Expiration Date

As we’re drawing down the curtains for 2007, my notebook is starting to act up. Well, it has been acting up since day one, really, but now it is really acting up in ways that are starting to worry me.

Recycled image with stupid green monkey from 2004 Universal Studios trip, 101^st Airborne patch, notebook PC with mouse, and 21^st Century 1000mg chewable orange-flavored vitamin-C

I’m used to the error messages during the shut down sequence. They never were any more than a minor annoyance but once recently the computer completely failed to shut down. I only realized it upon finding the notebook unusually warm with the battery completely drained when I took it out of the backpack. So now I always have to make sure that the notebook actually shuts down before packing up. It also regularly fails to recognize the built-in optical drive, and a few times ‘forgets’ the network adapters while I am online.

Granted, while the notebook is only about half as old as the computer at the Kuang Police Station, it has also seen some heavy usage, logging some serious hours as I am online most of the time I’m awake (as well as most of the time I’m not awake). Sure, it would be nice to buy a new notebook, but that will definitely burn a huge hole in my pocket. A new notebook means no more, well, a lot of stuff, chief among them my more-or-less monthly Amazon buys. Hmm… how can I get myself a free new notebook? I really don’t see how, so now I’m paying a considerable degree more attention to keeping the notebook running as smoothly as possible. Pray don’t you dare die on me!

__________
PS: If you represent an organization that gives out free notebook computers to strangers, I can definitely use one running on (at least) 1.6GHz Intel^® Core^TM 2 Duo Processor, 2MB DDR2 SDRAM, 120GB HDD, and discrete graphic card with dedicated 128MB GDDR2 memory.

:P

Six Years

“The computer has been running continuously for six years” said the police officer on duty.

I was at a local police station recently accompanying a cousin to lodge a police report for a break-in. We were waiting for the computer to register the report.

My first thought was “Wow, the computer has been running for six years!” That’s 52,560 hours!

My second thought was “They’ve been stuck using the same computer for six years!” Isn’t that a small miracle? Worse, apart from a spanking new mini photocopier at the back, the stained six-year-old PC with 14-inch monochrome CRT monitor was the most advanced piece of technology that I could see. Attached to it was a loud dot matrix printer.

I bet the printer was six years old and never turned off too. It was almost like a trip to a museum, at 2 in the morning.

Carrots and Sticks

Kenmore Square, January 2005

Everyone’s all quiet towards the end of the year. Lot’s of work, I suppose, or exams. Mon is redecorating again, I guess, locking his blog. I wonder what he’s got in store this time.

It’s almost the end of 2007 and I have not submitted any PhD applications, which means that I’m staring at a possibility of a pay cut next year. It’s one of the sticks the university inserted in my appointment letter two years ago – go for a PhD within two years or they may reduce my housing allowance back to first degree-level. Whatever.

Selamat Hari Raya Korban!

Outside the apartment on Bay State Road after a blizzard, January 2005

Trip to Nowhere

On Sunday, Ami asked if I would like to tag along him doing some property valuation. Well, between that and spending the day doing nothing but staring at my navel, I said yes, and off we went. Born and bred, and know working in the Klang Valley, I’ve always found smaller towns interesting in that there aren’t as many cars and people around. Wouldn’t it be cheap to buy a house in, say Banting or Bentong, far away from the city? Of course, it doesn’t make much sense unless I’m willing to find another job.

Our targets for the day were four properties in the Kuala Langat and Sepang districts, all set to be auctioned by the bank, hence the need for them to be valued. The first two were in Teluk Panglima Garang (Fierce General Bay?) – love the name of the place. Neither of us were familiar with the area, so we stopped by the local police station and asked for directions. Unlike most people I actually kinda like the police force despite all their failings, but my brother did all the asking – it was his job anyway – while I stayed in the car and played with the camera. It was blazing hot.

We couldn’t find the first property. The address listed a lot number but the place was a residential estate. We found the second property after asking directions from a young Indian man. That wrapped up Teluk Panglima Garang.

The third property really took us on an adventure of epic proportion; I only wish that it was an exaggeration. It was fourth floor condominium unit at “Taman Murni, Bukit Changgang, Banting”. We only saw one high rise building in the Banting area, a new condominium complex with a Tesco outlet on the ground floor – not it. A police officer at the Banting police station told us to drive towards the KLIA direction. A property sales agent at the previous condominium complex then told us to keep on driving for another five kilometers. More than five kilometers later, we were already in Dengkil and met a seemingly clueless shopkeeper who suggested we turn towards Kampung Selangor Dredging. Turned out he was indeed clueless. An elderly security guard at a deserted PLKN camp, however, was not so clueless, and gave us our first concrete direction towards Salak Tinggi. Along the way we stopped for more direction from a kid manning a car wash joint, before finally arriving at our destination, a housing complex quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

It took us two-and-a-half hours. And it was not exactly called Taman Murni. :P

You live here?

The last hunt took us to two police stations; first the Sepang district police headquarters and then the Dengkil police station, before finding the place right behind the station.

Calling it a day, we took a detour towards Putrajaya to pray, but was turned off by the volume of tourists. Instead, we ended up praying and having dinner at Shah Alam before heading home. After a scorching hot full day, it finally rained as we headed to Shah Alam with the setting sun.

Speeding Tickets

I got booked for speeding. Not one, not two, but three speeding tickets. That’s RM900 and potentially I-don’t-know-how many demerit points off my driving record. The worst thing, though, is that they weren’t my fault but my sister’s; my lead-footed sister. In all three occasions – once in Sabak Bernam and twice in Manjung – it was her racing for site meetings. No wonder she always managed to make it to her 10 o’clock meetings at Beruas on time after leaving the house at 7! The one ticket that arrived yesterday logged her going at 104kph on a 60kph-stretch. She didn’t think she would be caught speeding in the morning.

DOHH!

She better settle them all soon. I don’t want to imagine how many speeding tickets she’d get if she was driving that Camry she wanted instead of the puny Kancil.

I can feel the rush in Speed by sampok at deviantART. How fast can you go on a bike, though?

Two Weeks at Work

The first week – so-called “adjustment period” – was chaotic as usual with students joining and dropping classes to fit their schedules and filling up their workloads. It was especially chaotic for me sitting in for the department head. I never gave so many signatures in one week!

I have four new classes with four new sets of students, though there are some familiar faces among them. I’ve always thought that the first meeting of a class points to how the mood of the class will be for the whole semester. Two of the classes were “happy”, i.e. the students readily respond to questions and actively participate in discussions, while the other two were not so “happy”. I hope to be able to turn them around pretty soon.

Dark clouds... I was half-hoping to see a twister

Last Friday the whole kulliyyah plus families travelled up north to Lumut for a weekend of work and play. Most of us took the bus, but I thought that it would be a great opportunity to take the new car on a nice long drive up the coastal road with my brother.

He wanted a picture of him standing on a rock, he got a picture of him standing on a rock

Little Friends

I have another Twisties question: why are cultured milk drinks like Vitagen, Yakult, etc only sold in such small bottles? They are supposed to be healthy and contain live friendly bacteria. Perhaps the bacteria won’t be so friendly when there are too many of them in your stomach, huh?

