Boot Firmware, AirAsia and 9th Malaysia Plan

Just completed by German Test. It’s just getting harder and harder for me to memorize what I have learned. Yesterday, I had made a big mistake by damaging the hardware configuration word stored in the flash memory. Thinking of burning my own operational firmware to handle the E1 ports, I simply flashed the 1st EEPROM of the board and the board is straight away out of service. Since the boot firmware is resided in the 2nd EEPROM, I assumed that I can safely flash the 1st EEPROM and ooppsss… all the hardware configurations required by the Boot firmware had gone. There is one JTAG port in the board but I could not find any suitable tool in my lab to reprogram it. Sending back to the vendor is the only solution.

Read a cover feature on Bizweek regarding Tony Fernandes, the CEO of AirAsia. AirAsia just has its new low cost carrier terminal under operation beside our former PM mega project, KLIA. It is interesting to find out that all the 53 routes of AirAsia are all profitable or at least breaking even. Low cost budget flight is a new concept in Malaysia. It’s not easy for normal people like me to travel by air since it is such a luxury expense. I have had my first flight at the age of 22 and during that time, there was no AirAsia. I still remember that the route was from Penang to KL. How much I pay for that? Forgot already, since I was not the one who paid for the ticket. So, AirAsia is providing the alternative for the peoples in this region. Is there any alternative for our political situation?

Ninth Malaysia Plan, some of my concerns:

“The Government targets to have 60 percent of academics in Malaysia with PhDs by the year 2010. In order to strengthen research capacity at local institutions, cooperation networks with leading international institutions will be created.”
- 60% of Academics with PhDs, not too bad! Who should we cooperate?

“The public sector budget allocated for R&D activities is RM3.9 billion - twice the amount that was allocated under the Eighth Malaysia Plan.”
- Where the outcomes from the funding allocated under 8th MP?

“we target to have 50 RSEs for every 10,000 members of the labour force by 2010.”
- Alright, just 0.5%!

“Brain Gain Programme - a programme directed at involving or attracting outstanding researchers, scientists and engineers, including Malaysians abroad“
- If I am doing well in oversea, do I need to take a risk returning home? Unless I am patriotic and work for nation pride....

Let’s wait and see! We can always come out with a good proposal but how about the implementation…..


“A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.”
Herb Kelleher, founder of low fares aireline

Demonstration in KLCC on Petrol Hike Issue

My roommate asked me tojoin the demonstration in KLCC last Sunday It was quite a long time since I last joined the public demonstration. Perhaps, I was afraid of my position since I am working in a GLC company. Afraid, definitely no! But I still remember that I have signed a document which insists that I must preserve my company reputation and should not do anything against this.

“tuan tuan dan puan puan diminta bersurai dalam masa 10 minits, perhimpunan ini tidak mendapat permit dan dianggap haram”

I just whispered to myself, “Who will go to apply the permit for this type of assembly? You should be joking!” This was the third assembly and the first one been organized on the weekend. The estimated crowd was not more than 1000. The attendance is relatively low compared to the previous assemblies which held after Muslim prayer time on Friday. The enforcement officials seem reluctant to let this kind of assembly going on week in week out. They took more drastic approach and simply dispersed the crowd without giving any opportunities for the organizer to deliver the speech. They even closed the KLCC building to avoid any demonstrators running inside the shopping mall. Anyway, the demonstration managed to sustain for 1 hour time. At least, the messages are able to pass to the public!

Just have a look on the few pictures that I took.

Where we went after the demonstration? Watching movie in KLCC!

Rule-based German Language

I still remember that those who learn the German language said that this language is based on a set of rules and it’s easy to learn compared to English. Perhaps, it’s true in certain context. But once you get to know more, it’s not always the case. Vemal and I have an argument on the Perfekt mit “sein” oder “haben” regarding the special case “ist ge --- en”. The normal case for pass perfect tense in German language is to use “haben”. But there are two exceptional conditions which you must use “sein”. The statement given by our teacher is that those verbs involve the changing of place and the changing of state. This rule can be simplified as below:

If (verb == {changing of state} verb == {changing of place})
use “sein”
else
use “haben”

Let’s the verb = schwimmen, which category should the verb swim belong to?

