Category: Uncategorized

I have just read an interesting blog today, about the dichotomy between engineering types and business types, and how it causes problems within an organisation. It was an interesting read and it brought to mind the issue of an engineering shortage in industrial nations. Although the examples given in the blog were mainly programmers vs managers, it is something that equally applies to engineers.

http://www.brightcove.tv/playerswf

I had particularly liked a couple of points raised:

• Programmers are craftsmen. As craftsmen, they work to a quality line, NOT a deadline. Programmers do not respect authority, only ability. There is programmer calculus: “We have two different opinions. You have one vote. I, being smarter and more well-informed, have two votes.”
• The industrial world lowered production costs to make money. The post-industrial world raises quality to make money. Managers are trained to focus on efficiency, product goals, and deadlines: these are byproducts of the industrial era. Senior executives are essentially in denial about the fact that software can’t be mapped to industrial benchmarks.
• Business types have an artificial sense of urgency, which leads to wastefulness. Executives are focused on putting out new features quickly, because “tech moves fast.” However, user goals change very slowly. There’s not really a need to “move fast.”
• It’s genuinely impossible to answer a lot of simple business questions when it comes to software. For example, with estimating deadlines: “Writing software is like walking through a minefield. It’s really fast to get through…as long as you don’t step on any mines.”

Sometimes, I wonder how things will turn out in the end. An “insurgence” of quality is truly needed indeed.

I wonder if anyone else can remember the “inflasi sifar” (zero inflation) campaign that was held by the government around the mid-90s. I can remember that there were posters hanging everywhere and even a little campaign song playing on TV all the time. That was the first time I was exposed to the concept of price inflation. Today, I dare not imagine what’s going to happen to our economy in Malaysia.

Everywhere I go, I read that the price of commodities are going up. The government’s price control mechanisms, which were used to curb inflation for decades, is failing. Therefore, I do believe that years of backdated inflation, is going to catch up with us, in a very bad way. Although I am not an economist, even I know that it spells trouble when the price of fundamental commodities go up.

The price of rice, which is a staple in Malaysia, has been going up steadily. This will affect every single family at home. The cap on cement is being lifted immediately and this will affect all the construction going on in the country. Worst of all, the control on petrol is slowly being lifted and the target is to have pump prices follow market rates at the end. This will affect the cost of transportation, which ultimately affects everything.

Personally, I think that having artificial price controls is not necessarily a good thing. However, I have to think about people as well. Regular people will be pinched badly, when the controls are lifted. The trouble is that the wages in Malaysia, has not kept up with things. Over the years, we have artificially deflated our economy. So, nobody, not even the government, has been raising annual wages realistically.

As a result, if the cost of living rises sharply, a lot of people are going to get hurt in the short term. Then, the government would need to raise the civil service pay significantly, in order to keep up. This will then force the private sector to do the same. As a result, everyone needs to pay more for everything: food, petrol, cement, and even labour.

Seeing that I might be going home soon, I tried to see if there were ways that would allow me to curb my spending. For one, I will have to stop driving everywhere. The good news is that I live rather closely to many places and so, I can possibly afford to cycle around a bit. It’s going to be extremely hot and possibly dangerous. But at least, I would be able to save on direct petrol costs.

And, every problem presents an opportunity. Any increase in the price of goods, presents an opportunity for a business to supply an alternative, at a cheaper price. I have actually been thinking and researching along these lines recently and have surprisingly, found an undeveloped niche. All that is needed is a leaner, meaner way of doing business and some creative sourcing. Maybe it’s time to flesh out the ideas a little bit more and maybe go into that business.

I dread to think how this is going to ultimately work out. I guess that I’ll just need to put my trust in the people managing the economy. Yes, you economists out there, please don’t screw things up. Let’s try to optimise inflation and hopefully, things will all turn out right at the end of the day. I just pray that I won’t have to end up forking RM10 for a roti canai at my local mamak. Maybe it’s time to bring back the inflasi sifar jingle.

It’s that time of the year when you start to hear of all kinds of stories coming out of the National Service (NS) camps. It seems that without fail, every year, our government is running some sort of death camp for the kids in the country. I’m starting to wonder how the heck can this be allowed to continue. Personally, I would put a stop to this NS programme until a better one can be put in place.

The idea behind the programme is a noble one. The government recognises the fact that the younger generation are becoming more polarised than ever. In order to arrest this problem, the government came up with the idea of the NS camps. From it’s wikipedia article, it’s objectives are certainly worthy:

• Develop a young generation who are patriotic and with love for their country
• Enhance unity among the multi-racial communities in the country
• Instill a spirit of caring and volunteerism among society
• Produce an active, intelligent and confident generation
• Develop positive characteristics among the younger generation through good values
• Develop a generation that will always obey the current government

However, from the very onset, this programme was doomed. It was conceived in 2001, pushed through in 2002 and implemented in 2003. For such a large programme, it must have enjoyed the fastest navigation through the intricate workings of our government. I remember thinking at the time, that they have not thought everything through properly and the implementation will be a disaster.

After the pilot programme in 2003, there has been a number of fatalities every year. One may think that there is nothing unusual about fatalities. Obviously, there are also a number of deaths in the national service programmes of other nations. But there is a major difference. Our NS programme is more akin to an extended camping trip than a military training programme for soldiers.

