I've been away from the Internet long enough. It's time I took a little while to come back and start posting here again. In fact, I haven't been posting for so long it feels awkward typing at a keyboard again.

Let's start off with the..

[MINGGU ALUAN SISWA]

In the days running up to the beginning of the semester, I underwent the Orientation Week (or Minggu Aluan Siswa, MAS for short) program as a facilitator. I must say though those two weeks were terribly hectic - it was probably the first time I'd broken down over work - it has turned out to be an extremely satisfying and gratifying experience.

For the juniors who were welcomed into UTP as part of the January 2008 intake, for the seniors who guided us throughout one week of facilitator training and one week of orientation, for the friends I've found through the experience, I thank you one and all for everything. Never will I forget the enriching experience of being part of a wacky, dedicated and charming team of people from all sorts of diverse backgrounds. Especially being the only one in the Desktop Publishing Unit who knew Photoshop! You wouldn't believe how fast they caught up with my lessons! *ahem*

[EXAMINATION RESULTS]

I did tell you about this before, didn't I? Never mind, it's a subject worth repeating. *winks*

I really outdid my expectations for last semester. Where I'd expected a 3.7 or 3.8, I got a 3.95 - as close to perfect as I'd dare hope. Admittedly, getting such terrific results has been a bit of a cause to blush with me, considering a significant number of people have not performed up to their own expectations.

To my friends out there, don't despair! This is another semester, a chance to redeem our past mistakes - heck, I know I made a lot of them! Time to get cracking on the books consistently! Now if only I could find the spare time to start studying..

[CAMPUS LIFE WEEK AKA MINGGU MESRA KAMPUS]

Lately the Student Council has been pretty busy organizing a festival of sorts called the Campus Life Week. It's where *most* of the clubs and societies in UTP strut their stuff along the lecture halls of Pocket D and go all out to promote their upcoming events or attract new members from the new January 2008 intake.

(I say *most* because the Debate Club seems to be missing from the scene, among others, and the Media and Technology - Medtech, for short - club seems to have assimilated the tables assigned for the debaters' booth..)

[SYNTECH ORGANIZATION @ CLW]

I've been heavily involved with the CLW - that's the abbreviation for the event - if only because of my commitments to Syntech Organization, a technology-related club. This year we're going all out to promote ourselves and the many events we've got lined up, such as an apprenticeship program for Foundation students, as well as this wicked cool deal with a local IT company (MSY, based in Meru Jaya, Perak) that allows our members to get computer servicing, accessories and hardware at discounted prices.

As the Head of Human Resources (I've never really understood why its called that), the department has been placed in charge of registering new members. Suffice to say, having cleaned out our old Excel-based database and replaced it with a spanking-new Access one, the response has been good, but for some reason many current members have yet to re-register with the club to entitle themselves to the many benefits of being a member. I guess we've got our work cut out for us!

[STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL]

Besides that, the Student Council seems to have.. slacked, for want of a better word. Somehow I just don't feel the dedication to duty (or COMMITMENT TO TIME) anymore. It's like we're just going through the motions of living. Of course, I won't say that I've been completely innocent, though sometimes I wonder where we're actually heading to.

Right now though, the Council is busy with the recruitment of our working committee members, but the response has been pretty poor. Should we hope to expect more students turning up for the Friday recruitment session? I refuse to be pessimistic. *beams*

[MISTAKES]

To be frank, I've just committed a serious error under Syntech Organization - I planned an event last-minute. Needless to say, everything that could possibly go wrong did, and now I think I'm the one at fault for this immense wastage of energy, ideas, strength, time, and a little money.

Some of us have to learn the hard way, by way of hard knocks on the head. But I'm glad for the learning experience this has provided me. The scale of this failure is bigger than I had foreseen, and by far I am very disappointed with how I have performed lately. I have a commitment to every one of the members within Syntech, and I feel that I must atone for my mistakes and apologize to everyone who had helped me thus far.