No specific answer, it depends on the situation. According to my teacher’s explanation, if you swim in a pool, you should use “haben”. Wait a moment! Vemal claimed that swim in an Olympic-size swimming pool from one end to another is actually a change of place. So, when should we use “sein”? My teacher’s answer is when you swim across the river.

The conclusion is:
swim across the river != swim in the pool

It’s not easy. You have to make a correct assumption otherwise you might be wrong.

Martin Luther – many people should hear about his name if you take Sejarah Dunia in you secondary school. He translated the New Testament from Greek to German and became the creator of modern German language. So, he is the one who set the rules?

Pic . Altbau (Old Hause) in German

Cognitive Science

An IEEE ComSoc technical talk entitled “People and Tools: Applying Cognition Theories for Building Effective Tool Design in Breakdown Situations” had been successfully conducted in my company premise. The speaker was a Malaysian who is going to work in Airbus soon. I have recently read an article about Collaborative and Cognitive Networking. More or less, it likes making your device intelligent enough to learn from the environment and make adjustment accordingly. The speaker presented almost the similar concept and emphasized more on cross-discipline in solving daily problems. She even talked about Heidegger’s fundamental concept of thrownness and breakdown. Huh, too much....... it's always difficult to understand what philosopher said.

<-- Logo for Cognitive Science Society

My Roommate

My roommate has his Blog available yesterday. I have stayed with him since our graduation days from UTM. He is from PD and going to further his PhD in Australia this year. He studied Computer Science in UTM but turned out to do something related to social sciences – Islamic Cultural Study. He did really well in UKM. His thesis was even selected as “Thesis Cermelang”. After almost 4 years, it’s time for us to separate, otherwise, both of us will end up single! ^__*

A Painting to Share

A nice painting to share with you all! Guess, who is the artist and where the painting was taken? A wild guess, please. Sunrise in Teluk Kelong. Perhaps, one or two may know it but not me. So, who is the artist? Zainal Abidin Musa. Sorry, not hear about him before. At first glance, it makes me feel comfortable and relax. Hope that you feel the same. Oh, ya… where the photos are taken? Muse floor Starhill Gallery. Go there if you are interested to find out more about Malaysian artists.

-- Malaysia artist art Exhibition 2006

Last Week Updates & Yeehian's Weeding Dinner

Life goes on as usual. I had almost finished my task on protocol stack and ATM integration. Study the modular platform. Work on the documentation and technical paper before moving on to another new task. Refresh my memory on how to ride a motorbike last week! Before I picked up my car on last Wednesday, I had to borrow a motorbike from Chih Feng. It was almost two years since I last took a motorbike from my house (PJ) to my workplace (Serdang). I felt nervous and my heart beat faster than usual. Luckily, the weather was good and everything went on well. Yee Hian has her special moment of life last Saturday. It was also the time for our “activities circle” peoples to meet. It seems to become a habit nowadays for us to gather only through our friend’s weeding. Anyway, it’s great! I don’t even meet some of them for almost 5 years. The dinner was in Tai Tong Restaurant in front of Nikko Hotel. Sorry to say that the taste of the food was not really good. Anyway, we had free flow of red wine ;) A crazy moment in my table! Whenever we “kampai”, we had to bottom up. I think that I almost finished a bottle of red wine. I felt headache at the end of the dinner and as usual my face turned RED. Anyway, it was much better compared to Yong Ling (pic. 2) who drunk until unconscious all the way back to Chih Feng’s house. He was challenged by his special admirer, a girl who studied in the same school with him in Kuala Kangsar. We went to the Feast Village in Starhill Galery after the dinner before ending out in the mamak restaurant near Ampang LRT. It was almost 4 o’clock morning when we reached home! I was the one who drive :)

Champion, Champion, Champion

Carling Cup Champion !!!!!! That's all for Man Utd this season. It time for you to retire, Ferguson....

