T-shirts, etc

Still waiting for my books!

In the mean time, J!NX had another round of offers to take $5 off the price of each shirt for orders of three shirts or more. So I finally bought that WoW Arthas T-shirt, plus three others, MUAHAHA!

Some related dates for future reference:

J!NX order placed: March 20
Package mailed (via USPS Priority Mail): March 20
Estimated delivery date: April 3-10
Package cleared by Malaysian Customs: March 25
Package received: March 26

Amazon order placed: March 5
Package mailed: March 6
Estimated delivery date: April 11
Package received: ???

I’m guessing as the recession continues there’ll be more offers to come. Bad, bad recession!
:P

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PICTURE from top to bottom: J!NX You Don't Pay Me to Talk Pretty (featuring Jayne from Firefly), WoW Arthas, and limited releases Mod Shop (long sleeve thermal) and Terror Bot T-shirt designs.

Renovations

I wasn’t satisfied with the old font and color combo, and thought the background image made the pages look cluttered, but my colleagues liked them. So, while working on posting the list of papers for the conference I thought I’d revise the template and make it both cleaner and simpler. Tada!

The old:

The new:

The conference is now just a little over a month away, and everyone’s going crazy!

Hugo

Nominees for the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novel are:

• Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK)
• Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
• Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

WHEEE! I’ve read Zoe’s Tale and Little Brother, both totally awesome; am *still reading* Saturn’s Children, and expects Anathem and The Graveyard Book to arrive soon from Amazon. So now I know I’m not reading crap.

:P

Students

I’m absolutely swamped with work this week, so while I clear out my to-do list, here’s the latest from xkcd:

Students @ xkcd

(Click for full size)

Statistics

Because people always ask me about it but I can never bother to remember:

Total number of students in the kulliyyah: 2340
Number of international students: 338 (14.44% of total students)

Top eight countries of origin of international students:

1. Maldives (43)
2. Bangladesh and Indonesia (41, respectively)
   
3. Somalia (22)
4. India (18)
5. Thailand (17)
6. Sri Lanka (16)
7. Bosnia and Herzegovina (15)

Students in the departments:

• Accounting: 722
• Business Administration: 542
• Economics: 418
• ENM: 658

I assume these are current Semester 2 2008/2009 figures. I would like to see the figure for non-bumiputra/non-Muslim Malaysian students. Perhaps I will ask. First-year students yet to join any of the three departments/programs are classified ENM, which stands for Economics and Management.

As a student, I remained on ENM-status until well into my third year and had taken all the Economics department-required courses. I only registered into the Economics department after receiving an earful from the then kulliyyah Senior AD. Now, however, students must officially apply and join a department before they’re allowed to take second-year courses. :D

Home Improvement

I bought a Cooler Master “notebook cooler”-cum-USB hub yesterday. It’s not that my notebook is running unusually hot, even though I keep it running all the time, but I like the feel of having it slightly elevated and at an incline. That I now have a fan running to cool the bottom of the notebook and four extra USB ports is a nice bonus, plus the whole setup looks quite cool. I also considered buying a 16GB flash drive, but figured it will be a convenient excuse to go to PC Fair next month.

The mystery of my stuck wardrobe door is now solved! One of the sliding doors got stuck soon after I bought it in 2007. The only way I could open the door is to raise it slightly before sliding it open. Recently, I installed handles on the door so I can lift it properly without potentially damaging the door frame in the long term; but since then the problem actually grew worse. Finally, on Saturday I found out that one of the rollers had actually broken. I then took the broken roller, which was literally in pieces, to the furniture shop towkeh. He disappeared into the backroom and came out a few minutes later with a free replacement. Now my wardrobe is as good as new – YAY!

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There is a special convocation ceremony to give an honorary degree to the PM at 4 p.m. I am not planning to go although attendance is supposedly compulsory. Meh. Supposedly, there is a list of designated names to attend the ceremony. Supposedly too, my name is not in the list. :P

When

On Thursday:

Sir, when will we get our mid-term back?
When I finish marking them.
When will you finish marking them?
When I give them back to you.

The paper was two weeks ago. I am so bad.

Knowing

I know that I should have gone to bed, at around midnight, so I can have enough sleep to wake up fresh in the morning. Yet here I am, as always, wide awake till at least 2 a.m.

Knowing what’s right and doing it are two different things altogether, aren’t they?

Do, or do not. There is no try.

Yoda, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

School’s Out!

This is recurring issue year in and year out, but I really don’t understand why it matters so much how many straight-A students get to go to fully residential schools (sekolah berasrama penuh, SBP).

Gaining admission to an SBP should not be the reason to get straight As. It really can’t be helped if some wide-eyed child develops such a motivation on her own. However, any parent or teacher who tells a child to study hard to get straight As so she can go to a boarding school should be smacked, real hard, for feeding false promises.

The issue is not be about saving school children from frustration at an early age (which is not necessarily a bad thing, c’est la vie!) but about equipping them with the right values. Education should be valued for its own sake. SBPs are expensive to build and run. Instead of building more fully residential schools, we need the government to improve the quality of all schools for all school children.

Wednesday March 11, 2009
‘A’ squeeze for boarding school places

A TOTAL of 46,600 students scored straight As last year but only 12% will be given places to continue their secondary education in residential schools, said Deputy Education Minister Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong.

He told Datuk Juslie Ajirol (BN -Libaran) that although all the students are eligible for a place in boarding schools, only 6,000 places are available.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/3/11/parliament/3447556&sec=parliament

Besides, if fully residential schools are to remain the object of aspiration as they are now, they need to be scarce. It’s basic demand and supply: too much supply of a good decreases its value.

