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The past three days have been very busy, as I followed the company to the North Peninsular of Malaysia to conduct my training. Finally… something interesting for my internship. =P

On Thursday, our first station was Politeknik Sultan Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah (POLIMAS), Penang. Their “Rota Spray” machine was reported faulty, but after some checking, it’s just some pipes that were stuck, causing the sensor unable to work properly.

The second station was Politeknik Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin, Perlis. The campus is quite new and the environment is good (well, at least better than my own uni …). We didn’t stay long there as we’re just dropping by to return their after-serviced “Rota Spray” machine.

The third station of the day was Faculty of Engineering of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Nibong Tebal. The environment is even better than the previous polytechnic!

Didn’t managed to get any photos of the campus, but what I can say is their lab is way better than many local universities. It’s small but fully equipped with updated industrial PCB machines and they produced high quality boards.

On Friday, the second day of our trip, we proceeded to Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Seberang Prai Campus to discuss with their technician regarding reallocation of their PCB machines in their electronic lab.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is another lab that is comparable to USM’s. They as well have all the necessary machines for producing fine PCBs, and their technician is very concerned and updated with the progress of other universities regarding lab improvement matters.

Our last station was Asian Institute of Medicine Science and Technology (AIMST) University, Sungai Petani. This is something like the Indian version of UTAR actually; with majority of their students are Indians. And the campus environment, what I can say is… fantastic! Especially their buildings.

They’ve recently bought some machines and equipments from our company and we’re here to conduct a seminar to teach the lecturers and students on the proper way of using those machines to produce PCBs.

Ya most of you’ll probably say “PCB again?!”. Well not my fault la pals, the company I’m attached to is dealing with this type of business. =P

Since my boss can hardly spare time to train us, he decided to take us along to train together with AIMST’s lecturers and students.

Got the chance to get my hands hot.

The trip was really worth it (since the company bear all our expenses… =P). Many of the universities and even polytechnics are advancing to become better. Unfortunately, I didn’t see anything alike going on in my uni. We’ve been stuck in old technologies for so long and yet, the uni doesn’t seems to care about it. Something is wrong…

Reached KL at 12am last night, and I’m back to work today.

It’s been a week since I started my internship, and it’s so boring… The boss in charge of training me has been quite busy and outstation, so I ended up doing my own stuffs most of the time in the office…

…And one of them is this, Beacon Conqueror 2009.

This is a robotic competition designed to train the members during holiday. The objective is to let them improve their mechanical, electronic and programming skills.

This year’s game is quite similar to the Vietnam game in year 2007. The Vietnam game has inspired me a lot and I think it is one of the best Robocon game ever all these years. It involves good strategy planning and good programming skills to complete the tasks. So this year, we decided to do something not totally the same, but similar as a training for the members.

Beacon Conqueror 2009 Game Field

The tasks is quite similar, except the game field is square instead of “spider-web”, and there are many more obstacles in the game field to make the path more challenging.

It is hoped that through this game, members are able to sharpen their hands-on skills, get motivated and further cultivate coorperation among them.

All the best to all team members for this holiday !

I’m back home… earlier that what was expected. After the long battle and negotiation, we have finally withdrawn from this year competition due to some so called “dispute”.

Our journey started 8 months ago, when the theme of “Travel Together for the Victory Drums” was announced during last year international final held at Pune, India. As we’re defeated during last year domestic game, we planned to start things earlier to get everyone prepared for this year’s competition.

It has been very tiring throughout that period of time. A lot of problems occurred in our attempts to develop new technologies for this year competition. Nonetheless, due to the perseverance and determination of the members, some of our researches work. For instance, the so called “not following the line” technique. For many, it might seem like just simply using the encoder to estimate the distance, but to us, there are more to it. All members were overjoyed when the development of this technique produced high accuracy. At that moment, we knew we can complete the tasks with shorter time and perform better.

On the first day of the test run, we’re caught “red-handed” by some students from other institution for arriving early in the morning and tested the game field. It was not stated in any black and white and regulations that teams are not allowed testing the game field prior to the competition. The worse case, these students uploaded the video on youtube in attempt to threaten us to withdraw.

Those few days had been very tensed as all the members were worried about the teams’ fate in this year’s game.

We realized the hot discussion in youtube and chinese cari forum but we decided not to place any comment at all.

Each and every of our game was being boo by the crowd. The barbaric screams filled the stadium. The so called “sportsmanship” was unseen within any of them, but we decided not to fight back no matter how harsh they can be.

After the long negotiation with the panel judges, they finally decided to deduct 40 points from each of our teams (which is equivalent to being disqualified in one of the round competitions). This amount of points can easily crush any team in this year’s game and it really hurt to know that it was our only choice. Nonetheless, we thought we’re saved.

The overall performance of the participating teams this year was devastating. Some of the teams won by getting negative marks and violations, some of the teams won by zero marks, some of the teams won without even completing the first task. The result was very clear. We do not blame any of them as on our journey to create robots to complete the tasks, we knew and understand the difficulty of this year’s game was very different from the previous years. So we thought, for those teams who are growing and advancing, no matter how they win, this can be a very good experience for them to improve themselves, to share knowledge with other teams who can perform better and have positive idea towards the competition.

