Can't Get Over It... - The Last 12 Months

Song of the day:
Within Temptation
"Angel"

Part 1: Labbies

Next was industrial attachment/training but honestly, nothing interesting ever happened during the entire duration.

However, I managed to gain knowledge on a commercial micro-controller known as PIC micro-controller.

I did blog about my industrial attachment under the title “Programming Nightmare! / A little bit of this and that...” so just read about my rants in that blog entry. Hehe.

4th year was the final year of my entire course.

It started off with a busy laboratory session, where problem based learning, or simply PBL, laboratory.

This PBL lab is first of its kind in my faculty but not in UTM as other faculties had been implementing this for a while already.

So, students were put into groups of 5 and throughout the semester, groups had to go through 3 different laboratories.

In each laboratory, groups have to follow a 4 week schedule, where

1. 1st week: Collecting Information
2. 2nd week: Designing experiment procedures/preparing necessary equipments
3. 3rd week: Implementation of experiment
   
4. 4th week: Presentation and demonstration

Not only that, we had to do group meetings at least 3 times (but mostly 2 times for my group as 3 times might be too many times for us).

So with such a busy schedule, adding to the other subjects, I was pretty busy during 4th year.

Not forgetting the first part of my final year project, final year students also had to meet with their respective supervisor for at least 7 times a semester, chose their final year project topics and also did presentation at the end of the semester.

It was a hell of a time for us but I did enjoy the whole process as I’d learnt sooooooo much from doing presentations all semester long and working with my group mates.

*****************************

Part 2: F.Y.P.

Then came the 2nd semester of 4th year, which would probably be a hell of a time for some final year students, depending on their projects.

It never get any easier when one has to deal with software and hardware side of an electrical engineering project which I’ve endured.

Adding to the fact that I’m pretty lazy sometimes, things got even harder and worse.

Earlier on, I planned to start assembling the components in my project during the one month holiday in between 1st and 2nd semester of 4th year.

Well I did do that but I didn’t really take much time to research on the hardware specs of the micro-controller that I would be using though.

So problems started to pile up even at the beginning of 2nd semester when I realised that there were too many obvious differences between the micro-controller I’ve used to meddle with (PIC16F876A) and the one I intended to use in my project (PIC18XXXX, i can’t remember the code).

Therefore, I was forced (by circumstances) to change my core micro-controller to PIC16F876A.

Well, I mentioned that the problems started to pile up, right? Next was the programming (software) part.

You know, looking for the relevant computer program (with the C language linker) was a tough job unless you have $kaching$ (money).

So it took me the first few weeks to get hold of the required programs before proceeding with my program writing process.

I was at first shell-shocked by the difficulty of interfacing the program I’ve written with the actual micro-controller. Note that the program would be “inserted” into the micro-controller so that it would function accordingly.

However, PIC micro-controllers were such a hassle to deal with. And those chores took me another few weeks, which eventually reduced my available working weeks to nearly half of 15 weeks.

While dealing with my own problems, I still had the chance to look at my friends’ problems.

Chanuri was probably my only friend who was super duper troubled by her final year project.

Well, not that my other friends weren’t facing problems, but Chanuri’s was indeed a true hassle.

Her supervisor was already a huge question mark as he was known to be bias and discriminated females (as she’s the only female under him).

Note that my best-est friend, Dy, was also under him so it wasn’t only one side of the story.

Then, she didn’t get the help which was very much needed from her supervisor too. Therefore, she had to do all the things on her own.

And eventually, during the final week of the project, she somehow managed to obtain some result, which was only to be rejected by her supervisor who also humiliated her in her face by saying “throw your project away.”

Oh my gawd! Ridiculous, right? I mean, the title given to her was not even suitable for our level and yet he was being so mean to Chanuri!?

Well, a real lesson was learnt. Please choose the correct lecturer as your final year project supervisor before you even regret it.

So, throughout the 2nd semester, 4th year students also needed to meet their supervisors at least 7 times. BUT, I met mine less than 7 times. Muahaha..

