Since this is an annual thing, I thought that I should just put a few words down to tell the kids who got rejected by JPA – Don’t Give Up!

Dear JPA Reject,

I shall use the words that I had once heard, from a good professor of mine: “Although you may feel dejected, do not feel depressed.” The reason is really simple. The JPA scholarship is not the be-all-end-all of your dreams. Your dreams are yours to keep. So, keep them alive!

I have been fortunate enough to get multiple education scholarship offers in my life and I had turned down a few of them. I have also made many friends who are both government scholars and non-government scholars alike. So, I would like to share some of these experiences.

First and foremost, the JPA scholarship scheme is just one of the many scholarships available, both local and overseas. You should realise that there are many scholarship awarding bodies in Malaysia. For those who will be facing their SPM examinations in the future, please remember to apply for multiple scholarships, if only to increase your chances of actually getting one.

You see, everyone has a different set of criteria. You may not agree with the JPA selection criteria and you may not fit in with it. However, there are also other scholarship bodies who do not agree with the JPA selection criteria and apply their own criteria in scholar selection. So, while you may not fit into the JPA mould, you may actually fit into some other mould.

There are also many overseas scholarship schemes available. In fact, many foreign universities are able to provide some sort of financial aid for their students. You should check to see if you qualify for these. There are also various international foundations and bodies who offer scholarships. This is particularly true if you are able to secure a place in a top university.

This brings me to my second point. This is not the end of the road. You can still try again at the post-STPM (and equivalent) level. There is nothing to stop you from continuing your education to a pre-university level and trying again. There are plenty of Malaysians who have done exactly that – do their pre-university education themselves and re-apply for scholarships again.

If you cannot afford to study your A-Levels/IB at a private institution, you can always do your STPM. You may not realise this but the STPM is actually a very well recognised pre-university level qualification. You will still be able to apply for various foreign universities with the STPM. Do not always believe what the private colleges tell you about the STPM.

However, some of you may be turned-off by the lengthy duration of the STPM exam. For this, I have only one advice – a single year is nothing, in the larger scheme of things. Think about this for a minute. What is a single year difference when compared with an entirely lifetime. In fact, it is a common practice to take a ‘gap-year’ to go explore various avenues in life. This can even help you figure out what it is that you actually want in life instead of blindly going with the flow.

This brings me to my next point. Not everyone is made out to be a doctor. In fact, you are probably not made out to be a doctor. The medicine path is a long and arduous one and if you are not made out to be a doctor, studying medicine is going to be hell. I have seen this happen to many friends. So, you should really ask yourself if you really love medicine or if you’re doing it just for the heck of it.

You can be a success, if you do something that you truly like – be it something as dull as accounting or something as exciting as engineering (alright, I’m biased!). But seriously, you need to think carefully of your career choice. It is something that you will be living with daily for the rest of your life. If you find that you hate medicine after so many years of study, you will lose more than just a couple of years.

And finally, do not let this little hurdle stop you from pursuing your dreams. There are many paths that can lead to your dream. Sometimes, it may actually be better to take the path less tread. So, do not think that your world has ended as a result of this rejection. Learn to handle rejection and to use it positively to improve yourself so that you will ultimately, still achieve your dreams.

PS: Do not stop dreaming!

with metta,
Shawn Tan.
(Still trying to achieve my dreams!)

Gajah sama gajah berlawan, Pelanduk mati di tengah.

At first, I had a lot of things to write about today. However, after seeing what has happened in Perak today, I’m quite sad that such a thing has happened. You see, while this picture does not tell the whole story, it certainly shows a lot.

Personally, I would have to agree with Tun Dr M that BN truly screwed up the take-over of Perak. They really should learn from how our government engineered the take-over of Sime Darby on the London Stock Exchange. When you want to do a take-over, it has to be planned in advance and executed flawlessly. Otherwise, you risk a lot of back lash from revealing your hand.

