Sybreon Ones Nought

Education scholarships. Our government disburses many of them through its many agencies and government linked companies. We are fortunate in that we have one of the most generous national governments, when it comes to educational funding. However, there are many things about these scholarships that trigger an emotional response when people talk about them.

This reminds me of a TehTarik session that we once had where someone, who had clearly a lot of anger for our government, claimed that he was denied a scholarship because the government was ‘racist’ (or something like that). I was rather taken aback that he could claim that in a room full of non-bumi government scholars who have all been given full scholarships by our ‘racist’ government. So, being the tactless person that I am, I asked him why he thought he deserved a scholarship.

He had this bewildered look in his eyes like I was challenging him (okay, so maybe it did sound like a challenge). His answer surprised me as he mentioned that straight A1s is the reason in a room full of top students of all shapes and sizes. Thankfully, a few people then asked him: “so, what?” Then, he started mentioning other things (possibly head prefect or something) in a room full of people who had represented their states and even nation. Now more people asked him again: “so, what?”

In retrospect, I guess it was harsh to have been taken down like that but he had it coming. Most people think that they deserve a scholarship without asking themselves why. While I may have slighted him personally, he had slighted many others with his allegations. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who can keep an open mind so I won’t be surprised if he does not speak to me ever again but here is the thing.

Perceptions are flawed as they require us to view things through the lens of our own personal bias. In fact, my own perception is shaped by my personal experiences (i.e. bias). My personal bias has shown me a different facet of our government that most others see. I personally know five Malaysians whom had recently gotten into a PhD programme at Cambridge and tried their hand at applying for Malaysian government sponsorship.

From this group (and my previous experiences of others), I can say that there is no such thing as a sure thing or guarantee of a scholarship. Being a top Cambridge graduate is no guarantee, regardless of whether you are a Malay or not. Being an employee of a government agency is no guarantee, even if it is your turn to go for your PhD studies. Being an existing government scholar and a top student is no guarantee either. All this during a time when the government is trying it’s best to increase the number of PhD in the country.

In the words of a Singaporean mother I once met, you have to be really good to get a Malaysian government scholarship. Personally, I think that you need to be extremely lucky to get a single scholarship and in order to be able to get multiple scholarships, you need to be touched by the gods (especially if you are a non-bumi). There is actually some truth in that and a Malaysian scholarship is just like any other scholarship. Some people get them, while others don’t.

I had recently been contacted by a final year undergraduate at my previous university, where I finished by Bachelor’s degree. He was interested in continuing the work that I did there as an undergraduate and he would appreciate any heads-up that I could give him. He also had little knowledge in the specific area and asked me for recommendations on reading material.

Seeing that it was someone from my alma mater, I decided to be genial and gave the student some pointers. So, I gave him some pointers and some recommendations on what to read it. It is a wonder to me that I can still remember stuff from back then. Actually, I have come to realise the importance of good design, because it helps me to recall how the darn thing works years from now, simply because the design decisions flow beautifully from one to the next.

However, considering the number of years it has been since I had left, there was no possibility that he had ever met me in person. Furthermore, my final year project supervisor is presently furthering his studies in Japan. So, I was rather curious as to how he found out about my project, why he decided to work on it and how he found out my contact information.

This was when he mentioned to me that certain lecturers at the university, spoke fondly of me. He mentioned that one in particular, said that the university was fortunate to have had people like me during its early years. Now, this surprised me thoroughly as I had not parted on the best of terms with the university, but I guess they left out all the juicy bits and focused on my positive contributions.

I can understand why the university may think that it was lucky, that way. There are many of my fellow peers, who are doing all kinds of interesting things in this world. Several of us have furthered our studies to the PhD level at many of the best engineering universities in the world. Many of the rest are scattered around the world working for various multinational corporations. Considering that my graduating class had only about 300+ students across all disciplines, this is quite an achievement.

There is actually a reason for this as the first 3 batches from my alma mater, were almost all (95%) fully funded overseas scholars. We only ended up at the university due to the 1997 Asian economic crisis. One of the steps taken by the government to control the outflow of currency was to cut the scholars going overseas for education. So, our university was filled with students who are generally considered the cream of the country.

However, I cannot attribute our success to merely good students. On top of that, our university had a really ambitious vision and the necessary backing to achieve it. We were lucky enough to have had some really good lecturers teach us from the very first year, a well structured programme designed by the top educators of the world, as well as access to the best equipment that money could buy. There was also a genuine encouragement and push from the university, for the students to excel.

So, this is why I have always contended that my alma mater is the best university in the country (it was in the running for Apex University as well!).

In colloquial terms, my hands are itchy (sau han). The other day, I saw this digital audio player from Samsung, affectionately known as the Yepp. It is a chewing gum stick styled audio player and it comes in a whole range of colours. The model that is being sold in Malaysia is the YP-U3 model and has a number of useful features.

