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!

Reflection (Part 1)

Having participated in Biro Tatanegara (BTN) course that lasted for five days, I'm going to share what was going on throughout the camp. I had the urge to share my point of views while I was having the course, however it is not easy to recall every single incident that happened and come out with an overall review based on what I had been thinking.

BTN, in case you have not come across with this term, and if I'm not mistaken, was introduced at the early age to mould the youngsters who were thought to raise disciplinary problems in school. Recently it was further modified to fulfill the need to instill patriotism in the government servants and those government-servant-to-be. I guess this is also one of those preventive measures in reducing brain drain.

We didn't have enough sleep during the course, but we did not need to worry about hunger. They provided six meals including breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Teatime would fill in every empty slot of schedule. You would never feel hungry. There would be almost at least a piece of chicken and a fish for every participant in every meal, which is quite costly. The accommodation was the best part of the camp. We were provided a clean dorm with eight bunk beds and new furniture. The campsite is relatively isolated from the city and near to a beach, thus we would feel the calm and windy weather.

On the first day, I was so surprised to find out the campsite actually has a wifi source, and managed to steal some time and stay connected to Facebook for a while before our mobile phones were confiscated throughout the next four days. However most Maxis users received poor signals from the base stations of mobile phones in this remote area. Despite the fact that even if we took control of our own mobile phones, we cannot connect to the outside world with no signal coverage, still, I guess 107 of us were all having a hard time without mobile phone in our pockets.

The whole course was just mainly about presentations and group trainings that involves some aspects to build a civil minded and patriotic soul. Every morning we had to wake up at 5.30am, slightly late comparing to Muslims. We had to take part in so called moral lessons when the Muslims were attending for their morning prayers. After that there would be morning training session. I did not have any experience in marching or foot drill, and it is embarrassing and insulting when the commanders were no happy for he expected everyone of us must have joined a uniformed unit or national service before.

In my opinion, it is just a personal matter whether anyone of us chose to join a uniformed unit, and don't take that as a compulsory when it seems that joining a uniformed unit would greatly help one to obtain extra co-curriculum merit and secure your university seat. Just allow me to speak a little out of topic, I just find it ridiculous when people were so surprised to find out the fact that I, as a PSD scholarship holder, do not hold any certificate of a uniformed team at all. My point is simple, everyone has his or her own liking, interest and time management. When the government is practicing a moderate way of encouraging youngsters to take part in uniformed unit, we can make up our mind to give a full commitment in other kind of co-curriculum activities and the outcomes are beneficial as well.

Back to the marching part in every morning, I truly enjoyed the session as I learn something new instead of listening to cliche that has been aggressively reiterated during speeches given by trainers and facilitators. However when I further analyse the speech content as well as activities curriculum, I notice they had unevenly distributed what they want us to learn and understand in the course by national civic bureau. We were exposed to the content of constitution of Malaysia in different ways. However they just focused on some important clauses. According to the syllabus stated in the official website of national civic bureau, we are supposed to learn about the latest issues, patriotism, the nation history, the government system, social contract, constitution of Malaysia and others. However what had been greatly emphasised was the social contract and some particular facts included in the constitution. I'm glad to learn all of these, and eventually I catch the main point and agenda of the course, which is to indoctrinate participants to understand the social contract based on constitution. Not to say we learn only a little about others but honestly I was a little annoyed by the way it had been emphasised.

Nevertheless, at some point I'm still holding on to my ideology. I would reflect on it and figure out more to share with you next time.

IELTS result

Finally the IELTS result is released! Here is my result:

Listening: 8.5
Reading: 8.5
Writing: 7.5
Speaking: 6.0 =(

Total: 8.5 + 8.5 + 7.5 + 6.0 = 30.5
Overall band score = 30.5/4 = 7.625 ≈ 7.5

Here is the reference of band score:

9. Expert User - native speaker level of the language.

8. Very Good User - excellent command of the language, a few mistakes only

7. Good User - handles language well, some inaccuracies, communicates adequately

6. Competent User - reasonable control of the language, difficulties with unfamiliar

5. Modest User - adequate in own area, difficulties with complex structures

4. Limited User - adequate only in familiar areas, difficulty understanding expression

3. Very Limited User - problems communicating, limited communication abilities

2. Intermittent User - many difficulties, basic information only

1. Non User - understands a few isolated words only

I am quite satisfied with the overall performance despite the poor response rated for my speaking test. However I can't recall much regarding the experience during the tests.