Unfortunately, most of them do not share our vision.

All they want was to use any tactic to bring down the “strong” teams. To them, perhaps by disqualifying us, they might stand a better chance to represent Malaysia in the international game? They were totally unsatisfied with the judges’ decision in penalizing only 40 points from each of our teams. So a few institutions signed a “treaty” to the judges, saying and “threaten” that it was unfair to test the game field in the morning; that if we continue participating, they will boycott next year’s competition and so on.

The true meaning of the game disappeared.

It was a predicament for the organizing committee. The pressure from these “institutions” was very negative for the judges and for us.

Finally, on Saturday, one day before the final, we decided to withdraw from the competition. We’re so close to the final. It was the worst choice for us as we know we stand a chance to fight till the end, to meet with the “strong” teams face on and to exchange our knowledge. However, it was the best choice to save the organizing committee from this predicament and to avoid this issue being brought international, causing disgrace to our country.

All members were disappointed but there was no way to solve the issue without us withdrawing. I can see the sadness and pain in every of them. 8 months of hard works were in vain. We sacrificed our academic result, our nights of sleep, our holiday when other could went for vacation, our time… all but to get ourselves withdrawn just because of a video uploaded on youtube…

To all Roboconian around Malaysia, I hope you keep an open-mind if you are reading this. This post is not intended to offend anyone, but to let everyone knows exactly what happened behind the scene. We have got our punishment and what we deserved. There’s nobody who is absolutely wrong and none absolutely right either. So please do not spam this post with those harsh comments anymore.

To the champion team, we wish you the very best on your journey to Tokyo, Japan. You have the true quality and we know you can do it!

Nonetheless, we’re pleased to know that there are still a number of our supporters out there. We truly thank you for your support all these years that keep us going and we’re sorry to turn you guys down this year. Our future is still undecided… not to mention next year’s game. No matter how’s the outcome, we really appreciate your support.

I guess this is life… nothing is fair.

Came across this from an email. For those who think I am “mysterious”, read on…

TAURUS MAN

A quiet simple man who can do something unexpected to shock you. Taurus man mostly medium tall, strong with good health, good strong body. When he talks, he likes to turn his head to one side on one direction. His body will be quite straight, facial structure tend to be square shape more than other shape. His eyes sparkle with liveliness.

Even when he is in love, he is still a free wild bird. He is a sand in your palm, the more you want to hold it, it will slip out. If you stand and hold it still, it will stay that way. Don’t set the rules and draw a line for him, he will not stay.

When you are with him, he will think only of you. But an hour later he could change his mind. He is very patient with other people, but very impatient with himself. His world always turning and it will not stop just because he loves you. If he up sets, he will show it right away. If something has gone wrong, he will blame his own carelessness instead of blaming other people.

He sincere to his friends even to some friends he does not like. He likes to do odd things and surprise other people. He could be fully dress in a nice suit and jump in the pool. He could slap your back so hard just to make you turn around to see he has flowers in his hand. He never want to get too close with anyone for he thinks living in reality is living by yourself.

He does not care what people think when he behave weird. He could be walking bare feet and laughing at people who laugh at him and think they are so narrow minded. He does not likes to follow conformity, but always want to search for new ventures, new mystery. He will interest in a life of a millionaire as much as a life of an old man selling newspaper on a sidewalk vendor.

He like to search and analyze people and things. He will analyze his friends or his girl friend, and once the mystery is gone, he will search for new puzzle to solve. He can not easily understand thing, so he will gradually learning about you till he fills up all his questions.

He knows so many people ,but he has a few friends. He looks for quality friends than quantity friends. He will be close with some friends shortly and move on. He always feel lonely even surround by many people. He could create his own little world, and sometimes no one would understand him. He looks only for future and he thinks he lives for the future. He may wonder how many people think like he does, but he does not want to be like the others.

A man with a conflict personality. He is a cool, understanding, able to work well, and very artistic. Taurus man could be an artist. He could shock you as much as he is able to clam you down when you up set. He is a free spirit who likes venture, but when he wants to be alone, do not touch him but to let him be. He won’t disappear from the crowds too long, he will be back.

He will give you straight forward opinion or comments, but will never advice what he thinks you should do. He does not like people to tell him what he should do too. He thinks each individual dreams and thoughts should be very private. He will use his brain not his body strength, so he will let other guys compete. He has a certain satisfactory in life and hate to force himself in competition. He may seems careless, but actually he is a thinker and a stubborn one.

He sees anythings in details and not easily trusted people till he thinks he knows them well. You can just smile and he will think why and what are you smiling about, and if you are pretending. Once he trust you and accept you as a friend, no one can says other wise to change that for he will not listen to gossip. He will be honest and sincere to his friends.

He hates lies, so he will not tell you lies. If he finds it is necessary to lie, he will find other ways not to tell you or avoid telling you anything. If he really has to lie, you will never be able to tell that he is lying. He can really keep secrets, so you will hardly know that he is a lonely soul.

If you want this kind of guy, you have to be an interesting person. He has to be curious about you. Hell for him is ‘No Freedom’, so if he marry you then you should know it is the biggest decision in his life. Always be interesting, then you could have him beside you.

So what do you think? Am I this type of person? =P