Students blogs

26 January 2009

Doing a PhD straight after an undergraduate degree brings both good and bad connotations about yourself. Particularly in Malaysia, jumping straight from a BSc to PhD is fairly unheard of, thus they automatically assume that you're some intelligent overachieving prodigy. On the flip side, grad school has been famously caricatured as a way to put off getting a job - or joining the real world, so to speak.

When I first thought about doing a PhD, I wasn't really sure about what it involved. Sure, I was friends with loads of PhD students, but I didn't really jot down the details of what they *actually* do. I looked at the official University requirements and saw that throughout the three-year registration, I would be assessed through oral exams, a nine-month report, a mini-thesis and a final thesis. Shouldn't be too bad, right?

Hahahahaha. *ROTFL* :D

Now that I actually *am* on the other side, I couldn't believe how naive I was.

No matter how much you prepare for it, there will always be something that catches you by surprise. From what I've learned, PhDs are mysterious beings. No matter how many books are published about how to get a PhD, it always manages to blindside the best of them and confound the clearheaded ones.

Of all the books I've read about getting a PhD, one unanimous thread among them is that PhDs are emotional journeys; they don't just test your intelligence, but they test your EQ too. It's like a rite of passage. The difference is, you get to shape how the passage unfolds. Yes, you'll see the odd boulder or two, but you get to decide whether to make a detour around said boulder or to blow it up to smithereens.

I feel that doing a PhD is about knowing what you want, finding out how you're gonna get it, then going on to getting it, and finally telling the world that you actually got it. Sure it looks simple, but try remembering that when you're faced with deadlines, meetings, seminars and the temptations of procrastination :P

I've only started my PhD journey three weeks ago, so I'm still learning the ropes. You know what I like the most about doing a PhD? It teaches me how to take control. You have no idea how empowering that makes me feel :)

My friends are happy that I'm back in Soton. To quote a very good friend of mine, "your return from the graduated brought joy to the entire studentkind, because you defeated graduation and showed that graduation is not the end!"

I guess he's just happy that I'm joining his club of school non-leavers ;)

1 January 2008

OK, I know it's been absolutely AGES since I've last updated this. Two months and a bit. It's a disgrace, I know and I'm terribly sorry. I've been busy. I was probably busy doing stuff other than work, but nonetheless, faffing is still an activity :P

At least we've got loads more bloggers to fill in the gap this time around. I can't believe how much the ECS student blogging community has grown and they're writing some pretty good stuff as well. Just goes to show that there's a lot of nice things to say about ECS :D

The last week of term was a killer. The ECS hardware was taking a beating by both technical faults and grumbling students with deadlines to meet so it wasn't a pretty sight. The outages meant that we couldn't properly work on our assignments. At some point I was in the labs when suddenly the Internet got completely cut off so my friends decided to go off to the pub for a pint instead! Fortunately (or not, depending on which way you look at it) the good guys in Helpdesk got the whole thing fixed and we were finally forced to abandon our impromptu vacation able to progress with our coursework.

This year, Christmas is a little different. I mean, the tinsel and bright lights are still there. In fact, I was more into the holiday spirit than in previous years. But somehow Bob, the Uni-Link driver who usually drives in a Santa suit for the last two Decembers, decided not to continue the tradition this year. I still haven't found out why yet. I think it's a shame; he never fails to make me smile each time I see him drive by in his bright red costume.

As usual, I'm spending my winter holidays here in Southampton when almost everybody else has gone home to celebrate the festivities with their families. The city does get quite dead, especially at night. Since I still live in halls, the silence gets to me even more. Sure, there are many more international students around who are staying back as well, but you can't really dismiss the fact that our halls aren't as vibrant as they usually are.

The good thing is that the Uni-Link buses are a lot more punctual now. They leave on the dot so if you're late by 30 seconds, that means you'll be waiting in the cold for the next 20 minutes. Or an hour if you're waiting for the U2 bus.

