Update!

It has been more than half of a year since I last updated this blog before heading to India.

I'm currently enjoying a short semester break, a period of time where I can temporarily escape the hectic university life. Yes, it is hectic, considering the fact that we have to attend six days of classes per week. The Saturday is just another day of waking up early in the morning and dragging ourselves into the classroom for hours of lectures. How about Sunday? Having greatly deprived of adequate rest throughout the week, it is the only day that I'm allowed to sleep until whatever time I want. After that, I have to revise the topics taught by the lecturers for the rest of the day if I don't want myself to get embarrassed when bombarded by questions from lecturers in the next day. I would find myself guilty if I don't revise something on any day. Time management is the tricky part. It is hard to decide to work, play or sleep.

The diagram above explains everything.

Nevertheless, I never imagined how much I could have learnt during such a short semester. In short, as a first year undergraduate taking Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), I'm required to study three main subjects namely anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. Anatomy has been generally recognised as the most dreadful subject that everyone of us must face. It deals with every single detail of the human body structure, thus posing a large workload one has to strive very hard to gain an understanding. However, I can see it is of great importance to absorb as much knowledge as we can from the scale of a single cell to the gross structure of human body, as it is the basic of everything. Physiology is dealing with the function of human body, whereas biochemistry gives a macroscopic view at the happenings such as metabolism running in the human body.

I once heard a comment from a working doctor:

"One need not to be a genius to choose this career, what it takes is actually the diligence, perseverance and self-discipline."

I agree. Medicine is a field of wide knowledge. Unlike how we have been studying in the secondary school, there is no fixed syllabus or textbook in the medical school. Information is everywhere, and from the well-categorised source of medical knowledge, we need to put in great effort to integrate, store and apply the knowledge.

Yes, we study a lot. No matter how badly we are going to forget the details after several months, we are forced to cram everything into our mind, and expected to recall it during examinations, especially the oral test called "viva". I have been lack of confidence at speaking, moreover sometimes it is not easy to understand the English spoken in their accent, I'm always afraid of having any kind of interaction with the Indians in any session. Not to mention I'm always confused by the indication shown via shaking head. They shake their heads for saying yes and do the same for saying no.

India is a unique where we can observe a lot of extremities. We get to see how the poor blends with the rich, how the wealth mirage is accompanied by severe poverty, how the high-tech companies and skyscrapers mushrooming in the cities where man power is still the main workforce of everything. Men form a the line to carry and pass bricks, they build ladders using robes and woods to reach the great height without using machines.

If I'm asked "How's life in India?", I don't know how to provide an answer. I can't think of a positive thing to share with. I came across with a lot of negative incidents: Open defecating or urinating, reckless driving on the road, dirty streets where people spit and litter everywhere, unscrupulous auto rickshaw drivers who love to earn more via cheating, slow action by staff in public sectors, unstable electricity where at least ten blackouts happen everyday, beggars chasing after you, extreme weathers, not-so-tasty-food, terrible road condition, the over-obsessed students, the lack of courtesy, and more. Life has been depressing knowing I have to spend five and a half years in this land. By the time I'm back to Malaysia, I am a man of 26 years old, if everything goes as I wish.

Life is tough in India. I'm truly honest to point out this. We need to be mentally strong or else we are going to trap ourselves in the maze of troubles. It would be a different story if one goes to some other countries such as Australia or UK. Frankly speaking, I feel a little envious when I see friends of mine are currently going for their tertiary studies in those countries. Every photo taken there seems to be more scenic.

However I'm very grateful to have been granted the chance to pursue my dream in India. I believe the hardship and challenge could help to train and prepare myself to traverse into medical field in the future. I do not regret to have chosen this pathway. People often say it is good to enroll in medicine or dentistry in India. I'm not sure if this is plausible. From my point of view, I could just say the way we are educated in the college has been a great experience. We are able to gain great exposure towards some aspects where it is not possible in my own country. For example, we have relatively complete specimen and enough number of cadavers to study in the dissection halls. Professors are professional, they are highly experienced at teaching undergraduates. I'm impressed by each of them. I'm quite sure they are much better than the professors in my own country. I guess this is the only positive thing I'm able to talk about India.

