Rebirth of T-rex

Something special event happened today, in which I didn't expect it to be so, probably it's fate or destiny. It all began about 2 months ago. One morning when I was stepping into the main door of the building, heading towards the lift which will bring me up to 6th floor, where my office is, one guy sitting at Star Bucks approached me, passing me a small photo size pamplet having very nice colored front design and having the following stated at the back:

Statistics Show,
Most People...

• Are UNHAPPY with their Job.
• Are OVERWORKED and UNDERPAID.
• RUN OUT of Money before the month ends.
• Have TOO MANY BILLS to pay.
• You CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE
  

Call / Sms Now!


It attracted me. However, I didn't take any action as I was busy with tasks assigned to me then, until yesterday, some message sent across my mind and I sent an sms to the person stated. I didn't expect much as I didn't get any reply yesterday. However, surprisingly he called me this afternoon and we met up in the evening after I came back from work.

It was a nice session as he also brought along another two associates, in which he was trying to match make me with another young girl. Too bad, I already have a lovely girl friend, the first thing that came to my mind is I can introduce her to my best friend! The experience was wonderful as with an ad hoc action (which could be due to fate or arrangement by the God), I met new friends and probably an opportunity to meet my goal in achieving a better life, not only for myself but my family.

During the introduction on some nature of the business, he emphasized a lot of team work. Something plays in my mind as probably it's another MLM business. I have yet to get a confirmation on that as he insisted to have a thorough explanation during our next meet in his office. Besides, he shocked me when I found out that he was a classmate of my university's President. He just gave me a hint that the business deals with VoIP that bring me to another level of excitement on what type of business will it be, which can help to change our life. Thus, I am awaiting for the chance for the next meet.

I realized that meeting new peoples, old friends, ex-colleagues, ex-classmate is a very enjoying process as it widen our scope, in terms of friendship, relationship, knowledge/experience. It's the human network!

Talking about the human network, it makes me think back to an incident that happened 7 years back when my best friend- Tan Chun Sen, who is currently pursuing his trading business in Shanghai, told me about the power of human network. He told me, 'Huat Heng, today we form the core of this human network. Give each of us 10 years and we will achieve our goal- the Utopia!' During that time, my understand was limited to the computer networks. However, as years past and more things I have seen and learnt, now I began to realize the human network that he asked to strong hold on and keep expanding. I think we are almost there. 3 years more and I am sure we will reach our goal soon!

I believe in a saying, which states 'If you want to change the current situation, you must start to change today! You will never achieve anything if you are not willing to change!'

Today, I realized that an approach that has been applied by my friend to develop his business is very efficient and effective- he uses the power of human network. I won't reveal much here since it could be his top secret recipe and I haven't confirm with him about my observation. Mei Mei, take note on this, I will discuss with you on how to make full use of this approach to expand our business.

Besides, I have some quotes that I would like to share, they are translated from Chinese:
1) Set a goal and plan an action plan
- if you don't set a goal, then you will be like a ship in the sea, lost of direction. Upon setting a goal, you need to plan and carry out the action plan, in order to make your dream comes through.

2) Make things happen, never wait things happen
- you must be proactive to expand your business, knowledge...etc. Must always aware and sensitive about the surrounding.

3) Discipline, always go beyond and never have excuse
- You must have self-displine to keep yourself on the track to reach the goal. Never give up easily whenever you meet obstacles.

4) To succeed, you must have a right attitude and believe, believe in yourself
- Many people likes to 'wait' for the right timing, but 'now' is the best timing .

5) Never give out
- It has been proven that if you never give up, those who doesn't believe or commented you will be convinced.

6) Enjoy the process
- Enjoy in what you pursue.

7) Listen more, talk less and do/act more
- God has given us 1 mouth, a pair of ears and hands to make us a good listener. Thus, you can learn more, rather wasting time to talk nonsense or irrelevant things but convery your message precisely and concisely. No need to be in doubt, be brave to move on. Action is the best start to reach your goal! In other words, action speaks louder than words.

