PakndakLan's Corner

Raub

2012-02-12T13:45:00.000-08:00

I am currently spending my semester break at my hometown, Raub. Practically I am doing nothing here except fishing a little bit, helping some folks with their computer problems and reading a lot of good books.

I am thinking maybe I need to buy a new camera in order to snap an interesting picture and store it here in my abandoned blog for future memory. Who knows maybe we would want to remember the best moment in our life but no pictures to express the exact moment. So well that's my top reason. No need to have an expensive one, just the affordable stuff with basic functions would do just fine. I am impressed with other blogs with their cool pictures beside having a couple of good stories beyond.

Hurmmm...what else, oh yes only one semester remains and honestly I don't know which path should I choose after completing my degree. Either continue studying Master or find helluva suitable job everywhere. If I had to choose the later, obviously I wouldn't consider a place far far away from my hometown. The worst of it I am not even fit to live in an urban area which contains bad air, quick pace and noisy environment. Humm entahla...

Cukupla setakat ni...kita sambung lain kali.

go away works!

2011-12-14T01:00:00.000-08:00

design report
design slide
fyp report
fyp logbook
finite element: analysis of bridge strength
control: analysis of antenna azimuth
cfd test
finite element test
minute meeting
design logbook
flexible manufacturing system report
the list is going endlessly...

hopefully i wouldn't become crazy during this week.

regular day

2011-12-08T02:36:00.001-08:00

7.30-8.30AM: studying control at home, chapter of state space. Restudied how to calculate the inverse of 3x3 matrix. Felt a little guilt because I had learned this kind before from Puan Peridah Bahari (wonder where is she now) during my fourth semester of diploma study at UiTMPP 7 years ago. Because of never applying her methods, I forgot everything (typical me, study to pass the test, ~~tak ikhlas langsung niat tu!~~). Actually after revising a little bit from internet, I got clue that there is 2 different approaches how to calculate the aforementioned inverse. First approach is by using Adjourned method (istilah yang direka sesuka hati saya). Another approach is by identity method (juga istilah yang direka sesuka hati saya). And it got me thinking which approach is quicker. So I set the time and did both approaches by using identical elements. The results obtained were faster when I used Adjourned method, only took about 3 minutes. Contrary to identity method which consumed exactly 6 minutes, and the calculations were also quite messy and tend to get me confusing myself if I was not careful. So to sum up, never use identity method in exam, requires too much time. And not to forget calculators don't have this kind of function. To get the determinant, yes they do.
8.30-10.30PM: drove to campus, have control lesson on 9.30AM. Ate Breakfast with 3 kuih and a glass of Teh O at faculty's cafeteria level three. Did manage to revise a little bit how to determine the observability and controlability of a transfer function. During the one-hour-class, we have been given one simple question and not to my surprise I was the first to finish it. So my little habit of studying early pays the dividend. But I need to constantly remember all my sifus' advice; never get cocky and humbly spread the knowledge among friends who have little trouble to understand the concept. Despise to people who are clever but in the same time so stingy..be thankful to Allah for His 'anugerah' to give us the ability to think quickly....InsyaAllah...
6.00-7.00PM: Went to a restaurant (tak ingat nama) at Seksyen 7 near Restoran Amin Thai; ate Tomyam Ayam and simultaneously read a journal of hydrodynamic bearing ..time is gold.

Unproductive day.

2011-12-07T03:47:00.001-08:00

8.30-10.30AM: CFD lab lesson: Doing analysis about electronic cooling with natural convection. I have learned how to investigate the effect of thermal power dissipation via finned heat sink to the maximum temperature by doing FLUENT simulation. Cool... but unfortunately I am required to prepare a lab report and the submission date is due 14th Dec. Urgh again another report...my precious weekend will be sacrificed two times in a row.

10.30-11.30AM: Design meeting period. Only about 10 students attended this class. So sad...anyway 2 important dates need to be remembered. Presentation and product assessment dates are due 26th and 27th Dec. The panels will be not from UiTM lecturers but from experienced engineers from outside instead. So the attires must be proper and Pn Mimi has given sincere advice like student should be well prepared in term of slides and presenting skills. Keep the good image of UiTM!! It is vital for job market later. And not to forget, the final report has to be submitted before study week.