There is nothing wrong with my existing MP3 player from Creative except for one tiny problem. It does not support Ogg playback. In my zealous drive for intellectual property purity, which includes staying away from all dodgy pirated DVD stalls in the pasar malam, I have begun to encode the music CDs that I own, into Ogg-Vorbis files.

So, it is starting to become a chore to encode my music in both, MP3 for my audio player, and Ogg for my computer. It would be so much easier to just do everything in Ogg.

The price of the 4Gb model is RM299 (£49) or thereabouts. It even has an FM radio, which the Creative model lacks. The only thing that is stopping me from outright buying it is the fact that my Zen is still in perfect working condition. The batteries even last for more than 10 hours. So, there is really no reason why it needs to be thrown away.

So, I guess that I will not be buying a new player anytime soon. I should probably wait till the battery life starts to go down to about 6-7 hours. Then, it would be pretty useless for long journeys or long days out. Furthermore, the new version of Amarok still does not support audio players that well yet. So, I should also let that mature first.

I mentioned in my earlier blog that, “most of the IT companies out there are basically con jobs manned by people who do not know very much about computers. Most people in this world think that computers are something simple that even their teenage neighbour can do.” I feel that I should clarify that statement a little more, in case anyone else feels slighted and think that Shawn is so lan si (cocky) and is slapping the whole computer/IT industry.

The fact of the matter is that any teenager with half a brain can work with computers. In fact, they are starting younger and younger these days. Kids barely old enough to ride a bike are capable of using computers. All the stories of Silicon Valley billionaires who all started dabbling in computers during their teens, reinforces the belief that anyone should be able to get into computers easily. And that is entirely true.

The trouble is that computers have a very low barrier to entry, but they are exceedingly difficult to master. Everyone knows that the world of IT moves so fast that it takes a full time job just to try to keep up with everything. In addition to being fast paced, IT is also broad based. You will hardly be able to find an area that has not been touched by computers and IT in some way. So, there is just a whole lot of stuff out there to learn.

Therefore, it becomes exceedingly difficult for you to find people who are knowledgeable at all the different ares of technology. Most of the knowledge has to be gained through experience and in this sense, the people who only started with computers when they went to study IT at university, are at a distinct disadvantage. These latecomers are trying to step on a moving bullet train and it is definitely not easy.

I personally knew someone my age who started learning programming at the age of 4 (his dad was an engineer). Assuming that he had kept at it, he would have had 20+ years of computer knowledge amassed. Someone like him would have started learning computers during their infancy and boomed with them during his late teens. He would have knowledge in practically all the different areas of computing.

However, people like this are extremely rare and just like all other rare items, very expensive.

So, when I say that most IT companies are con jobs, what I meant is that they are rarely staffed by the rare breeds. Most computer graduates would have had minimal knowledge of computers and would be hard pressed when faced with anything other than the norm. As a result, the products and services delivered are usually lesser than what can potentially be delivered.

No one is to be blamed here. It is merely the nature of the industry to require both depth and breadth.

Some of the dumbest people I know in this world are medical doctors. Regardless of what many people may think, it’s been my personal experience with doctors, that they have a highly misguided sense of superiority, which probably comes from the God complex that one develops after holding the lives of others in their hands everyday.

I have come to this conclusion after peddling my wares, door to door, from one clinic to another in the past. Overall, most of the doctors felt that they knew more about computers than me and usually proceeded to lecture to me about computers. Seeing that I was the poor salesman, I usually refrained from correcting them even though my veins were bursting at their stupidity and illogical thinking.

And most recently, one of my previous clients is deciding to switch over to a different provider of a clinic management system. This system is by a Malaysian multinational company with branches in several countries. How they had gotten so big with their lack of computer knowledge bewilders me but I guess that I can say that it is just another regular con job and the doctors deserve them.

They have recently been in contact with me because they need to convert the data from the old database to their system. It is a standard part of the process as the doctors would need their patients’ historical data. A rotten person might just ignore their requests for help but I am perfectly happy to help, as long as it does not involve too much time on my part.

I was previously told by my ex-client that this new company was able to extract part of the data from the database. My ex-client told me that the company had been given one of the data hard disks to play with and they were able to extract some of the data. This got me very happy as I knew that if they could already do that, it would be easy to help them extract everything else.

But as usual, this is far from the truth. There is no reason for this IT company to lie to me as lying to me would inevitably just create more trouble for them. So, when I got several phone calls from them, and finding out the truth, I ended up being a bit rude in my politest possible way.

First, they asked me if I could dump all the data for them into a useful format that they could then import directly. As this would involve a lot of time consuming work on my part, I was not prepared to do this unless they were prepared to pay for my time. Knowing the price that they were charging my ex-client, I knew that they couldn’t possibly afford me.

