Music : The View

http://www.theviewareonfire.com/

Recently I have addicted to this band - The View.

They are from Scotland forming the band since 2005. Their album : Which Bitch - the title at first sound not interesting to me. However, after listening to their songs, I started to realize the arrangement and progression or what-so-ever is beautifully well created. So, if you are indie fans, let's check this band out.

Enjoy some sample tracks.
1. Give Back The Sun
2. Double Yellow Line
3. Glass Smash

If you think you want to steal RM2, think again!

Penghantar surat didakwa kerana rompak RM2

31/07/2009 12:54pm

SHAH ALAM 31 Julai – Gara-gara merompak sebanyak RM2, seorang penghantar surat berhadapan hukuman penjara maksimum 20 tahun, denda serta sebatan apabila didakwa di Mahkamah Seksyen di sini hari ini.

B. Thiyagu, 24, yang turut dikatakan mencederakan mangsa dengan sebatang besi dan topi keledar bagaimanapun mengaku tidak bersalah selepas pertuduhan dibacakan di hadapan hakim, Hasbi Hasan.

Tertuduh dibebaskan dengan ikat jamin RM8,000 dengan seorang penjamin dan kes itu akan disebut semula pada 17 Ogos ini. - Utusan

If you think stealing RM2 is not a big deal, then think again. You might be in prison for 20 years because of that.

Moral of the story, don't steal whatever which is not belongs to you.

J.W. Marriott

Everybody is familiar on the recent bomb which took place in J.W. Marriot in Jakarta. J.W. Marriot is a world class hotel which provide luxury rooms and facilities to their customers.

Yesterday I went to J.W. Marriott Hotel at Bukit Bintang as part of the after sales service. Being a world class hotel, they are always taking counter-measure on what ever happened to avoid or at least minimize the re-occurance of the trouble happened.

Starting from entering the hotel's parking lot, they are using the device like a giant dentist mirror to check anything under the car. Entering the lift they are scanning each part of the body. Wow... If this is the case, hotel have turned to airport or can I say manufacturing area. I remembered last time I work at Cubic, we need to scan the whole body when exit from the factory premises.

According to Robert Kiyosaki security is direct proportion to freedom. When you focus more on security, you will have less freedom. This is totally true in this case, at least.

Gathering SMSLD@Hj. Samuri Kajang

SMSLD - Sekolah Menengah Sains Lahad Datu.
Some of you might not know, I completed my secondary education at Sabah. Lahad Datu. A place which very far a way from the metropolitan and with peaceful and cheerful environment. No water facilities. Everyday the tank lorry will fetch water at Lahad Datu town located 14km from the school. I was very used to take bath with water from the rain and get skin disease after completed my SPM!

It where all the stories begin. I made a lot of friends there, and I am very proud of each one of them. I haven't met some of them for since 10 years ago. How times flies. Some of them already got kids (including me), some in their relationship and some still searching for the perfect partner for life.

It took place at the Haji Samuri, Satey Kajang on July 12th. It was quite near to my house actually. But since I never been there for quite a while (can I say 15 years?) and I lost on my way there.

Thanks to Fide' (or they called him as Max Hardy) who organize everything. We actually keep in touch at one of our website www.smsld.net (come and check it out).

Some funny little things happened, including a good friend of mine who mistakenly arrive 1 day earlier. (I was almost did the same, but luckily I got an internet connection at my house and able to re-check on that warm Saturday).

Glad to meet all of you. Hope someone will organize the same gathering one day. To those who can't attend, hope to meet you again.

Related post : Ustaz Amir Blog
More picture : smsld.net

UPSR : Still Relevant?

Still in education theme here. After the PPSMI, now the UPSR. Some suggestion to scrapped the UPSR which the purpose is to eliminate the exam oriented mindset of pupils and parents. There is some point there. But my opinion, in whatever we do, there must be some target to achieve. If not because of the examination, do you think all the student will read books, focus on class, revise the subject, do homework or attend tuition?

If there were no exams during my time, I wont even care about the lesson and syllabus will become just a syllabus.

