I'm in NST!!

Haha. Just discover this!

A dreamer, doer and thinker..

When i received her message last two days, telling me that she might not be able to make it to ITEX 2010, I chose to not take it seriously. I knew her very well, and she wouldn't miss this important event, she's a wonderwoman.

Then yesterday, I received a short message telling me she "might not be able to make it, please prepare for the presentation." I thought, "Me? A presentation to impress the judges? That's too funny, better asked someone with Doctorate do it." Again, I chose to play dumb.

But later that evening, upon receiving the phone call from her that I started to feel like my world was upside down for a while. I just sat in the car for about 15 minutes with lots of thoughts going through my mind.

She said she's not coming. She was sick. The sickness was quite serious. Googling about her sickness doesn't make me feel better at all. She said she was so down, she did not feel like doing anything. And that there's no other person that is suitable to present the project but me, since I'm local. And she sounded very different from the person we knew, that I cried in the car.

I'm not crying because I need to present. I don't mind presenting. Although I didn't prepare anything. And I have less than 24 hours to prepare. I took that opportunity for me to shine, for me to challenge my intelligence.

I'm crying because I feel helpless. To not able to do anything to help a person who help builds who I am currently; the one you are proud of and even better the one she is proud of.

At night, the stress got even worse. The need to get a gold medal for her, as I see it's the only way for me to make her happy.

And in the morning, after calling to check up on her, and the whole way to KL Convention Centre thinking how dull would it be without her, I eventually got to the hall feeling a sense of emptiness all over me. We used to have so much fun in MTE, where she helped me to shine on my first exhibition, thus steal the gold medal.

Just about I put my phone in the locker, I received a message from her,

"Salam, sorry to put you thru this, but I know you'll be fine. I am trying to distress my nerves at home. Dr said that my nerves too work up and manifestating it on my leg. Anyway tqvm for giving ur best all this while. Tq."

Then, I stood up from where I sit, did my make up a bit, cheered myself up, took the judging criteria's note, go through the flow a few times, and when the judges came, I imagined how she would kill the presentation and impressed the judges, I did just as that.

And when I was done, all my project members ran to me, hugging me, "Impressive! Very confident! OMG they love you, Ikeen, the judges love you!"

I blurred for a while, and I quickly grab the phone, calling the woman who is already a part of me. My mentor. My supervisor. My project leader. My head of department. My inspiration.

This is for you.. And may we get that gold medal and may you recover very soon.

Thank you for everything. I love you, for everything you are. And I am proud to work under your department, a department that you called as the Department of dreamers, doers and thinkers.

The whole facebook generation

All these while, I've always been labelled as the "facebook" generation by my aunts and uncles. I think it's funny for them to call me that because they have facebook themselves. And I don't really see the generation gap between me and my aunts since we are really close with each other despite of our age difference that I would usually forget they are years older than I am.

But today, I suddenly see how it feels like to be in their shoes.

See, my fiance has a beautiful 11 years old niece. I've known her since she was 4. Time flies so fast, that I was really surprised when she added me as a friend in facebook.

And.. when I saw her photos in facebook, I got even more surprised. What the.. Why are you biting your lips like that? No no no, posing like that with that 3 inches heels doesn't make you look like supermodel, you're way too young for that! And please cover your legs from that super mini skirt!!!! And why the heck would you organize such grand slumber party, go study please!Ugh!!

OMG!!!! I sure feel like my aunts.

I surely had enough when I read a comment from an 11 years old boy in her facebook asking about her friend in hot pants with lots of flowers as its design (yes, hot pants!)

11 years old boy ok! How dare!

Suddenly I thought of my niece, Qistina. She is now 9 years old. I wonder if she had a facebook. Or if she is thinking of having one. Please don't add Aunty k, Sayang?

And my nephews. Then, I feel like crying.

I seriously have an issue with facebook for under age now. Gosh, I really have to sort this up before I have my own child. Aunties, please don't browse through my facebook photos, thank you.

Lyx training - the feedback

Was so surprised to see these emails as I opened my outlook just now:

Thank you to Mr.Fairuz, Syed Khalil, Aiman & Ms Nurul Asyikin for organizing and taking the effort to share the knowledge.
I enjoyed your class and appreciate your enthusiasm to share. Thanks Again.

This came from fiance's lecturer, a Ph. Dr.

And another one from a senior lecturer..

Hi Fairuz and gang,

Great workshop! Learnt a few new things! :) If you guys need any help in assisting future workshops, I'd be happy to help. Now that I've completed my studies, got more time at hand to play with Latex...

Would love to have an advance course. I did learn a thing or two in modifying thesis class files and bibliographystyles before. So if you need any help in that area, do ask.

In my own humble opinion, Lyx is a great software for beginners. It doesn’t seem so intimidating for first time users. So this workshop is a great way to let people start on it. As for me, I think I'm stuck in my old ways...haha. I miss the writing...

So anyways, congrats on the successful workshop!

See, now we have followers. ;)

Lyx training

Once we had a meeting, the four of us, (Mr. Fairuz, Mr. Syed, Aiman and I) when a lecturer came inside the meeting room and asked, "What's the agenda, why so serious?"

Then, Mr. Syed answered, "Nothing. We are having a meeting for the Latex Lovers Club"

I was like, LATEX LOVERS CLUB???? OMG!!! Probably the geekest club I've ever joined in. I wanted to laugh, seriously. But it'll make me very "sane" to do that in front of these genius people, so I did not.