Car Accident near Pudu Station - Saturday

Lazy to wake up as early as 7.30 a.m., so I decided not to join Peini and co. for the Bukit Gasing “jungle tracking”. As usual, I had my German Language course in Goethe Institute. After the class, I went back to meet Khai Loon for lunch around 1.45 p.m. I took the usual way back. I always believe that this is the shortest path back to my home in Gasing. KLCC -->Pudu --> Bangsar --> Pantai Dalam --> Gasing. Don’t know why there were so many buses near the Pudu station. I had stuck in the Pudu for almost 1 hour and started to lose my patience. I had been queue in the lane where all the cars in front of me were waiting to turn to the right. I supposed to be in the left lane so I turned on my left signal. Seeing the bus behind me starting to slow down and "make way for me", I decided to turn left. Bang! The mirror on my left hand site was broken as well as my side mirror. Shhiiitttt…. I just did nothing for 2 to 3 minutes, except having the peoples around me watching the incident. After calming down, I quickly went down to take the bus number and the bus driver asked me to settle it in the Hentian Duta. Luckily, I was still able to drive my car back and went to workshop. After bargaining with the foreman in the workshop, the repair fee was agreed to be RM1000. Khai Loon was the one doing the bargain since he seems to pick up the Kantonise after staying in HK for almost 2 years. What a ridiculous thing! He asked me to buy the 4-D lottery and then he lost the ticket on that night…

Picture says a thousand words. Just have a look on how my car in the workshop. Not too bad….at least the driver is safe!

der Mittwoch

Just finished my badminton session in Country Height. 1 hour exercise per week. Not too bad ;) I hardly took any sports recently due to my busy schedule. Ah, have to attend a workshop tomorrow. Country Height’s Sport Complex… This was my first experience playing there. The condition of the court is not too bad, except the hall is little bit dull. I seldom have the opportunity to play with my colleagues. They have tremendous stamina and power. Easily outplay me. Majority of them play other sports, such as Sepak Takraw and Squash. Watched the Part 1 of “Good will Hunting” yesterday. Just wonder it’s that possible for a person who has no opportunity to attend any formal higher education can become a Genius.

Wisdom from the movie?
“You can get this f*** knowledge from the book in the library, rather than wasting your money attending the class”

Jaring in IEEE Spectrum

Last week, there were two guys from British Telecom Research came to our office to give a talk on “IEEE 802.21 Handover for Seamless Network”. This is not a new topic since we all know that a lot of peoples are waiting the convergence of CDMA, 802.11, WiFI, WiMAX and etc. to be happened. But it’s good that BT peoples point out the necessary of Telcos to start working on data services, instead of voice services. I always believe that Telekom Malaysia has owned almost all the necessary infrastructure and should be more aggressive not only in the business but also funding the research and development for the ongoing evolution.

There is an article by Steven Cherry entitled “A Malaysian Internet service provider sidesteps its biggest competitor”. It is published in IEEE Spectrum, a very well known magazine for those who work in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The author has praised the Jaring’s initiative to deploy the wireless broadband service. Yes, I have to agree that Jaring has indeed done a good job at least they know how to self-promote. But I think that it’s much better we ourselves owned part of the technology, if not all. Soma Networks Inc. is the one providing the base station. Just wonder when we can become a technology leader!

Some very astonishing words from the author:

Malaysia has long been a telecommunications leader in Southeast Asia. It was the first country in the region to hook into the Internet. Its enlightened spectrum management policies encourage innovation. A so-called multimedia supercorridor—a miniature Silicon Valley constructed during the global dot-com bubble of the 1990s—still flourishes. So it's not surprising that a wireless broadband service like Jaring's is found here and only a few other places around the world. This type of broadband is not available in Taipei, home of the skyscraper that supplanted Petronas as the world's tallest, nor in Chicago, where the Sears Tower once held that record, nor in any other large city in the United States, which once led the world in Internet access but is now lagging.

