Head blown moment

“If you’re not paying for a service, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold”

I love the internet

Our family got Unifi a couple of months ago and just like with all the other internet service providers before this, the modem had to be placed at the corner of the house which was where the home office was because the desktop was in there. As a result, the Wi-Fi network coverage didn’t quite reach all four corners of the house.

This is fine for me because my room’s directly a floor above the home office but beyond the dining hall and my brother’s room, the house gets zero coverage! This of course will not do for my dad since he has an iPad and he can’t surf in the living room. Him being the man of the house (until I move out to my own place *shakes fist*) means that I have to settle this problem for him.

I thought, won’t it be great if there’s a device that extends the wireless range of your network? I’m not the geekiest of tech geeks so I wasn’t sure. Here’s where I start to really be appreciative of the internet and the ease of information sharing. 5 minutes on Google and I knew exactly what I was supposed to look for: a wireless range extender (of course), the normal price range and the most value-for-money brand.

So I bought what I needed and brought it home. Then I realized I didn’t know how to set up the damned thing. All the stuff about static IPs and default gateways might as well have been Arabic to me. Not to worry, fired up the laptop, typed the appropriate keywords into Google and BAM! detailed instructions from a Forum Lowyat thread from someone who had the same problem.

All these would not have been possible even a decade ago. I would have struggled with the manual for the entire night and called my techie friends the next morning. These days, with the proliferation of internet forums and the increase in volume of tech-tards on the internet asking for advice, you can be almost certain that if you have a problem, somebody has already asked about it first on the internet. Obviously, this is not applicable for all cases, especially not to the first person who asked it on the internet obviously, but in 95% of the cases, just look it up on Google!


It really bears repeating: I fucking love the internet!

On sharpening my knowledge of Malaysian football

Coming back from my first official Malaysia game yesterday (friendlies against English clubs don't count) has made me feel even more detached from English club football. There was just this attachment to the side, not to mention the feeling of watching stadium football, that you just don't get from watching the English clubs on TV.


I mean, I think back to the time I watched the United-Milan game at Old Trafford and wonder if I can feel the same passion again like I did before. The allegiance was phony. I mean, I'd probably still root for the team but I don't think I can stand up and sing and chant for them like I did before without feeling embarrassed.


It's funny, though, how I can probably tell you exactly what is wrong with the English national team, who should be drafted in or out, who's been underperforming, but I can't do the same for the Malaysian team. So I thought back to how I amassed my knowledge of English football in the first place and try to do the same for Malaysian football.


At first, I thought that the best way to know more about Malaysian football was to watch it on TV (or at a stadium). I mean, that seemed like the logical method. You watch the players play, you sift the bad from the good and you remember the names.


Then I realized that wasn't how I knew so much about the Premier League. I mean, I watched the United games and the occasional Premier League/Champions' League matches of some rivals but that was about it.

So then it had to be down to dedicated football news sites with editorials a la Football365/Soccernet. You get to read match reports and there'd be editorials commenting about the state of this club etc. However, I don't seem to be able to find a Malaysian equivalent. A few months into a season with a site like this and I think I can easily get up to speed with the who's who of Malaysian football.


Also, a forum would be very handy to read up on the fans' views. We already have Forum Lowyat for that so it's not too much of a problem. It's just that I've no freaking idea what they're talking about. I mean, they were talking about who was left out by Rajagobal and who should have played in place of whom, who was blazing in the local leagues and should have been included. Y'know, the kinda things that I can do too......... for the English national team!


Oh well, hopefully I can pay more attention to the local leagues and maybe, just maybe, watch my first Selangor match some time next season. Oh, did you know that Selangor is the most decorated club in Malaysian football? I know right, how bloody convenient.

Switching allegiances from one football giant to another.

Inspiring.

There’s nothing more beautiful than a well-written chest-thumping pep speech such as the infamous “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King Jr. and “We shall fight on the beaches” by Churchill. I’ve only recently come across this one even though I’ve seen it in in parts but never in its complete form. Yes, I’m probably a spaz for not having seen this one before.


Anyway, an excerpt from Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic”:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."


Apparently, it has appeared before in another guise as follows:

"Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger."


Basically the 1900s version of “Fuck off, haters!”

This new recent dose..

 

.. of pop-economics literature has really made me wish I’d done economics as my bachelor degree. It just feels right for me, and something I found myself to have a keen interest in. Looking at my bookshelf now, you’d be forgiven for thinking I’m an economist rather than an engineer! I suppose the giveaway would be that all the books right now are light-reading stuff and nothing overly heavy.


Then again, I suppose if you dress a subject up the way these books do, any subject would seem interesting. Maybe if a book was done on how chemistry’s at play everywhere around us (I suppose there is one), chemistry would have been an easier sell to me back when I hated the subject in high school.