So, I told them that I could not extract it, but I could definitely explain it to one of their technical people how to do it and they could do it themselves. All I needed was someone who was familiar with public key encryption (because all the information in the database was encrypted) and SQL (a standard database language). I even told them what database I had used in the system.

Several days later, they told me that they were unable to do it because they had nobody who knew Linux. This resulted in a very polite lecture from me as I asked her to explain to me in what way does the operating system have any bearing on the database or even PKI for that matter. You can mix and match databases and operating systems as they are functioning on a different layer entirely.

Several days later, they called me to say that they could not do it because they were unfamiliar with the database that I was used. This again resulted in a very polite lecture from me as I told them exactly what to download and that they could run it on WindowsXP just as well. I cannot imagine any IT company telling me that they do not know an industry standard database in use since 1986. It is quite unheard of, if you ask me.

Several days later, they called me to say that they were unable to even read the disk as they did not know how to read it. This shocked me because if they were unable to even read the data off the disk, how were they able to tell my ex-client that they could extract some of the data? Well, fair enough if they did not know how to read a simple hard drive and I volunteered to help them pull the data off into an external USB disk for them for free.

Anyway, my point is this. Most of the IT companies out there are basically con jobs manned by people who do not know very much about computers. Most people in this world think that computers are something simple that even their teenage neighbour can do. As a result, there is a big disparity between expectation and delivery but thanks to Microsoft, people have been used to getting shafted with substandard products for decades.

There are some really good people and products out there but you just need to be willing to look for and pay for them. If you pay peanuts, expect monkeys. You deserve what you get. The same goes in every field, including computers and IT.

On another thought, maybe I should get this company to hire me as a consultant but this would mean that I’ll need to be nice to them. Never mind.

I have always been curious about Tunku Kurshiah College (TKC to the older folks and KTK to the younger folks) after a friend of mine from primary school, got admitted into the school. Although I have forgotten how she looked like (I have a vague recollection of some studious looking kid in a headscarf), I can still remember her name. Until today I still sometimes wonder what had happened to her and if she had found success in life.

Although I was too young to understand it at the time, my mother told me that TKC was a premier school for girls in our country. It was to the girls like MCKK was to the boys. Now that was another school that I had never heard of before then but would feature prominently in my future life as people I knew started going to MCKK (or MC Gay Gay as it is affectionately known by the other boarding school students).

So, seeing that I was in Seremban recently driving along Jalan Tunku Kurshiah, I decided to pop in for a visit. So, I drove up to the school and asked the guard if I could just go in for a visit. It was afterall a Sunday and I knew where all the boarding school students went on a Sunday afternoon. So, it should be fairly safe for me to nose around an all-girls secondary boarding school without rousing any nasty suspicions.

So, the guards who guarded the school asked me “kenapa? bekas pelajar ke?” (why? are you a former student?). Man, I was stunned for a couple of seconds as I wondered if I looked like I was a former student of an all-girls secondary boarding school. Anyway, my friend mentioned that we had come from afar to visit the school, all the way from Kuala Lumpur (smart move!) and the guards decided to let us in after signing the log book. So, we signed the log book and took a drive around the school.

The thing that struck me about the school was how small it actually was. I would have imagined a premier boarding school to be much bigger. The whole of TKC would have probably fitted into the sports field of my secondary school. Then, I realised that the size probably worked to its advantage by maintaining a forced exclusivity. There just wasn’t any room available to take in anyone who wasn’t the best of the best.

The next thing that struck me about the school was that my friend, didn’t even know about it’s exclusive status. Well, I can probably blame that on the fact that my friend came from a Chinese school and didn’t have any other friends who went there or even applied to attend there. She did remember that the girls from TKC always seemed to be very smartly dressed with their headscarves all done up when attending competitions.

Then, on our way out, some of the girls started returning to school from home and they were all being driven in by BMWs and the like. So, I can safely surmise that most of the kids from that school were probably from families much richer than mine (nobody in my family ever drove a BMW). I have nothing against that as I strictly believe that there is no such thing as meritocracy in this world. There is no point in having wealth if you cannot use it to better your childrens’ lives.

Anyway, that’s all for my post.

I’ve been home for barely a month and I have already been caught ill, twice! Man, I think that I have been living away from home for far too long and have lost all the natural defenses that I used to have against local bugs.

I think that I need to be very careful during this initial period of readjustment. I will need to drink lots of water to avoid myself getting dehydrated. Also, I’ll need to be careful while eating out and not visit any dodgy unfamiliar places. I should also think of stocking up on my regular medications, like lots of PCM for the times when I am down and out.

Anyway, I just hope that I get well by tomorrow. Another day of bed rest should do me good. Otherwise, I may need to get some direct medical intervention.

PS: I miss how healthy I felt in the UK, falling ill only twice in 4 years.