11.30-1.00PM: Because of so stressed thinking about too much works need to be completed, I decided to drive to Plaza Masalam alone and ate one pax of a healthy meal chicken rice at Chicken Rice Shop downstairs. Hik...hik... (~~bila dah tension, memang kuat makan~~). Oh yes, on the way to go there my elder sis has called asking whether I had called Mak before. Strange, I am not avid caller due to my disability to hear accurately. So I said no, if there is anything I would reach Mak through sms.

2.00-4.00PM: No evening class. The stress have not gone yet so I did my all time favorite hobby...sleeping!!!! Oyeah. So epic Lan...(~~tengah keje betimbun sempat lagi kau tido erk..~~)

8.00-onwards: Completing my FYP report...ok cukuplah setakat ni... goodbye readers!

Mind Mapping

2011-12-04T23:06:00.001-08:00

Actually this is one of my study techniques that I have been practicing consistently back during my study at MRSM. I am still using it today in my current study. So far this method has been proven highly effective especially when I have been forcefully studied(?) on the last minute (grammatical error but I don't know the correct perfect continuous tense for passive sentence, ~~bantai je la janji pembaca faham~~).

This technique has many advantages compared to traditional linear note. One of them is you can store a whole information of one chapter into just one page! Hence it can reduce the pressure to read the important concepts which are usually too long to remember. Another benefit is it triggers both sides of your brain to think strategically which the left side focuses on the words and the right side concentrates on the colors, pictures and other visual data. It has been scientifically proven by researchers that if you use both sides to think, the output is maximum!

But if you are looking at my notes, they lack colors and pictures (actually none!)..this is because I am not talented enough to draw. Another reason is it consumes too much time and very impractical to bring together the markers everywhere you go. So one pen is simple enough for me and I can jot down every time the idea strikes no matter in what place and what time. But sometimes if time permits, I write in colors because I could remember better and crucially longer like this one below.

After completing the notes, I put them on the wall above my study table. One night before a test, I am simply staring at them and try to make connections what I have written. Lastly I memorize everything without much problem because it's just 1 page for 1 topic after all. The duration of memorizing only takes about a half hour.

I am encouraging the readers to apply this method because you can amazingly recall quicker during the test. Steps to do mind mapping can be referred at this link iqmatrix
That link explains better..

Good Luck!

Too much

2011-12-03T12:12:00.001-08:00

This weekend I have tone of assignments which need to be submitted impossibly sooner than I could manage.
It is just not that, every assignment has very gruesome difficulty to solve and requires overly creative thoughts. Otherwise you will be penalized for your messy work and even being labelled as lazy student. Not to mention the tests, FYP, design and mini projects...how it is possible for human to finish all the tasks given within the very very very short time?

Urgh..

Sometimes I fail to make sense any of this. Fail to comprehend the essence of learning if the input is too much. Fail to find the beauty of understanding and love of knowledge. As usual when I have been pressured to do my best and sadly succumb to my own weakness, I start to read the biography of Islamic scholars like Al-Biruni, Al-Khwarizm and Ibnu Sina. Their stories help to motivate me a little bit because I find the similar pattern between their journey towards knowledge's wisdom. All of them loved to study because not of acquiring fame, not to past the examination and not to receive a huge sum of money. They studied simply because they love the knowledge itself. That's why the had the great ability to withstand the tiredness of long hours of studies.

What about me? Yes I love to read and yes I love to understand something especially when it involves sciences and mathematics. But admittedly my intention is not as pure as them because there's a tiny spot living in the corner of my brain that telling me I have to study to pass the test, not to feel the delicacy of cognizance.

Something for me to reflect back my nawaitu...

It is Allah's promise to give His secret to people who really work towards it in condition their heart must be pure and have the willingness to spread the knowledge among the community.

Hopefully I would survive all of these and at the same time wouldn't neglect my passion of study.

Dah..dah..study...study...