This is made worse by the fact that almost all the deaths are not due to accidents from physical activities of the camp but, rather, caused by illness or some sort of physical ailment or other. In almost all these cases, the poor kids were not sent to the hospital until things were already too late. Personally, this smacks of incompetence and negligence, to me.

If a kid died at a summer camp, due to illness, you can be sure that the camp would have been shut down until further notice. But in the case of the NS camps, they still go on and on, bringing us more interesting deaths each year. The fact that these NS camps are not voluntary, means that the government has to take full responsibility for the deaths and be fully accountable and liable.

However, until today, I have yet to see a single person dragged through court for criminal negligence, which resulted in the death of too many young lives. Such is the core problem of the whole NS programme in Malaysia. Nobody cares enough about it. The government doesn’t care enough about it to run it professionally, the commandants don’t care enough to take responsibility, and the parents do not care enough about it to file criminal charges.

There are obviously bugs in the programme. So, the best thing to do would be to stop running it for a while, and do whatever it takes to iron out all the problems. Until the day that the NS camps have 0 fatalities, I don’t think that the government should be allowed to run these camps for another day. No parent should ever be forced to send their kids away to these camps, without knowing if they will ever see their child alive again.

*** images from scotthong.wordpress.com ***

I was fairly surprised when I went to check my mail at my lab today. I found a package addressed to me and it felt like some DVDs. I scrambled trying to recall if I had ordered anything. I don’t normally have any of my online deliveries set to the lab, because I usually get them delivered to my home address. Plus, it was sent by internal mail and I don’t remember bidding for anything on our internal marketplace except for a Palm. But with all the things that I have to deal with recently, I might have forgotten something.

So, I opened it up to find two Siti Nurhaliza albums! Definitely not something that I had ordered as I would definitely remember it. Woo hoo! Not one but two! The Royal Albert Hall one and one of her newest albums, Transkripsi. Wow! I love it. As I’m writing this entry, I’m busy ripping the contents of the CDs into MP3s so that I can carry it around with me in my Zen.

There was no note or any indication of whom it was from. The only clue that I have is that it was delivered by our internal university messaging service, which is typically only available to the staff and graduate students of the university. Undergraduates don’t normally have access to it. And since it is not easy to buy these albums online, I’m guessing that someone must have brought them over from Malaysia.

But I’m not going to spend too much time trying to work out whom it’s from. Doctor says that I should learn to manage my stress levels and take things easy. So, you know who you are. Thanks for the wonderful gift!

I watched the American Idol finals the other day. It’s been a long while since I’ve watched it because I think it’s not been worth watching for a while now. But my friend introduced me to David Cook the other day, and it changed everything. I was really glad that he won. He brought tears to my eyes. During the finals, this was one of the songs that he sang, and I really liked it a lot.

When I was a little boy.
I swore that I would change the world when I grew up.
Nothing else would be enough.

I see it everyday.
We settled for safe.
And lose ourselves along the way.

But if you don’t dream big,
What’s the use in dreaming?
If you don’t have faith,
There’s nothing worth believing.
It takes one hope
To make the stars worth reaching for.
So reach out for something more.

It took a well perfected plan
For me to finally understand
That it’s not me.
Faith is something you can’t see.

I wiped my tears away.
Now its time for a change.
No I can’t waste another day.

‘Cause if you don’t dream big,
What’s the use in dreaming?
If you don’t have faith
There’s nothing worth believing.
It takes one hope
To make the stars worth reaching for.

‘Cause if you don’t have faith,
What’s the use in dreaming?
If you don’t have faith
There’s nothing worth believing.
It takes one hope
To make the stars worth reaching for.
So reach out for something more.

Full lyrics here.

I’ve finished checking the first batch of papers allocated to me which consisted of papers from four courses. I’m starting to get the hang of doing it and yes, I do think that the most efficient method is to check all the scores on the main sheet first, before verifying each paper against it’s score.

The reason is simply one of context switching. With this method, context switching is kept to a minimum. Checking the scores on the main sheet merely involves punching a calculator at lightning speed and looking at the values. Then, the next task of verifying each paper against it’s mark sheet is just a question of looking it up in the table, in sorted order. Then, the last task is to actually verify that each page has been marked and the marks totalled up correctly. I do this while looking up the scores to reduce the amount of manual paper flipping work that I need to do. Optimisation.

Three of the courses went without problems and I could quickly sign off on the papers. One of the courses has quite a large number of errors though. Some of the questions were totalled incorrectly and some pages were not marked. I’ve noted down all the details of the errors on a sheet of paper that I will need to attach to the official marker’s form later. It’s a little unfortunate for the students as in each case, they had been given too many marks and might need to have some of their marks deducted.

So, I’ll need to meet up with the principal assessors to make the corrections. However, that person is away for the whole of next week. So, I can only make the corrections the following week, which is pushing the deadline kind of close.

I have noticed something about marking though. You can tell if a lecturer is dedicated or not, simply by how they mark the papers. Some lecturers are very careful in their marking, with lots of details, while others are just cincai doing it. It really comes through in the marking.

So, next week, I’ll go return this batch of papers and possibly pick up another batch of papers to check. I do the mark checking while watching TV. It also helps me to keep my mind off things.

Good stuff. Lots of popular Malaysian artists in the clip. Watch this, ’nuff said. Spread the word. Kick the racist bastards out of parliament. We are one nation, one people, one love.

PS: You can download the original MP3 and videos from the official website here.