At the end of the semester, all final year students would do a final presentation and demonstration in front of a panel of evaluators.

I was scheduled for Wednesday morning (16th April 2008) and was supposed to be the 2nd fella to present in Group 2 in the same laboratory (Power Electronics Lab).

But I was pushed forward instead as the first fella did not print out the latest evaluation form so I headed Group 2 to be the first to present.

To me, it was a fun experience doing presentation as the panel consisted of a few lecturers who knew me.

The worst part would always be the question and answer session for every final year student, depending on the panel of course.

Fortunately enough, my panel weren’t full of inquiries.

Group 1 was different. The panel included my supervisor, who was an associate professor and so it was understandable that he would ask a lot till you drop.

Well, the demonstration was conducted at the end of the whole Group 1 presentation session. One by one, we did a demo on our project and explained whatever the panel asked.

Fun is the only word I’ll use la. Hehe.

FYP ended well for me luckily, as I got an A for it. My initial expectation was to get a pass so obviously it exceeded my expectations. 

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Part 3: Unexpected Events

To be honest, I really didn’t expect some things to happen.

I did mention in “2nd and 3rd Year Tales” that I didn’t have the chance to know people from other courses.

Firstly, I got to know some faculty mates better through the use of technology. What I’m talking about here is MSN of course.

And also, there were lotsa shocking developments in terms of gossips, you know those “A is together with B” or “C breaks up with D”.

SEE gang had our last gathering at Tebrau City, watching Iron Man and also had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant before the movie date.

Well, I would also like to thank Eng Xiang, Lyeyong and Jia Hwang for the last yumcha session I had (with UTM people before the end of my whole UTM experience) as it marked the ending of my 4 year experience.

Adios to all and may all of you have a great career ahead of ya!

Can't Get Over It... - The Joy of Extra Curricular Activities

Song of the day:
Jimmy Eat World
"Work"

In my varsity, 2 credit hours of our bachelor degree life were dedicated to extracurricular activities. 

Therefore, I’ve to take 2 activities in separate semesters and choose from a list given to students.

In the application form, students were required to fill in their top 5 activities but there was no guarantee of getting your most favourite one as the places were always limited.

I remembered taking my first one during the second semester. As there was a fixed date to obtain form and register, I was a bit late for the registration and had to be contented to queue up at the back of a super massive line.

It was the first nightmare I faced in UTM. I’m talking about the super massive crowd and queue of course.

In the end, I managed to get into swimming, which wasn’t my top 2 choice anyway. Ang and his room mate from SEL, Jia Hwang also joined swimming.

Swimming was fun under a lecturer from FKM (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering) who’s also a swimming instructor during leisure hours, but was also strict as his marking scheme was not easy at all.

All the swimmers had to learn the 10 skills listed by our swimming instructor and then take the tests after mastering them.

So in the beginning, we learnt the basics and then tried mastering the 10 skills required. I only managed to master 8 of the skills and was able to obtain a B minus at the end of the whole course but I was pretty contented that I didn’t fail the whole course.

The other credit hour for extracurricular activity was SCUBA diving. I purposely applied for it as

I was super duper interested in water activities.

So, I attended the indoor lessons but I still wasn’t ready for the full license lesson (which requires students to take 2 extra lessons with higher fees of course and extra outdoor lesson and test) so I took the incomplete course.

After 3 indoor lessons, we were put into groups based on the schedule for the outdoor lesson, which is sort of like a practical lesson to learn how to deal with the SCUBA equipments and applying diving skills.

My scuba group

I was grouped with different people from different faculties and altogether there were 8 of them including myself.

The practical lesson started with our instructor explained the uses and procedures to handle the equipments. Next we followed the procedures and learnt to use the equipments.

Next, we were guided to make ourselves comfortable in the water and then learn how to dive underwater using the equipments as well.

The whole lesson was broken into 2 sessions; morning and afternoon sessions. Morning session ended at roughly 12 while the whole lesson ended at roughly 3 pm.

Scuba meeting! Attention! Scuba meeting!