Feedback

Apparently, my totally awesome new dark color scheme was impossible for people with terrible eyesight, crappy old CRT monitor and in poor lighting. I’ve now made it a bit less dark.

BTW, apart from official websites for movies, bands and the like, I absolutely hate web pages – especially MySpace pages – with embedded audio clips. They’re just frakking annoying.

Pirate Bay

Pirate Bay @ xkcd

Requests Denied

The first:

salam sir, regarding to the date for the 2nd test econ 1500 is on 11 march, wednesday. actually on date day, i already book for my JPJ test and i already paid the payment for it. i can't change that date and that JPJ is only conducted on Wednesday only. so sir, can i been given a chance to do the quiz on other day earlier, or after 11 March. i m sorry for it sir. i went to see you to tell about this, but u r not at your room.

The second:

assalamu'alaikum...
sir, i would like to request something. can we postpone the test on this wednesday to the other day? this is because i have jpj test on that day. if sir don' want to postpone it, can you give me chance to do it on the other day? i hope you will take it into your consideration. i hope sir can reply this message. thank you..

I could postpone the said test, but I am not going to. I am not that nice. Most importantly, it is just wrong. The test is to be held during regular class hours. We are in the middle of the semester, in a full-time program, and the students are full-time students. Asking for a test to be postponed or rescheduled because you are taking a driving test is no different from asking to postpone a class because you want to go on a picnic or to a sale.

Nobody said anything when I announced the date. If it weren’t for the test, I suppose they would have just skipped the class without even a word.

Generation Gap?

WTF? I see that Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience is showing at the local cinemas, which begs the question: which is bigger – Jonas Brothers or U2?

How does Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, from a band with only three full albums, scoring 31% “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes, get shown; while U2 3D, described as “even better than the real thing” with a 92% “fresh” rating, from the absolute biggest live band on the planet, do not?

Watched, Watching

I am currently stuck reading Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross. Set in a far away android-populated post-human future, this book turns out not one I can just lose myself into from the first page. Perhaps I haven’t really tried. Note to self: finish it this weekend.

On Wednesday evening we were at Mutiara Damansara when my brother suggested we check out the Cathay cinema at Cineleisure Damansara. It was my first time there; the convenience of location and most importantly online ticketing mean I always go to GSC 1 Utama for my weekly movie fix. We went in just in time to catch Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. God, it was one really bad movie. Worse, it was the top-selling movie last weekend!

Thankfully, the trauma of watching The Legend of Chun Li didn’t have to linger in my mind for too long because last night we went to see Watchmen. For a work generally considered “unfilmable”, I think Zack Snyder did a good job in translating the graphic novel into a movie. Jackie Earle Haley was excellent as Rorschach but Matthew Goode was too skinny as Ozymandias. I love the soundtrack.

IIRC the movie was shortened from four hours to two hours and 43 minutes (more so after local censorship cuts). Hopefully, this means that an extended version will be released on DVD.

Back to books, I am looking forward to receiving Anathem, The Forever War, and The Graveyard Book soon – another reason to finish reading the books I have now! Meanwhile, Random House is offering the first book of some (and hopefully more) of its “most acclaimed” science fiction/fantasy series as free downloads at its SFF portal Suvudu. Titles currently offered include Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon.

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LINK: Suvudu Free Book Library

Lessons

INSPECT YOUR GEAR. On our very first day in Bali, the outsole of my right shoe came off as I entered our hotel room. Yes, shit happens, but I wasn’t planning on getting wet so didn’t even pack spare flip flops. Apparently, the rubber soles of both shoes have worn almost completely flat. They were still very much wearable, though, especially after I patched the lose rubber up with half a tube of contact glue that cost me Rp2,500 at a local hardware store.

INVEST. I should really buy a proper backpack for future travels. I took the old notebook backpack (sans notebook) for the trip, which is both too heavy and too small. I am already used to the weight, lugging my 3.5 kg full-size notebook to and from work every day, but the small internal volume (due to the protective padding) prove quite a huge setback.

BE PREPARED. Another important item, apart from the spare flip flops, that I sacrificed was a spare pair of pants. I figured, with daytime temperature of between 30 and 35 degrees Celsius, Bali is no different than Kuala Lumpur, so I could risk it with just the pair of jeans I was wearing. What a mistake that was; I forgot the last time I actually trekked around KL in the sun. It didn’t take long at all before I was soaked in sweat. Now I have two pairs of shorts I doubt I’ll ever wear again. :P

It rained heavily during much of the second day. I left my rain gear too but thankfully we spent most of the time in the car comfortably dry.

TECHNOLOGY FAILS. Mobile phone service was erratic throughout the trip. Only once a phone call got through; it wasn’t much better with text messages. ATM machines were just as moody. One minute they worked and the next minute they said that my account didn’t exist. This brings me to the next point...

BRING ENOUGH CASH. Not all shops accept plastic. When they do, the connection may be busy or the phone line may fail. Swipe in the wrong place and you card may get cloned. When travelling to strange places, cash is king. My only complaint is the confusing Indonesian huge currency denominations. All those zeroes made my head spin.

GET CORRECT INFORMATION. My travel buddy told me to keep aside Rp100,000 for airport tax. I did, but the actual figure turned out to be Rp150,000. It was nothing major, but I should have known better to do my own homework.

All this while I thought I was the Internet addict but the disconnect didn’t bother me at all, while Suapi insisted on logging in to Facebook every evening. There are still 100-plus unread articles in my Google Reader page, but somehow I find myself not too eager to catch up.

Bali was wonderful, by the way.