There is a lot of stories to share, hopefully I can come out with another interesting article after this!

My new gear

If someone asked me if I ever wished to own a DSLR camera a month ago, I would definitely give a firm "no". However I was quite surprised by how things have turned out to be too, and yes, I'm now shooting photos using a little more advanced camera - Canon EOS 1100D.


I used to have an incorrect perception towards some technical knowledge of the photo shooting world. I thought megapixel fully decides how a camera is worth its price and rating. I had never gone deep into how a camera really works. I was always wondering why people would have chosen a heavy and bulky camera ( I didn't know the referred camera is called DSLR ) rather than a convenient compact camera which has a higher megapixel value.

I was introduced to more photography terminologies and some insightful operating theories of cameras when I stayed with my previous college roommate for more than a year. He was holding a Canon EOS 500D equipped with a lot of accessories. Under his influence, I spent some time to read articles of introduction to photography and related guides from Internet as well as reviews of entry-level DSLR cameras. I managed to catch some ideas of several factors to be taken care of during photo shooting such as shutter speed, aperture, ISO etc.

Picking up photographing as a hobby isn't as easy as we might think because at the end of the day we are still bound to one of the most important considerations - money. If you have no idea of how much an amateur photographer would spend for basic DSLR camera sets, I shall give you an example here. While we are gradually improving our photographing skills, we need to upgrade our gadgets such as lens. My roommate spent more than RM2000 for normal camera set, another RM3000 for additional lens and digital flash. Sometimes a single lens would cost more than the total amount of money that my roommate spent for all of his photographing gadgets! It takes a considerable amount of money, time, passion, patience, skills building and experience to enter a semi-pro stage.

Why did I decide to own a DSLR camera out of a sudden? My family has been sharing and using a 10mp compact digital camera. I realised the quality of photos could have been better due to some limitations in compact digital camera. I wish to take great photos of each of my family members. Secondly, when I'm in India in the coming August, I wish to capture memorable moments and share it with friends and family. I was attracted by the advertisement of this latest product of Canon, the brown-coloured entry-level camera model which was released in March 2011. Thrust by great interest and urge, permission was gained from my parents, and I finally hold it in my hands.

Just a few weeks after the original set of camera bought, I further equipped myself with several important and handy camera lens and photography accessories as shown below.

Canon lens EF 50mm f/1.8 II

If I'm not mistaken this is the cheapest Canon lens available in the current market. It still costs about RM300. Almost every Canon DSLR user would go for this popular lens as their second lens because of its large aperture. What can a large aperture give? It enables photos taken at night or dark areas to be clearer and most importantly it gives great bokeh (out-of-focus area).

As you can see, the background is highly out of focused, leaving a soothing and blurred effect. A compact digital camera would hardly give us this kind of effect.

Canon zoom lens EF 35-80mm f/4-5.6 III

You might be surprised by the fact that this lens is as old as I'm. Surprisingly it can still fit into my camera body and function well after I found it out in the storeroom. However it doesn't come with image stabiliser (IS) technology. I'm wondering how much its virtual market price is about since no one is selling or purchasing this lens anymore. But I'm happily keeping it in my camera bag although I seldom shoot photos using it.

A tripod

For shutter speed slower than 1/30 seconds and above, the photos taken are prone to handshakes under normal zoom range without the aid of a tripod. Therefore to perform some photo shooting that requires a longer exposure time especially during night time, I bought this tripod with RM50. Moreover, by switching my camera to self-timer mode, I can include myself into the image! For more advanced photo shooting options such as high dynamic range imaging (HDRI), I need to combine three photos of same position but different exposures, therefore a tripod is needed.

I took a family photo with the aid of my tripod.

This is a sample of photoshopped HDR image.

Nissin Di622 Mark II digital flash

Nissin is a third party brand. It does not build cameras. I'm supposed to buy a Canon digital flash, however the market price for getting one having similar function and specification of the one shown above is around RM900. Accessories produced by third parties could be very cheap, and some of them could still guarantee a decent quality and performance. I had gone through the reviews of different third party digital flashes via Internet and asked for some advice around. Eventually I found out the one I bought as shown above has a great reputation. The price of RM470 is within my budget too. Controlling lights could be difficult for beginners. Despite shooting repeatedly to obtain the preferred result, I can see the potential of how the colour and tones of a photo could be greatly improved by applying a particular amount of flashlight at a certain angle properly. Direct flash using built-in camera flash often creates harsh image with annoying shines and shadows. Digital flash is capable of rotating and light filtering, thus it is a versatile device to add more artificial lights. It gives a vibrant colour tone too.

