Kacang is Nuts!

It’s sure not home when cars drive on the “wrong side” of the road and the staple food is meat and bread. Yeap, this is my first post from the US of A and it’s been an exciting time here.

They say getting there is half the adventure, and you’d better believe it! The journey over from KL really started off on the wrong foot when the MAS flight we were taking got delayed by engine problems.

Waiting at KLIA for the plane to be fixed

We finally got off the ground, about 4 hours late. A Brit on the same flight was royally pissed. He was delayed on the flight over to Malaysia too, and he was adamant that he’d never take MAS again if he could.

The flight over to England can only be described as long. We had economy class seats, the food was really blah. However, there were personal entertainment systems for all the passengers, and I ended up watching reruns of House and CSI.

We transited in London Heathrow Airport. Our connecting American Airlines flight was overbooked, and surprise surprise! I got upgraded to Business class together with a colleague.

Business class seat on AA. Can’t really tell, but you can really stretch out or lie down.

Not that I’m complaining of course. Hell, business class is THE WAY to travel! The seat’s so nice, you can recline it all the way like a bed to sleep. The air stewardesses actually treat people in a civilized manner, and the food. Wow. You have got to see it to believe it.

Apple juice and really fresh roasted nuts

Salmon something-or-the-other which really tastes great.

Turkey sandwich with salad.

Everyone on business class was given a Bose noise cancellation head phones which totally cut off the scream of the engines to a quiet hum. They’re wicked!

I can’t hear you. I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

The flight was really wonderful. However, on approach, Raleigh looked a bit desolate from the air, not at all what I was expecting. No major city blocks or urban sprawls, just flat land and clumps of development.

Raleigh Durham area from the air.

We got a pick up from Raleigh-Durham International Airport, arrived at Courtney Estates, our home for the next one year.

First view of Courtney Estates residence.

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No, I’m not dead (This phrase has been used to death around here. Maybe I should use it as my blog tagline. You know, “Kacang is Nuts!: No, I’m not dead!”). Well, I’ve been busy (Bet you’ve heard that one, too). No, really.

It’s all a long story, a little of which I mentioned in passing here. So, what really happened was that… I got a job at my dream company! WOOHOO! *dances, jiggles, cheers*

OK, alright, not ‘jakun’ or anything but I’m very excited to get a job with Cisco Systems. If you’ve not heard of the name, it’s the top network technology provider worldwide. Every time you use the Internet, you can be sure that somewhere along the line, a Cisco switch or router is humming quietly and sending your data along up and down the line. These days, Cisco equipment is pretty much the glue which holds much of the Internet together.

Anyway, I’ll be joining Cisco through its Associate Systems Engineer (ASE) program. This program will bring me to Cisco’s Research Triangle Park facility in North Carolina for a one year training stint starting in July 2008. Together with three other ASEs (no, not ASSES!), we’ll be trained in Cisco’s own networking technology, technical sales as well as effective communicating. By the end of the one year, we are expected to have achieved both the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) and Cisco Certified Design Professional (CCDP) certifications.

Expect more about this in future, but one thing’s for sure: It’s gonna be a heck of an awesome experience!

Filed under: Experiences, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

For a long time, the mainstream media (MSM) organizations in Malaysia have been actively partaking in biased reporting, truth censorship and fear mongering on behalf of Barisan Nasional. Certain very well established English dailies helped Barisan Nasional paint the finishing brush strokes of racial, political and instability fear against the canvas of the recent elections. Many of them demonized the opposition politicians, while making the BN politicians sound like angels. Basically, the message by the MSM to Malaysians was “Vote for us, or else”. Well folks, I think we’re all still waiting for the “or else”. Anyone see any sign of it yet?