It was raining on Christmas day; it wasn't exactly the white Christmas I was hoping for. Still, my friends and I were in our festive moods. We were opening our presents and we successfully attempted to cook a proper Christmas dinner :D

Just now, I was watching the New Year fireworks from my bedroom window. Yes, it would've been a lot nicer if I was outside celebrating, but then again the Uni-Link buses stopped working after 7pm and I didn't want to walk all the way from town at night. The best thing about having a room that's facing the University and effectively the whole city is that you get a good vantage point of all the fireworks around town. Apart the annoying trees that blocked my view, I could see fireworks near and far. It was as if the whole city was exploding with colourful joy. I stood there looking outside my window for a good 20 minutes or so. It was amazing and I wasn't freezing in the cold midnight air :D

The thing that I like the most about ushering in a new year is that you reflect on the year that has passed and you hope for better things in the future. If you were to tell me exactly a year ago that I would have experienced everything that I did in 2007, I would've slapped you silly. Now, I can only hope that 2008 brings me just as much happiness, if not more, as God has granted me now. Alhamdulillah.

Happy New Year everyone!

Only one week left to finish off all your holiday assignments now :P

26 October 2007

Last Wednesday, I was a student helper for the IT, Science and Engineering Careers Fair. It was massive; we had 85 exbihitors spanning across two exhibition sites. Another company was unable to take part in the Careers Fair because all the spaces were booked so they had to set up shop in Zepler instead.

I've been regularly working as a student helper since last year. The pay's not too bad, but what I like the most about it is that you're in the front line of getting the most out of careers fairs such as this. In the morning, when we're helping exhibitors carry their displays and boxes, it's usually the ideal time to be asking them your questions about their job opportunities. I see it as a win-win situation; they get to practise their promos with you when they're still fresh and they haven't been bombarded by hundreds of students, while you get the inside scoop before anybody else does and they do tend to pay more attention to you. I guess that's probably because I'm helping them carry their stuff in the first place :P

What I like the most about this year's fair is that now that I'm a final year student, I actually understood the jargon they were throwing at me! Maybe it's because of the two years I've spent here. Maybe it's because of my summer placement. But when they were explaining to me about the technical aspects of their jobs, I was surprisingly comfortable with the conversation. When one guy was talking about triple DES, my mind raced back to my last Communications and Networks lecture. When another guy mentioned about Java APIs, I remembered my Advanced Programming tasks. When someone else said he was in the infrastructure department, I related his experience to my internship in Malaysia. Long gone were the days when I'd just nod and feign interest in their techno mumbo-jumbo while I was eyeing the colourful freebies on their table.

That Careers Fair made me realize that I've come a long way since I was just a freshie two years ago. I'm happy that my time here is fully preparing me for the future and I'm a bit excited over my prospects and what's in store for me.

However, this fair is my worst in terms of my freebies count because I could *just* snag two pendrives, one keychain light, 4 pencils, 14 pens, 3 highlighters, 4 sweets, a pad of post-it notes and a Rubik cube. It's a shame in my books. My friends did a lot better! :P

8 October 2007

Full Circle

Who would've thought that after a year, I'd still be blogging right here. It feels oddly surreal.

My summer was absolutely amazing. I went back home to Malaysia for three months and I got to spend some quality time with family and friends. I also had the chance to do an internship in a semi-government institution.

Whoever started the rat race to join the working world should be shot. The way I see it, you'll never get the chance to be a carefree undergraduate again (unless you're getting a second degree) so all throughout my internship I was thinking to myself, I've got three months to enjoy in my beautiful, sunny Malaysia and there I was cooped up in a cubicle. But oh well, such is life. If you don't start preparing for your future now, you'll be hard-pressed to find a job later. There's a reason why it's called a race; if you don't step up your game, you'll get left behind.