Nyquist history

2011-11-26T23:54:00.001-08:00

Nyquist Plots were invented by Nyquist - who worked at Bell Laboratories, the premiere technical organization in the U.S. at the time. He was interested in designing telephone amplifiers to be placed in ocean-floor cables. In those days, between the first and second world wars, undersea cables were the only reliable means of intercontinental communication.

Undersea telephone cables needed to be reliable, and to have a constant gain that did not change as the amplifier aged. In those days, electronic amplifiers were constructed with tubes, and tubes had gains that could change dramatically as they aged.

The solution to the aging problem was to design feedback amplifiers. However, those amplifiers could become unstable. One morning - going to work on the Staten Island ferry, before the Verrazano Narrows bridge - Nyquist had an inspiration, and wrote his work, literally, on the back of an envelope as he rode. Today, millions of control system students are tortured by instructors making them apply the Nyquist Stability criterion, and it is widely used in control system design.

it is such a mess here...

2011-11-16T16:43:00.001-08:00

I want to read peacefully, but the room is so messy...stinky cloths lie all over the places, pile of books scrambling around without in order, a number of empty bottles, stack of old newspapers and countless other thing,

I want to cook, but looking the unwashed dishes, remaining fluids splashing all over the kitchen stove, wet floor, full of thrash in the basket....urgh...

Boys are always boys...

You scold them cleanliness is part of Islam's faith... but fall on deaf ear.. They have good ears but never listen..

urghh so tension la bende2 sepah ni...

CFD Test

2011-11-12T10:09:00.001-08:00

On Monday I will sit a CFD test which contributes 10% of total grade. The test is an open book type so I am pretty sure the questions will be really difficult ones. So today I am very determined to read all the notes included. The only thing I don't like about this subject is it lacks of tutorials for me to apply what I have understood so far. Online resources are also not available and are out of lecturer's syllabus. So I have to risk my grade by just read a lot.

So readers, wish me luck!

Losing memories: A box of matches

2011-11-11T11:02:00.001-08:00

OK this is actually a funny history of mine almost 20 years ago when I was nine.

Back in primary school when I was in standard three, I had one Math teacher who was famous as the most fearsome person who could easily scare his pupils without much effort. He had no problem at all to whip the ignorance by his legendary huge rattan with thick inches. The unlucky ones at best would cry out loud by his unique whipping skill. Usually most of the victims wouldn't dare to report their respective parents about this sort of punishment because of high percentage of second chance they might be beaten again. This time they could get from their father due to the embarrassment they carried to their family. Thus, it discouraged everyone and kept their mouth tightly shut. Hehehehe....

And not to my surprise my mom even had told all of my teachers to punish me without second thought if i had not behaved properly. This case was standard at that time because most parents really trusted all teachers, compared to the current trend, which even the slightest touch on a pupil will cause a teacher one nasty police report. What is wrong with society today? I really believe teachers are always sacred like knowledge itself, they should be protected because without them there is no such thing called doctor, engineer, lawyer or even prime minister.

opsss sorry dah merapu jauh ni...

ok back to the story..

A day before this funny incident happened, an art teacher of our class had asked us to bring along an empty box of matches for the art lesson tomorrow. To keep story short, the next morning during cycling all my way to school suddenly I remembered that I didn't bring the box, so I rushed to a nearby shop and bought a box of full matches that costed exactly 10 cent before continuing my 15 minutes journey to school.

The first period was Math taught by the famous teacher I have mentioned earlier. As usual the class was eerily quite because everyone was afraid to become his next victim. Because of this frustrating silence I eventually became so bored that I decided to lighten a match serenely in my desk while the teacher was writing on the blackboard. Here I chafed...scchhhhffftttt...

Unfortunately my friend behind me saw my action and quickly yelled (well kid is always kid who doesn't think about the consequences..furthermore she was the proud class monitor and she thought she was responsible in just everything...damn)

Well I need to switch to our language because I think it is funnier if the dialog below is written in Malay.

Class Monitor: Cikgu, Fadzlan bakar mancis!

The teacher slowly approached me. The thick scary rattan was not that far from his reachable range. Of course I was shivering and my face started turning pale.

