After taking the CEH exam in February, I finally received the certificate on the 26th of March, more than a month later.

Having said that, I’d like to reiterate that at a certain stage of one’s life, one can never reach as high level a hacker as one would like anymore, due to other commitments, especially time.

The other, followup course is coming up in June.

Still, doing well in any exam, especially a relatively expensive one like this is an achievement to be savoured. The last time I took an exam which cost a few hundred ringgit was on 24th June 2006 when I sat for the IELTS exam. I scored an average of 8.6 out of a possible 9 then, but surprisingly did worst on a topic I thought I’d get a 9: writing.

Time sure flies so fast. It seemed only a short while ago that we went through our compliance audit. In fact it had been about 13 months.

So my time-management skills were stretched to the limit. Having been made the head of the new data centre effective February, there are many things that need urgent attention, but at the same time I also had to play my role as head of the internal audit team which is one of the critical elements of a successful quality program. I would never have been able to do both without the support of great teams in each camp. Thanks, teammates!

SIRIM QAS’ 2-day (yearly) surveillance audit of our department ended today. I think after the closing meeting, everybody could heave a collective sigh of relief: we did enough to maintain our MS ISO 9001:2000 certification.

Congratulations to all involved.

I expected a few minor nonconformances (NCs) and a bundle of opportunities for improvement (OFI) suggestions, and that’s what exactly happened. As is usually the case with surveillance audits, the scope was not as comprehensive as last years’ audit. The experience we had last year definitely helped, we were somewhat more prepared, at least mentally, this year.

I am also grateful to the auditors for allowing myself and another colleague to be in the interview room to observe how they conduct the audit. You can be sure I was furiously taking notes on my laptop.

Looking towards the future, the 2nd surveillance audit will take place a year from now, and the recertification audit the year after that. That last audit I expect to be a very tough one. But who knows, the audit team might be different that time…

After having been at my existing office for slightly less than 2 years, the boss decided that it’s time for staff reshuffle again.

My transfer was effective 1st February, so I have been in the new office for about 2 weeks.

Not that I’m not used to it: it must be my 5th transfer since I started, but I really miss my grand room and its view. At my old office I can see Sutera Harbour, the sea and the islands like so…

…while I had a huge table and floor-to-ceiling wood paneling:

At my new office, everything is brand new, but on a smaller scale, and as for the view, well, there’s no view at all

At my old office I had 7 subordinates, about 2,000 users and 600+ computers.

At my new office I have 13 subordinates and practically the whole state to serve. Now, if only we have a memory foam mattress in the recreation room…

For the 2nd consecutive year we had our annual department’s workshop at this resort, from 29th November to 1st December. We’ve been holding our workshop annually since 2003.

While we were there last year they were on transition phase - change of management, rebranding etc. This year were they better prepared?

Well, the road there is better, but the last kilometre is still not fully sealed, although the potholes are now covered. The road on the last 2 kilometres are still rather narrow, but being a “kampung” road, that is acceptable. The last few days were rainy, so some patches are rather muddy.

The map as presented on their website is still cryptic - do you think you can find the way simply by looking at this?

Luckily, once you get nearer the resort, there are plenty of signboards directing you, although they could be difficult to see at night.

The website says that it’s located “just 40 minutes by car away from Kota Kinabalu.” I think that would apply if you’re thoroughly familiar with the road and driving as fast as the law allows. If not, 1 hour, or even 90 minutes should be allocated.

When we arrived, Typhoon Hagibis had just left. The swimming pool was full of seawater and they were still cleaning it up when we left on Saturday. A few days earlier the guests’ vehicles had to be moved to higher ground due to the big waves pushing seawater up to the resorts’ steps!

I usually try not to get too excited looking at website or brochure pictures, as they usually portray the place to be prettier than it really is, but I’d have to say the beach is indeed as beautiful as portrayed on the website.

Last year at least one of my colleagues could not get out of his room because of the peculiar room door locking mechanism: you’re not supposed to push in the button located on the handle, but that’s what you’d normally do right? This year I didn’t hear anybody trapped, perhaps everybody’s learned their lesson, but still the door handle to my room looked very similar to the one last year.

My room was in one of the deluxe rooms. It was spacious, the materials top notch and all the TV channels actually worked. However, the port where you’re supposed to slot in your “keychain” is not working - meaning all the lights and aircon could be left running forever.