I tried my best and stretched my ears to the max during listening test. However I couldn't catch up the fast conversation by some speakers with thick British accent in one of the parts. I have got some luck to score well in reading test.

Although 7.5 is lower than 8.5, it is still considered as a relatively high band in writing. I think I did pretty well in that paper as I applied a wide range of vocabulary and structures of sentences in appropriate ways. I wouldn't have achieved this band if I did not force myself to pick up the habit of blogging and intensive writing since I failed to score well in SPM.

The examiner who conducted my speaking test was very professional. She is a woman of more than 60 and has a perfect pronunciation. However, she looked very unfriendly, serious and strict. I tried my best to give my best answer for every question or task given, but I just couldn't escape from the fate of getting such an unacceptable band. In fact, if I obtained a band higher than 6.0 for speaking, even by only an addition of 0.5, the overall band score would be 8.0 or higher! =)

In conclusion, IELTS test is interesting and exciting. Every candidate needs to pay full attention to focus on every test after a certain period of training and preparation. Having boosted with confidence, a little luck is still desired.

The controversy

Since it was announced that the grading system is slightly changed to introduce a higher distinction namely "super distinction" for SPM, I had been wondering how it would result in a different outcome regarding the proportion of candidates scoring the so called perfect result in a particular subject or all of the subjects taken, which have been limited to 10+2.

A grading system is like a measuring tool. It is designed to measure something. It should be moulded and calibrated considering the main aspects - is it too long or too short to measure the full size of the object? Is it sensitive enough such that smallest division used is helpful to give a reading including the significant figures needed? Can it be used to measure different objects, and give a comparison of them? A bad tool is not meant to be a bad tool as it might still be useful to measure other objects of different requirements. Applying the same analogy, I soon realised the new grading system is not competent enough to calibrate the candidates nationwide from the same batch in a credible and sensible method.

The SPM wouldn't be so important if it hasn't been included in the main consideration taken into account while the government department such as Public Service Department or other party such as National Bank is going to determine scholarship winners. Therefore SPM result is often related to these scholarships because they are closely linked. To maximise the chance to qualify oneself as the applicant and at the same time secure such scholarships, scoring a perfect result is necessary. It could be scoring all A1 based on the previous grading system or all A+ based on the current grading system. These are so called "perfect result" which would guarantee you, or at least it is very hard to deprive your chance to secure the scholarship provided by government. This is why candidates used to take more insignificant subjects, leading to improvement made to the examination system whereby maximum number of subjects taken has been limited. However, the flawed remains flawed until today due to the lack of transparency as some parties are still seeking for explanation for the unsolved yet prolonged problems, or even some conspiracy as mentioned by others.

How if there are too many perfect scorers? I didn't expect to know there is a large number of "perfect" scorers nor did I believe it if approximately 90% is the official threshold as reported. I'm not certain whether the number of candidates who managed to score A+ for any subjects is almost equal to the figure of the previous batch of candidates, however and still, there is something very obvious and provoking - the steep gradient between Chinese subject and any other subject. All of that is just playing with the normal distribution. Apparently it is not hard to set a threshold with the marks needed as the responding variable based on the proportion of the distribution required artificially. For example, if we want only 8% of those, let say 10000 of them who take a particular subject to get an A+, we can easily determine the threshold of the marks needed for the A+ by considering the lowest marks obtained by the candidates in the 8% of distribution. We might question how if the overall performance has greatly declined and what other changes should be made. In this case, a smaller proportion can be selected, for example, 5% or lower. Therefore, this flexible method is not applied blindly, but considering all the possible situations with a fair solution.