8) Never say "I can't" but "How can I make it happen?"
- We should learn how to use our brain to create miracles. Whether bad or good things happen, it doesn't matter. The main thing is how we perceive it. A right and positive attitude is like a compass, thus never say "I can't" but "How I can make it happen?"

Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines,
but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.

-The Buddha

I have been searching and gathering some informations for my Master Degree preparation. However, since early of this week, I started to seriously study for some of the introductory knowledge that will be required for me to kick start my Master Degree research on Computer Imaging/Pattern Recognition. I shared some of them here.

Definitions (brief and verbal basis):
i) Moment- Image intensity projected on monomial/polynomial
ii) Feature- Characteristics
iii) Descriptor- Way to describe features, eg. wavelet
iv) Domain- Range
v) Normalized- Convert to 'standard'
vi) Moment Invariance- Under certain condition, things doesn't change, eg. centroid (center of gravity)
vii) Lagendre Moment, Zernike Moment, Pseudo-Zernike Moment- based on Lagendre Polynomial, Zernike Polynomial and Pseudo-Zernike Polynomial respectively.
viii) Elementary Area- The ratio of area between original and domain

Since I am looking into Zernike Moment for research, I wish to share some of the important mathematical background here:

The radial moment of order p with repetition q are defined as


The 2D Zernike moments of order p with repetition q of image intensity function f(r, theta) are defined as


where Zernike polynomials of order p with repetition q, Vpq(r, theta), are defined as


and the real-valued radial polynomial, Rpq(r), is given as


where 0 <= q <= p and p - q is even

As my hair is kind of messy and long, I went for a hair cut. I was surprised that the barber still consider me as MMU student. So happy because I still looks young :P

During the hair cut, we have a great chat as he told me many 'unknown' news. The one that shocked me most is that back in China, someone who would want to apply for a job needs to pay up to a few thousand dollar before he could join the company. If you don't want to pay there, then others who are willing to pay up will get the job. Really a big contrast to what happens here, in which graduates demand for certain amount of salary before they are willing to join the company.

When I mentioned that many fresh graduates still jobless, he commented that many will straight go for KL because more opportunities. He added that we need to 'ride on a cow to look for a horse', can't just always aim for big companies and high salaries. The longer you wait, the tougher you will get because the next cycle of fresh graduate will be released to compete with you.

Besides, he also told me that he has a friend whose cousin just launch a new shopping mall in Acheh during Tsunami attack. The Tsunami attacked on the fifth day after the grand opening, though the mall was not 'swept' by Tsunami, but things in there were gone! (stolen by the victims) And he lost RM 5M. More surpisingly is that he just said that it can be earn with little effort. Thinking back in Malaysia, just wonder how long it will take for us to earn that much, it may not even happen in a life time.

Lastly, the told me that there are some Chinese students here felt a bit reluctant to go back to China because they can no longer able to surf English web sites- they are filtered. Besides, I also read an article recently that says the government closed down a lot of cyber cafes. Personally I felt that this may reduce the 'eyes of scope' to learn more and produce international-standard products, especially in IT.

Due to some issues faced the day before, my colleague has proposed that we work in our office to get some of the UI improvement done and to find out some solution to the issues. I drove to office since my younger sister didn't use it. After getting ourselves ready, we have a small chat with our CTO regarding the progress and some suggestion on solution that we may proposed to our customer to improve some of the operation processes. We pack and left the office. However, since both of us were driving, so we decided to let him pass his car to his brother in Kepong, then I drove him to Cyberjaya.