:P

__________
NST article: Yakult Lady comes a calling
PS: What do vegetarians have to say about ingesting millions of live bacteria in one gulp?

I Wish

Once as a child I spent an afternoon alone watching a very long movie called Dune. This was the time when I used to spell robot r-o-b-a-t. Though I didn’t really understand English then, I know now that it was an awful movie adaptation of the Frank Herbert book.

“The worm is the spice, the spice is the worm”

It stuck with me just like Livin’ on a Prayer – not an awful song – stuck in my head until I heard it again years later at a mall in Seremban in 1992. I’m glad that I’m reading the book now, after years putting it off because of the thickness of the hardcover volume at the school library. The paperback version doesn’t look as menacing.

There were two movies I wished to be made into blockbuster cinematic releases. One was The Lord of the Rings, which thanks to Peter Jackson is now one (or three) of the best, biggest movies ever made. The other one was Robotech/Macross. Hopefully this will soon become a reality, as The Hollywood Reporter reported in September that Warner Bros. has taken up the rights to produce a Robotech movie with Tobey Maguire.

Is it too much to wish that they would make a trilogy out of it too?

Take My Wing by ukitakumuki at deviantART

Two Movies

I’m hearing a lot of disappointed voices over Beowulf. Many who went to watch the movie really had no idea that it was an adaption of an old epic poem, like the movie Troy starring Brad Pitt was adapted from The Iliad. Apparently, many were really attracted to the movie to see a naked Mrs. Pitt, and went away feeling cheated to find that Beowulf was an animated, rather than live action, movie. LOL. Earlier, a radio station asked listeners to call in and give their best war-cry in return for tickets for the movie, but callers invariably gave a wolf howl instead!

I went for the animated dragon, and was definitely not disappointed
(Paramount Pictures/Yahoo! Movies photo)

The Kingdom was shocking but ultimately forgettable. The first bomb, set off by a suicide bomber dressed in police uniform really caught me by surprise. The MPAA gave The Kingdom an R rating for “Intense Sequences of Graphic Brutal Violence and Language” but really, what are “intense sequences of graphic brutal violence and language” on a cinema screen when we already have 24 on primetime TV? As for the politics and setting, I can imagine the movie being sold in a boxed set along with Syriana.

The “… kill them all” quotes at the end of the movie may well be the most lasting impression of the movie, but ultimately movie is forgettable apart from being an action flick. At this GWOT age, we are already drowning in the violence.

The Point

The point of being a research university is RM50 million of additional funding.

There’s an interesting back-story behind Whats the point? by wirestyle at deviantART.
Click on the image to find out!

Interregnum

in•ter•reg•num (ĭn'tər-rĕg'nəm)
–noun, plural. –nums or –na (–nə).

1. an interval of time between the close of a sovereign's reign and the accession of his or her normal or legitimate successor..
2. any period during which a state has no ruler or only a temporary executive.
3. any period of freedom from the usual authority.
4. any pause or interruption in continuity.

[Latin: inter-, inter- + rēgnum, reign]

How’s that for a big word, unless you are a walking dictionary/thesaurus, in which case I hate you!

I first came across the word through Isaac Asimov in Foundation, referring to a period of anarchy between the fall of the first Galactic Empire and the establishment of the second. I’m eternally thankful to Abang Aziz for introducing me to SFF.

[BTW, I’ve just received Axis and The Clone Alliance from Amazon on Tuesday. The package arrived two weeks early – all hail Amazon! Now I’m seriously considering putting the books I’m currently reading to read these two first]

We are in sort of an interregnum on campus too in between semesters. Today is the deadline for submission of last semester’s results. The new semester begins December 3. It doesn’t mean that we have nothing to do till then, though, as there are administrative meetings, seminars, etc to attend. The week before the semester begins – wait a minute, that’s next week! – will be spent preparing for the new semester.

In the meantime, the university is reminding us (staff without PhD) yet again to go for PhD. OKAY, we get it already!

Honestly, though, I am still not done thinking about the whole PhD thing. It is teaching and learning that I love, not particularly the research part. So much for wishing that I’ll be a student forever – yeah, careful what wish for, kids! I suppose I’d be perfectly happy teaching in a high school. Why can’t we be happy as a teaching university? Why must we all want to be research universities?

SIGH. There are some really big decisions to make. I hate big decisions.

An Exercise of Futility

The government is refusing the industry’s request to allow the selling price of general purpose (wheat) flour to increase from the current RM1.35 per kilogram. The request follows an increase in the price of wheat, imported from Canada and the United States, from US$235 to US$40 per tonne. At the same time, the government reassures the public that the supply of flour will not be affected.

LOL.

Good luck trying to fight market forces. The only way the government can guarantee the supply of flour at the current selling price is by subsidizing the industry. More subsidies, yeah, right.

If I’m not mistaken rice, not bread, is the staple food of Malaysians. Why can’t we simply abandon price control?

Price controls distort the market and incur high costs to enforce, but ultimately when it really matters, they usually don’t work anyway. Politicians should really not make promises they cannot keep.

But that’s really what it is all about, isn’t it?

Computer Down

Not mine.

I dropped by the district police headquarters in Selayang on the way to work this morning to settle my mother’s speeding ticket, but was turned down because “their computer was down”.

I assume that really it was the network that was down instead of the computer. So, there were a few people sitting at the lounge area waiting for the network to be “up” again, whenever that will be, while the visibly embarrassed policewoman manning the counter helplessly kept telling everyone walking in about the network interruption. She could have just put up a notice.

Really, how often do we experience such a thing at banks, post offices, and government agencies? So much for the government’s digitization initiatives and the Multimedia Super Corridor, I suppose, when everywhere they cannot even setup reliable network systems.

Haven’t they heard of redundant backup systems? The tech people I talked to invariably claimed that it wasn’t their fault, but really the bean counters or top management’s decision to not authorize the necessary budget. SIGH. Don’t they realize that in many ways an unreliable system is worse than having no system at all?

How did we, mankind, survive the centuries before electronics? How hard it is to dig out the old registers and receipt booklets and do things manually in the name of honest-to-God customer service? They can always key in the data later. Unfortunately, we are now pretty much slave to the machine instead of the other way round.
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PS: My mother didn’t really go very fast. She was ticketed for going 96kph over a ridiculous 80kph-speed-limit stretch on the MRR2.

Borrowed Time

The notebook’s AC adapter cable, after years of wear, finally broke on Monday so I had to borrow the department notebook. The thing with semi-public property, nobody actually takes care of it, so the PC was such a mess. The desktop was full of files and folders from long-past conferences and presentations and the installed software were never updated. I just couldn’t stand it, so I spent the better half of the day on Monday bringing the PC to a more respectable state.

Anyway, back to my notebook, I had to place an order for a replacement adapter which only arrived today. Thank God there is a replacement adapter, or I would have to buy a new notebook!