For the whole day of the 30th November, there was plenty of hot water and very little cold water in the bathroom, so taking a shower was not a pleasant experience.

And apparently some of my colleagues could not enter their rooms directly - they had to enter their neighbour’s room, then use the interconnecting door.

There’s free and fast WiFi access, where the strongest signal is in the lobby. You can still access the Net from the nearby restaurant and the Mengalum room upstairs even though the signal is low.

For the workshop, I was in charge of emergencies and first aid, and was pleasantly surprised to be informed that they would even send you free of charge to the nearest clinic or hospital free of charge, even if it’s just a little headache.

Parking is more than adequate.

I am not fussy about food, so all I can say is that all of them taste good and there’s more than enough for everybody.

For our dinner on the second night, we used their flagship hall - the appropriately named Royal Grand Ballroom (or Royal Hall), which apparently can fit 100 round dinner tables. Our theme was “Malam Riang Ria Bersama 60an & 70an” [1960s and 1970s Night] and I must say the resort went to great lengths to ensure this theme was adhered to. First, it was the most elaborate food presentation (well, it was more like an “bon apetit” wish since it’s a buffet dinner) routine I’ve ever seen - complete with big motorcycles, bicycle riding all the way from the front up to the stage, the resort staff dancing to a P Ramlee song onstage, and finally the unveiling of the backdrop. Later, they were also involved to pick out the best dressed people - those wearing authentic-looking 60s/70s costumes. And no, no renaissance costumes.

You might never see yours truly wearing this kind of shades again

Later, everybody, having earlier been divided into groups, had to participate in a competition. You had to come up with a sketch, song presentation, dancing etc, as long as it adheres to the theme of the dinner. So here I am trying to be P Ramlee:

And ended up looking like a bad Elvis impersonator:

But still we finished 3rd among 10 groups presenting:

By Monday, the general consensus is that this is the best workshop the department’s ever organised.

Source

MCs and Floor Managers on the left of stage: on the left is Disney

As I mentioned previously, during our state-level charity dinner on 22nd October, I have never had the experience of getting an Akademi Fantasia artiste to perform at a function I was involved in organising. Stark details of the contract are of course P & C, but I hope by sharing some of the points here will be of help to those planning a similar venture in future.

During one of the many organising committee meetings, we started by deciding on which artiste to choose. After settling on Velvet, I called up Maestro’s artiste management head, whose mobile phone number someone had given me. In this initial discussion, I found out that Velvet was free on the date of the function. If she was not, I’d have to fall back on the 2nd choice, 3rd choice and so on. The discussion also revolved around the fees and the number of songs she’s supposed to perform. The committee had decided the absolute maximum cost we could bear, so I was quite pleased when Maestro accepted our proposal.

That was the first and last time I talked to the head on the phone - later it was one of her staff and of course later, the manager in charge. Yes - the artiste will come to the function with his/her manager. Everything that concerns the artiste is supposed to be dealt through the manager. He needs to be no-nonsense, businesslike. Of course an artiste needs to show that s/he is friendly, greets everybody and smiles all the time: if s/he needs to make a quick getaway for whatever reason, it would be impossible to do so. That’s why managers would seem to be obnoxious, especially when the artiste gets up close and personal with the fans during the photo session at the end of the dinner.

Oops, I’m rambling already. Back to the subject matter: Maestro then faxed the contract which ran into several pages, which I had to sign and return. The details include:

Fees - have to pay 50% of the agreed fees a.s.a.p. and the other 50% a few days before the function.

In addition to the agreed fees, you have to cough out additional costs:

Flight ticket - you’re supposed to provide KLIA - KKIA return ticket, business class, for both artiste and manager. That means AirAsia is a no-no. I did the e-ticketing, cheaper than going through a travel agent.

Accomodation - you’re supposed to provide rooms (one for each artiste and manager of course) in reputable hotels (the manager didn’t specifically ask for 5-star resorts, he just mentioned “a hotel that’s of OK standard”). Our function was held in Magellan Sutera, I put them up at Promenade: it was a cost issue. The new hotels at Warisan Square sounded tempting, but they seemed too new and I never went there before, one didn’t provide room service, the other one didn’t sound convincing enough on the room service part. This is a pertinent point because the manager didn’t want unwanted attention on the artiste: they’d not want to go out unnecessarily. Even at Magellan Sutera they preferred to wait backstage for the entrance, rather than at a more comfortable place outside.

