsible and good as well. Hehe.

My Cup of Tea

Nowadays, it seems like most of the people get their cup of tea very early, but why not me? Perhaps I prefer coffee to tea, particularly the 3-in-1 coffee (which is a very good friend of mine especially during the exam week or assignment time. Hehe.)Or it is maybe that I just do not know how to enjoy tea, so there is no tea for me to taste even a little bit.

Sometimes, you may have found your favorite cup of tea, but that cup is too sought after as it is very hot. Besides tea, there are still lots of beverages for me to choose. However, I do not like to have a cup just for the sake of having (as many of your friends do have theirs). Fortunately, there are still friends who have not found their cup of tea (just like me) or lost theirs as the cups are too hot.So, let's find our cup of tea together but not the same cup oh or else....Haha. All in all, I am still searching for my favorite cup of tea, in the mean time, improving myself to be a better man, equipping myself with all kinds of skills needed to be great tea taster.

B11 Break

22 August 2009 3.00pm

Happy Birthday to Simon and Chun Yan. Hope you enjoy yourselves today. Have a wonderful moment as you did in previous years’ today.

I finished all my 1st tests 2 days ago. Hurray, I am feeling elated. I feel so not because I did them very well, but it is releasing me from pressure of 10 MPa (Pascal, SI unit for stress). I was feeling pressure because I did not do my preparation well. Although my timetable is not so tight, I am just not managed to do all the study well. Just “Don’t know why”(a favorite song of mine by Norah Jones).

Since my course mates and I promised to go out to relax after tests, we decided to go sing K. What I am trying to say is not the (wonderful nice, perhaps) singing moment we had in the K box, but the moment we were waiting for the bus to go to City Square(CS) (a shopping complex in the capital city of Johor Bahru, for those who do not know JB well). We waited for bus for about an hour. Since we were quite fed up with this kind of bus service, we made a decision to leave to go back to our hostel (meaning cancelling our “concert”) in about 5-10 minutes if the bus still did not show up. After deciding so, the bus finally came after 5 minutes. This is the best part. God (of any kind of religions you believe in) is almighty. HE can always make some situations for you to go through before you can achieve the result. He made us wait for so long then made the bus appear just at the moment when we were about to leave. (Maybe the delay was not arranged by HE, but instead was due to some lazy bus drivers who took a long lunch break or due to some “responsible” traffic or JPJ officers who had a road block during that time, who knows, but surely I did not know).

After coming back from CS, I decided to go online as I had not updated myself for 10 days since the coming of test week. The on-line speed at B11 (a block of Fakulti Alam Bina(FAB)) is tremendously fast, even faster than the lousy 1M streamyx broadband service at my home. The Wi-Fi service there is fast (and free some more) because in my opinion they do not restrict the bandwidth. Meanwhile the streamyx do limit our speed. The broadband service provided by them is not very broad actually. But, I still have to stick to it since it is the “best” among the others. (If anyone knows anything better, please leave me some comment).

While my roommate(TW), CH and I were happily online, a guard (Security Guard of UTM) came in and asked us to leave without giving us any explanation. There were other people as well at that moment. He asked us to go to library if we wanted to go online. But, the line there (PSZ-Perpustakaan Sultanah Zakariah) is running at a snail’s pace (I never go online there before, I just heard this from my friends). However, undoubtedly, the speed at B11 is the fastest I have ever experienced so far. The guard never explained the reason we were not allowed to be online at B11. If late (about 1.30am) would have been the reason, he should have told us so, but he did not, he just came in and took video of us being online there with his “exceedingly advanced” hand phone (since it is better than my old hand phone). The situation was as if we were caught “ tangkap basah” by him. He wanted some proof. He forced us to leave. Since he was standing right in front of my friends and I, I had to stop all my PC applications immediately (including stopping the download running at several hundred KB/s, what a nice speed!). I felt sorry to my laptop for not shutting it down properly due to the guard who in my point of views, felt extremely sleepy and wanted go to back to sleep as soon as possible.