So it’s back to marking exam papers now. Unlike most of my colleagues, I don’t bring the scripts home to mark, but do it strictly at the office during office hours. I give two days for one section/class – one day for the multiple choice part and one day for the essay part – and I’m already halfway through, expecting to submit my the last results next Monday.

By the way, I’ve just recently installed Office 2007 on the notebook. I was perfectly happy with Office 2003, which I bought with my own money, but the ‘free’ software provided under the university’s academic licensing deal with Microsoft (the evil empire) is simply too hard to resist. Now, if I could only get my hands on a free Vista-loaded (read new) notebook.

:P

Last Word

I
“What is the Malay word for begging?” asked Pak Suherman this morning while we were invigilating an exam – my last paper for the semester. He was looking at a picture of Buddhist monks begging for alms in the newspaper. It caught me off guard. Begging is mengemis.

“Do you know the origin of the word mengemis?” he continued. I gave up. Mengemis comes from Khamis –Thursday. People give away charities on Friday, the Muslim holiday like Sunday is to Christians, so the poor beg on Thursday, hence meng-Khamis – mengemis.

I swear I heard it before. Pak Suherman leaves for Surabaya tomorrow.

II
It is finally the end of the semester, though I have four miserable piles of exam scripts to mark before the semester is really, truly, over.

Already someone came to see me yesterday. He sat for the exam on Friday – my other paper. This semester is supposed to be his last, he said, and he is looking forward to returning to his home country. He already told me this two days before the final exam.

“So?”

“I forgot to answer one essay question” he said. It was unbelievable. I told the class many times, I told him himself directly a few times more I’m sure of it, and the instructions were clearly written on the question paper – ANSWER ALL THREE QUESTIONS. He only did two.

“Can you help me?” he asked with a phony sad face. The ship has sailed.

“You’ll get the marks you deserve” I said.

Zzz...

My brother crashed on my sofa bed after a movie last night…

… and got his photo posted on this blog.

:-D

Watch More TV

I may be a TV addict too. Here are the shows I watch on my PC:

• 30 Rock (Season 2) – the smartest sitcom on TV from SNL alumna Tina Fey.
  
  
• Bones (3) – David ‘Angelus’ Boreanaz plays FBI agent in Fox’s CSI-copycat show with more interesting characters. Emily Deschanel’s ‘Bones’ is hot too; geeky hot.
  
  
• Californication (new) – David Duchovny as his horny self.
  
  
• Cold Case (5) – special police unit in Philadelphia investigates old cases.
  
  
• CSI: NY (4) – I have time for only one CSI.
  
  
• Dexter (2) – dark show about a Miami police forensics expert who is really serial killer (who kills only bad guys). Too dark for Malaysian TV, I think.
  
  
• Ghost Whisperer (3) – Jennifer Love Hewitt sees dead people.
  
  
• Gossip Girl (new) – teen drama. I’m allowed to pick one, right?
  
  
• Grey’s Anatomy (4) - who doesn’t watch this show? Now with two Greys.
  
  
  
  Watch more TV by pandaman27 at deviantART
  
  
• Heroes (2) – X-men without Professor X. Again, who doesn’t watch this show?
  
  
• House (4) – everybody’s favorite doctor is hiring a new team.
  
  
• How I Met Your Mother (3) – could be the next Friends, but so far closer to Two Guys and a Girl (and a Pizza Place).
  
  
• K-Ville (new) – police show in post-Katrina New Orleans.
  
  
• Life (new) – Band of Brothers’ Damian Lewis as a police detective who spent twelve years in prison.
  
  
• NCIS (5) – JAG spinoff is now in season 5.
  
  
• Private Practice (new) – Grey’s Anatomy spinoff with Kate Walsh.
  
  
• Pushing Daisies (new) – Strange show. Guy can bring dead people to life for 60 seconds.
  
  
• Samantha Who? (new) – new Christina Applegate sitcom. Will it survive the season?
  
  
• Stargate Atlantis (4) – the adventure continues in the Pegasus galaxy. Best sci-fi show on TV.
  
  
• The Unit (3) – above top secret Special Forces unit doesn’t even have a name!
  
  
• Weeds (3) – I don’t get what “dark comedy” means, but Mary-Louise Parker is simply awesome as a marijuana-dealing single mom, which makes it yet another show that will never be aired on Malaysian TV.
  
  
• Without A Trace (6) – there’s always room for another police (or in this case, FBI) show, isn’t it?

There shouldn’t be any doubt about about my ‘social life’, now, should it?

Clean Sweep

The Boston Red Sox win the World Series! WOOHOO! Take that, Yankees Rockies!

Watch the Carrot!

It’s been a while since I enjoyed a movie like I enjoyed Shoot ‘Em Up. It has neither some pretentiously complicated, cerebral plot nor some deep message that gets you home thinking or reflecting on some worldly or otherworldly affairs; just fun. I wish I could write “good clean fun”, as our housemaster at KTJ used to say all the time, but it was just fun; outrageous, but definitely fun. Roger Ebert likes it, saying the movie “… the most audacious, implausible, cheerfully offensive, hyperactive action picture I’ve seen since, oh, Sin City…” so I’m in reasonably good company here.

A standoff, but the good guy’s got a carrot! (New Line Cinema/Yahoo! Movies Photo)

Shoot ‘Em Up is directed, written, and co-produced by one Michael Davis, whoever he is. A movie with just one name taking all three credits is always a gamble – it can be a masterpiece of some sort, kinda like this one, or it can be some terrible ego trip. I can imagine a bunch of guys drinking late at night, perhaps with a videogame on, having a conversation that started by a guy saying “Dude, you know what would be an awesome idea for a movie?” It doesn’t hurt too that they got to sign up Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci for the leads.

Electrical Appliances

There are electric shavers, electric toothbrushes, electric pencil sharpeners, etc. I have none of those. I tried an electric shaver once but didn’t like it. I toyed around the idea of an electric toothbrush more than once, but decided that it’s too costly to justify any marginal increase in tooth-brushing effectiveness it would give. I would love to get my hands on an electric pencil sharpener, though.

An electric pencil sharpener (image from eHow.com)

One thing I would really like to see invented is an electric nail clipper. Though it really isn’t much of a hassle, I hate having to clip my nails every week, so think an electric nail clipper would be awesome. I imagine the contraption to look like an electric pencil sharpener. You’d stick your finger in it. The machine would scan your finger and fingernail and decide on the appropriate length of the nail, perhaps with some preset options, and trim off any excess edges with a fine laser. Voila, a perfectly manicured finger!

What office/home appliances would you like to have or have invented?

RM186.21

I went to the Bank Islam branch on campus today to deposit my two years’ worth of change. The machine rejected a 50-sen, a 20-sen, a 1-sen, and a US quarter coins; but I still got RM186.21 total. It’s almost like money falling from heaven, especially with the government saying that it is definitely not paying government employees a bonus this year, :-P.

The Coca-Cola Contour Bottle Bank, that’s the actual name of the thing, I bought at the Coca-Cola Museum (a.k.a. NEW World of Coca­Cola) in Atlanta when I visited Mon during the winter break of 2004. I preferred the larger 20-inch version but it wouldn’t fit my bag, so I bought the 11-inch ‘small’ version instead.