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Seeing how my dog always greets me happily when I come back home has led me to conclude that there is no animal on earth more deserving of the title “Man’s best friend” then our canine buddies. He just goes into this crazy ecstatic run around the house and sprints towards me when he sees me at the front gate. Kinda like Dino and Fred Flinstone without the licking.


Dogs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Cats.

John Mayer..

.. is the freaking bomb. His songs are just so soothing and he doesn’t get enough credit for his lyrical abilities. Just heard this song off his first album, Room For Squares – “St. Patrick’s Day”. Beautiful lyrics.

Champions League Final

So Manchester United, my second team in England after Nottingham Forest, has reached the Champions League final. Strangely though, I’m completely non-fussed about it. I think it’s because I know that there’s absolutely no way this team would beat Barcelona.



Also, I’d be delighted if United did the league/European cup double but not ecstatic like I was in 2007/2008. I no longer have the urge to wear or buy Man United replica kits like I did. In fact, I find the practice kinda tacky these days. Opposition wind-ups no longer bother me. So that’s it, the transformation’s complete. I was so hardcore and into the culture of supporting Manchester United that I actually convinced myself that I’m nothing but a foreign plastic.



Good thing then: those jerseys + numberings really were quite expensive.

A lesson learned today

Well, not really learned as I already knew this; more like lesson reinforced:

“Friends in need are friends indeed”


Friends who would drop whatever work they have and go out of their way to come to your aid when you desperately need it should really be treasured.


I love my friends.

The importance of being humble.

So I was involved in an internal research poster competition last week. When I found out that my participation was compulsory, I thought about just pulling up one of my old posters to submit. As I gave it more thought, however, I thought this was a good opportunity to get something on the CV. Yes, I noticed that I’ve become a little CV-obsessed lately but that’s a story for another day.


With that in mind, I set out to design the best poster I could. I trawled through dozens of articles offering tips on designing a good poster and coupled them with my experience to produce, I must say, a poster that I was fucking well proud of. I spent hours tweaking the spacings, editing images and making sure it was as easily digestible as possible and the end result brought a little tear to my eye.


Even though I put up a front about not taking it seriously, I wanted to win quite badly. On the day, when I looked at the competition, I felt that there were only 2 who were genuine contenders. The rest were basically manuscripts on a wall, badly edited amalgation of charts and poorly thought-out layouts. Which was why when the Director of Studies came by and jotted down my poster number into his mark sheet, I was encouraged about my winning prospects. He looked and me and he said “What? It’s good!”


Well, it didn’t matter in the end because I lost. The particpants were judged by general visitors including those who don’t necessarily know what makes a good poster, further strengthening my beliefs that (a) “one man, one vote” doesn’t work when the voters are “uneducated” (b) sport is great because it’s the only competition where victory is always fair.


At the risk of this being read by anyone from work, all I’ll say is that I genuinely felt that only one of the winners was even decent. The rest, one in particular, were such utter turds that I felt nauseous upon the announcement. They weren’t even the best of that bad bunch!


The disappointment lingered for a while and quickly turned into frustration as I puzzled over what exactly went wrong. I pondered over the idea that maybe I was wrong about what made a “good” poster. Maybe I was a little too arrogant in deciding that my poster was the best. I thought in the end that that wasn’t likely; my conclusion was just to blame the scoring and judging system, and decide that the praise from someone knowledgeable ,i.e. the DoS, was reward enough for me.


There are times in life when you have to hold your hands up and admit the better entry won or risk being labelled a sore loser. That was not one of those times. I sucked it in though because it seemed unnecessary to kick up a fuss over an admittedly minor competition. I just hated losing, is all.


I have bigger fish to fry.


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I knew the bad academic results from my years of being lazy during pre-U would come back to haunt me. I can only hope that more recent academic achievements will gloss over it a little. I want those jobs so bad it hurts.

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I’ve been reading up a lot on subjects outside of my field of research lately. The main reason for this is that I became convinced last year that I wasn’t going to be staying in academia if/after I complete my doctorate degree. I knew then what I wanted to do and that getting in would be a long shot at my current state so I started to work on my shortcomings. I’m not going to repeat what field I want to get into because frankly, I’m sick of talking about wanting to do it like the others. From now, I just want to focus on getting myself to that level where I’d be comfortable in that sort of environment.


With that in mind, I’ve been stocking and reading up a lot on books that are outside my field of expertise; mainly on economics and critical thinking. I’ve also been paying a lot of attention to my body language and the way I structure my thoughts and present them. I noticed when I spoke to the people during the corporate high-tea session, that right away from the way someone chooses his words and carries himself, you can separate the genuine from the bull-shitters. The ones that are truly intelligent have this sort of air about them and when you speak to them, you can almost see them dissecting and judging your points such that you feel you best know what you’re talking about.