Photo of my grandmother without using a digital flash.

Photo colour enhanced with some removal of undesired shadows compared to the previous photo. Flashlight is bounced from the wall onto her left face.

There are still a lot to explore and learn about. I would appreciate any advice regarding photo shooting given. Hopefully I can share great photos with you guys!

Youtube

As one of the most popular websites, Youtube has always been serving as the main Internet platform in video uploading and broadcasting in most countries. In other context, it is the website where most of the Internet users are searching for audio-visual information. The user community has been growing steadily after several implementations of introducing a dynamic, user friendly, interactive interface. At the same time, the users can easily stay connected with video producers via subscriptions. Although Youtube is not a social network like Facebook, it is still obliged to take care of this large community and control the privacy, harmony and benefits of the community.

I don't know if I'm an active user of Youtube. I watched a lot of videos. I have an account but I rarely subscribe to any channels or providing feedbacks via leaving comment. At the same time, I don't bother to like or dislike a video at all. However I do observe how the community has been abusing their right regarding their freedom of speech. It is fascinating yet surprising to notice how easily human beings can be so juvenile, ignorant and abusive when they are granted the anonymity. And here comes the main point of this post. I would like to leave my opinions here concerning the way Youtube has been changing its feedback-providing system from what I slightly observed.

Once upon a time, Youtube was practicing a rating system which people normally called "five-star rating system". For example, if there were two groups of similar number of users rated 3 stars and 4 stars each, an average rating of 3.5 stars would be shown below the video. After that, this rating system was changed to what I called "bar rating system". Users were allowed to like or dislike a video without being given a scale to rate a video. The numbers of likes and dislikes were accumulated and displayed by two bars of green and red to show the video viewers a comparison. Now, Youtube has altered the "bar rating system". Only numbers of likes and dislikes are shown instead.

Before continue elaborating on my point of views, I would really like to determine the actual purpose of implementing a rating system. Groups of users can be differentiated in term of their interest, video making experience and so on. Some users would like to know how good their videos are made from the ratings given, while some of them are not interested to know the rating because they just share videos to close friends or relatives without editing. I don't know if we can completely disable all the rating and feedback in a video. At the moment, I would like to link the rating system to another website, The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The website is proving a wide information of filmed movies with great and active response from the audience community. Instead of "five stars rating system", they maintain a "ten stars rating system" to improve on the rating sensibility of how worthy a movie should be watched. A rating system like this would be very useful, beneficial and appreciated with some reviews available at the same time. Back to Youtube, not many videos are filmed or made to entertain people in the same way as those commercial movies. Sometimes I just do not feel the necessity to have a rating system on Youtube, when I have no idea which parameter I should follow to rate a video featuring some bad news. It is the team of Youtube to decide which interactive elements to be maintained or to get rid of.

The above picture illustrates a "troll face"

Have you heard of "troll"? You might have met with trolls but not knowing they are referred as trolls. In Internet slang, troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous or off-topic messages in an online community. These people are almost everywhere. The bigger the population of an online community, the bigger the population of such trolls in the community as well. Why do I mention a new term here? Well, let's conduct some trials. Try to surf on Youtube to find as many videos with a moderate number of view counts as you can. You would be able track the trace of such a trolling activity when a video has been uploaded for a period of time until a troll can actually reach the site. And here comes their favourite agenda - giving some ridiculously juvenile and irrelevant remarks and a dislike, or more than a dislike if the troll has multiple accounts. You can hardly find a video with no dislikes, even if it is featuring sheer artistic performance. Under the same analogy, they would rate for the lowest star if possible, when they do not feel comfortable with the growing view counts and relatively high rating stars of a video. Perhaps you don't even know "Baby" by Justin Bieber has set a new record by collecting the greatest number of dislikes - about twice the number of likes. Do people really hate him so much?