This is an alien fixing his goggles... I'm the alien! Muahahaha...


Me and my scuba buddy... Part 1...


Me and my scuba buddy... Part 2...

I still have the pictures with me but I forgot to blog about it. Hehe. Enjoy the pictures though.

*Note that the pictures of me were taken before 2008 as I was fat then.

Can't Get Over It... - GKUTM and Me

Song of the day:
Dido
"Life For Rent"

Golden Key became part of my life after I was elected into the committee and was appointed the historian of the club.

Golden Key International Honour Society Logo

It all started after the members’ induction ceremony which I mentioned earlier when the then committee called for new members to come for new committee interview.

Amy and I were very interested in the positions on show and thus both of us went for the interview, which was held on a Wednesday.

Both me and Amy were interviewed. I remember filling the form and rank my choices of position as follow:

1. Historian
2. Vice Secretary
3. Community Service

Maybe the 2nd and 3rd choice weren’t exactly what I wrote but historian was my top choice nevertheless.

I got interviewed by the president, Jason and the vice president, Karen. 

Then I received an sms from Kee Yew, one of the directors during their session for a meeting. Amy also received the sms and we went together to attend the meeting at KTDI (another residential college within the campus).

The meeting gathered several people who also attended the interview previously. Then, Kee Yew informed us about his purpose of the meeting and then distributed the tasks.

The meeting was actually to gather all potential committee members to organize an event known as “Homecoming 2006”.

In this event, an obstacle race would be the main event where contestants had to go through a series of different games/obstacles in order to read the ending point.

So, the preparation of this event were started by setting up a booth at my varsity’s library, PSZ (Perpustakaan Sultanah Zanariah) and conducted for 3 days.

I remembered that the number of contestant were very very low and therefore different solutions were gathered, including opening the event to non-members and also contacting our close friends to obtain more contestants.

Of course, I called my bunch of fun loving course mates and they both were super interested. Till today, I really thanked them for that.

Before the day of the event, I think we managed to find more than 60 contestants which was roughly our target.

The committee members also went to the site, which is an army training site to observe the area and plan what we could do with the site.

Finally, the day arrived and everything went smoothly, albeit some expected hiccups which normally happened during such event. 

It was still a good one to remember as everybody was pretty happy with the event and had lotsa joy. Even though I did not join and raced through the obstacles, I did enjoy working to make the event a success.

“Homecoming 2006” sort of marked the beginning of my GK life. 

Note that during “Homecoming 2006”, the committee members for this event was not official committee of GKUTM yet as we still had to go through another programme to train up the members. I skipped the programme due to some undisclosed reason though.

Prior to the training programme, the potential GK committee had to also organize another GK event known as “Appraisal Night 2006”, where it is an event to commemorate the achievements of the out-going committee members.

I took part in a singing performance together with Johan (vice president to be) and Amira (Academic Programme Director to be). Honestly, Johan and Amira were picked to perform as both of them play the guitar.

Originally, we planned to perform 3 songs with me singing all three, while Johan playing 2 songs on guitar and Amira playing the last song on guitar.

The songs were 

1. “More Than Words” (a super popular song by Extreme and covered by Frankie J),
2. “Kau Ilhamku” (a song by Malay artist Manbai)
3. “Wake Me Up When September Ends” (by Green Day)
   

We practised on numerous occasions but I just couldn’t master the Malay song as I just couldn’t remember the lyrics. 

However, in the actual event, I only performed “More Than Words” with Johan on guitar as I missed the last few rehearsals due to family matters.

(Me and Johan, performing "More Than Words")

The “Appraisal Night 2006” was a pretty fun event held in Chimosa Restaurant along Jalan Kolam Ayer. Those who know where the famous Kolam Ayer Laksa is, will be able to find the exact location of the place. 

Me and Aifen during Appraisal Night 2006

And also this was the event that I knew Aifen, who’s currently furthering her studies in University New South Wales, Australia. 