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PS: Mon, if you could buy me the large one when you come back, it would be very, very much appreciated. I’ll pay for it, of course!
;-)

Why Bother

I have an MPH Readers’ Circle card because I think I read a fair amount so I’d buy a fair amount of books too, and the MPH at 1 Utama is the closest major bookstore I can go to. But every time I visit the store, or any other bookstores around for that matter, I’m reminded yet again why I buy most of my books online from Amazon.

They renovated the store again recently, apparently, and the science fiction section is now down to only two shelves. Obviously not many people read and/or buy science fiction. Then, the books are all shrink-wrapped and there are no browsing copies provided. I suppose, unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and they happen to have it, you really have to judge a book by its cover.

I am helpless.

I bought two books, though: Dune, a classic I never actually got around to read; and The Children of Hurin.

Next stop: Amazon.com.

Four Reasons

Four reasons to celebrate the last weekend:

1. South Africa wins the 2007 Rugby World Cup
   
   
2. they beat England
   
   
3. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen wins the 2007 F1 Drivers’ Championship
   
   
4. he beats the McLaren drivers to it

MUAHAHA!

Apparently the Formula 1 gods have not abandoned us, and delivered us justice from the McLaren cheaters. Go Ferrari!

Congratulations to the Springboks. Congratulations too to the Argentine Pumas for their third-place finish. Condolences to the All Blacks, et Les bleus.

Book #7

Temeraire by sandara at deviantART

I finished Empire of Ivory around 3 o’clock in the morning last night/today, WHEW! (Yes, 3 a.m. – I’m still on Raya leave!)

High treason! Napoleon invading England (again)! I can’t wait for the fifth book.

In the meantime, what next? Should I finally read about that Harry Potter people talk about?

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LINK: Naomi Novik’s Temeraire

The Raya Mood

4 Syawal 1428 – Is everyone* still in Raya mood?

Iz wrote about missing the Raya feeling. I never really felt the excitement and anticipation leading to Raya myself. I hate the housecleaning and the massive crowd at the shops and shopping malls. I hate the thought of having to wake up early Raya morning, dress up in full baju melayu, and rush to a crowded mosque for Raya prayer. I hate the thought of having to go on rombongan – a neighborhood travelling party going house to house to celebrate – afterwards in the hot and humid late afternoon to midday weather.

Then the day came.

While I am definitely not the beraya sakan type, the Raya feeling is definitely there; though it is more of a feeling of significance and appreciation than festivity. Raya is religious festival; waking up early and dressing up to go to the mosque is part of the whole celebration. The mosque next door was not so crowded this year, as the neighboring villages now have their own mosques; and as the rombongan leader said, it was our opportunity to get to know each other as neighbors.

One of the best thing about Raya , though, is definitely the food. My favorite is lemang and rendang. I don’t care about fancy cakes and cookies, but I just can’t have enough lemang and rendang.

What’s your favorite Raya dish?

__________
* If you celebrate Raya , that is.

I Meant to Write

To whom it may concern,

I meant to write, call, send you a text message or an e-card for the occasion; but:

1. there were a bunch of late papers to mark.
   
   
2. I had to go on a last minute shopping spree; it’s the only way that I’d actually buy something.
   
   
3. the house needed cleaning – you wouldn’t believe the amount of dust.
   
   
4. my bedroom hadn’t been vacuumed for two weeks!
   
   
5. I had two weeks of downloaded TV shows to catch up.
   
   
6. there’s this movie I just had to go watch.
   
   
7. my latest Amazon package arrived – two weeks early, can you believe that? – so I’ve got this new book.
   
   
8. frankly, though, they’re just not my thing.

However, trust me when I say that my thoughts are with you, and I wish you much joy and good health, wherever you are.

Selamat Hari Raya

Maaf, zahir dan batin

__________
;-)

Yesterday

(They Long to Be) Close to You
by The Carpenters (1970) [watch it on YouTube]

Why do birds suddenly appear
Every time you are near?
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you

Why do stars fall down from the sky
Every time you walk by?
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you

On the day that you were born
The angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold
And starlight in your eyes of blue

That is why all the girls in town
Follow you all around.
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you

On the day that you were born
The angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold
And starlight in your eyes of blue

That is why all the girls in town
Follow you all around
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you.

My favorite Carpenters song, though not their original. I won the 1990 Gombak district schools’ music competition instrumental solo category with a Carpenters song, Yesterday Once More. It was unbelievable that I won, as I was shaking the whole time I was performing. I thought a girl who played Endless Love on the piano would win, but I guess she bored everyone with the seemingly endless song.

WOW, that was seventeen years ago!

__________
I don’t know migraines, but I’m having a massive headache.

What Happened

I
I wrapped up all my classes last week with two more weeks to go till the end of the semester. The remaining two weeks are as good as gone, though. Next week the students’ minds will be everywhere but in the classroom with Raya expected on Saturday. The same goes with the week after the break. In fact, some students may not even be on campus until the exam week comes November.

In the meantime, I expect to see a significant increase in the number of students knocking on my office door. There’ll be the regulars, whom I’ll be happy to see. Then, there’ll be some new faces looking to squeeze some juicy exam tips out of me, whom I’ll tolerate. The rest, however, will be those who will come to a belated realization that they are not doing particularly well in the course, coming for “help”.

By “help”, they mean to be given some kind of assignment that will bump up their grades. Since it’s already late in the semester – too late, I’d say, though some will actually come after the final exam – they won’t really expect to be given any ‘real’ assignment but, quite literally, a free pass.

One sorry ass already came on Thursday. A repeating student who is rude, always late, never participated in class discussions, never came for consultation, and never shown any degree of interest in the course materials; I was happy to throw him out of my office. Figuratively, of course, though it would have given me much greater pleasure if I could actually do it.

II
It took me about four days to read Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber, my only sixth book this year! This one I didn’t buy from Amazon, but from MPH at 1 Utama, almost two months ago. A few pages were defaced with a black marker, to my absolute horror. It may not have been MPH’s fault – the book was shrink-wrapped – but it definitely makes me want to stick to Amazon for my next book purchase.

The Terran Federation Navy fought desperately for over forty years, but the ruthless species known as the Gbaba slaughtered the human race’s extra-Solar colonies one by one. Now the end had finally come; Earth herself lay under siege by an enemy humankind could not defeat.

And so mankind undertook one last throw of the dice: Operation Ark. Earth’s final colonizing expedition was meant to build a new civilization, on a planet so distant even the Gbaba might never find it and without the high-tech infrastructure whose emissions might betray its location. To protect and conceal that expedition, the Navy’s final fleet was prepared to die to the last ship. Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban volunteered to serve on the flagship of that fleet, knowing that she and everyone else aboard it would die... which was exactly what happened.

