Will be on Terengganu waters for next couple of weeks. Anything you need from the South China Sea? Ohh.. yeah, fishing is not allowed :p

Sometimes I wonder.. How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean!

Today is the first day of another brand new start. I'm sure it's not me all alone here who always looking ahead what the nearest future holds and starts preparing for it. A big point of making goals for the next 364 days is also to take look back at what you have achieved throughout the last 12 months of 2008.

And, here's my report card of what I have promised to resolve in 2008:

Improve on my time management, to plan and prioritize my tasks accordingly. It's time to stop procrastinating and get things done by yesterday which can be done today.

I'm not a perfect planner but I have able to kept things under my control. I was an undergraduate till mid last year and was struggling a little with a flexible lifestyle which at times goes off the track in meeting timelines. Now, it's more organized. I have no choice - my work starts at 8.00 am and my biological clock is ticking to a programmed routine.

Develop a positive mental attitude by looking at problems and difficulties as challenges. I think they become less difficult to handle that way

I think I have done pretty well looking at things with a whole new perspective. As I always believed everything happens for a reason, now I got no problems but tones of challenges ushering me along with the brand new 2009.

Be passionate in everything I commit with. With such attitude I hope it would be easier for me to bring the best out of me to achieve outstanding and excellent results

It's either I do what I like or I have to like what I got to do. I’m working now; standing stable on my own feet. But, what I'm doing now got nothing to do with what I have studied. But, the most important thing is I'm loving it. To put it differently - It's finger lickin’ good; for now at least.

Eat more and gain some weight for goodness sake. Trying hard for it! (yeah, I know what you are thinking!) Only, if I can borrow some of your fats.

Ermm.. well..I have gained some but need to get a little more buffy. The doc said 2 kg more for me to enter a balanced BMI window. I shall continue my effort to balloon up myself. Hopefully I don’t explode one day :P

Not to be selfish, to be compassionate and not only think about myself. Time to lend my hand to others in any ways as others too may have doubts, fears and difficulties with life, just like me

It was a long pause since then. 4 years of Campus life didn't gave me the luxury of time to serve the needy the way I wanted to. But now, I'm free to move around and have spent last few months with a great bunch of buddies to collectively give some money, time and energy to where it belongs more. And, I have also made it a point to contribute a certain percentage of my monthly income as a community text, channeling it for goodness.

Read more books. I wish I could learn something new each and every day of 2008.

I have done good with this resolution. Finished reading “Wings of Fire”, the autobiography of Former President of India; “The Secret: by Rhonda Byrne; “Law of Attraction” by Michael J. Losier and still left with few more chapters of the book "My experiment with Truth" by Mahatma Ghandi along with some other interesting writings. Now, I have in my hands is the book "Giving - how each of us can change the world" written by Bill Clinton. And, I have made it a point to carry a book with me to fill in little gaps that pop out randomly in between a hectic routine. You have any suggestion for my next read?

Expand my network, meet more people, make new friends and earn some good money as well - all with blogging of course :P

If you noticed closely, I have left big gaps in between my posts. I wasn't able to post up more often as I used to be due my job that requires me traveling to remote areas for a long period of time. But, I have successfully expanded my circle of friendship and met some good souls through blogging and online activities. In fact just back from Penang a two weeks ago, after spending an awesome weekend with some of my blog mates.

I'll be graduating this year. Hopefully 2008 will bring me golden opportunities whereby I could stand stable in establishing the next step in my life with a good career.

Wohoo..! Do I need to say more?

And here's more off the record which gave me reasons to look back and smile at 2008. I have walked more than I intended to do - created a written budget for me to keep track of my money. I feel it's a great way to organize our cash and it’s a respect all of us need to pay for every single penny that we spend. After all, money is energy too!

To my luck, I had opportunities to meet some of the successful people and listen to them. Last September, I attend a public lecture - “Ignited Minds : The Power of the Youth” by APJ Dr.Abdul Kalam, the former President of India. And Later, had another chance to participate in a dialogue session with Datuk Vinod Shekar. And, I hope 2009 will show me the way towards more success and its people.