After I was officially appointed the historian through the official office bearer installation ceremony (which I was absent due to personal problems), there were 3 more GK events providing the best memories in my varsity life.

I remember that the committee of GKUTM planned to organize a community service project (which I was an “expert” while I was the Community Service Director for my old club Interact Club during my secondary school days).

They ended choosing Rumah Seri Kenangan in Kempas as the visiting location. I guess some Interactors of SSI, JB would still remember where it is.

As I was caught up with other commitments during that period of time, I only helped out in the preparation of the event.

However, I volunteered to be the “chauffeur” for GK regional director Mr. Jimmy Teo as he came down to JB from Penang on the actual event. But I couldn’t follow through the entire event as I had to travel to KL at around noon time so after reaching the location, I stayed for a while and took a look around the area.

Rumah Seri Kenangan is actually an old folk’s home for old people with different backgrounds.

Some were homeless, some were ex-convicts, some were basically widows. 

But rest assured that they are given the best treatment as a Chinese old man talked to me about his life in the area. He was a pretty approachable old man and a few of the participants were also listening to his words attentively while the old man talked about his past.

You know usually during such events, there would be opening speeches. The speeches were then followed by a special musical performance by the old folks using different musical instruments.

After that, came a dance session when I got pulled onto the stage and dance. I couldn’t believe that I actually DANCED! I did the “agogo” and danced with the Chinese old man with joy and absolute fun.

Too bad I did not take a photo with him but I still remember the scene to date. It was truly a memorable one.

During my GK times, I also had the chance to become the Emcee (master of ceremony) of 2 events; one was the New GK Member Reception Night (July 2006) and the other was the New Members Induction Ceremony (Jan 2007).

It was a pretty exciting and nervous experience as I had a little bit of a stage fright to be honest but these experience did help me to overcome this fear and making me more confident while making my presentations in front of a crowd.

Well, a lot have been written on GK events. I eventually faded off after January 2007 due to my lack of participation. Yet, the memories remained in my heart.

*Note that the pictures of me were taken before 2008 as I was fat then.

**Also note that I'll post my blog entry regarding my convocation very soon.

Can't Get Over It... - 2nd and 3rd Year Tales..

Song of the day:Ultra
"Human After All"

Re and Mi After Do (Do Re Mi)

In the first three years of my studies, my social circle wasn’t that big but occasionally I was here and there trying to know more people. 

And those were the times that I began to know more SEL and SEM fellas, boys and girls. 

I realised that there were more chicks in other courses than in my course. And what the f**k.

Lol.

No offence intended though.

In my 2nd year, I also recalled that I joined Golden Key International Honour Society Chapter UTM (GKUTM), a society which only recruits members with a CPGA of 3.5 and above.

I was baffled by the CPGA condition for the member participation thingy at first but soon I still joined the society and attended the member induction ceremony.

In the ceremony, I clearly remembered that Amy, Me and Amira attended the event. 

The VIPs of GKUTM encouraged members to be active and to ask questions at the end of the session.

It was obvious that there was a Q&A session at the end of the ceremony but nobody dared to ask questions.

So, Amira stood up, walked to the front (stage) and grabbed the microphone. 

The Advisor of GKUTM, Prof. Tajuddin called for applause for her initiative to ask questions. I can’t remember what she asked already but I thought that she was very brave at the time.

Then I joined in the “fun” and asked my own question, which was related to the connection between GKUTM and Rotary Club/Interact Club as I was pretty interested to know that.

It was still very fresh in my memory now, a very unforgettable scene.

Then occasionally too, I would join some of the SEE and/or SEL gang’s parties (usually birthday parties) and had fun with them, even though most of the time they were having fun while I was simply chatting with some of them.

One of the gatherings I joined was a birthday party for Lyeyong if I wasn’t mistaken. (I assume it was a party for her as she was the centre of attention that night). 

Another party I attended was for Eng Xiang, as it was held in KFC Taman Universiti. It ended a mess as there were some “cake-throwing” action during the celebration process but of course the KFC premise wasn’t owned by us so we had to help clean up the place.