Cikgu: Kenapa kamu bawa mancis ke sekolah?

Me: Cikgu pendidikan seni suruh.

Cikgu: Apa kamu nak bakar sekolah ke?

Me: Haah.

Everyone of the class burst out laughing with my clumsy response. Actually I didn't realize that I had miss-listened with something else. I thought I heard "apa ianya kerja sekolah ke?". I stood in terror when he raised his hand to grab the rattan. I closed my eyes as indication that I was ready to be whipped on my cute b*tt. Luckily my cousin who studied the same class with me did manage just in time to inform the teacher that I was born with hearing disability. He told I was not making a joke at all and probably I miss the words.

So the teacher didn't punish me, he merely took the box of matches, turned away and started to spend time on his blackboard back. Fuh....how fortunate!!

But it was really not that fortunate as I thought because I was still been fined later by my art teacher for not having the box. And my friend made this freakish incident as the greatest joke ever to be remembered and shared to other classes for the whole year. T_T

What is the moral of the story? Well I would like to tell the readers it is not easy to live with any kind of physical disability especially when you are still a kid where your friend are still not mature enough by easily abusing you. People always make fun about your handicap notably your closest friend. Allah blesses my parents who have already trained me to be never got hurt by such behaviors by doing the positive thinking. Otherwise I don't think I could get as many great friends as today. But sometimes particularly when I am alone, I couldn't lie that I am very sad regarding to my failed ears which can not function normally like the others and the worst of it some of them (even the teachers themselves) start to wrongly judge that your future education would be in bleak because of your difficulty to listen any crucial information that might be needed. But really I am lucky because only few of them tend to segregate based on physical appearance. Most of my teachers are/were very understanding and I could never forget their countless effort to help me doing well in my studies.

Final year (part 2)

2011-11-11T06:12:00.001-08:00

OKAY Continue my last post...

Well I have chosen those two special topics because mostly they are related with my Final Year Project (FYP). I am actually doing research about temperature profile in journal bearing for my FYP. My Supervisor is a deputy dean (Research & Industrial Linkage), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Salmiah Kasolang. It is likely unfortunate for me to have someone who is very busy being the deputy dean, which the amount of her duty task is triple than an ordinary lecturer's . I had only 2 slight opportunities so far to have a meeting with her discussing about what need to be included in a good FYP report. And those meetings were conducted no more than ten minutes each because of her crazy schedule. To make the matter worse, I don't even have a single clue what I will do about my thesis. The only thing I could manage so far is just skimming through pages after pages of ISBN journals without fully understand a little bit what the authors of those nonsense journals mumbling about.

So I think this is a paramount challenge for me to prove that I too, could be an independent thinker who can survive by himself despite the lack of guidance and accredited resources. Insya Allah..

Final Year

2011-09-17T17:01:00.000-07:00

Wow... it has been close up to 2 years since my last post here. I had told you before, I was not into blogging stuff because I am not good with language. Anyway this year is the final year for me as a student; whether like it or not I have to practice using English because good technical report is very crucial to mechanical engineer. If my grammar is sloppy and I keep constantly using poor vocabulary how the hell would I expect to find a promising career next July? So I need to do something about it.

Well, as usual apparently I have no idea what to write in my nearly abandoned blog here so I figure it would be okay if not better that I share some of my current student life which by the way is quite hectic. This semester every student is required to choose at least 2 special topics to enhance various skills as a preparation before graduating and entering the next stage of young adult's phase of life. For your information I have selected Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Finite Element Method (FEM) as special topics for this semester. Strangely not many other students dare enough to take these subjects. I find it is weird because every special topic will require students to do mini project with their own budgets of money and time. And CFD and FEM are two of them that cost the least money and maybe could save a lot of time because they would have only concerned with simple software. I decided to choose them because of my particular reasons below.

1: It is obvious that my interest lies on fluids flow and the profiles of temperature/pressure distribution. ANSYS is the best simulation software to visualize that flow and distribution quite in detail.