We Malaysians should be proud of this. ^____^

A Genius is never understood in its own time.
-CALVIN-

Stadium

Think about the Berliner Olympiastadion. It’s good if I have a change to enter it again for the World Cup Final. I am a “Stadium” admirer. Don’t know why? But always feel good when entering the stadium. How many stadiums that I have visited?

Batu Kawan Stadium
A new stadium in Butterworth, Penang. Went there just once for sluggish performance by my state football team. Good seafood there!

City Stadium
An old stadium under renovation in Penang. It is unique because surrounding by three petrol stations and you can expect your life under threat if the spectators throw the firecrackers. You can join the crowd for the “dirty” words as well!

Larkin Stadium in Johor
Went thre only once for watching the national team playing…

National Stadium in Bukit Jalil
A lot of matches involving Malaysia team were scheduled there. A high capacity stadium, Manchester United used to play there once!

Shah Alam Stadium in Selangor
The toilets are terrible there. Our keeper scored an own goal to give the SEA game gold medal to Thailand.

MPPJ Stadium in Kelana Jaya
The black spider team plays there. Big apartments surround this small stadium.

Cheras Stadium in KL
Myanmar and Malaysia spectators fight each other there!

Berlin Stadium (Pictures)
2006 World Cup Final venue. Went there in the wrong time.

Dream Stadium ---- Old Trafford (Going to change the name!)

Hwang's Downfall and Linux

An article discussed about Linux and Hwang Woo-Suk. The title of the article catches my attention. How Hwang and Linux relate to each others? For those who haven’t heard about Hwang’s story, just go to this link. For your information, Linux is an open source OS contributed by developers all over world. I still remember a few words from a Microsoft speaker who came to my company for a debate entitled “Open Source: Yes or No” He said that “Open Source’s developers are irresponsible on the copyright issues. They can do whatever they want without any rules and regulations imposed on them”. Until now, I am not too convinced with his words. One thing that I agree with him is that Microsoft is creating job opportunity to the peoples. According to the article, Hwang’s downfall was mainly contributed by young scientists who frequently visited the web-site. They started to question the validity of Hwang’s photo. Some of them even proved how the photo is cooked. Same as what "Y" said to me, Jinho is good in using the PhotoShop to manipulate the photo! Anyway, I haven’t seen the photo before. I agreed that the only way to improve your research results is to make it publicly accessable. Same as giving out the source code in Linux, allow other to modify, enhance and make it better. However, this is not the case in current research practice in engineering. You have to pay for accessing the Journal. Even to publish your result, you have to pay for it. My roommate once asked me why you need to pay for attending the conference and this is not applicable to those who studied social science like me! Anyway, I still could not believe the reviewers of the so called prestigious journal could not pinpoint the faked photo. At last, we should blame the reviewers as well.

More discussion on the internet culture in this article…..

Family Outing in Damai Laut & CNY Gathering

We had our family outing in Damai Laut Resort on the 3rd Day of CNY. My sister booked the apartment in Damai Laut for 2 days 1 night. We reached the place around 4 p.m. and had seafood in Setiawan before that. We had to wait for almost 1 and half hours before we can have the first taste of the seafood in Setiawan. My mum was not impressed with the food there. Anyway, it always feels tasty when you are hungry. We could not find out any delicious food in Lumut for our dinner and ended up with “terrible” Nasi Kandar.

In the resort, we went for Sauna, Table Tennis, Tennis, Canoeing…… Fully utilize the facilities there. The only thing that I missed out was swimming. There, I had my first experience on canoeing but actually my brother did all the hard work. An important announcement here is that I have been crowned as the champion of table tennis there after beating my brother twice. Until now, he still keeps on complaining about the bats. We returned home the next day around 2 p.m. and had our dinner in Tambun. The seafood in Tambun was better than the one we had in Setiawan!

Some pictures to share, including the gathering in Khai Loon’s house….