So she was a little surprised to wake up in a cave on a planet called Safehold. She was even more surprised to discover that she’d been dead for eight centuries... and that the fanatic administrators of Operation Ark had used mind-control techniques to create a false, brutally suppressive religion in which every single Safeholdian believed – one whose entire purpose was to forbid invention and innovation forever.

Everyone on Safehold knew the Church was the consecrated custodian of God’s will. Everyone knew forbidden technology was the work of the Devil. And everyone knew that anyone who dabbled in the forbidden must be destroyed, lest everyone’s soul be lost forever to damnation.

But a tiny faction within Operation Ark’s leadership remembered the truth and believed in human dignity and freedom. They’ve left Nimue Alban to oppose that monstrous creation, and they’ve given her a carefully hidden cache of technology and the capabilities of the android body in which her memories, loves, hopes, and dreams live on. Now it’s her job to somehow provoke the technological progress – and freedom of thought and belief – the Church of God Awaiting has worked centuries to crush.

Nimue Alban spent her entire life fighting against the inevitable destruction of her species. Now she’s about to discover that dying in humanity’s defense was the easy part.

Off Armageddon Reef book jacket

Nimue Alban/Merlin Athrawes reminds me of R Daneel Olivaw.

Six books! I seriously hope to catch up when the semester is over.

Civilian

ci•vil•ian
–noun

1. a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization.
   
2. Informal. anyone regarded by members of a profession, interest group, society, etc., as not belonging; nonprofessional; outsider: We need a producer to run the movie studio, not some civilian from the business world.
   
3. a person versed in or studying Roman or civil law.

–adjective

4. of, pertaining to, formed by, or administered by civilians.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

What’s another word for “civilian”, the adjective, not the noun? “Private” is the best I could find.

I gave my classes another round of quizzes last week, their fifth; and I plan to give at least a couple more before the semester ends. A student raised her hand during one of the quizzes. When I went to her desk she pointed to her quiz paper and asked “sir, what is the meaning of this word?” pointing to the word “civilian”. It was a true-or-false question:

The unemployment rate measures the percentage of the civilian population that is out of work.

The answer is false.

What’s another word for “civilian”? I was quite a bit taken aback that somebody even asked what such a common word means – “non-military”? “Outsider”? I opened the question to the class. There were a few chuckles, but then another student raised his hand and said, “isn’t ‘civilian’ the same as ‘population’?”

Somebody, kill me!

I just told them to ignore the word.

Omnipresence

It is interesting to see that Wired saw it fit to publish our Muslim angkasawan’s – astronaut’s – potential problems in performing acts of worship, which are typically defined within terrestrial bounds, in space.

See: A Muslim Astronaut's Dilemma: How to Face Mecca From Space

I remember during undergraduate we discussed similar issues in some of the university-required Islamic studies courses. Forget about problems when praying and fasting at the International Space Station, what about praying and fasting on another planet! While Angkasa (National Space Agency) and JAKIM (Department of Islamic Development Malaysia) took the effort to hold a national conference to resolve the issue, I really don’t think that it was ever a real problem, though the whole question makes an interesting academic exercise.

The solution is really not much different from when we’re travelling through foreign, unfamiliar lands. We simply do whatever we can, as much as we can. Muslims worship God; and God is omnipresent. Planet-side we face the Ka’aba partly as a symbol of unity. Acts of worship like the daily obligatory prayers and fasting are first and foremost expressions of faith and submission, and not meant to unnecessarily burden the believers.

Old Record: The Other Side

I’ve always wanted to write about the ‘other side’ of Old Record but never actually got to doing it. Basically, the idea is the music/movie industry is also partly to blame over the whole pirated media and downloading issue. However, the latest entry on Freakonomics talks exactly about that, so I’ll just post the link to the article:

What’s the Future of the Music Industry? A Freakonomics Quorum

While I don’t buy pirated CD/DVD, I download music, movies, and television shows off the Internet via P2P file-sharing technology. I download music to sample them, because the local radio stations do a poor job of promoting new music of the kind that I like. If I like the music I’ll buy it, either in the form of an actual CD or (sometimes, when I was in the US) through online stores like iTunes Store and the now defunct MSN Music; I delete the music files I don’t like. I download movies that don’t get screened at local cinemas because of one reason or the other, and if I like them enough I’ll buy the DVD, especially if it’s loaded with extras, from Amazon. About the same applies with TV shows. Once a show is aired somewhere on the planet, with the technology that we have today, it’s already ‘out there’.

Awaiting delivery from Amazon:

As Seen on TV

There’s a ton of work to do: mid-terms to mark, finals to prepare, etc. so I decided to sit down and watch some television. Nice.

:P

I am feeling ambivalent about Prison Break 3. The first season was great, which set the stage pretty solidly for season 2, which was also for the most part a great run. However, I was rather disappointed with the end of season 2. The brothers were at last exonerated. At that point they should have just concluded the series and it would’ve been perfect. Instead, the creators decided to put Scofield back into another prison, though this time in Panama, and suggested another layer of conspiracy that may involve some secret government/military experiment.

In other words, it was getting ridiculous, as if they’re just perpetuating the whole ‘adventure’ to make more money.

Prison Break 3 (Fox photo)

Season 3 – at least the first episode – now returns without Sarah Wayne Callies a.k.a Dr. Sara Tancredi, which is another mystery. Is she or is she not still in the show? I hate all of this at the moment, but I’m still watching season 3 nevertheless; at least for now.

Other shows I’m watching, via I’m-not-sure-if-it’s-really-legal downloads, include Burn Notice (new), Californication (new), Eureka (season 2), and Saving Grace (new). Greek (new) also turns out to be quite interesting, though the first 10-episode season is already over. Many of the old favorites are returning, and new shows are coming. Fall is definitely a great time for television.

Ramadan Stories

Apart from the nightly tarawikh prayers, Ramadan in our household is almost like any other time of the year. We normally don’t take lunch anyway, only my parents regularly have breakfast, and dinner is usually around 7 p.m. So, the menu for iftar is also almost no different from a normal dinner menu, with the exception of the customary dates.

I am ‘quite’ picky about food. Not exactly discerning, just picky, in the sense that I don’t eat a lot of stuff like cockles, squid, green vegetables, and most of the exotic local delicacies like budu, tempoyak etc. I have even stopped eating durians. All my relatives have long given up any hope of making my palate more Malay.

Once during Ramadan when I was nine or so I returned from school and had a peek under the food cover, and found a few packs of tapai ubi, fermented cassava. I never tasted it before – never wanted to – but somehow I found myself opening one of the packs and stuffing the content into my mouth.

“Buat apa tu?” Mother caught me.

I (accidentally?) ate tapai, YUCK! I spitted it all out; it was so embarrassing, though till this day I still cannot say which was more embarrassing: that I was caught red-handed eating during the day in Ramadan, or that I ate something so gross. Maybe both.

YUCK!

I’ve never had any tapai since.

Freakin’ Stupid

I
I spent hours yesterday repeatedly reinstalling, updating, and repairing Acrobat Professional, and thinking that “Oh, shit!” my computer’s messed up when it turns out that it was Microsoft’s fault all along. Stupid Microsoft! It all started when I wanted to convert a Word document file to PDF when a message popped up saying “Missing PDFMaker files…”, suggesting that I repair Acrobat Professional.