My internship was quite daunting in the beginning. In my efforts to beef up my CV, I had written down that I knew Linux and C-shell scripting although my experience was limited to say the least. I've never used Linux before I came to Southampton and the only bits I knew were the ones I learned at university. So when my supervisors gave me the task of integrating a server running Microsoft Active Directory (?) to a Squid proxy server (??) that's sitting on a Linux box using bash scripting (???), I felt sick. :S

Let's just say that the internship was quite a steep learning curve for me. But you know what? If it weren't for this one course module that's called System Administration Tools and Techniques, I wouldn't have survived. My paycheck depended on everything I learned from that single 1st year subject.

Moral of the story: Make use of all the skills you learn at university. And be careful about what you put in your CV :D

Despite the horrors, I really enjoyed the internship. My colleagues were awesome and they were always helpful no matter how silly my questions were. The working atmosphere was very friendly and it's one of the reasons why I kept looking forward to going to the office. Apart from that, once I've completed the project, there's this indescribable satisfaction of finally getting your head around a problem and seeing your solution running beautifully. It's this same feeling that has always made me want to do computer science.

Time just flew so fast. Before I knew it, it was time for my flight back to Soton. All in all, my summer was a blast! It's kind of depressing knowing that it would be my last four-months-off-to-do-anything-I-want summer as an undergraduate :(

But I'm glad to be back here. There's only one year left for me. So many things to do, so little time. I've gotta make the most of it! :)

6 July 2007

I just got my exam results and I did waaayyy better than I would've imagined, thank God :D

The thing is, I was quite a mess right before the exams. I was so emotionally unstable that I got to the point where I didn't care about what would happen anymore. My exams were getting closer but it wasn't sinking in and all I wanted to do was hide in my dream world. This wasn't helping me at all.

So I sought help.

First, I went to see my tutor. He was very understanding and it was quite a relief because he didn't invalidate what I felt. Then I went to see another ECS member of staff and he gave me some music(!) to help me heal. After that, I went to see a counsellor. It's funny, really. There's this huge stigma attached to seeing a counsellor. Some people think that there must be something horribly wrong with you to be seeking counselling. I suppose that's true in some ways, but what makes it surprising is how people reacted when they knew I was seeing a counsellor. Some people thought I didn't really need to. Some people felt hurt because I chose to seek help elsewhere instead of turning to them.

Well to be perfectly honest, seeing my counsellor was a turning point for me. In fact, if it weren't for my counselling sessions, I don't think I could've regained control and learned as much about myself as I have right now. Yet how do you convince other people that you're merely trying to sort yourself out? How do you convince them that seeing a counsellor doesn't mean that you don't trust your friends? How do you stop yourself from being branded as mentally unwell?

The answer? You just don't. You can't control what other people say about you, nor should you even care. If you're being true to yourself, that's all that matters.

I am very blessed to have such a strong support network here in Southampton and ECS particularly. If you feel like you're in trouble, look for help because there are people out there who genuinely care about your well-being. I'd also like to give a huge shout-out to my friends, especially Nurul, Jas, Sam and Andrej, for being my source of strength. But most importantly, thanks to a special someone, MS, who taught me so much and made me grow wiser. I can never thank you enough :)

I've got a new personal blog to mark this new chapter in my life. I hope to achieve as much of my dreams as possible and there's no better place for me to do this than in Southampton :D

8 June 2007

Now EXAMS ARE OVER! Wheeeeeeeeeee :D

A couple of weeks ago we had a short talk on relationships. It was run by Eric Cooke (a.k.a. The Legend) and Sarah Cove from Zepler Reception.