I too had my one and only birthday gathering but was only attended by my course mates. It was held at Singgah Selalu restaurant near Danga Bay. 

I remembered after my usual celebration with my family, I headed to the place alone and waited for them for quite some time and I couldn’t imagine that I’ve to wait for them!

Nevertheless, they arrived and brought a cake. They sang birthday song and ordered food to eat. All of us talked crap as usual and enjoyed the event as fun as possible. It was still a joyful one though. 

I found it pretty tough to chat with the people (of SEL and other courses) during the parties as it was probably my own problem.

But nevertheless, I got to know who they were, where they were from and most important what their names were.

For me, it was good enough at the moment of time since I haven’t got any chance to work with them or chat much with them.

And also, as laboratory sessions became more important and more imminent in my 2nd and 3rd year, it was inevitable that lab partners/group members played an important role.

I remembered clearly that my first lab partners were 2 Khairuls; one was Khairul and the other one was Khairul Anwar. Pretty confusing for me but we managed to go through the tasks successfully.

Then throughout 3rd year, my lab partners changed and joining me were Jazrul and Hazriq. Three of us became very united and cooperative as we always divided our jobs automatically.

Usually I would collect information for pre-lab purposes, Jazrul would make important decisions during lab sessions and Hazriq would do the writing and touch-up for the short reports at the end of every lab session as his writing was always clear and nice enough. 

So my lab sessions went by very very smoothly and I was very grateful to them.

Lecture Memories – 2nd and 3rd Year Recalls

One compulsory subject in the first three years of every course in my faculty was Electromagnet Theorem or simply EMT and it ended up the toughest subject before taking our core subjects in our own fields.

And this subject introduced me to Dr. Norazan, whom I always regard as the best lecturer I’ve ever seen (in my faculty of course).

His lecture style was simply exhilarating. I might be exaggerating but I just felt that way so just bear with my exaggeration. The way he talks also made his lessons interesting.

Weirdly though, I think he’s probably the only lecturer who wears slippers to lectures. Haha.

Yet, he’s a very good lecturer all in all. I think I was very fortunate to be taught the subject as he went pretty in-depth into the subject, helping me and my fellow friends to understand the subject better.

When I talked about him, I couldn’t forget to talk about one of the memories I had.

I remembered that Dr. Norazan assigned each and everyone in the class a question and do a short report comprising introduction, solution to the question, background of the problem/topic, and the application of such topic.

And he also created a time-table for an “interview” session where he would ask questions regarding student’s assignment and also the topic related to the assignment.

I did mine, and I was scheduled to meet him on the last day of the interview schedule (it was a Friday), before 5 pm (originally I was scheduled for the 2nd day but he postponed it to the last day).

As I reached his office, there were still a lot of guys before me while I waited for my turn to be “interviewed”. 

I waited and waited of course (no choice at all) and one by one they went in and came out feeling relieved. 

At roughly 4.30 pm, there were still 3 or 4 guys ahead of me. So he came out of the office, and said, “Kelvin, I think you don’t need to come in for interview. Your assignment is already very complete.”

I was very happy to hear that as I was the only guy who was exempted from interview! Off I went then after thanking him.

Well, it was a very small incident but I think such small matters do deserve a place in my memory.

Another lecturer whom I still recall is Dr. Norazman, who taught me the subject “Advanced English for Communication”. Basically this subject was all about doing research and producing a research report.

Dr. Norazman was a gigantic fella. I mean gigantic as in very big size fella. He was 1.5 times my size (remember I was pretty big size during that time).

At first, I thought he was a very scary lecturer as he looked very fierce and stern.

But after a few lectures, I found that he was actually very kind and used a relaxed approach during lectures. 

And only in his lectures I saw people raising their hands to ask questions in the middle of the lesson. 

It was a very refreshing scene at that time as we know Asian students in Asian universities seldom do that in lessons.

Under his guidance, my group (me, Ang, Foo, Dydientha and Gaffar) learnt a lot of stuff. We did questionnaires and distributing them and collecting them back. 