It has been a known fact that the "hardest" subject appears to be Chinese subject. In case you don't know how "hard" it is, you can ask any of your friends who were sitting for SPM in 2009 and could proudly tell you he or she had gotten an A+ in that subject. I don't have an official figure nor statistic for this, but it is fairly easy to spot the flaw when you heard there is only one hundred and more candidates scoring A+ nationwide, while a school could have equal number of candidates achieving the same result for any other subject. Why is the percentage of proportion scoring A+ for Chinese is less than 1% while other subjects can have relatively high percentage such as 8% or even more than 10%? All we need is an explanation.

Put the grading system of SPM aside, I would like to share some of my views towards the distribution of PSD scholarship. I used to think it is the best to give away the scholarship to the best brains. However when I further reflect on this issue, I think of wealth gradient among the people in our country and the way our government is trying to minimise gradient. We can't let the people in poverty to stand in the tight competition alone, that's why some policies such as free tax or extra subsidy are introduced so that they can have a better living condition, although it is still considerably terrible. This issue would be less controversial if everyone understands that. However it is not easy to protect everyone...

[To be continued...]

Flawed?

It has been more than 8 months since 6th July of year 2009 when I registered myself as one of the students in Kolej Teknologi Timur to enroll on Cambridge A-Level program under the scholarship awarded by JPA. Here is the schedule of the 18 months (1.5 years) I would like to share.

The A-Level program comprises two main examinations we have to go through. The syllabus is divided into half, which in short namely AS and A2. Both of them account for 50% of the total marks that would in turn determine the grade (A, B and so on) each. Theoretically I could have 9 months to deal with AS syllabus and another identical duration for A2. However I have to wait until the May and June to take AS papers, and there starts the A2 syllabus before the examination. When is the A2 examination? 4 months after AS examination.

So, I am wondering why the schedule is fixed in this way. I do not have any intention to bring about my own dissatisfaction towards the imbalanced schedule, as I would have decided to take STPM that includes all the syllabus in only one final examination, if my SPM result failed to attract any scholarship. Moreover, some friends of mine here are actually enduring a tough stage - they have no other choice but are forced to complete the same syllabus within one year, not to mention the entrance exam to pass as one of the prerequisites to grab a seat in any prestigious universities abroad. While some of them might be proud of that only Malaysia can provide the insanely shortened duration of A-Level program in this way, it seems that none of us are actually aware of the improper management to plan the foundation course provided to scholarship holders based on the dates of intakes stated by particular universities.

In my opinion, A-Level is not as tough as STPM in term of the academic coverage, but it does take time to fully prepare ourselves before stepping in the examination hall to apply what we have learned. This is just my little concern as a Malaysian blogger, who welcomes anyone to clarify anything I might have missed or pointed out wrongly, or justify the need to change, for a positive outcome.

IELTS

In case you don't know what IELTS stands for, it is actually the abbreviation of International English Testing Language Testing System.

First of all I would like to critic my previous IELTS lecturer once again.

Disclaimer: If you have been following my blog for a certain period you could notice how intensely I have been criticising many aspects of my current college, but that doesn't mean I was showing my sheer hatred towards KTT. In fact, I'm concerning the issues that annoyed me, and having an urge to share it with my nearest people. I could have ignored all the flawed, the preposterous one happening around me. But after all I felt it might be better to voice my dissatisfaction and disappointment in order to let myself out.

I had never seen such an irresponsible lecturer in the sense that she had cancelled 90% of her classes since I enrolled in A-Level program 6 months ago. Just imagine I was supposed to attend 2 lectures per week, but I ended up by having less than 5 lectures during the six months. If this doesn't sound shocking, listen to this one: she had fled away all in a sudden with some money that students paid to purchase IELTS reference books! Seriously it can be considered a crime. Consequently, a new IELTS lecturer is taking her place now, bringing both great news and bad news, where there is a resurgence of IELTS teachings but we have to pay for another IELTS reference book of a different version.