We covered so many topics, including how you should learn to love yourself. Eric brought out this book with a bright yellow smiley face plastered on it and read some interesting quotes from it. He mentioned something about an elephant and a mahout (noun: the driver and keeper of an elephant, especially in India and the East Indies). The elephant symbolizes your needs and desires while the mahout symbolizes how you manage to keep that elephant happy. Obviously, using brute physical force will not work, so you've got to figure out how to tame your elephant. Then we digressed into discussions whether elephants prefer peanuts or ice-cream, but that's the beauty of having Eric centre stage ;)

Unfortunately I didn't write down anything so I've forgotten the rest of it but I'm sure if you ask him nicely, he'll lend the book with the smiley face to you :D

One interesting point I learned was that when you see a loner while you're out in a group, you should try to make the first move to include them as well. It's really hard for one person to break into a proper group but that's not necessarily the case when the roles are reversed. It's a lot easier to ask someone to join your group rather than the other way round, which makes perfect sense to me.

One of the suggestions raised was to organize small breaks in the Zepler foyer with free cakes! Any takers? :D

BTW, did you know that Sarah has a Law degree? It was quite amusing to hear her tell us about her encounters with people who think she's stupid just because she works in the reception. She had people telling her that she was wasting away her degree, but according to her, she thoroughly enjoys her work. She enjoys meeting other people and she gets a lot of satisfaction in her job. And soon, she'll be leaving for Australia because that is what she has always wanted to do!

Firstly, I'm quite amazed to meet someone who's so unafraid of breaking stereotypes just to be true to oneself. There are so many people out there who are leading lives not the way they really want to but the way other people would expect them to. She's a shining example that it IS possible to be happy even when you're swimming against the tide.

Secondly, I'm quite pleased that she chose ECS over a courtroom ;)

17 May 2007

SEG IS OVER!

For the uninitiated, SEG stands for our Part II Software Engineering Group project, where we spend a whole semester working on a piece of software while embracing the trials and tribulations of group-based software development. It all started when we were told our group allocations. The groups were randomly chosen, so if Lady Luck was having PMS at the time, you could've been stuck with your arch nemesis for the rest of the semester. Luckily for me, my group mates turned out to be people I've known anyway so we didn't have much trouble getting it together. In the beginning, we had 6 people in our group but from Day 1, one guy never turned up. We suspected that he dropped out, so we reported it to our course supervisor.

So the five of us continued our passage through the treacherous paths of our software specification. Hartley Library became our usual meeting space, with Tuesdays 10am-12pm being permanently marked on our calendars. It was not unusual for us to book meeting rooms a week in advance. Leaving it late meant that we would be greeted by the small, cute paper clock on the reception desk telling us that the next available meeting room is from 9pm onwards :P

Three weeks into our SEG, the unthinkable happened. Another group mate dropped out.

And then there were four.

Most groups had 6-7 people to complete the project so we were understandably nervous. However, we did a good job coping with the extra workload. There were 5 deliverables overall and we scored pretty well for the first two. For our interim demo, we explained about our group process and showed the examiners our software prototype. We did particularly well; we arrived early, we had set up our slides even before the examiners came and we delivered a finely rehearsed presentation. Everything was perfect. So it was quite a given that we thought our final demo today would be a piece of cake.

How wrong was that? Everything that could turn out wrong just did.

We wasted a whole 5 minutes out of our 20-minute slot trying to set everything up. We attempted to copy our slides onto the labs' PCs but they couldn't detect our thumb drive. Our backup laptops(!) decided to take the most opportune time to crash right there and then so we had to wait for one of them to recover before we could even start. We never truly recouped from that bad start; everyone was out of their element even though we had rehearsed countlessly. To make things worse, since we were on Plan C, i.e. we used one of the lab PCs to load the software, we had to take a couple more minutes to look for our test data set which was stored in some obscure folder in the depths of my filestore. Then one of our functions didn't work ( see: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=821 ) before getting completely blindsided by a question that we weren't prepared for. The whole demo was a nightmare!

However, despite the setbacks, we were able to deliver our product's functionalities across to the examiners. We succeeded in meeting the requirements of our software. After the demo, they commented that we did a good job even though we were short on manpower. Thank God! I don't know how we survived that ordeal, but we did. It's a miracle.