So I did, again, and again, and again to no avail, until out of frustration I googled up the message: “Missing PDFMaker files”. Apparently, MS Office had automatically and discreetly disabled PDFMaker during one of the automatic updates. There was nothing wrong with my Acrobat Professional installation or the computer at all.

PFFT!

II
The McLaren F1 spy scandal has just got more interesting. Though I’m not a McLaren fan at all, the punishment meted out by the FIA World Motor Sport Council – forfeiture of constructors’ championship points and a $100 million-fine – appeared quite surprisingly harsh at first. I thought I would be happy to read about it, as it means that Ferrari is now the de facto 2007 team champion, but I wasn’t. Quite frankly F1 doesn’t excite me that much anymore and I can’t even remember the last time I watched a full race.

As more details of the affair are released, it is actually surprising that the punishment wasn’t heavier. While McLaren has to submit their cars for inspection in 2008, they are allowed to continue racing their existing cars this season, and the drivers escape any punishment when at least Alonso was also implicated in the scandal. The reason they didn’t impose the heavier punishment they should – a full two-year ban for the whole team including the drivers – was that they didn’t want to upset [British] fans hoping to see rookie Lewis Hamilton winning the drivers’ championship.

Way to go, FIA!

III
Defending champions England were defeated 0 – 36 by South Africa in the Rugby World Cup second Pool A match.

HAHA! HAHAHA! MUAHAHAHAHA!

Go Springboks!

The Aliens are Coming!

Obviously, somebody forgot to brief the Auditor General. There’s only one explanation for the government’s paying RM224.00 for RM40.00-screwdrivers, RM1,146.56 for RM160.00-pens, and RM10,700.00 for RM417.00-books etc:

We are preparing for an alien invasion!

It's all hush-hush, of course; we can’t let the alien know now, can we? There is a top-secret massive underground complex stretching from under the Ministry of Defence Complex in Jalan Padang Tembak to the Kuala Lumpur City Centre, with secret emergency evacuation exits through the Putra LRT and SMART tunnels.

Of course, you don’t hear it from me.

President Whitmore: I don't understand, where does all this come from? How do you get funding for something like this?
Julius Levinson: You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?

Independence Day (1996)

Word of the Day

pasrah

1. Jw menyerah;
   
2. memasrahkan menyerahkan: kepada-Nyalah kita pasrahkan doa dan harapan;
   
3. terpasrah terserah;
   
4. kepasrahan keadaan menyerah diri (nasib) kpd Tuhan: ~ doa utk menunggu saat-saat berkabung.

English: to submit to one's fate.

A relatively common word, especially in literature, that I’ve never understood and known how to use (and never thought of looking up the dictionary). Now I do, though not the kind of word I look forward to using.

“Aku pasrah” – Suapi

On a lighter note, the origin is Javanese – no wonder I don’t know it given my Bugis-Minang heritage.

:-P

Monday Morning Shower

The wet Monday morning created a three-mile long traffic jam when a trailer truck decided to fornicate with the road divider. On the other side too, because everybody loves a good show. It must have been quite a storm last night, for a fallen tree then upset the not-so-merry-go-round one-way campus traffic. Needless to say, I was late.

Three classes and three tests summed up my day today. YAWN. Luckily I was not there to take them; you wouldn’t believe that you can get so tired doing nothing. One more tomorrow and I’m done.

Interestingly, everybody gets sick or has some close relative pass away during mid-term season.

Visiting fellow Pak Suherman gave history lessons last Friday

Profiled

All UK ‘must be on DNA database’

The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said.

Lord Justice Sedley told BBC News the current England and Wales database, which holds DNA from crime suspects and scenes, was “indefensible”.

He added it would be fairer to include “everybody, guilty or innocent” on it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6979138.stm

The UK maintains a DNA database of everyone accused of committing crimes. While it helps towards solving a lot of criminal cases, as anyone who’s watched enough CSI (or not!) could have imagined, it is becoming an issue now that DNA profiles of people who are cleared of any criminal wrongdoings remain in the database.

I’ve always thought for a country like Malaysia, where the government already has everybody’s fingerprints on record for the national identity card system so violation of civil liberties should not be so much an issue, it’s only natural that we ‘progress’ to having a national DNA database, once we can get the practical issues and logistics ironed out.

fingerprint by stadma at deviantART

Stay

kl tower by purplisyh at deviantART

Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
by U2, from the album Zooropa (1993) [watch it on YouTube*]

Green light, Seven Eleven
You stop in for a pack of cigarettes
You don’t smoke, don’t even want to
Hey now, check your change

Dressed up like a car crash
Your wheels are turnin’ but you’re upside down
You say when he hits you, you don’t mind
Because when he hurts you, you feel alive
Is that what it is?

Red lights, grey morning
You stumble out of a hole in the ground
A vampire or a victim
It depends on who’s around

You used to stay in to watch the adverts
You could lip-synch to the talk shows
And if you look, you look through me
And when you talk, you talk at me
And when I touch you, you don’t feel a thing

If I could stay, then the night would give you up.
Stay, and the day would keep its trust.
Stay, and the night would be enough.

Faraway, so close
Up with the static and the radio.
With satellite television
You can go anywhere:
Miami, New Orleans
London, Belfast and Berlin

And, if you listen, I can’t call
And, if you jump, you just might fall
And, if you shout, I’ll only hear you

If I could stay, then the night would give you up
Stay, and the day would keep its trust
Stay with the demons you drowned
Stay with the spirit I found
Stay, and the night would be enough

Three o’clock in the morning
It’s quiet, there’s no one around
Just the bang and the clatter
As an angel runs to ground
Just the bang and the clatter
As an angel hits the ground.

The song that got me hooked to U2.

So close, yet so far.

__________
* Universal Music puts the video on YouTube for all the world to see, yet doesn’t allow it to be embedded elsewhere. Go figure the primitive logic of these corporations!

Dekat Tapi Jauh

“Siapakah akan jadi anak gemilang [Malaysia]?” asked Kam, via text message, on Sunday. “Who will be Anak Gemilang Malaysia?”

“Jauh dari Boston pun boleh hantar SMS?” asked mom, amazed that I received a text message all the way from the other side of the world. She forgot that we also communicated through text messages when I was in Boston.

But, “Anak Gemilang Malaysia?” I asked in return. Yes, we like to talk in endless series of questions.

I don’t watch television. Correction: I don’t watch local terrestrial television; and there are many reasons why. The top three:

1. My dad usually holds the remote, and he rarely stays on a channel for more than two minutes. Even when/if he settles on a program, he likes to press the mute button – “Sakit telinga aku” – often during the best, very crucial parts. They hurt his ears, right.
   
   
2. My mom is next in line in the remote-holder hierarchy, because she has ‘regular programs’ she ‘has to watch’, although most of the time it’s actually the other way round: the television watching her dozing off.
   