2. I am strong in mathematics and comfortable in manipulating numbers. So FEM definitely suits me well

Ah dah tak larat tulis....sambunglah lain kali yerk.....hehehehe

-To be continued-

Losing Memories: Bath in the river

2009-08-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

When I was in primary school, I loved to have a bath (mandi sungai) in the river which located not far from my grandma's house. I preferred to swim together with my closed friends after school time, which was usually between 3.00pm to 5.00pm. Luckily my mom didn't mind about my hobby as long as I finished my homework first since she had already known that I was a good swimmer, therefore I would able to take care of myself. This kind of activity was going on for years until I was in Standard 6 which meant I had to sit the USPR Examination. Since I was very weak in English, my mom instructed me to attend extra tuition class which I hated most because I couldn't have fun or fool around as usual with my regular friends at the river anymore. To make the matter worse, my mom also required me to have not just English class, but all UPSR subjects like Malay Language and Maths as well. Pretending to be a good son (actually I was kind of afraid of her because she's very strict at that time), I just followed on without complaints. I figured maybe my mom didn't want me to waste such precious time and she really didn't like me to befriended with such friends who didn't care about their examinations.

The tuition center was organized by two teachers of our public school. Both of them were actually a married couple but childless and they had opened the center in their home located next to the school. The husband taught us Maths and Malay. In the beginning, I took the tuition classes pretty well for couple months. Until I was eventually so bored especially in Maths because I had already excelled above the rest of my tuition friends at this easy subject. Not to brag about, I even surpassed his wife in Math test who was by the way teaching us English in the tuition center.

Later on one fine day, I had decided to skip Maths-tuition-class without telling anyone and joined along with my two buddies who my mom had severely misjudged as 'people with no future' to take a bath in the river. They were my friends who studied at the same public school but had not taken any tuition classes. How lucky there were!

Three of us were enjoying ourselves like hell and absolutely were oblivious of the surrounding until one of my friends saw a man was hiding in the bushes not far from the riverbank. He gestured me to take a look too and I without checking carefully just yelled at that man, "Yo dude! Why spying us? Are you scared? Hahaha..... he can't swim, that's why... Common and have fun. It's very cool here! We can teach you how to swim".

And guess what? When he came out of the bushes, I was shocked like having a first stroke and not sure if i had peed myself. That man was actually my Maths Teacher! Damn...I don't want to tell what were going on but i can guaranty you something really really bad happened to me. :P

The next day, both of my friends and me were called by our Maths Teacher in a discipline room. As my friends didn't take the tuition, they were only given unpleasant advices like never to swim anymore because UPSR was just around the corner. They should take more responsibility as a student to behave and be well prepared for the forthcoming examination. What about me? I was not the lucky one. As the punishment because of skipping class, my teacher instructed me to kiss a flagpole in front of all pupils during the next assembly.

T_T T_T T_T

The confusing thing is who was the real culprit to tell my teacher that I went to the river instead of having Maths class? I never told anyone at that time. Sure I would take a revenge if I know who did it.... :P

Unfortunately, I never learnt the lesson...I still took an occasional bath in the river and sometimes skipped classes if I had to. Only this time I was smarter as I would pick the secluded spot in the river which was the hardest to be found by my teacher.

Hehehe...

First Entry

2009-07-14T03:28:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. Actually I am not into blogging stuff because I simply don’t have time to do this activity but my BEL499 lecturer requires everyone to create his/her own blog to improve the usage of English language.

I don’t have much to type here except one thing that I think is very solemn, I am semi-deaf in both ears which means my hearing skills are effective only about 40%. Despite being born with such permanent disability, I really don’t care what others think about me but I do realize that OKU (Orang Kurang Upaya) community deserves to be given the equal chances like normal people do; to seek the better life with stable career and the right to learn high level of education. I did wear an hearing aid attached in my left ear but recently that device was broken and it requires about RM1k to repair it back to optimal condition. Of course I couldn't afford it since I don't come from prosperous family. So I figure the alternative way is to communicate with the sign language but the problem is not many people can do that. This language doesn't matter to me because I am already fluent. So what do you think?

Ok that’s all in my head right now. If I have anything to share about, I would be back to write something ASAP in my dull blog here.

Cheers….

And sorry for my bad English.