As I bid farewell to 2008, I'm hoping for a better 2009 and wonder what the coming year has in mind to offer me. With never a thought of sorrow; the old goes out, but the glad young year comes merrily in. Wish all of you a blessed new year.

May 2009 brings out the best in you.. Cheers!

p/s: Two double O nine; the time is here for you to buckle up.

And this semester on the 5th of May we had a very special guest speaker - His Royal Highness, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, the erudite, urbane Regent of Perak who has won the support of many with his common touch and willingness to speak candidly on a range of delicate issues. It was my first time witnessing a function or rather a lecture full of royal protocols. The presence of orchestra, huge yellow chair on stage, beautiful flower decorations, yellow carpets all the way, the traditional and musical welcome, thousands of people including lecturers, students, teachers, professionals, school kids, and not forgetting the protocols and police officers, all gave a real different aura to the ceremony. And, since I left my primary school years ago, I had never actually heard some of the rarely used array of Malay words such as patik, hamba, mencemar duli, titah, beta and baginda. May be that's what made the real difference in the hall this time, despite the presence of a royal figure on the stage. And, those words were for real instead of some examples on books. The way the MC conducted the ceremony with full blast royal protocols and the style of Raja Nazrin addressed himself as Beta was something totally strange for me to witness. Well, I have only seen those words on blackboards and school books and never heard it for real until then.

Raja Dr. Nazrin Shah has shared his views many times before on topics related to The Constitution, race relation, good governance, and role model, in the absence of any other leaders speaking on these topics so passionately. And this time, Raja Dr. Nazrin Shah delivered his text on "The Challenges of Human Capital Development". Raja Nazrin opines that the challenges of human capital development lie in enhancing knowledge, skills and abilities and in imbibing sound values, beliefs and attitudes.

His speech was short and sweet; right to the points. Let me give you some of his inputs from my notepad:

The process of human capital development works best where policies are strongly encouraging and supportive and not dispiriting and coercive. We must also be strongly oriented towards achievement. It is imperative that its linkage with advancement be an unshakable one.

Human Capital Development lies in active participation of individual themselves. Developing human Capital is also about building characters. It's the DNA of success, protocol and basis of establishing interpersonal relationships. And the value transformation towards human capital can be from family, colleagues, school, face-to-face and cyberspace. The Government and Monarch are also responsible in playing important roles in value transformation - The government must increase it degree of transparency and accountability should be demanded in public offices.

Money alone is not enough but, skillful human professionals. These concrete changes require more than concepts and we must give our knowledge institutions the critically needed space to work for it. In order to meet the challenges of Human Capital Development, we must empower Knowledge institutes or we may need to suffer the consequences. It's important to raise the number of knowledge institutes and increase the standards of local universities to match the foreign education institutes. We must close the gaps between them if the nation's vision is to increase size and standards.

Raja Nazrin suggested three goals -- learning culture, analytical culture and intellectual culture -- that we as a nation have to achieve in facing the challenges of human capital development.

• People need to look at ways to instill values and beliefs that promote learning among Malaysians. A true learning culture includes overeating sense of questioning, welcoming new perspectives or different ideas and the ability to actively debate all kind of topics' Learning makes us change and changes make us learn - this is the whole cycle that could contribute to human capital development. Once knowledge is acquired, it motivates people to take action. With such we can improve the present and make the future better.

• Malaysians needed also to develop an analytical culture so that they could be vastly more reflective and to understand the "what", the "how" and the "why" of the things they did. With such culture, people will consider methods with objective and will be able to draw a logical conclusion on anything the venture in. By developing analytical culture, it's important for us to review, debate and critic on issues and minimizes weaknesses

• People needed to develop an intellectual culture though intellectuals were no longer highly regarded in most societies and even many rich countries were seemingly reluctant to support their work. If a nation is not intellectual, then the blossoming of knowledge would never occur in it. By acquiring knowledge we could create and creations are often come from those who ready to push their boundaries and limits. Also, learn to question, challenge and think. It is out of a sense of wonder or doubt with the conventional wisdom that new paths of knowledge emerge.

