Asian Cartoon Exhibition

Went back late yesterday. Woke up at 12.15 p.m. and had my brunch with my roommate. We were having a very brief discussion on the Pengkalan Pasir by-election on Dec 6. He had to conduct the survey on this issue. I believed that BN stands a good change by promoting “Development if you choose BN”. But I hope I am wrong. We used to have our banana leaf in Archa Curry, home-made style India restaurant. Cost me around RM8 for one fried fish and three vegetables. After all, I had to find my way to the Asian cartoon exhibition. I am not really crazy about manga. But the topic of this exhibition caught my interest.

I went to the KL library near Merdeka Square, only to find out that the exhibition is held in National Library. Ahh…..had to pay for the RM2 parking fee for nothing. Then, I tried to find the way there. Guess where I was this time? National Art Gallery Center….. Since I was there, “why not pay a visit” I whispered to myself. Then, saw a signboard writing [Work in Progress]. Never mind, just had a snapshot on the painting about footballer (pic. 5). After that, I had decided to walk to the National Library. Not far way from where I was.

“How’s IT in Asia?”

This is the topic for the 9th Asian Cartoon Exhibition. I managed to take only 5 pictures until the security guard said to me, “Camera is not allowed here”. The Asian countries that involved in this exhibition are Malaysia, Japan, Korea, India, Filipina and China.

“Soccer Game” or “Soccer”….
Youngsters nowadays prefer to play soccer on the computer rather than on the pitch.

“Dream to be a Singer” (pic. 4)
Anyone can become a singer with the help of technology.

“WWW”
World Wide Web but peoples are actually all alone.

........ ^__^

Overall, cartoonists from Japan seem to be optimism that technologies or ITs are helping our daily life. Others have made a point that physical human interaction will be minimized due to the booming of ITs. With the sense of humors by the cartoonists, it is worth to pay a visit. I recommend those who stay in KL to have a look by yourself. It’s not too late to do that!

Never Say Never

Switched on the radio in my car this morning and heard the phrase "Never Say Never". Forgot about what the DJ said. Straight away I was thinking about my favorite football club since my childhood time - Manchester United. David Beckham, a golden boy in Manchester football history once answered the question from a journalist regarding the possibility of joining Real Madrid. For those who are not a football mania, Real Madrid is actually another famous football club in Spain but not so popular compared to Manchester United. Not before Beckham joined the club! Beckham’s answer was rather simple. “Never say never in your life”. After all, we all know that he is now playing for this Spanish club. His performance is well bellow par but his popularity has helped this Spanish club to sell its merchandises. The financial income for this Spanish club looks healthier than before. Thanks to Beckham! Thanks to ManU! He is a famous football icon in the world, especially in East Asia. Anyway, not in United State which football is known as soccer. Just to let you all know, Real Madrid has not won any trophy after Beckham joined the team. But it hardly matters at all, the club is making money. Real Madrid is going nowhere after watching the match between them and Barcelona. Ronaldinho could not help you to sell the merchandises but he wins you the match. Sorry, talking too much about football. I just wonder “when and where” to use this phrase. Time will tell!

Attended two training sessions on 3GPP stack last two days. The previous training session using web conferencing was not good enough due to the voice quality and the damned slow power point presentation in Netspoke. I don’t have any idea on how the mechanism of the conference call works. But, you really frustrated with the voice quality when various echo and noise coming from all the parties. The Internet connectivity was also too slow and not able to support the Netspoke’s features. The switching of one slide to another took more than one minute and worse if the slide contains a lot of pictures. Perhaps, the only way to solve this problem is asking for specific amount of bandwidth allocation prior to web conferencing. Recently, I have experienced that a technical support web page took almost 10~15 seconds to access. I think that this is because the security features have been put onto the server. I was not patient enough to wait for this and showed my unsatisfaction in the recent survey form. If I want to complaint next time, I mind as well complaint to the internet service provider…..