When we reached partner site, everyone has gone out for lunch, thus we also head for food. At the canteen, I met my uncle there. So happy. We continued with our work after lunch and faced some obstacles as we don't seem to get the integration work properly. Later we found out it's due to information provided by the other party are either incorrect or insufficient. I hope this part can be improved as I believe quite some amount of time has been wasted on this. At the end of the day, we managed to complete 2 out of the 3 remaining tasks. The only remaining one is because the other party not yet ready for us to integrate. So my colleague will continue to pursue that task on Friday since I will be on leave.

When I drove my colleague home to Kepong, we were surprised that the traffic seemed quite congested, starting from Sunway all the way up to IKEA. After I have dropped my colleague, I drove home to have my dinner, then I went to visit my grandma who is currently critically sick of lung cancer. My 3rd auntie was there too! My younger sister and her boy friend cum my best friend were already there. We spent sometime with our grandma and relatives.

As scheduled, today I went to customer site in Cyberjaya to integrate the prototype my colleague and I have done with the existing backend EJB. My colleague picked me up at SS2 and I was shocked when he told me that he was stucked in the jam from Kepong to SS2 for an hour. However, the journey to Cyberjaya was smooth and we reached around 9.15AM. While waiting for the pre-sales colleague to arrive, we went to a food court near the customer site. I realized that the our company's new branch will be located in the next block.

When my pre-sales colleague reached, we went to the customer site together. We meet up with our partner colleague and one of them was my ex-colleague. He was in the previous company when I was undergoing my industrial training there. So lucky to meet him here. But that's now all, I met another MMU junior who just join our partner. Since I have a MMU junior already working in the company (our customer), we have a small gathering during lunch time. Everyone seems to be doing fine. However, the most interesting part is after the lunch, my junior brought me to the sports room to have a few rounds of pool. There are 3 pool tables, 2 table tennis tables and a table for carom.

After that my colleague and I continued to perform the integration process. We successfully integrated two out of five modules that are specified in the scope of work. Among the three that meet a failure, one of them was due to the backend server is down, another was due to the backend is not ready for integration since it needs JMS, while the last one was a bit tricky, we suspect it's due to the version or service pack difference between the servers.

We left early and will continue our integration process tomorrow.

The whole week, my colleague and I have been busy developing the prototype. In fact, some minor problems are still unavoidable during the development, however, we our positive attitudes and we played as a very match team mates, things were resolved and almost come to an end. Starting from tomorrow, we will refine the prototype and prepare ourselves for integration on Tuesday. Hopefully everything will go well and smoothly, and of course main thing is meet the requirement and expectation. Prepare for deployment.

Back to things happening in my family, I sent my younger sister for a small surgery to extract a lump in her body yesterday. In the beginning of the week, I wasn't really worry about the surgery since it didn't seem so serious to me and I was just too busy with my work. On Saturday morning when I sent her there, the nurse ask me to stay back till her surgery is over. So, without realizing it, my heart was pumping slightly faster than usual and I was a bit worry. I told myself that my sister is nervous too! She is trying to tell me through 'this'. Thus, I pray for her, pray so that she is calm and the surgery goes well and she is safe. Thank god that the surgery was a short and succesful one.

Since the doctor still need to observe her condition, she needs to stay back and we continue to wait. Then, she awoke, the nurse allowed my mom and me to go in to take a look at her. She was a bit weak and felt cold. She told us she felt like vomitting. So, we requested from the nurse a container for her to vomit in case. After that, I sent my mom back home and to work, then return back to the medical center to visit my sister again. The doctor came after half an hour later, did some check up and released my sister after she found everything is ok. I went down to pay the bill and collected the medicine for my sister and drove her back. So far, she is alright and perform normal task. Thank god.

My Kai Mui recommended a site which provides a test to identify a person's travel profile. I went through the test which the questions seems a bit wierd. However, the following is what I got.

	Your travel type: Rough guy When the going gets tough, the rough guy gets going! Sleep outside, hike up mountains, eat raw lizards for breakfast, that's his perfect holiday. Ten days of hiking through unspoilt jungle between Colombia and Panama, that kind of thing.
	top destinations: Ngorongoro Kashmir Ciudad Perdida	stay away from: Paris Venice Tokyo

get your own travel profile

What do you think? Does the test correctly reflects my travel profile? You can try it out too!