Pic. 1 : Apartment in Damai Laut
Pic. 2 : Canoeing
Pic. 3, 4, 5 : At the Jetty
Pic. 6 : Good View
Pic. 7 : Khai Loon's House

Happy Chinese New Year !!!!

Chinese Spring New Year is approaching. Tomorrow is the New Year’s Eve. I will only rush back early morning to avoid the heavy traffic. One thing good in our country is that whenever one race celebrates its festive season, the others can also enjoy a long break. My Malay colleague, who sits in front of me and just stays in KL, has asked for one week break, same with me. My boss laughed at him, “You also celebrate gong xi fa choi?” ……

For those who have missed the opportunities to return home for celebration, such as PohKit, CheeMing, ZhenJie, Jinho…., wishing you all have a nice rest and enjoy a different atmosphere in respective countries. For those Dema related friends, don’t forget to attend Khailloon’s open house on 2nd day of CNY. Call me if you can’t find the way. You also can come to my house on 2nd day of CNY....

Happy Chinese New Year and Have a Prosperous Year to come…
Ein Glückliches Chinesisch Neues Jahr ------ (not enough Wortschatz)

Technology Update

Yesterday, two IEEE ComSoc technical talks entitled “IPv6: Enhanced Mobility and Security Support?” and “Location Based Services” had been held in Auditorium UPM. The first section and second section were conducted by Dr. Daniel Wong from MUST and Dr. Mahamod Ismail from UKM respectively. I can say that both of the technical talks are related to mobile communication. DNSSEC and location tracking algorithms are those new things for me. We have able to invite Dr. Daniel Wong who had worked with Telecordia before on WLAN/UMTS convergence. However, the amount of participants frustrated me. Only around 50 persons came to the talk and not many questions have been asked. We need to do something to increase the number of “active” participants.

Back to IPv6, I knew that majority of the advanced countries in Far East, such as China, Korea and Japan, have worked out their IPv6 backbone. NTT Japan is in a leading role. I am not too sure about our own country. I have worked with Mimos before and knew that MANIS is promoting IPv6 in Malaysia. Anyway, I don’t hear about any initiative from TM Net. The future communication network, especially on rolling out the 3G or perhaps 4G services, which are full IP-based network, will play an important role on stirring up the IPv6 deployment. Our government reacts rather slowly in this. Same old story!

Education System in Danger?

I really worry about the education system in Malaysia. I have started my German language last Saturday and managed to meet Ivan, who is in Form 4 right now. He has complaint that his teachers are not capable to teach their Science subjects properly and he found that he lost interest in his studies. If the government really sincere to use English as the teaching medium, they must first ensure that all the schools have enough manpower to do that. I read a new in the Star that 5 Malay students have made a legal claim against the government. They cited that the government has stolen their rights to use their mother tongue to continue their studies. I am not here to debate whether it is good or bad to use English as the medium but I just want the government to be more sincere in their moves.

Another issue is the quality of local universities. I really worry about that. “Do you still remember what the promise of BN to the peoples in Sabah and Kelantan?” The BN will setup a university in those states if the peoples vote for BN and take over from the opposition. Huh….what the heck! You think that setup a university is like building a house. We have facing the shortage of qualified lecturers in local universities nowadays. How can you simply setup a university like that! I tried to compare the core courses of universities in Germany and we are not far behind! Please wait a moment. I have to say that we are not far behind in terms of structuring of the programs but the coverage of core courses is nowhere near their level. Found out an interesting discussion on UPM in Wikipedia. Perhaps, it’s true but I am not too sure about UPM.

Liverpool was beaten by one Man, Rooney who was a defender, midfield and striker in that match. Why? Don’t forget that Rooney is Evertonian!

Jinho, all the best in your new job in Singapore and hope that you succeed in your life!

I have decided to take out the link on Wikipedia upon recommendation. I agreed that some of the claims on the discussion will not be fair for those who really work hard for themselves in UPM. Anyway, you should able to find it yourself if it is still there.