I have to admit these “intellectuals” are on a higher level than where I am right now but I’m not going to put them on a pedestal and worship them. I think Alex said the ones that usually fail to “make it” are the ones who try too hard to impress and I’m inclined to agree. And so, for now, I’m working on all these things not for the sake of landing the job per se but for true self-improvement. I think that if I can get the fundamentals right, my career goals will come naturally to me. After all, who’s to say I’ll actually like the job, but whatever I pick up en route to getting there or not will stand me in good stead for anything else I plan to do in the future.


Here’s to hoping that unlike the poster competition, the hard work here pays off.

Futsal!!!

 

So I’ve finally understood my role within my regular futsal team.


In that team, I’m none other than Michael Owen.


No no, not the begrudgingly good Michael Owen of Liverpool.





I’m that Michael Owen at Manchester United.




Derp, derp. Ball? I iz kick the ball?


Yes, yes, that Michael Owen who you look and wonder, wait, what’s the point of that guy again?


You see, I’m not in the first team. In fact, I’m not even the first choice substitute. I’m the guy that gets called upon when they look around the bench, see me and also an old lady mopping up the stands, thought really hard who to pick and decide to put me in eventually while heaving a loud sigh.




I cannae believe I’m doin’ this. Fuck me, get in, Mickey. Sigh.



My primary attributes are, well, I can’t dribble very well. I can’t control a high pass; I can barely control a low one. Like Michael Owen of ManYoo, my passing is abysmal; my positioning substandard.

In fact, my only purpose within the team is to be on the end of a passing move to finish it up and score. That’s right, finishing! And actually, you know what, I’m not very good at that either. I chip in with a few goals every now and then through a scuffed shot and that’s about it.


Yes folks, that’s me. The Michael Owen of Manchester United. A complete mirror image. /facepalm


Actually, you know what, I think I hustle more than Mickey when the team loses the ball. So fuck that comparison.


Me>>>>>>>>>>>> Michael Owen

Dead exhausted..

.. from working 16 to 18 hour days every day for the past 35 days.


I’m now nearing the end of my stint here and looking at all the work that I’ve managed to get done, I have to say I wouldn’t have it any other way.


No matter what happens results wise, I can truly say that after giving it my all, I have no regrets should things fuck up. The next 2 days are absolutely crucial. Re: the last post, I’m so close to doing the treble. Wish me luck!

Things rarely go as planned.

Before I came to Taiwan, I imagined myself working hard to meet my objectives and seeing the country during the weekends. When I came home after the 4 month stint, I thought I’d have completed most of the work and got a great travelling experience out of it as well.

Well, let’s just say things didn’t go as planned. I did do what I set out to do but in vastly different proportions. To begin, I worked hard. Ridiculously hard. 12 hour in the labs, 4-6 hours in the room typing up reports/reading up on lectures, and 6-8 hours sleep. I had to juggle my Malaysia project and the project my Taiwanese advisor cooked up so my day was often a carefully coordinated overlap of tasks. Leave this in for 4 hours, use the time to do something else, come back to it, finish it up for 2 hours, back to the other thing.

The only break I got from the 7-days-a-week routine was when there were power trips that forced me to stay at home. Also, when experiments didn’t go my way, and science experiments rarely do, I got really down mentally. It was just the thought of expanding all that effort and having little to show for it that really killed me. Science is a bitch that way. Unlike accounting or corporate jobs, where it’s more muscle than brain, research is a crazed amalgation of both. You need to put in a hard shift in the labs and also have the critical thinking to dissect the information you’ve obtained; how and why it’s failed or succeeded. More often than not, there are no references for you to fall back on and if there are, they are often intentionally vague. In other words, it’s all you out there, nobody’s there to save you, not even your advisor. And I’m saying this for all forms of science, not just chemistry.

Now you might think reading this that I’m bemoaning my fate but although it was really exhausting, I think I really grew as a person after this experience. I mean, I thought I’ve dealt with setbacks before, but what I experienced here was unreal. Experiencing failure after failure, I learned the value of perseverance the hard way and success tasted so, so sweet whenever it came along. It’s a very exciting ride, if anything. I really do think now that if/when I step into the corporate world, I’ll be able to handle anything it throws at me. There will be problems on a bigger scale and I’ll struggle sometimes, sure, but I’ll look back at this and think, nah, I can deal with it.

Of course, I haven’t survived it yet. In fact, I’m still walking a tight rope. I’ll really say I’ve made it when I’ve survived the viva voce and donned the red robe. And so, back to the Taiwan attachment, with less than a week remaining, it comes down to this. In a strangely identical image of Man United’s treble season in terms of order and significance, my projects come down to 3 defining tests: the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Champions League.

I just won the Premier League today and I’m over the moon. There’s the FA cup tomorrow, which I’ll be more than glad to win but won’t be overly disappointed if I don’t. And then there’s the Champions League, a big bitch of a test with even greater rewards if I conquer it. Sure, I have the Premier League, but like United when they lost to Barcelona, the victory will still feel a bit hollow without Ol’ Big Ears. The silver-titania nanocomposite photocatalysis test is my Champions League final.

5 days to go. Game on.