Alright, till now. It's time to back to my work…

Presentation in IEEE Conference

Did my first presentation in the IEEE MICC-ICON conference which was held in Berjaya Time Square, KL. The paper is related to “802.11 MAC implementation using SDL”. Not much scientific research contribution in this paper, but just to highlight the design methodology used by our research team. SDL has been widely used in the Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavia, but not so popular in Asia, except East Asia. It is particularly useful for modeling distributed and real time system, and a lot of protocol specification by ITU-T is written in this language. Another language, known as TTCN, is useful for testing and verification purposes. Few peoples in Malaysia heard about this…

There were more than 200 papers in the 2-days conference and hence it’s hard to put high expectation on this conference. I have been assigned to chair my first ever session in a conference. One of participants from Iran did not satisfied with too many parallel sessions at the same time, seven in a time! Able to meet new friends in this conference… Guillaume (Pic. 1) from French, asked me to bring him to Chinese Restaurant. So, we ended up in Nam Yong in Petaling Street and he bought the Chinese tea for his “wife” or more precisely "special girlfriend". Claus (Middle in Pic.2), a German who speaks fluently Mandarin after staying 5 years in China, kept asking me about alaysia during our dinner time. He amazed that majority of the Chinese here speak in Mandarin and condemned those Chinese in Singapore who give up their mother tongue language. He actually criticized a lot. He even said that “Fxxx off, Bush”. Ah, fyi, he is now working in California…. Met my seniors as well, Sum, who studied in Niigata University in Japan. He came back for the conference cum vacation. We spent our coffee time in Starbuck located in the Boarder Bookstore. See the picture!! A “pig” was surfing the Internet and looking for AV using his stylish VAIO…:-P

A birthday party for Siew Ling and Xu Zhuang on Tuesday night...... a small farewell for Jinho on Thrusday night as well! We all expect the girfts from him on 3rd Dec... Alright… it’s time to back to my FP/ATM work on 8260 board.

The Future of Telecommunication

Yesterday, attended the technical talk entitled "The Future of Telecommunication - Technologies and Disruptions" by Roberto Sarraco, Chairman of European Center of Excellence in Telecommunication of Italia. He is one of the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. Yes, this is again part of the IEEE ComSoc activities. The whole technical talk was mainly emphasizing on the necessary of service provides to change their paradigms. To survive in the future, the service providers should put efforts on improving their value chains instead of just attracting more subscribers. I wonder whether the cellular providers in Malaysia have aware on this and do something to improve their services. They seem to keep on manipulating their subscription fees by offering plan A, plan B ….etc. but without any improvements on the services. I also frustrate with the advertisement of our local cellular providers that mislead our consumers. They keep putting the promising advertisement on 3G service, but I doubt the capabilities of them to deliver what they promise. Mr. Roberto also insists that telecommunication service providers have the wrong perspective regarding the broadband communication. Broadband communication is simply increasing the capacity or offering a big pipe to the customer but nothing to do with the speed. I think that majority of the consumers actually don’t care about what is broadband. They just want something that satisfy their needs and if possible, free of charge. “It’s free, so why I bother!” Overall, this was indeed an interesting talk.

For those who are interested in his talk, click on the following link:
http://www.comsoc.org/socstr/memprog/dislec/tut/saracco/saracco.html

A conversation between a 5 years old girl with her 60 years old grandmother:
“Maria! Your mum wants to talk to you. Come!” the old lady shouted.
“Coming now! Grandma,” the girl picked up the phone and started walking away.
The phone fell down and broke. The old lady scolded the girl.
Then, the girl asked, “Grandma, why you tie your phone on the wall?”

Engineer Rules the World

Sent my car to the nearby workshop in Petaling Jaya. The service center is known as Tayaria, which is quite famous in Klang Valley. I have sent my car to this service center for almost two years. I found out that there are different approaches between mechanics in Tayaria compared to those in my hometown, Penang. In Penang, the mechanic will use all the hard way to “fix and repair” the parts in your car whereby the mechanic in Tayaria always said to you, “We need to “replace” the XX since it has spoiled already”. At the end, I have to replace my spark plug and air filter every three months. Maybe, replace with a new one is easier and faster compared to fix and repair. Or maybe, mechanics in Penang have to first consider how to reduce the cost of services otherwise they will lost their customers.