Wikipedia’s slogan: “The Free Encyclopedia that anyone can edit"

Network Down

All the network elements, such as mail server, internet and etc. for my company had been downed the whole morning. It was started since Friday evening. Staffs here always bemoan the downtime for our network systems are longer since the setup of IT unit. I was making a joke to one of the IT staffs before that. “You are the one who purposely created the network problem and solved it after all.” FP/ATM system is improved after switching to round-robin with preemptive scheduler. Probably, there are certain tasks that consume too much processing delay and defer the other tasks for too long.

Khai Loon and Liza came back from HK and Taiwan respectively on last Saturday. I just had a strange feeling that both of them were actually back from China. Is it a sensitive statement? I don’t think so. After all, we spent most of our time hanging around in café and restaurant before sending Liza to KL sentral. Later, watched the derby match and it’s a terrible performance by ManU. Time to change! Please pack up yourself, Ferguson! Ended up in Wakiki Bar in Petaling Club with Jinho (who manages to introduce this bar after a date with a German girl) and my old schoolmate, Kok Theng, same primary school, same secondary school and same university…..He said that he will marry soon since he is getting older. And Jinho met his neighbor who spent almost all the night playing pool. KT said that my life is almost same with him. Anyway, bless KT good luck….

Reunion dinner in Dema house yesterday. A “huge” number of UPM students attended the event. The agenda of the day was the sharing section for out friends who went to join the “Junk WTO” in Hong Kong. Get a book from K.Loon on “Football Analysis”. The author of the book is an associate professor in HK University. He wrote a very comprehensive view on EPL and also the relationship between football and politics. I can say that it’s much better than our local Chinese press but http://www.soccernet.com/ seems to have more detailed analysis.

Last Week....

43 dBm was a fake. The CPICH channel is actually transmitting only 33 dBm or 10% of the total power setting in the Basestation. Figure it out with the spectrum analyzer. So why are we feeling headache before that? Physiological effect, I think. Screwed up the system when configuring the system clock rate to 1000 clock ticks per second. It all because of the watchdog timer using 1ms timer resolution.

Suddenly, I found out that Teh owes me 2 or 3 can of 100Plus. I don’t know why we start to bet for badminton match. I think that probably because of Goi’s sister and lack of motivation recently. Went to the Bowling Center in Sunway with a group of “Crazy” ppls. One of them threw the ball to me while I was standing behind. Even the security guard behind us was shocked. But the most embarrassing moment was that I finished a game with merely 45 points!

Future Mobile Evaluation

Finished reading an article entitled “Future Mobile Technology: Lessons from China and Korea” by Department of Trade and Industry UK. DTI picked the two most promising countries in Far East as the study case to find out the future mobile evolution. There are some good points to be shared. Let’s look at Korea first,
- Korean companies put more focus on “R” rather than “D” to compete against the USA and Europe.
- Korea, positioning itself, through its national telecommunications research institute, ETRI, as an ally of Qualcomm to develop and deploy high risk and unproven wireless technology.
- Future infrastructure evolution, such as BcN, IPv6 and USN.
- Funding from governments: 15.5 billion won is directed to ETRI, and 2.4 billion won to three universities: Seoul Nat. U, ICU and Hanyang U.
- ~200 spin-off companies from ETRI work closely with IPR development.

Then, some interesting points extracted from the report regarding China,
- Promoting its own TD-SCDMA as a base and direction towards 4G.
- Use a very low cost services and technologies to accelerate the development in rural area.
- Universities and Research Institutes are divided into 2 major groups, FDD and TDD.
- CATR carries out the fundamental research as a state research body on Telecommunication.

Both countries have spent significantly on research and development and enable a rapid transition to demonstration. I predict the same model should be used by our country. The same theory had been applied to semiconductor field previously. Heavy investment on the state research body Mimos but it is hard to see any significant outcome that our country can proud of. Perhaps, just the all Malaysian 16 Bit RISC Microprocessor.......