As I mentioned in the previous blog, I was working at partner site on Monday. Early that morning, the Pre-Sales colleague dropped in and notified us about the changes on the prototype we were working on. In fact, based on the plan, we would sum up the prototype and pack to go back to office. So, after final touched up and testing, we departed home.

On the next day, we were back in office. First thing I did was set up my desktop as we just brought back our CPU from partner site. Then I contacted the Channel Manager to find out more about the preparation for the IBM Symposium. After the briefing, I started to work out the things. However, one of the notebook that would be used for demo went down and supposed to be sent for repairs, so we took alternative to set up another notebook. Since IBM Websphere Portal need to be installed and set up for us to deploy some of our application, a lot of hard disk space was required, which brought us to another issue- insufficient space. After much discussion, we decided to use another IBM notebook that requires reformating. I am grateful that another Pre-Sales colleague who are familiar with all these technical stuffs helped me. In fact, he stayed up whole night before the event trying to deploy one of the application, but to no avail. I felt owing him.

I reached Sunway Convention Center at 6.45am and waited for the other colleague from Marketing and Pre-Sales to arrive before setting up the booth. After some effort, with coorperation from all parties involved, the booth is ready. I was busy explaining and promoting the comapny's product to some prospects and participants of the Symposium. Besides, also having FOC nice hotel food. I was very pleased with the day. During the break, the Marketing Executive told me that 'You have gained another profile today.' I was shocked with what she told me and asked her to explained, then she smile and told me 'Dang- Ju/ Zhe^ Mi/'. She continued to asked me, 'So, do you prefer Pre-Sales or Technical?', then my COO came by and added 'Don't force yourself to do things that you don't like. You have the capability, so make your choice'. Later, my CEO asked me whether I know Mandarin, when I told him that I was from Chinese primary school, he told that I will be another candidate to go China. I was shocked. After the event, I headed to bus station to get the bus ticket for Friday night to go down to Melaka.

On Friday, I was sent to represent the company to attend Novell's Open Enterprise Server launching. It was not a big event as the Symposium but merely a small promotion talk at Novell's training room. I was impressed with the work they have done, especially trying to promote SuSE Linux which is now bundled with their product. However, I was in doubt when they try to compare SuSE Linux with Red Hat Linux as I was expecting them to be 'partner' rather than rival. Anyway, it's still pleased to see how much the open source has gained the niche in the market.

After the event, I went back to office and received an email about another new prototype for a big corporation. After some discussion with my team mate, we started to prepare some of the required tools and source structure. CTO came over and emphasized on the seriousness and importance of the prototype as it's for the big corporation and we don't hope to lose this opportunity. So, it will be a challenging task this time and I really hope to produce something that will impress the customer, partner and the management. Pray Hard!

It all started on Sunday when I joined the parade for 'Kuan Yin' Birthday celebration, in which all of us started at one of the temple in Tengkera (Melaka) and 'march' to 'Qing- Yun/ Ting/' (Kuan Yin Temple) by walk 3 steps and pray (kneel down) (san- bu\ yi/ gui\) all the way. This was my third year attending this ceremony. We started around 5.30am and it ended around 7.30am when everyone reached the Kuan Yin Temple. It's for world peace!

When I came back to PJ for the week, I was relocated to partner's site to perform some UI enhancement on the prototype that we managed to completed and presented last week. It was great as it's only my 5th week with the company. The system looks great with the new 'look and feel'.

Besides, I received a notification that I was selected to involve in company's marketing activity next Thursday at Sunway Hotel during IBM Symposium. I was excited as it's pretty early for me to get involve in marketing activities since I just join the company no long ago. Really appreciate the opportunity given by the company. :)