Still, its only the beginning of the new semester, and I refuse to let this one failure bog me down. Sure, there's this little insect called Guilt eating away at my heart, but I need to get things done right now that I know my mistakes. The important thing is that we learn from our falls, and get right back up to continue where we left off.

[LECTURES]

I'm glad for my lectures because this semester it seems that I've got quite the number of good ones. There's Prof Jubair from Iraq teaching Software Engineering, Ms Subarna, one of my favorites teaching Professional Communication Skills, Mr Mohammad Noor Ibrahim, teaching Internet Programming, and Dr Baharum, a friend's father who teaches Business Statistics.

Then again, I've not gotten used to the other three yet - Dr Halabi for Data Communication Networks and En Abu Bakar Sedek for Strategic Management. I hope to get to know these two later on, because I'm really determined to score well for this semester's examinations despite my workload. Best way to do that is to get the lecturer to like you (so they teach you nicely, not for extra marks)!

..I guess I'll sign off here for now, blogged long enough. Do check back regularly, alright? Ciao!

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Sometimes you don't ask for work but you get it by the buckets.

It's like there's always something that needs doing.

Even if the time on your watch happens to be 4:00 a.m. in the morning.

For the record, I am currently NOT doing any work. This is some very rare "free time" that I'm getting - if only because I'm not sleeping at the moment.

Lightning flashes intermittently outside. Yet thunder does not boom. Strange.

Is it a sign of weakness to cry, or merely a potent reminder of our brittle humanity?

Gotta go shower. Duty calls.

P.S. - For the record, I did much better than expected in the previous semester examinations. Whoopee!

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I'm currently in university till the 19th of December to complete the strategic planning for the Student Representative Council. Planning is hard work. Even with a day packed full of classes I never expected to find myself wringing my brain for ideas every minute of the day!

On the other hand, with my old desktop sent home already, I've been playing around with Photoshop on friends' computers, and boy, is it fun! I only wish my old desktop could support the voracity of Photoshop's hunger for system resources. *frowns*

I hope to find my connection at home still working that I may update this blog regularly during the holidays. In the meantime, this little update will have to do for the time being (since I'm using my friend's computer while he's praying) - see you all after I return home on the 19th's evening.

Ciao!

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As the title clearly states, I am stuck - in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS. Currently, my lecturers in the Computer and Information Sciences Department have decided to select the best students in my Object-Oriented Programming class to learn the real-world application of Java, a flexible and powerful programming language that is in use worldwide for a variety of uses.

I'm quite grateful about being selected, particularly since I'm a person who's very much interested in Java (once one is good at it, one naturally aims higher). For the better part of this past semester, people have been struggling to get by in the subject because of the difference between object-oriented and structured programming (which we learned beforehand in the January semester of this year).

Assignment submission datelines always became a frenetic race against time as people attempted to develop - or copy - a working solution to the given problems at hand, oftentimes going without sleep for nights in a futile effort to set up a running program that fulfills the assignment marking criteria.

I suppose the whole problem started when our first assignment was to build a simple (simple being a relative term) working calculator using Java. At that point we had no idea what the code was like (other than being inherited for C, which we learned previously), what functions to use, the basic concepts of Java - in short, we didn't know anything substantial at all!

From that point on, working on Java became nothing more than a headache for the majority of us, what with all of us struggling to keep afloat. I learned the best way to get familiar with Java was to tinker around and read up the many resources available on the Internet, especially the official tutorials and "dictionary" that provided examples on how to use certain keywords.

So now, my efforts have paid off. I mean, being selected to learn Java for what it is, instead of the simple (again, relativity is important) programs that we've had to create before, during the semester. My room mate is around to keep me company (he was selected, too), but our only complaint is that the campus this time around is too quiet. Just about everyone else has gone home for the holidays, and most of the cafes are closed as well, thereby limiting our choice of food for meals.

Since nowadays I expect to have nothing much to do (or, heaven forbid, nothing to do!), I will post soon about the past half-a-week that has been my holidays thus far. Toodles!

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