The matter between the two Menteri Besar is still being deliberated at the Federal Court. That situation is a little murky because the Sultan is involved and the constitution is not very clear on the matter. That is why it is being referred to the courts for a decision.

However, the situation with the Assembly Speaker was never in question. By law, he was the lawful speaker of the assembly. His appointment had nothing to do with ‘confidence’ nor does it have anything to do with the Sultan. This is where the BN botched up the job.

They should have shown a little patience and restraint. They should have waited till the sitting of the assembly before springing their trap. In one fell swoop, they could have voted out the speaker and tossed out the Menteri Besar unquestionably. Unfortunately, the acted prematurely.

As a result, neither party is satisfied. One side is trying desperately to bull-doze its way through while the other side is trying to be as stubborn as a rock. Obviously, something has got to give. I just hope that the rakyat does not end up dying in between.

There are reasons why procedures are in place. Even the triads and gangsters follow procedures. We can argue about the right or wrong of these procedures, but they still need to be followed. Let’s try to stick to the procedures, yar!

After spending the last month working on a Windows machine, I have decided to go back to using Linux in the office. If I have to use it under virtualisation, so be it. I have come to understand why trying to do development work on a Windows machine is a joke. Seriously, you won’t understand it until you have actually used Linux for real-world embedded development.

Let us just talk about this from an embedded developer perspective.

One word – Emacs. There are few integrated development environments that are as featured as Emacs. It has everything under the hood and more in its back pocket. Just like a woman, it takes a while to learn all the right moves but once that’s mastered, life will be good. Try comparing Eclipse or the piece-of-shit CodeWarrior that I have to use at work is laughable. While notepad++ shows some promise, it is but an infant compared to Emacs.

Two words – Code management. Windows does not come with any sort of code management system. Therefore, developers have developed a lot of bad habits over the years when it comes to working with code revisions such as the multiple-folder technique. Instead, Linux comes with a host of code management tools from the venerable RCS to the most modern Git. Once you have experienced the beauty that is distributed code management, it is difficult to go back to anything inferior.

Three words – Support Tools and Utilities. When you experience some trouble with some piece of code, you need to have a lot of support to solve it. Windows does not come with anything. For example, when you have some really cryptic C code that you need to understand, there’s always cdecl on Linux and nothing equivalent on Windows. Doxygen is truly a life-saver when it comes to the tedious work of generating mundane documentation, which every engineer hates to do.

Obviously, this just applies to a specific area. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Microsoft’s own developer tools. Unfortunately, those are not universal and are not suitable for use in embedded development. Maybe this is an area that Microsoft should take care of. However, they seem to have little incentive to do so as few embedded systems are bloated enough to run Windows.

At work today, I got to toy around with some equipment worth millions. I use the word ‘toy’ because I was literally fooling around with it to figure out how things worked. It is nice that we get to play with these kinds of toys at work because I would not be able to afford these kinds of toys at home.

Then, while this was happening, a co-worker and I were discussing about the cost of these expensive toys. You see, the actual cost of manufacturing these expensive toys is probably not very much, certainly nowhere near the millions that they are sold at.

However, the engineering world is filled with a lot of these high-margin toys. We engineers just love these toys to death and just cannot afford to live without them. They are our bread and butter in many many ways. Therefore, one should always treat toys with respect.

Which was exactly what I did when I was toying around with it.

We had to move it out from another place to ours, in order to fool around with it. It took 3 people to remove it and carry it all the way up to our lab. Then, we were a little worried that the table would not hold the weight. So, we ‘borrowed’ another piece of furniture to use.

Thing is, although I am currently not working in my comfort domain, I have been picking things up rather quickly. Basically, I just plunged myself into the deep-end from the very first day. I figure that that’s the best way to force myself to learn.

Good thing is that although it is not my comfort domain, I am not entirely n00b about it either. I do have some related knowledge that I can leverage on. Personally, I think that my co-workers have been quite nice. I have basically been bugging them with queries.