Food & Beverage - you’re supposed to grant full signing facilities to them at their hotel. This is of course a big risk - you wouldn’t know how much food and drinks they’d order, and we all know the cost of room service, even at a mere 4-star hotel. The committee expressed concern about the possibility of costs soaring out of control because of this. I talked personally to Velvet about this, she assured me that it won’t happen. It didn’t.

Transportation - you’re supposed to provide *all* transportation: from/to airport/accomodation; from/to accomodation/performance venue, including for soundcheck in the afternoon. Hence, you’d need to do some liaising with the band/sound system guys - they must be ready by the set times. Lembaga Kebudayaan Sabah were truly professional, the head of the team called me on Sunday night to doublecheck on things. They were already setting up at 11am Monday, so by 3pm Velvet was rehearsing her 4 minus one songs and 1 live song without any hitch. After the soundcheck Velvet went for a hairdo at Centre Point, the driver had to wait for her; he could not join us for early dinner.

Dressing room - you’re supposed to provide this, but actually she can use her hotel room for this purpose. During the function itself, she only needs a waiting room. She’d go backstage via the “secret path” all good 5-star resorts have - so that she’d end up backstage in the waiting room (in reality Magellan Sutera’s kitchen).

Security personnel - you’re supposed to provide 2 persons to escort the artiste at all times, in addition to the driver. Can appoint big-sized colleagues for this task But perhaps due to the civility of the people of Sabah (no gone-berserk fans), the manager didn’t really follow-up on this one, so I just put the 2 assigned persons on-call.

Others:
Insurance coverage for the event, of course car insurance for the vehicle ferrying the artiste around must’ve been taken care of.

So as you can see, the cost can balloon up. Coupled with the stress of selling the tickets, of course you’d try to keep costs as low as possible In the end, we managed to sell more than 50 tables, not as many as we hoped for, but it was not bad.

Velvet, kau mimang malatup!

Velvet poses with me with colleagues Romeo (sometime RTM DJ - my co-MC for the night), Tim and Edi

The dinner itself went on relatively smoothly. There’s a newsreport on it in Daily Express on 24th October, a copy of which is posted on JPKN’s website (I can’t guarantee it’ll be a permalink).

There’s an encouraging message from my director, who said that the VVIP for the night mentioned that this was the most well-organised function he ever attended. Thanks YB Datuk! That almost rivals the time when our SUKMA 2002 website was declared better than the SEA Games website by the Federal Minister of Youth and Sports!

I was the deputy chairman of the dinner’s organising committee, and was the chairman of the subcommittee in charge for entertainment, meaning I was responsible in dealing with Maestro to garner the services of Akademi Fantasia 4 artiste Velvet and Lembaga Kebudayaan Sabah, who provided more than 20 of their staff to handle the live band, PA system, lightning and 3 traditional dances. In addition, I was the formal MC for the night, and later took over as one of the Floor Managers when Romeo took to the mike.

I had been MC and Floor Manager for various high-pressure functions in the past, including events involving the Chief Minister, but I have never dealt with a high profile, national-level entertainment company like Maestro, so it was interesting challenge: I learnt a lot of things - will talk about that in another post.

The official video would be released by the pros later, but in the meantime here’s a short amateur video of her during the soundcheck in the afternoon covering Hain Jasli’s 2003 classic “Nobolou Nangku Tupusku”:
Click here to see video

My Streamyx connection was strangely intermittent (DSL light keeps blinking) a few days ago, then one night it just decided to quit. I thought it was “normal”, since Swordie mentioned that the guys at TM are doing an upgrade for a whopping 8 days starting 2nd October. However, checking further it seems that that only affects users in Cheras. And that announcement is only available for viewing in google cache, and not TMNet’s actual website - but that’s another story lah.

Back to the my problem, the connection was still KO the next day, but I was thinking this would be a good time to take a holiday from the Net at least for a night (read: rediscover what it’s like to sleep a full 8 hours), so I didn’t bother calling 1300889515 just yet.

Anyway I thought the problem might be in the splitter or the RJ-11 socket of the square thingy where the indoor phone line terminates (what do you actually call this thing?), because voice was not OK if I connect to the splitter and OK if connect direct; and for both, Streamyx’s dead. And I’ve been using the splitter for at least 3 years, and the RJ-11 socket for about 10: the pins looked a bit rusty.

Then early this evening, looking closer at the RJ-11 socket’s pins, I noticed one of them a little out of alignment. So, simply using a small slotted screwdriver I lifted up the stray pin into alignment, and voila!