Moral of the story? Prepare for the unexpected :D

P/S: Somebody thought I was a PhD student! He said it was because I was involved with the WWW conference last year. I was very flattered, and I'm going to ignore any connotations that I look older than I should.

2 April 2007

Yesterday was April Fools' Day. After years of torment by my old schoolmates, it's usually the day when I sit quietly in my room and cut all ties with the outside world in my bid to spare myself from any humiliation.

Did it help this year? NOOOOOOO..

1) Google TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider): Fancy some FREE in-home wireless broadband service? Look no further than your own.. toilet! How does it work?

"Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines."

Basically, flush (no, GFlush) a cable down the toilet and it will be connected to the network by dedicated PHDs (Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers). And you know what the best bit is? A ZDnet blogger apparently fell for it and made a serious blog post on TiSP. LOL :D

2) GMail Paper: Print hard copies of your emails and get them delivered to you for FREE!

According to them, it's free because "the cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica. No pop-ups, no flashy animations—these are physically impossible in the paper medium."

3) Ryanair: Flights to the Moon!

They prominently displayed a picture of Ryanair's jets flying to the Moon and when I clicked on it, I was redirected to another page with a huge "GOTCHA!" plastered on it :P

4) Facebook: Introducing LivePoke!

They will "dispatch a real live person today to poke a friend of your choice."

I've never hit that "Poke" button much quicker in my entire life :P

5) World of Warcraft: Introducting the Tinfoil Hat!

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

All this just goes to show that no matter where you are, there's no escaping April Fools' Day. You can run, but you can't hide.

9 March 2007

Time sure flies.

I got my previous semester's exam results last month. I always seem to get my Semester 1 results on or around my birthday. It's kind of scary; if the results are good, I would definitely feel like celebrating, but if they're not, it will just ruin my special day. This year, thank God, my birthday celebrations went without a hitch ;)

The Students' Union held their elections last month as well. It's funny how all the candidates I voted for LOST. Again. The same thing happened last year. It's as if whoever I vote for WILL lose. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I suppose next year, hopeful candidates should try a new spin when they approach me during their campaigns: tell me ‘Dayah, don't vote for me!’ and they'll probably get a shot at winning. Who knows? LOL :P

At the moment, we're all in this nice lull where the pace isn't as fast as it used to be towards the end of last semester. We're still knee-deep into our respective Software Engineering Groupwork (SEG) projects and they do take a good chunk of our time but apart from that, it's been smooth sailing so far.

On March 14, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, will be coming here to ECS to deliver his inaugural lecture on the history and future of Web development. If you've read my earlier blog posts, you would have known that I was completely star struck when I saw him in Edinburgh last May. For a guy who revolutionized the way the world works - and effectively igniting my interest in Computer Science - I would've expected him to be aloof, but I was surprisingly wrong. He's funny, down-to-earth and most importantly, he's approachable. When my friends and I went up to him for a photo (star struck, I tell you!) he was very friendly and he didn't have this oh-I'm-so-famous air around him. To me, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is like a rock star without the attitude. I'm well chuffed to be breathing the same air as him again next Wednesday :D

24 January 2007

Exams. It's the time when you start reassuring your parents that you will ace them because you've been working hard all this while. *cough*

One thing that amazes me is how my exam schedule would always put my killer subjects last. My schedule would start off with relatively easier papers first before building up to a somewhat climatic ending. And strangely enough, the last few papers would have at least a 2-day gap before them, giving me ample time to do any last-minute revision. I like this pattern more because if my harder subjects were moved up, I would just lose momentum towards the end. I mean how do they do that? Surely they couldn't foresee which subjects are more difficult for everyone because what I find hard might not be the case for other people. And yet I've been having the same schedule pattern since Semester 1 :D

What amazes me more is how much tidier my room is than it ever was before the exams. The things I do to escape my revision. *sigh*

In ECS, you'll be hard-pressed to find people who wouldn't help you with anything, be it coursework or revision. We're blessed with terrific bright minds who wouldn't mind giving assistance. But what's really rare is to find someone who isn't "kedekut ilmu", a Malay saying which means being selfish by keeping knowledge to themselves. Some people have a condescending attitude when helping people. They think they're better than everybody else and you won't get anywhere close to being as good as they are. It's every man for himself.