Hopefully, I will be able to finish my learning process soon and start working on the solution instead.

“I’m just tired of people. Human. Cylon. Whatever.” — Galen Tyrol

There is a lot to be said about the finale of Battlestar Galactica. If you google for it, you’ll find all kinds of debates on it as a series finale. Personally, I felt that there was probably enough material to stretch on for another half season, which is why everything felt a little rushed and convenient at the end.

It started off just like every other BSG episode – very well. We had the last battle of the Galactica, which was a ‘volunteer only’ suicide mission. It was good to see my favourite character come through at the end. The battle sequence is probably the best CGI you will ever see in a TV production for a long time to come. The series has always had its own distinct special effects.

Unfortunately, since I am a hardcore engineer and an atheist, I found the final ending a little too ‘preachy’ with regards to religion and technology. I would have preferred either a really dark ending, or one that left things unanswered. A dark ending would have fitted perfectly with the rest of the dark series.

That being said, I still found the series finale a good wrap up to the series, emotionally. I cried when Sam did his final duty. Then, I cried so hard when Lee bid his final farewell to his father. Then, I cried again when Laura’s life ended. Then, I cried again when they panned over her gazelle grave with Adama sitting next to it, going into the sunset. It was also good to see true love finally develop between Baltar and Caprica 6.

Overall, it was a fitting end to the series.

“See you on the other side” — Samuel Anders

Why is everything so purple?

As I have written about earlier, I am currently looking for my raison d’etre in this life. It is difficult for me because I am too greedy and want to do everything in life, which is just not possible. So, I have to ask myself a few fundamental questions.

I love designing stuff. The reason that I am passionate about this is because of my thirst for knowledge. I like creating things as a means to learn something else. The act of creation itself is not an end but merely the means to an end.

I am also a natural problem solver. I love puzzles, not just my own but others’ as well. So, I would love to spend the rest of my life fixing unique problems. However, problem solving is itself, not an end but another means.

The combination of these two characteristics make me a natural engineer.

I need to find a problem and apply my design skills to solving the problem. Furthermore, the problem would need to be sufficiently large so that I can spend the rest of my life devoted to chipping away at it and maybe never ever arriving at a solution (how depressing).

Now, there are a lot of pressing problems in this world that I have absolutely no interest in – e.g. environmental modulation, universal health-care, economic recession. These problems cannot be my puzzle as I will grow tired of it very quickly.

Paraphrasing House: I need to solve the puzzle – my reason to be.

This is another example of my engineer-ness. I was thinking about adding a computer to my car, what is known as a CarPC. Such a computer is typically used to provide music and videos for entertainment (it could also possibly be used to build a mobile WiFi hotspot if configured correctly).

Anyway, I was thinking about doing it. A CarPC could be installed in the boot of the car with little problem. I was thinking that an Atom based mini-itx board could be used, coupled with a small amount of memory and a solid state harddisk. Because the car will experience bumps and shocks, it is important to use a solid state drive. So, I was calculating the cost of doing this – about RM300 or so.

Then, the only trouble was with building a user interface to the computer. It has to be something that can be accessed from within the car. So, I thought of building my own little device with a screen and some buttons. Then, I suddenly realised that I could just use a PDA to control the CarPC. That was when the though hit me.

I could just use a PDA as the CarPC!

I have two old PDAs lying around, a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 and an Acer Palm S10. The choice was evident on which to use. The Zaurus is infinitely hackable and had more computing power than the Palm. It has a 200MHz ARM processor, 64Mb RAM, 320×240 LCD display, keyboard, SD card slot, CF card slot. I plan to use the SD card slot for adding storage while using the CF card for peripherals (I have a wifi card for this device).