At this frustrated moment, he saw my roommate with his long hair (still OK lah, not too long lah, since I am his roommate, must be standing on his side, haha), he asked my roommate to give him his Matrix card (our identity card in Uni). My roommate refused to do so and said he did not bring since the guard behaved badly before. When he asked for IC or license, my roommate (TW) said he forgot to bring as well. He said so because he just felt disgusted with the guard for forcing us to leave without giving us proper reason. He just had the guts to be recalcitrant. Haha. The guard asked him to go back to Balai (Security Station). TW refused and just kept on walking. Then the guard said he will follow TW to go back to room to get his identity. He seemed like really wanted to “kenakan” my roommate. While TW was heading to go back to room, trying to run way from the guard, the guard was surrounded by other students who already handed over the Matrix cards to him and asked for reason. This had actually helped TW to “escape” from the guard as he was busy answering questions from the others. Meanwhile CH and I were being the eyes and ears for TW, observing the situation. We were feeling very excited for “playing” hide-and-seek with the guard. This is why I named this article “B11 Break” analogous to Prison Break, breaking way from the guard. After walking for a distance, we found out that the guard was not following us. Yes, we did it. Haha. Fortunately, TW did not tell him any identity about him other than he is staying in KTHO. Ah, and the video in which we were caught “tangkap basah” in his hand phone.

So, the moral of the story is that do not keep long hair and if you do, please always tell the one inspecting you that you do not bring any identification cards with you. Ooi, not that lah. If you want someone to follow what you say, please let him know the reason, or else people will just ignore you.

Uni Life

5 August 2009 1.30pm

First of all, Happy birthday to Soon Seng! May your wish(es) come(s) true (hope that one of your wishes is that our sinusoidal group win a category (the best of course is all categories) of the bridge competition. RM9000 is awaiting us. Hahaha. Mimpi hari siang. But this can even motivate us more in designing our bridge.

I am really busy recently as many stuffs have to be dealt with : assignment + entrepreneur interview + bridge competition discussion & proposal + last and most importantly, tests are coming very soon (as they may affect your result). Result is not everything (as many say when they attempt to please you about your not-so-good result), but result does be something.

I participate in Bridge Competition 2009 organized by own Faculty (FKA UTM) this year as I think it is a chance for me to show-off no no no… I mean gain experience. Haha. Actually I take part because I think that it is an event by my faculty, it will be a great loss if I do not even take part in this biannual competition for even once in my 4-year uni life in UTM. I did visit the competition last time back to the year 2007 in the Uni main hall (DSI) when I was first year. During that time, I just felt that , “Wah, I must come “play play” as well if I have the chance”. Now, the (once-in-a-lifetime) opportunity has come (as I will have already graduated in the next competition in year 2011), so I grab this chance to “compact” my Uni life. Just hope that it will not disappoint me. The proposal have been submitted and we are now just waiting for the letter from the organizer confirming that our bridge design is accepted for the competition. May our bridge win !!!

Blog

19 July 2009 2.00pm

Blog ( also weblog ) is a diary (= regular record of your thoughts, opinions and experiences) that you put on the Internet for other people to read (CALD 3rd Edition, 2008).
Blog is a diary on Web site: a frequently updated personal journal chronicling links at a Web site, intended for public viewing (Microsoft® Encarta® 2009). Blog in full Web log or Weblog is an online journal where an individual, group, or corporation presents a record of activities, thoughts, or beliefs. Some blogs operate mainly as news filters, collecting various online sources and adding short comments and Internet links. Other blogs concentrate on presenting original material. In addition, many blogs provide a forum to allow visitors to leave comments and interact with the publisher. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2009).

Sometimes saying something face-to-face is not so appropriate as that sentence you say may trigger a fierce argument among your friends, although as a matter of fact the sentence is absolutely true. So, by saying it online then all of us can use our logical mind (but sometimes illogical as well) to think about the matter and then use the knowledge we learn to analyse it. This way we can still maintain the harmony (not hypocrisy). Furthermore, people may not like to listen to you as they think you are not up to them or they are far nobler than you. Whatsoever, the main reason I created this blog is to say what I want to say and to disseminate some ideas regarding the things happen around us everyday.

Either you read it or don’t, it’s OK for me (just say so, actually I do care when no one read my article). I enjoy reading and writing. Since I am just a small little young boy, readers of my blog are welcomed to make any (critical yet constructive) comment or idea so that there is some lesson we can learn from. All in all, I am just a “small little innocent young” boy (emphasizing this so that the government cannot detain me under ISA if I write something that is a sabotage or subversive in their opinion, haha, joking, they will just catch you when they like to) who enjoy writing, and sharing thoughts with some great minds out there. Enjoy reading. ^o^.