He concluded,

Providing the Knowledge institutes the needed space to meet the above goals will make Malaysians developed with their fullest capacity to benefit the nation and world.

I've been absent from blogging for past few days. I had to deal with a couple of hectic weeks till I had no choice but to take this blog out from my priority list for a short period of time. These are my final few weeks in university, which means I have to settle everything once and for all before I leave this place for good. I am sprinting my last four weeks of my four years race. The previous two weeks, I have been dealing with tons and tons of works and projects and paper reviews together with more and more counting datelines approaching my way. Looking at my calendar now reminds me of time bombs waiting turns to explode along the next few days. There are too many to handle!

And, to make things from bad to worse, my hard drive decided to crash a few days back, six days to be exact for no reason, on the minute I needed it the most. Too bad, I couldn't recover any single file. All my bits and bytes gone forever leaving me losing some of my recent works. Thank God, I had my important data and documents backed up in my external hard disks. If not, that would have been a real nightmare for me!

Being the only and very last electromagnetic device on computers (I guess no one uses floppy anymore, do you?) the reliability of hard drives is always a big question mark. I learned my lesson from previous damages happened last year when my Maxtor crashed. And, now my Seagate died in less than year - with the warranty is still way too long to expire. Currently I'm surviving on a brand new Western Digital. Reinstalling everything from scratch and customizing my system to suite my need is another headache. I've lost some of my precious downloads and yet to install my engineering soft wares. :( Well, shit happens now and then. We can't run away from it but we can always learn to flush it away.

For now, I need a break. Excuse me for a few more days. But, thanks to all those funky online gadgets - you can now catch me on Twitter even while I'm offline. Cool uh? And.. in case you are not aware, we have another new blogger in town. I think he doesn't need an introduction. Check it out for yourself at http://www.chedet.com.

p/s: Happy Labor Day to all! But, it's not a holiday for me. I had a test this morning and having a presentation right after this :| And, I don't wanna talk about tomorrow! T_T Like I said, too many to handle!

Yesterday, 23rd of October, was my 23rd birthday.
I thank my family and friends who well wished me and my buddies who organised a suprise birthday party. Sharing some of the photos here.

Early preparations. Guess what's in the pail ?!?


The birthday cake. Can you see a red Ferrari parked on the cake? Thanks a lot to Yoga and Rin for that.


Four candles and one lighter make a 23. lolz. Thnx to Yogz for holding it!


With rest of the jokers.


Here's the grand closing. And.. Did u managed to figure out what was in the pail? Actually, there's more inside than what meet the eyes!


Muchas gracias, thank you everyone!

A month back, I was tagged by a friend of mine to list down seven random things about myself. It's the first time I got tagged. Yes, I know that it has been quite some time since then but I think it's still not too late to list them down here. jeng.. jeng.. jeng.. Here are the seven random things about myself:

1. I am a night person. I prefer to stay up late at night (sometimes till early in the morning) and be busy with all the things I need to settle down. Besides that, the internet connection is faster at early in the morning compared to any other time. So, I can sleep how late you want.. But, don't ask me to wake up early in the morning :P

2. I love to read about psychology. It helps me to understand the world within me and the universe lying around me. I find those stuffs interesting and motivating to me. So, I do not miss any reads about psychology – anything from leadership psychology to winning ways.

3. I strongly believe nothing in this world is co-incidence. I feel everything happens for a reason. Thus, I take things around me positively (even though I don't like them at times) and understand that I have no control over certain aspects of my life.

4. I moved quite often in my childhood. So, I have studied in seven different schools and now I have lots of friends to keep in touch with. :)

5. I am a person who can't easily say NO.. But, I am trying to change that habit as it can be my weak point at times. Sometimes I need to be sterner in making decisions whenever I do not agree with something or someone. So, I am learning to say NO.

6. I'm quite friendly and love to share and receive ideas with a person who has the same frequency as me. It's easier to get along and fun to spend time with those kinds of people. I can spend hours talking and listening to them.

7. Finally, I am someone who can get along with various kind of people. I think lots of people agree with it :P

Hmm.. now, who shall I pass on the torch to !?! ?!?