So, I dug up my old trusty Zaurus from my box of old stuff and plugged in the power cable. Nothing happened. Then, I shook the power socket a bit and the power-LED came on. That is a good sign. Then, I tried to turn it on and again nothing happened. I kept tapping away at the different buttons until something came on screen. However, the screen was dark because the back light did not want to come on. But after more fidgeting, the entire unit came to life! The batteries were just weak.

So, I logged onto the Internet and downloaded the latest version of OpenZaurus, a Linux operating system designed for the Zaurus. I flashed the internal firmware to the latest version and everything worked. This made me infinitely happy as I now have a semi-powerful computing device that I can install in my car. It runs on a 5V power supply which is easy to tap into, in a car.

So, the plan is to install a media player onto the Zaurus and test it to see if it can play MP3s and OGGs. If that works, the next thing to do would be to find a nice way to interface the Zaurus’ headphone socket to the car radio and provide a suitable 5V power supply. If that works, then it’s done!

In addition to playing media, I can install the wifi card onto the Zaurus and use it as a mobile way to say, check emails and such at public hotspots like at McDonalds or some other cafe. Now, that would be a real accomplishment. Wardriving is also a potential plus!
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Since I was in Bandar Utama yesterday, I decided to pop by 1U just for the heck of it. Since it’s just days before Chinese New Year, the whole place was decorated for the festive season and I was even lucky enough to be there for the lion dance performance. This actually brought back some memories of my days with the CULDT. I could actually identify about half of the music.

Before that, when I first arrived, I bumped into someone whom I’ve not seen in 6 years or so. She’s two years my senior at university and we were friends and group mates at one time. It took me a few moments before realising whom it was. So, I then went up to her and called, “CC!”. Turns out that she’s actually working around the area and hangs out in 1U quite a bit. Even so, it’s still quite lucky for me to bump into her like that.

Then, I went off to watch the lion dance performance by our national lion dance champions. I ran back to my car (in the parking lot) to get my camera to take some photos. So, I was watching most of the performance through my camera lens. It was a rather dramatic performance. At one point, one of the poles that the lion was jumping on was felled by the act. As a result, the lion was trapped at the highest end of the poles and was ‘trembling’ there from fear. Then, after contemplating the wide chasm, the lion jumped and landed on the poles on the other side. That brought a rousing applause from the audience.

After the show, I went off to see another show – of Honda Citys! They had a number of the new Honda cars on display at their 1U roadshow. I got into one just to see how spacious the new model was – it was surprisingly very spacious. I sometimes wonder how these Honda engineers did it – built a car that looks so small from the outside but is so spacious inside. Honda cars have always been engineered well and it shows.

Randomness@1U. I think that I will probably hang out there a bit more in the near future.

I continued my exploration of KL today, by paying a visit to the shopping area in Mutiara Damansara. This included a visit to The Curve, Ikano and Cineleisure. I felt that I should just blog about experiences and observations. Don’t worry, this is not a review about the shopping malls or the shops.

I took the LDP there and parked inside The Curve. It was very curious to me because all the signs in the basement car park area were in English except for Keluar (Exit). Surprisingly, it also took me quite a while to locate a lot, even on an Tuesday afternoon. As I was already hungry, I immediately chose a place to have lunch – at Waroeng Penyet.

I chose the place because it had a cute name – Penyet (flat). However, there weren’t enough seats and I had to share a table with an old uncle. Since we were sitting together anyway, I decided to strike up a conversation. What my friend said is true – in Malaysia, everyone is separated by 2-degrees of separation. It turns out that we both know one particular person. He was a civil engineer and he ended up giving me a lot of worldly advice on working in Malaysia. He agrees with me that it is much better to work in Malaysia than overseas because there is more money to be made here than elsewhere.

After lunch, I went off shopping for stuff. I know that even 1U or MidValley would be packed full with people on a Tuesday afternoon. However, The Curve was strangely quiet. I found some things to buy for myself and my car. Then, it was time to cross the road over to Ikano and that was when I encountered another strange incident.