We also did information collection and also held numerous meetings to make the research proposal a reality. 

I too learnt to tolerate my members’ antics and behaviour as they caused me a lot of problems and I ended cleaning up their mess.

But at the end of the day, the final product was out there in time and I was very glad with the final product too. (:

Can't Get Over It... - The Beginning and Heading Towards 1st Year

Song of the day:
Jack Black
"School of Rock"

Starting from this entry, I'll post a series of entries regarding my memories in UTM.

It'll be a 4 parter series which will be posted daily I suppose.

Each chapter will consist of one or more chapters which is divided by bold wordings.

****************************************************

The Beginning

2 nights ago, at around 5 sth in the morning, I was lying on the bed, getting ready to sleep.

I realise that I was still thinking of my old friends in UTM, especially those I’ve yumcha with the last before everyone basically went on separate ways to work in different places.

Then I reminisce the old days in UTM, when I first stepped in UTM together with my dad, who drove me to the varsity for the first day of orientation.

And I would always repeat the same old stuff over and over again about the first person I got to know in UTM.

Sei Hwa is the fella. Haha.

I think he will be pretty proud to be mentioned by me so many times. (I received his sms on Sunday, with the message content similar to the caption I’ve placed below the Convocation picture taken together with him).

Then after the UTM registration session ended in KTC (Kolej Tuanku Canselor, which is a residential college), I collected the keys to my room and of course headed to my room to place my stuff.

And there was where I knew the first fella who was in the same course (SEE) as I was, Kinlik.

Basically we mixed around quite ok and were helping each other almost all the time. 

My room mate was a Sabahan named Christo. He was a bit of a talkative fella and I remembered that he chatted with his friend/family (as I surely couldn’t know who he was chatting with at the time) in the middle of the night, causing me to suffer from insomnia for the rest of the orientation.

Well, then after the registration of course at my faculty, I got to know who my course mates were and they were; Foo, Ang, Soo, Yong, Wong, Amy, and later, Chanuri.

Something I couldn’t forget was that during the course registration at my faculty, there was one girl who caught my attention.

She looked like a Chinese due to her super fair skin tone but she wore baju kurung during that time. In the end, when her name was called upon, I got to know that she’s a Malay girl.

Of course, for SEE fellas, you should’ve known that the girl is Amira. Hehe.

****************************************************

Heading Towards the 1st Year

After the orientation, my official hostel room was relocated to the new block in the same residential college but was in a more rural area of the college, block S44/45/46 (I couldn’t remember the exact number but those blocks were in the same area).

I liked the location as it was pretty quiet and green, pretty conducive for studying and living.

As few of my course mates were staying at the top level of the block, I usually headed towards their rooms to collect senior’s notes and do some electronic stuff. 

And from there, I knew some fellas from other course such as Electronics (SEL), Mechatronics (SEM) and others.

I got to know some of them by their names, i.e. Eng Xiang, Chun Vui, Aaron, Alex, Kevin, Ing Hui (whom they always nicknamed as “God”. Don’t ask me why though. Maybe he’s super duper good. Hehe.)

At the same time, I also got to know a senior named Yap who was a JB fella. He studied in SDJ during form 6 and sometimes I did chat with him about JB and our past during secondary school.

Too bad we didn’t keep in touch but I assumed that he must be living quite well at the moment. (:

Turning to the females, after a few weeks of lectures, I got to know more about Amy and Chanuri through constant gathering during lesson breaks and lunch time.

I still remember that some of the SEE guys were trying to woo Amy after attending a talk session by the Buddhist Society of UTM (or something like that) on romance or something like that. (Do correct me if I’m wrong).

It was a big laugh for me when I heard about it because I felt that they were pretty desperate for relationships.

But to be honest, kinda recall, most of the SEE fellas were from other states and it’s inevitable that they might want a partner to go through the challenges of life.

Well, the first year was not going to be easy for a lot of young adults but nevertheless most of us pulled through and managed to obtain good results.

Then 2nd year and 3rd came.