   
3. They, local TV, not my parents, suck.
   

So, in short, again, I don’t watch local television. Kam does.

I did before, way back, when there was no other kind of television. I did too when I was in Boston, catching TV3’s Bulletin Utama, Majalah 3 etc. online on TM’s bluehyppo.com. RTM supposed to have a live stream as well, but it didn’t work. I suppose it works now.

So close, yet so far.

__________
PS: The Tokoh Anak Gemilang Malaysia award, which was shown concurrently by Astro and RTM, went to Datuk Onn Jaafar. Any Malaysian who doesn’t know who the guy was really need to look for their (children's) school history textbooks.

When I Read Newspapers

Why do our national service (NS) trainees keep dying? I saw this on Bernama:

September 02, 2007 11:42 AM

NS Trainee Dies

KUANTAN, Sept 2 (Bernama) -- A National Service trainee at the Cheneh Cemerlang camp in Kemaman died on the way to the Tengku Ampuan Afzan (HTAA) Hospital here Saturday night.

Mohd Rafi Ameer, 18, died at 10.30pm after having fever since last week, his sister, Jubaidah, said Sunday.

Jubaidah, 25, when met at the hospital, said her brother called her at their home in Bukit Rotan, Kuala Selangor, last Saturday, to inform her that he had fever and his leg was swollen for nearly week after he fell during training.

…

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news.php?id=282514

The rest of the article is just blah-blah-blah; you know the usual stuff. First, they’ll wait for some preliminary report, in this case the autopsy. Then, a committee will be formed to look into the matter. There may even be a promise thrown in for good measure that steps will be taken to ensure that the tragedy will not repeat in the future, but in the end when the news cool down everybody will just forget about it. Nothing will change.

We have the same script following some major road accident, building collapse, landslide, air crash etc.

The theme is apathy, indifference, for safety and the value of human life. It is not just indifference among the people in authority, but actually the society in general. That much is evident in the general disregard for traffic laws.

Compounding the indifference is lack of accountability. The proverbial buck simply never stops. I suppose ultimately we all just have to accept that everything is takdir – fate, which is just another way of saying “Shit happens”.

It is high time that we to start suing people.

__________
PS: Oh yes, I read almost exclusively mainstream, official press because I’m a sucker for propaganda.

PPS: Speaking of propaganda, who can beat the ultimate master of the craft – former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf?
:-D

Now and Forever

[a.k.a. Obligatory Merdeka entry]

Here it is again, the annual flag-waving season. Wave the Jalur Gemilang, shout “Merdeka!” and call yourself patriotic and a good Malaysian.

;-)

People still talk, and I bet will always go on talking, about minda yang belum merdeka – the ‘unliberated’ mind – and ertikata sebenar merdeka – the ‘real’ meaning of merdeka. Whatever merdeka means to you, the event fifty years ago gave us the chance to shape our own future as a people. Of course, in a world where everything is relative, let’s say that it gave us a higher chance of having more influence on our own future. Let’s live it. Living it, of course, while honoring those who fought for it and preserving it for the future generations.

In the spirit of my previous merdeka entry, here’s a mat saleh song for us, and for all the other peoples in the world with no merdeka of their own to celebrate. I couldn't find another classic, so this one will have to do.

Miss Sarajevo
by U2/Passengers with Luciano Pavarotti (1995)

Is there a time for keeping your distance?
A time to turn your eyes away?
Is there a time for keeping your head down?
For getting on with your day?

Is there a time for kohl and lipstick?
A time for cutting hair?
Is there a time for high street shopping?
To find the right dress to wear?

Here she comes
Heads turn around
Here she comes
To take her crown

Is there a time to run for cover?
A time for kiss and tell?
Is there a time for different colors?
Different names you find it hard to spell?

Is there a time for first communion?
A time for East 17?
Is there a time to turn to Mecca?
Is there a time to be a beauty queen?

Here she comes
Beauty plays the clown
Here she comes
Surreal in her crown

Dici che il fiume
Trova la via al mare
E come il fiume
Giungerai a me

Oltre i confini
E le terre assetate
Dici che come fiume

L’amore giungera
L’more
E non so piu pregare
E nell’amore non so piu sperare
E quell’amore non so piu aspettare

Is there a time for tying ribbons?
A time for Christmas trees?
Is there a time for laying tables?
And the night is set to freeze?

Run Around

I
The students invited me to attend the closing ceremony of some program they had on Saturday and sent three girls and two letters to get me to come. Er... when was it again, Saturday?

HAHA! HAHAHA! MUAHAHAHAHA!

That’s one thing about being academic advisor: you get invited to just about every other student activity you don’t want to have anything to do with. I just don’t get it with these people; if I were the (student) organizer I wouldn’t want to have lecturers come to my event if I can help it.

Of course, it helped too that the invitation letters had a giant loophole that allowed me to skip the whole thing without an ounce of guilt.

HAHA! HAHAHA! MUAHAHAHAHA!

There was no closing ceremony listed in the program itinerary!

I’m so bad. But hey, I’m just the academic advisor, not the babysitter.

II

The program book was actually quite a good read

The 4^th Session of the 23^rd IIUM Convocation was such a bore. The Ministry of Higher Education Sec-Gen missed a huge opportunity when giving his speech – monotonously reading the text at a gazillion words per minute! I suppose he knew that nobody came to hear him speak. The plus side was the whole thing was finished – all diplomas, or should I say diploma folders, were given out – in just about two hours. Oh, and instead of the embarrassingly inappropriate ‘rock band’ last year, an angklung orchestra performed during the intermission.

III
What’s the most important thing in life? Well, people write books on that (or watch Adam Sandler movies, eh?). I sat with the parents of an award winner at the post-ceremony high tea, and the father went on and on about how many thousands his children are earning working with this and that multinationals, and telling me again and again how right he was to tell them to study in the business fields because “That’s where the money is”. I got the point, pop!

His 15 seconds, I guess. He didn’t want his daughters to become doctors, because doctors don’t make much money. I suppose he wouldn’t want them to become teachers too.

Whatever makes you happy, huh?

Carousel

[WARNING: Long entry]

As teachers, our job is to help students successfully complete their studies, but sometimes I cannot help wondering if some of them can, or even want to, be helped.

There is a student in my Introduction to Economics class who is repeating the course. He failed the course last semester despite collecting average grades for his coursework, which was mostly group assignments, after a very poor performance in the final exam. He came to see me when the results were out visibly shocked and upset, pleading that he has a medical condition that’s affecting his studies, but at that point that information was useless.

Recently, he came to see me again after doing very poorly in a quiz. He reminded me about his epilepsy, which is aggravated by stress. He is definitely stressed over the possibility of failing course again.

“Do you need help with the course materials?” I asked. “You know you can always ask me if you have questions, right?”

“No, no problem,” he said.

I asked how he studies for the course. He said that he spend hours every night going through the materials in the textbook. When I asked how exactly he studies, he said that he would read, translate the materials into his first language, and memorize them. I told him that he should emphasize on understanding the materials instead of just memorizing them, but he said that memorizing works for him, coming from a religious school background. Then, I asked if he studies with a friend. “No,” he said. “No problem.” He’s always studied alone in the past.