But I was proven wrong. I couldn't have done one of the courseworks if it wasn't for my classmate who had become my living reference manual. When we received our marks, we both scored As but my mark was marginally higher than his. I felt it was unfair for this to happen but he just said:

"Pfft. I don't care about the marks. All I care about is getting a 1st."

He's totally right. This isn't a race. In the end, even if everyone around you got firsts, what's there to harm you? He showed me what it really means to help people without being self-centred. I'll always remember that, especially right now in the middle of the exams when you're more likely to seek and receive help from each other.

Good luck for your exams everyone! :)

15 December 2006

Last week, my lecturer mentioned, ‘There's nothing more boring than writing parsers.’

And our last coursework before Christmas? A parser. How timely :P

I've been doing 9am-11pm sessions in Zepler labs day after day to get my last two assignments done, although in retrospect, I wasn't exactly 100 per cent productive, LOL. I still can't believe how huge the jump from first year to second year is. The subjects are more technical and the coursework more gruelling, but as I've been reassured by my third year friends, ‘There is light at the end of the tunnel.’ :D

I'm definitely looking forward to the three-week holiday starting tomorrow. There's always a certain romanticism about the holidays. Despite the arduous task of Christmas shopping, there's a light and happy atmosphere to almost everything you do. Everyone's (a bit) nicer to everyone, people are more giving and forgiving. Holiday plans are made and the whole town's covered with tinsel and bright lights. And then there's Bob, the ever so friendly Uni-Link bus driver who does his rounds in a complete Santa suit!

The festive season is a good time to be thankful for what you've got. I'm thankful for having the opportunity to experience the world around me and everything it has to offer. I'm thankful to meet lovely people along the way who make the journey even more meaningful. But I'm particularly thankful to have such amazing angels to help me with my coursework in Zepler :D

Happy holidays, everyone. I'm off to Italy for a week ;)

22 November 2006

As an ECS Computer Science student, sooner or later, you'll settle into three distinctive levels of activity:

1) Idle time: You find yourself lazing around during the huge gaps in between classes. With loads of free time, you can do absolutely anything. You could even skip classes and still take comfort in the fact that you've probably just missed the introductory lectures. This usually happens at the beginning of the term, when lecturers keep reiterating that "you will learn this and that in the next few lectures" and your coursework deadlines are practically non-existent.

2) Coursework chaos: Unlike other courses, where assignments are usually spread out evenly, we get a string of back-to-back deadlines. After messing around for a month, you're suddenly thrust with loads of coursework and you're expected to hand them in once every week up until Christmas! The last few days leading up to the deadlines are always stressful. Lectures are almost empty, Zepler becomes your second home and caffeine becomes your best friend. And just when you've rejoiced after submitting your hard work, you're back in the labs, looking at the specifications for the following coursework that's due next week. Of course, you could always avert the worst by working on them a few weeks earlier, but nobody does that :P

3) Crunch time: The week before the exams. This is when you finally realize that the lecturer has already covered "this and that" eons ago and you're developing selective amnesia again. So you read through all your books that have been collecting dust and the lecturers get spammed with questions that you could've asked during the lectures. Past year papers get pored over in hopes of finding repeated questions and effectively, you start to disassociate yourself from the outside world.

Once the exams are over, the cycle gets repeated again and again.

I'm currently on level 2 at the moment and it takes some time to shift gears when you've been stuck at neutral (or reverse!) for some time :P

Despite the hectic lifestyle, I really enjoy the pace that we do. Ultimately, you get to choose how fast or how slow you want to go and that suits me perfectly fine :)