Back to the today’s topic, engineers rule the world. Do you think so? Almost all leaders in this world are coming from the social science educational background. I still remember that one of my lecturers told me that engineers will always be ruled by those from arts stream. So, be prepared to work under them. However, there is an interesting fact which can be good inspiration for those who studies engineering and would like to become the leader of a country. For the first time ever, a country with 1.3 billion peoples and GDP per capita USD 5600 has its technocratic leadership in the highest tier in the only ruling party. Yes! It is China which is believed to go to shape the future world’s economic.

List of members in the China’s elite Politburo Standing Committee, the highest tier within the Communist Party.
- Hu JinTao, President of the People’s Republic of China, TsingHua University, Water Conservacny Engineering.
- Huang Ju, Tsinghua University, Electricl Engineering.
- Jia QingLin, Hebei Engineering College, Electric Power Engineering.
- Li ChangChun, Electric Machinery, Harbin Institute of Technology,
- Luo Gan, Freiber University of Mining and Technology, Germany.
- Wen JiaBao, Geology and Minerals Engineering, Beijing Institute of Geology.
- Wu BangGuo, Radio Engineering, TsingHua Univeristy.
- Wu GuanZheng, Power Engineering, TsingHua University.
- Zeng QingHing, Automatic Control Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology.

Sound interesting!! China is pushing hard towards science and technology development. So, it’s much better to have those who have the knowledge on “know how”. Besides, I think that it is also to ensure the China’s society is still remained under the control of the only communist ruling party in the world now. They need those who have the knowledge on applying Internet censorship. Who would like to help them on this? US, the country which has the most sophisticated and centralized network infrastructure…

Finklstein:
“The Internet considers censorship to be damage, and routes around it. I say, what is censorship is in the router?”

"Peaceful" Gathering

Managed to sneak out the office around 10.30 a.m. to join a “Peaceful” demonstration in UPM. Just to show the support for the students who advocate "fair student election". They were going to attend the trials today. But, I’m not too sure that we should call it a trial. Do you think that the students will escape from punishments? No way! There will be no opportunities for the students to defend themselves from the beginning. Students’ rights are long been tied due to the notorious College and University Act (AUKU). Anyway, I believe that the universities’ authorities have acted smarter compared to my uni days. At least, they allow some “peaceful” demonstration or gathering to go on. No direct confrontation with the students. Simply ask the Special Agents to take the photos to create the physiological fear amongst the attendees. "Are you going to be caught next? Be prepared" Oppss….actually my old university were also doing the same last time. No different !!!

Small picture this time. Sorry.... So that there will be no more victims.

Restore Our Student Rights!

Please sign this petition and circulate the news. We need a pro-active and dynamic society.
http://www.petitiononline.com/poll2005/petition.html

Raya Break

A 6-days break last week. It was quite a long time since I last enjoyed such a long break. Back to Penang. Went to visit my colleagues, Syed and Aziz for Raya celebration. And thanks to Jinho. I had the opportunity to visit flea market in Batu Ferringhi after 27 years! Then, revisit Langkawi again. The only time that I visited Langkawi is 5 years ago. Flashed back to that time, those guys on the trip were Ah Kai, Choot, Sze Khian, Ah Puh and etc. Can’t remember all!!! This time, those on the trip were Jinho, Siew Ling, Chui Qing and etc. Then, the route was from Kuala Kedah to Langkawi, instead of Penang to Langkawi. I was “asked” to drive from Penang -> Kuala Kedah -> Langkawi -> Kuala Kedah -> Penang. It was my first experience driving in Langkawi and also driving a van. Ten peoples were brave enough to gamble their lives on me so I don’t mind to have a try. Just to remind you all, shifting from 2nd gear to 3rd gear of an “old” van is not a pleasant experience. It is much easier to shift the gear straight away from 2nd to 4th! Hmm… staying in the same beach resort… viewing the same scenery… experiencing the same journey in Langkawi… So, has my life ever changed since then? Or only keep on repeating the same thing again and again? Maybe nothing changes for me but just the peoples surrounding me.

Pic. 1:
Exactly the same seaside view 5 years ago but manage to capture the view this time. Why? I had already bought a Digital Camera!

Pic. 2:
New looks. Why? Meet new friends and getting older!!