Don't get me wrong. I love Lyx and Latex a lot. But Latex Lovers Club? Lol. Meet the members..

I know what you think, but 4 AWESOME minds are sufficient to make a club, ok! 4 is just a number after all, ryte? Lol.

So, anyway, last year I organized a Lyx short course for the post graduate students in my university. A very small scale short course. This year, Mr. Fairuz invited me to organize short courses for the staffs and I got really psyched with the idea!

We targeted 25 participants, but we had 41 people registered in a week. Quite a surprise.

See, Lyx is actually an open source document that is soo easy to be used. It provides a "what you see is what you mean" interface to LATEX. You can actually download it for free.

Lyx is very smart, I can say. So smart, that the participants wonder why such intelligent software is open source. We had a lot of questions like, "Who invented this? Why did they do it for free?? What is the benefit for them?"

The inventor of Lyx is Matthias Ettrich. He did it out of passion. And he shared it for free to the whole world for us to discover Lyx, to learn together and to keep improving the system together. One person is not enough to change the world.

And that is actually why, I decided to share the knowledge granted to me for free to all of them. If you're wondering about the standard cost for Lyx training, it is RM700 outside. Imagine how much money I can get if I have 25 students in my class.

An email sent by a company to all the staff for Lyx/LATEX training. RM700 promotion, they gotta be kidding us.

But, the satisfaction pays me enough, thank you. Just look at the participants..

They looked so... err.. happy?

Jimmy Durante

He said, "Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down".

My co-supervisor once told me. And I took that to heart.

I believed it is true in the context of my co-supervisor and I. She was my lab demo, which I really looked up to. You can have a lot of lecturers and teachers in your life, but to have one that truly care about you is rare. And she is of that rare species I found on my first year degree.

She helped me really learned the basic hands on, that I excel in all my labs afterwards, and even argued with one of my other lab demo for teaching me the wrong stuff in her lab. And now, five years after, throughout my Master and after finishing my Master, I found it exciting to help this co-supervisor of mine to have a better understanding on my work for she was once helped me although I am nobody for her at that time around.

During my first class that I taught in 2008, a lab demo in Microprocessor-a third year degree subject, there is this one particular boy that really caught my interest in class. Let us call him E. It is a programming subject, and this guy always came with a weird coding, not always working, but eager to find clarification on why it is not working. He asked a lot of question in a very down to earth way. I don’t always know the answer since it’s my first year, but there’s never a slight of expression in his face that shows, “You’re my lecturer, you’re supposed to know.” Never.

So, I tried in every way possible to assist him in anything that he needs to know. Sometimes his question is beyond my knowledge, so I called my coordinator to ask him.

Until recently, I’ve been a new member to the solar car committee. A task I’ve been dreaming of since I was in undergrad, I want so much to contribute, now I’m in charge of the AI part. But I know nothing about the car. So, the committee decided to have a student leader of this project to explain everything to me. Do remember that I know nothing, never looked at the inside of the solar car, did not yet study anything, meaning that the student would have to answer a lotttt of funny questions from me.

And this very patient student did answer everything, explained from A to Z. And guess who he is? Yup, it’s E.

Superwife

I want to be a good wife to my husband. I really do. Not just another wife, I want to be a superwife. I wanted to make my hubby happy, cuz seeing him happy in return never fails to make me happy.

I did not have much examples of a newly married superwife that inspired me. My cousins were all depending on maids, or mums or some in a long distance marriage, so I really did not have any idea how superwife should be like.

I've always inspired by Posh and Becks since they are always with each other through thick and thin. And always ALWAYS holding hands in even the most ridiculous situation. So I began to call this one newly married couple in my office, Posh and Becks --> Indonesian version, cuz they're foreigner. Haha. They would always hold hands each time I saw them, even when they were eating. (Seriously! My friend, once even got disgusted with them)

See, the wife was a lecturer back in their country. And both of them came here because the hubby is furthering his Master. The wife had to stop working completely, and each day is filled with following the hubby to office. Which I think is a big sacrifice, from a career woman to a full time housewife, with no entertainment, no friends, and her life is her husband. Amazing, huh?

So, yesterday, this lucky husband came to my office and told me that he just finished his research. Trust me, I hardly even talk to this guy. But, he came eventually, with the wife. And told me that because of that, to say thanks to Allah, the wife cooked some Indonesian foods for everyone. Sweet kan?

And thatfood, which I forgot the name, tasted like one of the best thing I've ever tasted. Probably because of the sincerity of this wife. And while I was eating that, I stopped and pondered, how thoughtful that wife was. I couldn't stop thinking of her. The husband must be really proud and happy having her as a wife.

Today, as I was browsing through fb, i saw the husband's status..

Alhamdulillah Alat research ini sukses dan kami sujud syukur di Lab, semua ini tak kan ada artinya tanpa pengorbanan dan perjuangan isteri saya yang selalu menemani saya dengan sabar siang malam di Lab dan selalu memberikan semangat dan membantu memeriksa pekerjaan mahasiswa dan memasak makanan yang enak2. Semoga Allah... yang mampu membalas semua kebaikan isteriku dan juga semua pengorbanan orang tuaku.

And when I read that, I immediately replied..

Your wife inspires me to be a good wife later on.

And I seriously mean it. There goes, I finally have a newlywed superwife as an inspiration. Alhamdulillah, doa dimakbulkan.