Now, I was starting to get pissed. Studying alone obviously is not working, I argued, given the fact that he already failed the course last semester. He claimed to not knowing anybody in the class. “Get to know some, then,” I said. He said that he’s a very shy person.

That has got to be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard. I was definitely pissed then; there was no way getting through to this guy.

I needed a break, so asked him to do a question he got wrong from the last quiz, which was already discussed in class. He stared at the question for a couple of minutes like it was in Greek before asking me to explain the question. I explained it. He gave me a puzzled I-don't-get-it look. “Don’t you understand what I was saying?” I asked. He shook his head.

“Can’t you see? This working-on-your-own thing is not working. You need to find someone to study with!”

He argued that he’s used to doing things his (goddamn stupid) way – studying all alone by himself – that it would be difficult for him to change now.

I could bite his head off.

I explained to him that he is both really weak in the course and has a serious problem with his command of English. He gasped in disbelieve when I suggested that he drop the course and retake it later when he is more settled. After all, he is only in his second year while the rest of the class are mostly in their third and fourth year.

When I asked if he sees his department academic advisor, he said that he sees his academic advisor during pre-registration. AHA! Only weak students (are required to) see academic advisors during pre-registration. “Go talk to your academic advisor,” I said. “Get help.” His department academic advisor would know the specific requirements of his program so would be the best person to help him. He said that he doesn’t think that the academic advisor would have time to see him.

“Have you even tried to see her?” I asked. “Academic advisors are paid to make time to see students.” He said that he doesn’t think that the academic advisor could help him.

“No problem,” he kept saying.

Now, I was the one puzzled. “So what is it, really, that you want from me?” I asked. A free pass?

“No, no problem,” he said.

__________
PS: He had a brief seizure while we were having a quiz in class on Thursday. It totally freaked me out. He appeared embarrassed by the whole ordeal but still chose to get on with the quiz. I thought about talking to him when the class was over but he ran off before I could call him.

Chocolates!

[Still in sick mode]

Chocolate for Digital Media by psivamp at deviantART

As if I need another excuse to eat (or drink) chocolates, chocolates are good for cough too*!

__________
* Alright, I read it in Wikipedia, not the most reliable of sources, you’d say, so read it yourself, smart ass. Link to the referred very reliable and very scientific The FASEB Journal article is here.

Strike Two

+Cough+ by horrormove at deviantART

I really should’ve known better: colds come in twos. At least for me they usually do:

1. It sucks that I’m back with a stuffed nose and painful coughs in the morning from the overnight phlegm buildup. YUCK!
   
2. It [sucks]² that my voice is reduced to something between a whine and a whisper when I speak, though ever so slowly and carefully lest I break into a lung-spitting cough; the upside of which is the students suddenly become so quiet and attentive.
   
3. It [sucks]³ that I got so tired I had to leave work early. Luckily, I have only one class today; but three tomorrow! Still, I’d rather labor through the classes than have them cancelled and replaced later.
   Even dinner is exhausting.
   
4. It [sucks]⁴ that I practically had a free day-off I had to spend at home, in bed, no thanks to the goddamn cold.

I'm whining, I know. Of course, I’m ever so thankful for everything else. And I'm definitely not going to a clinic just for a stupid cold.

:-P

Autumn Reflections

autumn-reflections by daewoniii at deviantART

A new desktop wallpaper; I have to stretch it to fit the 1280x800 screen on the notebook but it still looks awesome. A little bit early for autumn, though.

Prof. Muhammad Yunus gave a wonderful little speech at the university today, relating to his experience in setting up the Grameen Bank and promoting social business. His message at the end of the lecture was simple – take charge.

(Got to) Have Faith

“This is not an English class and I’m not marking your language,” I always tell my students on the first day of class, “but if I cannot understand what you’re writing, then it does become an issue”.

Especially as an English (and Arabic)-medium institution, the students’ command of English is embarrassing. Forget about grammar, they often can’t even spell, which is unfortunate considering English is taught from Day One in our education system. Half the time I cannot understand what’s being written. The other half the sentences say exactly the opposite of what the students presumably mean to say.

Since we really want to give the students marks and make them pass, it is very tempting to resort to scanning for keywords or guessing – very optimistically – what they are trying to say.

Both are, well, wrong. So like it or not I still have to look at the language, as ultimately I can only take the answers literally, at face value, because as much as I fancy the idea, I really cannot read minds.

I gave a quiz today, and here are some of the interesting questions I get from the students during the quiz:

Sir, what does lumber mean?
Lumber is processed timber.
What is timber?

(Same student) What is a mill?

(Another student) What are bowling balls?

Quite recently a minister proposed that universities conduct programs to improve students’ general knowledge. Yes, why the hell not? We can teach them how to juggle too while we’re at it.

:-P

Revelations

I never thought I’d ever be glad that I sneezed. Well, I did (sneeze) and I was (glad). I woke up on Saturday morning with a very blocked nose that I actually wondered how I could possible wake up still breathing. Then I sneezed, hard.

PHEW!

In the meantime our house is under siege by ants. Previously we were invaded by this species of red ants my mother calls semut gila – crazy ants because they seem to run around like crazy, well, ants. Now, those thin loony ants are taken over by some kind of mean, stocky black ants I like to call semut manggis – mangosteen ants – because my first recollection of them were on the old mangosteen tree we had behind the house. So now every morning my mother has a new routine engaging the ants in chemical warfare, and whenever we’re not careful the ants will strike back by swarming the kitchen cabinet or dinner table.

Two interesting news I found online today. In the first, a seventeen-year-old girl in the UK was taken to the hospital for caffeine overdose, after downing seven double espressos while working the family shop. It basically confirms that all you heavy coffee drinkers are nothing but a bunch of caffeine junkies. LOL. I typically have only one dose of coffee a day, if any, when I drop by Dunkin Donuts for the Iced Coffee/Latte Combo breakfast on the way to work.

Coffee by kris-wilson at deviantART

In the second, in the Health & Science section of the International Herald Tribune was an article called ‘Sex surveys don’t add up’ by Gina Kolata. Basically, sex surveys consistently report that men are more promiscuous and have more sex partners than women. Everybody seems to accept that because men are supposedly biologically inclined to spread their genes. The problem is the finding doesn’t make sense mathematically when the male-female ratio in the population is about equal.

As explained by (Emeritus) Prof. David Gale from the University of California:

By way of dramatization, we change the context slightly and will prove what will be called the High School Prom Theorem. We suppose that on the day after the prom, each girl is asked to give the number of boys she danced with. These numbers are then added up, giving a number G. The same information is then obtained from the boys, giving a number B.

Theorem: G = B

Proof: Both G and B are equal to C, the number of couples who danced together at the prom. QED.

The researchers can't explain it, but one possible explanation that I particularly like is that men exaggerate while women understate their numbers to conform to societal expectations and stereotypes.

Go figure!

__________
PS: Scalzi has a really interesting explanation to the whole conundrum here.