Anyway, I sure hope the March ‘08 elections woke up every last one of those folks who think that controlling the media is going to help them politically. It is the era of the Internet now, and if the MSM cannot report truthfully and fairly, then we shall vote with our feet. No more media lies. The truth is out there on the Net these days, and nobody can deny it to us Malaysians. Where? Think Malaysiakini and Malaysia Today. Think the many multitudes of Malaysian blogs and independent observers. Our eyes and ears are everywhere.

That’s probably the reason for today’s call by The Star for freedom of press. It has taken some time for the fact to sink in, but it appears that at least some of the MSM people are sitting up and taking notice. I quote,

The emergence of these channels of alternative media has effectively neutered the powers of governments to censor or limit information or freedom of expression.

While the writer still sounded a little reluctant to admit all of MSM’s faults (”maligned” meaning they were accused untruthfully),

In the past, the mainstream media, The Star included, was maligned for its scope of coverage.

he/she nevertheless understands the final outcome of its complacency.

With the intensifying competition, readers and viewers, who are armed with information as the true source of power, will determine the survival of any media. The simple message is this: Publish correctly or be damned.

Well, it’s about time. But it remains to be seen if The Star [or any other "news" organizations, for that matter] will grow some balls soon, or is it just doing another of Dollah’s “talk the the talk, pretend to walk.” The MSM need to understand that their getting our hard earned money is not a right, but just a simple business transaction. Supply and demand. The demand is not for bullshit, but for truth and quality reporting. And when the demand is not met, well, they can keep their supply of bullshit for themselves and wallow in it.

Update 1851hrs: Just caught my attention that in The Star’s news article on Raja Petra’s arrest, Pete himself from Malaysia Today has been ‘upgraded’ from just a blogger and is now recognized as “editor of news portal Malaysia Today”. Changes starting already?

Filed under: Malaysia, Thoughts, politics | No Comments »

I had to perform a long due upgrade on my home server about two days back. The problem with it was that the server processor would overheat under high computing load. It became so bad that the CPU alarm would trip occasionally, indicating a “fever” of more than 60°C. As with most electronic equipment, Computers + Heat = Big No No + Big Computer Junkyard in The Sky. A new CPU heat sink seemed to be in order, with both the Thermalright Ultra 120 and the Thermalright Ultima 90i looking to be pretty good choices.

The Ultra 120 model is a huge behemoth of a heat sink, weighing in at over 700 grams. The Ultima 90i is far lighter at less than 500 grams. While the Ultra 120 offers much better cooling performance, its weight is a problem, especially for a computer which will be transported around. With the increased mass and inertia, any shaking or rapid vibrations would result in potentially damaging force to the motherboard. Not to mention that it may plain break off. I’ve still yet to hear something like that yet, but being a first on this doesn’t win any prizes. Also, with the Ultra 120 going for RM255 and the Ultima 90i going for a more reasonable RM205, I decided to go with the Ultima 90i.

The Ultima 90i, while not as heavy as the Ultra 120, is still hefty enough to need more than your bog standard heat sink mounting mechanism. And installing the special mounting means taking off the whole board to install a back plate.

Here’s the naked computer with the ole’ standard issue Intel heat sink fan set.

Here’s the naked computer WITHOUT the ole’ standard issue Intel heat sink fan set. That’s the processor chip there. Four lip-smacking cores of Intel Q6600 goodness. It runs hotter than hell, hence this blog post.

The mounting brackets are installed by screwing them against a supplied back plate.

The said back plate, the primary cause of all this monkey business.

Once the mounting’s done, it’s time to work with the Ultima 90i itself.

The heat sink doesn’t come with it’s own fan, so I had to scavenge around for a spare 120cm fan. This one’s a spare taken off a casing somewhere. I had to take the fan off again to actually mount the heat sink on the board, or else I couldn’t tighten down one of the locking screws.

Ta-da! Bunged together and almost ready to go, with the fan reinstalled after the earlier snafu…

Here’s the front view. Looks huge, doesn’t it?

This is after installing the board back into the casing. Yes, it’s quite a mess. One thing I can’t seem to get right is tidying up the innards of the computer. Too many cables and stuff in the server already.