Again in anything we do there must be target. That is why KPI or MBO is a very powerful tools in management. The reason behind it was the objective! What is the objective of attending school?

I agree with TSMY to mentioned that UPSR is still relevant, whereas there will be some additional area, co-curriculum will be assess as well. Let the academician become excel in their field and the footballer, or photographer excel in whatever they do as well. So that we can produce a product of the future which we already set a target of what they want to be since primary school. Not everybody wants to be professionals, not everybody wants to be businessman, not everybody wants to be sportsman. So let them choose themselves. But in the meantime, don't scrap the UPSR examination as syllabus need assessment as well.

Music : Composed Songs

Back in my time at University, as a student, there always enough time to do everything we wanted to do. I have a very deepest interest in Music! I played the guitar and also other instruments (but not good at it). Jamming is our weekly activity and it was like a drug for me, stronger than heroin. Those were the days.

Aside from playing, I did compose some songs and luckily some of them I have recorded. Some live jamm session and some I recorded using a multi-track recording software called Cakewalk. Recently, one of my friend just bounce some idea to go for a recording session and start to work on our stuff. So, I just downloaded some of my stuff which I keep a copy from at my gmail. I started to listen to some of my recoding and guess what? The melody keep on flowing into my head.

Even I lose touch with my friends, I still listen to these music. I wish I could spend enough time in the future to work on some of my composed stuff and really do some serious recording. I'll try to allocate myself some time, who knows, I might be just another person on the AIM in next few years. :)

PPSMI - > PPSMM (2012)

So, government cancelled the PPSMI? I believe there's a lot of opinions on this. I personally support the idea of PPSMI. It's not just about the english. There's a whole lot of things, considering my experience from my kindergarten until climbing some few steps at the corporate ladder.

For me, I am the product before the implementation of PPSMI. I studied engineering in Multimedia University. I found out it was difficult to translate all those Malay terms to English during the foundation stage. Some of our friend in South Africa manage to understand the concept and explain to us on the physics subject because they learn science in English at their school. The concept is the same thing with what we learn in form 5, but the terms made us confused, hence, that is my reason for my poor grade. :) Hehe...

If we said, Japanese can do it, why we can't? My opinion is simple. Japanese own most of the largest companies. They decide whatever direction they wanted to. But for us, most of the company is foreign company. We work for them. We did not decide, but we have to follow their instructions. Multi-national company (MNC) will always instruct using English, not Malay. If the student graduated the subject in Malay, they will have difficulties in understanding instructions.

What ever I mentioned above was electronics and manufacturing industries (as my career background began there). How about constructions and oil & gas, where we own some companies? My opinion is the same. All these big companies will expand abroad. Especially mid-east, China etc. We still need to employ foreign people at their country. Then, if we just started to convert every terms, the same situation will happened like me communicating with my ex-colleague from Japan last time. Everytime need to press the electronic dictionary. Same goes in finance and banking, accountancy, medical, etc. Please give me the picagari... err.. what is picagari..?? Let me press the dictionary.. (of course this is lousy example. but did you get my point..?)

I strongly agreed with our former PM, Tun Mahathir in their future vision. However, government also have their point. The gap is there. In 5 years time, those who live in town can get good result, hence excellent career in life, while those studied in rural areas don't have this English atmosphere will end up missing their seats at the higher education level.

However, a lot of steps can be taken to strengthen the English gap. Like Tun mentioned, it's not the idea is to be blamed, it's the implementation. PPSMI is not about the statistics of improvement of the subject, the pass-rate, the gap, the difficulties, the lack of quality teachers etc. It's about the future. To do something for the future requires CHANGES. After some CHANGES there will be some PROBLEMS occur. To solve the PROBLEMS we need some SOLUTIONS. To implement the SOLUTIONS we need some CHANGES. And the cycle goes.

Steve Vai & Andy Timmons - Beat it

Tribute to Michael Jackson.
This video is recorded on June 27th 09, performed live at Meinl Guitar Festival.

Enjoy!