Therefore, I was wondering, if I *did* call Streamyx support, how many round trips of “makan angin” would be in store for me? Because, reading thru quite a few newspaper hotline letters, forum threads and blog entries on grouses with Streamyx support, I have never read this simple solution being suggested.

Have you?

I received the following email about 2 weeks back:

From: “Irene Julia” <irene.julia@gmail.com>
To: [deleted]

Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 1:54 AM
Subject: Fwd: Free PDA+GSM Palm

Dear Friends,

Here is to announce that our company Palm, Inc., headquarter is located in Sunnyvale, California US opens our marketing office in Kuala Lumpur for Asia region. We are promoting our product and for the detail you can visit: 

http://www.palm.com/id/products/smartphones/

For first launching of our product in Malaysia, we will give away for free the new product of PDA+GSM Palm Type Treo 650 and Treo 680 and Treo 750.

By giving the product of PDA+GSM , we will get valuable feed back from the customers and get the mouth to mouth advertising.

You only have to forward to 15 people. After 2 weeks you will receive a PDA+GSM Palm Type Treo 650. If you forward to 25 people, you will receive a PDA+GSM Handspring Type Treo 680. And if you forward to 40 people you will get a PDA+GSM Palm Type Treo 750.

The only thing to remember is to send cc (copy) to:

louise.jasmine@gmail.com

Only by sending email to this address, we know you have forwarded this massage to your friends.

Good Luck!!

Louise Jasmine

Executive Promotion

Kuala Lumpur Office

Palm, Inc.

Email:

Private : louise.jasmine@gmail.com
Business: louise.jasmine@palm.com

After explaining to the sender that it’s most likely a hoax, I keep getting the same email back from different persons.

Even though I can’t find references to it the usual way, it still sounds suspicious for the following reasons:

• why she used a free email account to send this instead of palm.com corporate email?
• why is the email sent by a Ms Irene Julia, while it was signed by a Ms Louise Jasmine?
• why she linked to Palm’s Indonesian website instead of Palm’s Malaysian website?
• neither Palm US, nor Palm Indonesia, nor Palm Malaysia website mentioned any such promotion/marketing campaign.
• spelling and grammatical errors

I contacted Palm Corp US, Hong Kong and Singapore to confirm whether this is an authentic offer via their listed email address a few weeks ago, unfortunately I haven’t received any reply yet. Email addresses for Palm Malaysia & Indonesia are not listed.

It came and went - time seemed to slow down in the first few weeks of my stay at INTAN Bukit Kiara, then speeded up dramatically towards the end of April.

The exams went well - especially the first (stats) and last (research methods). I thought I didn’t do the second (SPSS) too well, even though I expected it to be easy. Lesson learnt: be overconfident at your peril!

And now, at the time of writing, it’s been 10 days since I came back on the 12th May.

———————————-

Regarding the statistics exam - was held 16th April. We had to do 5 questions out of 8 in 3 hours. I ended up doing 7, because (i) I finished 5 questions with 45 minutes to spare; (ii) the last 2 questions was much easier than the first 5, and (iii) the examiners would select the best 5 anyway.

The 2-week crash course in statistics has certainly been eye-opening and quite stressful. It has not been unusual for me to review the day’s lecture till late at night. Everything was done at full speed ahead. For example, the ANOVA (>=3 mean test) part usually takes one whole semester, but in this course it was covered in a day. Every day is a different topic - you had to make sure you fully understood the day’s topic, for tomorrow is a different topic altogether.

The biggest problem is deciding which hypothesis testing approach to use in what situation. Even though the exam is open book, it definitely won’t be easy.

Another is that it’s quite easy to get lost in the long formulas. One wrong step, and you get the whole question wrong.

For example, the formula to work out the t value in hypothesis testing using regression looks like this:

One mistake on the scientific calculator or even Excel on the laptop, and you’ve had it.

One could use SPSS, but there’s no time to get well-versed enough with it. Plus, I think it’s good to know the fundamentals too, rather than simply keying the data.

Adding to the stress is that the statistics module contributes the most i.e. 45% to the whole course.

If we don’t pass the course, automatically the scholarship offer will be withdrawn. Of course, judging from past history, most people would pass, but nobody want to be added to the statistic of people who’ve failed.

This was what happened to me middle of last year. Click on the thumbnail below to see bigger picture.