The heat sink seems to work pretty well. While before this, the baseline temperature of the processor was around 44°C, it now holds around 35°C. This is pretty good, leaving a much larger buffer to the dreaded alarm at 60°C. While the system will need monitoring for some time after this, I do believe the heat problem is solved. More on this later on if anything breaks!

Filed under: Technology | 4 Comments »

Hello world! Sorry for the long absence, I’ve been really busy tying up some lose ends for my masters research. Why the rush now? ‘Cuz I got a new job, that’s why! More on this later on when the offer has been finalized. For now though, I can say that it’s going to be a really swell job with a really swell company, and getting it is sort of akin to striking lottery. Stay tuned for more!

Another reason for being uber busy these last few weeks is that I’ve been attending the Toastmasters Club at my university as well as at Mid Valley. Briefly, Toastmasters International is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people improve their communication and leadership skills. For most part, the organization focuses on helping individuals overcome their fear of speaking in front of a crowd, while improving the delivery of their speeches. After all, being able to communicate effectively these days is a must for anyone and everyone in the workforce. Personally, I’m hoping train myself to be more confident when I’m communicating with people for my future job. Just like Obama! For more information, do go to the Toastmasters International’s “What is Toastmasters?” page.

Anyway, having signed up as a member about three weeks back, I finally received my Toastmasters New Member Kit today. Many thanks to Joy Lee of the university’s Toastmasters Club for helping me with the registration earlier. The kit shouldn’t have taken so long to arrive, but the fault was mine as I had registered using my JB address. The package took a circuitous route to JB before reaching me in PJ, safe and sound, via Poslaju (courtesy of my mom).

Inside the package is the New Member Kit. Oh, and that’s DD, my girlfriend’s soft toy dog which was lying around when I took the pics.

The kit contains a few manuals, namely:

• Competent Leadership
• Competent Communication
• Your Speaking Voice
• Gestures: Your Body Speaks
• Effective Evaluation

Join me, anyone?

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I received this SMS message this week from a medical officer at the University of Malaya Medical Center (UMMC) a few days back:

Hi dear donor! This is medical officer from university hospital ppum. We are very short of o and A.Pls come n donate at blood bank ppum uh. Mon to fri 8am to 5pm. Sat 8am to 12.30pm. Enquiry pls call 0379492706 reception. Tq very much for ur help.

I found out today that this message was sent by Dr. Maung from the Department of Medical Transfusion. The nurse who chatted with me while I was waiting for my blood to be collected told me that the SMS campaign successfully increased the number of donors by up to 100% on some days. However, blood reserves for blood types A and O are still insufficient, and more donors are still needed at this time.

If you are healthy and in reasonably good shape, please do consider giving some blood to the blood bank. The stored blood is usually used for accident or emergency cases where loss of blood has occurred, as well as in some major operations.

For first timers, you may be interested to read my post on blood donation(with pics!) from earlier on. Additional information can be obtained from the UMMC Blood Donation page. It’s generally quite a painless and safe process. And to top it off? You may just be saving someone’s life.

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Here are some of the election events which really caught my attention. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, and some… Well, you decide.

Let’s start with the good:

• First time candidates and bloggers Jeff Ooi, Elizabeth Wong, Tony Pua won their seats. Bloggers ARE relevant, no matter what some losers say.
• Zainuddin bin Maidin knocked out as Information Minister. He was known for:
  • Criticizing Malaysian bloggers for allegedly spewing lies (which were really truths).
  • Oppressing freedom of speech by disallowing any semblance of fair reporting of news by the media.
  • Making a fool of himself and Malaysia with his incomprehensible commenting on the BERSIH rally on Al-Jazeera.
• Khir Toyo knocked out as Selangor Menteri Besar (Chief Minister). He was known for:
  • Falsely claiming that the state of Selangor had achieved developed status, ignoring all internationally accepted standards.
  • Awarding brooms to under-performing civil service departments.
  • Defending Zakaria Mat Deros and his palatial mansion.
  • Daring to recommend controversial election candidates no matter their flaws, as long as he thought they could win for BN.
  • Personally insulting straight-shooting journalists Citizen Nades and Terence Fernandez for reporting negatively on his state government, and warning them against such further (truthful) reporting.
• Badruddin bin Amiruldin defeated. He was known for the following:
  • “Malaysia ini negara Islam. You tak suka, you keluar dari Malaysia!” (Malaysia is a Islamic country. If you don’t like it, get out of Malaysia!)
  • “Keling!” (derogatory name for Malaysia’s minority Indians)
  • Threatened a repeat of the May 13th racial riots for those who questioned Malaysia’s Malay rights.
• Samy Vellu defeated. He was known for:
  • Collaborating with the National Front in implicitly sidelining the rights of the minority Indians.
  • Being highly corrupt, selling out the country to highway consortiums, resulting in increasingly ridiculous highway tolls.
• Mohd Said Yusof not even fielded as candidate. He was known for:
  • Abusing his power to ask customs officials to “close one eye” so that his consignment of illegal logs could be cleared. He was subsequently NOT punished.
  • “Batu Gajah MP tiap-tiap bulan pun bocor” (The Batu Gajah MP also leaks every month) in reference to Fong Po Kuan’s menstruation. This was during a debate on a leaking parliament building roof.

The bad:

• Khairy Jamaluddin won against che’GuBard. He is known for:
  • Being the not so secret power behind Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s throne.
  • Referring to bloggers as monkeys, and hypocritically following suit with his own blog days before the elections.
  • Trying to integrate Mat Rempit (motorcyle gangs and hooligans, basically criminals) with the police, to be their “eyes and ears”.
  • Being the famous Son-in-Law of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who rides roughshod over everyone not in agreement with him.
• Bung Mokhtar Radin won in Kinbatangan. He is known for:
  • Supporting Mohd Said Yusof’s sexist “Batu Gajah MP tiap-tiap bulan pun bocor”.

The plain ugly:

• Zakaria Mat Deros died after a heart attack. He is the former Port Klang Assembly man and former Klang Municipal council member best known for:
  • Abusing his power to build an illegal and palatial mansion without a construction permit.
  • Failing paying assessment on his property for 12 years.
  • Operating an illegal food stall on government reserve land.
  • Getting away with all the above with Khir Toyo’s help.

This page will likely be updated with more details this week as more post election tidbits are uncovered.

Filed under: Malaysia, politics | 3 Comments »

Alright, I’m a bit late getting on the bandwagon of posting about the election results, but here is my take. Malaysia is truly going through historic times. Now that the National Front has been denied the two thirds majority, we are in totally uncharted waters of our democracy. With Penang, Selangor, Perak, Kedah and Kelantan being held by the opposition, and the power to arbitrarily modify the constitution no longer belonging to Barisan Nasional, it will certainly be exciting to see how the next five years play out.

One thing’s for sure though. This election has been a resounding and well-deserved blow to Barisan Nasional. It has also proven that Malaysians are not as bigoted and as cowardly as UMNO thinks, that we are now wise enough to see that the system needs to be changed, and mature enough to choose change without being uncivilized about it. This truly shows that people have great power, while reminding current and future leaders of Malaysia that “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government, governments should be afraid of their people.”

For now, the opposition rejoices, but they must too remember their promises to the people. Running a government (even at state level) is much harder than talking about how it should be run. Five years from now, if they mess up, the people will be as pissed as they are now with Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. And trust me, opposition or not, they too will be shown the door.

To end on a positive note however, as of these elections, Malaysia has passed the point of no return. In the future, the people will likely pick leaders for their merit and leadership, rather than being convinced by lies or out of fear of instability and violence. We as Malaysians, have truly grown up as a nation. What better present for Malaysia, just past her 50th year of existence?

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