Let alone the trolls. We cannot eliminate them as they are abusing their rights legally. Any democratic platforms are bound to these trolls. But certain actions can be taken to curb their activity. I recommend Youtube to remove the dislike buttons. By the way, what is the point to have this function? If we dislike someone, we don't express ourselves by telling him "hey dude, I dislike you." Instead, a preferred action would be telling him which aspect we would hope him to reflect on or change. Dislike is way too negative. This function could potentially harbour a community accompanied with hatred, jealousy and discouraging environment. I would agree to preserve the dislike button if it can bring a constructive means even without the presence of trolls. If you are thinking that you want to preserve the dislike button because you can take a look at its number while deciding if you want to spend your time watching the video, why don't you take a look at the numbers of view counts and likes, since trolling might give you a false feedback, assuming trolling does not target its positive feedback? In my humble opinion, the percentage of people who liked a video is enough for us to decide if a video should be watched. Thus, my another recommendation for Youtube would be showing the percentage, for instance, 25 out of 1000 people who watched the video have liked the video, thus giving a percentage of 2.5%.

It would not be wise to disable all comments in all videos due to trolling as we still need some constructive responses. At least inappropriate comments can still be flagged, reported and hid from public. By the way, if a video is really featuring something we don't like, personally I don't think it is a must to express ourselves. We have to accept the fact that having the urge to express such a dislike or negative sentimental thoughts to something is actually lack of self-cultivation, and being angry is an emotional penalty to no one other than ourselves. We just need to be moderate to build a harmony community.

Poor customer service

Since I am having holiday until early in March, I would really like to enjoy this precious period by doing something else besides communicating with the world via Internet. As an ASTRO user, I used to subscribe to some channels that I prefer to watch such as sports channels and documentary channels. However it would be wasteful to keep on subscribing to these channels considering the fact that I was staying in college for months while none of my family members is interested in sport or documentary. Now it is time to resubscribe to those channels.

On the last day of 2010, I browsed through the official website of ASTRO to gather some information and found out recently there is a newly introduced package called high definition (HD) package which includes some sport and documentary channels! I was so delighted. I made some calls to seek for customer service, and as expected, we will need to reinstall the hardwares. However the installation fee and the cost of new hardwares are waived as long as you are bound to an one-year-contract with extra RM20 added to current subscription fee per month, which is quite reasonable. I was promised that their technical team would reach within 10 days. What? 10 days?

"Maybe this HD package is in a high demand in Alor Star nowadays," I thought.

So the days passed by until it was the seventh day of waiting. I was wondering, if they do take care of customer satisfactory, they wouldn't choose to perform the installation procedure on the last day of promised period. I tried to reach the customer service again, and he confirmed with me the technical team will surely contact my father as the account holder in the next few days. So I kept on waiting. I hoped it wouldn't take long because there were some interesting football matches I would really like to catch up. Moreover, my holiday is going to end soon with everyday passing by so swiftly.

It was the tenth day, and I realised they had missed out the important phrase. The "ten days" was meant to be "ten working days". Thus I was again told to wait for a few days in frustration. However we didn't receive any phone call even though we had been waiting for their service for more than 10 working days!

I constructed an email to voice out my anger and disappointment. Having called ASTRO for more than 8 times, I wasted about RM10 as I needed to key in the numbers, listening to the repeated instructions for a considerably long time that charges during the calls. To my surprise, it was clearly stated my email would be read and replied within another 3 days. I recalled my customer service with Dell when I discovered my newly bought laptop was having some problems with a faulty hard disc inside. I sent an email on the first day, and got the hard disc exchanged on the second day. I was so shocked by their efficiency.

I couldn't wait anymore. I got the phone numbers of the technician in charge of my residential area and started calling him. However, the office number directed my call into irritating voice mails, whereas no one picked up my call when I dialed the cell phone number. This lasted for 3 days.

When I was about to cancel my subscription, they contacted us. Right at the time I was constructing this blog post, 17 days after my initial call to subscribe the HD package. Typical customer service in Malaysia, I would say. Don't ever think you can always dominate and monopoly the market when the fundamental support is actually from customer's trust.

And, customer's trust is earned, not given.