I was in Harvey Norman looking at random electronics when I overheard an argument between a woman and the shop manager. Seemed like the woman wanted to return something that she bought and the shop manager was trying to explain their ‘no refunds’ policy. Then the woman whipped out her mobile phone and mentioned that she would like to call her lawyer to check to see if the manager could do that. Finally, the manager gave in and gave her a refund. Now, the drama didn’t end there.

Then, the woman decided to go off shopping elsewhere and told the sales assistants to watch her son who was probably around 7. This was where it got interesting. Obviously, the sales assistants didn’t care at all that the poor kid ended up crying from being abandoned by his mother. I then overheard the mother saying to her friend that she needed to teach her son a lesson. The sales assistants were also joking among themselves at this kid’s expense.

All this time, I was thinking to myself that this is a terrible mother. Yes, you may need to discipline your child from time to time but this is not the right way to do it. Abandoning your child at a shopping centre is not right. I’m sure that the lawyers would have something to say about that as well, if she had bothered to give them a call.

After that, I met up with my friend who was shopping at the Japanese store there. Everything in the store sells for RM5. That is the gimmick. Most people would think that RM5 is not very much money and start buying stuff. Then, before you know it, there would already be RM100 worth of junk in the basket. This almost happened to my friend and she ended up sorting through the stuff and dumping some of it before buying the rest. After having tea together, we bade each other farewell and I decided to come home.

It was quite nice that they charged only RM2 per-entry for parking on a weekday and only RM3 on a weekend. Curiously though, the parking machines displayed two prices – one in Ringgit and the other in Euros. I doubt that the machine accepts Euros but it is curiousity anyway.

On my way back, I decided to try a different route. I paid RM2 for the privilege of using the Penchala Link and then another RM1.50 for using the Kerinchi Link before ending up on the Federal Highway and taking the normal road home. In the end, although it was smooth traffic all the way back, it still took a similar amount of time as the route was much further.

We started our day by visiting the tribal people – Karens. These are those famous long-necked women that depress their collar bones for beauty. The thing that interested me more during our visit was their use of local engineering and technology. I observed that their roofs were made with regular dried leaves and they used water power for their machines. Such things interest me because I’m a hardcore engineer but it will probably bore most of you to death. So, I’ll just skip it. However, it’s still interesting to note that these people are, by themselves, a tourist attraction. When they see me coming with my DSLR, they all move into position for me to take snap shots. How quaint – not having to get people to pose or ask them for permission.

After that, we went off to a few other tourist attractions including, a petting zoo for tigers (!!!), a snake show and an umbrella factory. It is at this umbrella factory that I witnessed more skilled craftsmanship. I told my family that if these artistes set up shop in Central Market, KL and charged between RM10 to RM20 for each drawing, they would make a fortune. Most of the teenage girls in KL would love to have these artistes customise their clothes and accessories for them. RM10 is nothing much to spend on getting some quality artwork rendered on your favourite bag, for example. Furthermore, these artistes worked so fast, it hardly took them 5 minutes to render this drawing on our clothes. Since they’re meant for umbrellas to begin with, it’s all water-proof!

At this point, I had grown rather weary of factories. We were of course, brought to a few others – leather, cotton and what nots. Since this was the end of our official tour, we asked that our tour guide drop us off at a local shopping mall so that we could pick up a few other items at local prices as opposed to tourist prices. Our guide told us that there were only two malls in ChiangMai, an older small one and a newer big one. So, we went to the big one. While exploring the big one, I learned a few more things. The cost of goods in ChiangMai is pretty much similar to that in Malaysia. Of course, this was limited to the things that I’m interested to buy – i.e. DVDs, books, electronic gadgets. The only cheap stuff in ChiangMai are the local crafts and of course sundries like rice and vegetables.

PS: As you can tell, I’ve grown rather weary of writing as well! But, I shall press on!