Back to the title, all of the scholars in preparation to travel aboard to India, Polland, Czech Republic etc. for tertiary study in medicine or dentistry have to pass certain cut-off points depending on the university we apply. IELTS includes four main tests - reading, listening, speaking and writing, with the achievement of each represented in band form ranging from band 1 to band 9.

I had a listening test in this afternoon and I find it challenging to recognise and read the British accent. I take IELTS more important than any other subjects I'm taking now.

Revealing unpleasent sight

It was a lovely afternoon when my roommate was enjoying the breeze in the balcony. Suddenly he smelt something. To his surprise, he saw a guy holding a lighted cigarrete above him in another balcony.

"What are you looking at? Strange? I'm not going to die because of this lah!"

It is quite an unexpected as well as unpleasant sight to me, considering the fact he is a JPA scholar, the educated one who is going to traverse into medical field, and has the responsibility to advise people to stop smoking. However he is not the only person practising something ironic and contradicting to his prospect in my present college. They are a lot including seniors. Moreover, it has been stated smoking inside the college compound is prohibited and penalty of RM100 would be charged towards violator. Well, I haven't come across any news that any kind of penalty had been charged on them since I was here six months ago. The guards ignore that too, so do some lecturers and wardens. I can't tolerate indifference shown by the administrators. Honestly I have no prejudice towards smokers, but in my point of view, smokers are not qualified to contribute himself in health care related career seriously. Even if they are, don't you think that their patients would surely doubt their credibility in diagnosing ailments or prescribing medicine?

Put this aside, I would like to share another thing that was annoying. It happened for days continuously in the last month. When I was in my mood of revising and there came a deafening bang inside the hostel. Apparently someone was trying to get into our nerves by lighting firecrackers. My instinct told me that was another immatured scholar, but I could never identify the nuisance maker. In my previous secondary school, if you tried to challenge the school rules by having such explosives, you would be expelled without any tolerance or consideration.

Please return me the serenity of my lovely tiny college :(

When I was not at home

My homesickness ceased after staying for a week "in the middle of nowhere" (that's how people locate my college) but not when it came to a couple of days before departure to home. Thanks to my first examination week that has been postponed to a week after this holiday, I would have to reschedule my activities during this holiday. However I have squandered half of it before realizing I have only 5 more days to deal with the books (more than 15 kg) I brought back, but not now. I'm going to use this moment to share something I haven't updated right at here :)

This is how my college looks like.

As you can see the smart-looking guys are my housemates. The first person starting from left is Alee from Sabah, the diligent Malay. The guy in white is John from Sarawak. His greatest interest is Internet business, the field where most of us are not familiar with. The guy standing on my left hand side is called Maegyvear, a Kadazan hailed from Sabah also. Being active in Christian Fellowship and crowned to be "The Prince" during the orientation week, he is undoubtedly the most renowned person in the college.

Thanks to the seniors from the same secondary school of mine :)

I bought a new table for comfort after getting frustrated by the books jumbled up on my small desk, yet the books still jumble up easily. You guys know why.

"Learning is like sailing against the current, you would lag behind if stop moving."

These words are creative indeed.

This is one of the myriad types of bugs I have to confront every night. Somehow the mosquito here appears to be more furious. There was a spider hiding in my sport shoe too, luckily it escaped by the time I grabbed the shoe.

Time to get home :)

My little sister collected these while I was not at home!

First Blood

The title above flashed spontaneously in my mind when I'm going to share my fresh experience in my college. I had my very first blood donation two hours ago.

Before being able to summon my courage to allow my precious blood to be isolated and the needle to penetrate my tender skin *exaggerating* , I didn't know which type my blood belongs to.

It is type O ( I don't know if it is RhD-positive ). How good would it be if donating blood would return monetary reward to us since type O is the "bestseller" :p

I was pretty worried actually, considering the fact that I saw some of the donors turned pale after donating blood. Moreover my Biology lecturer shared his first blood donation to everyone of us - he suffered hyper ventilation and collapsed after that for not taking breakfast.

It was fast - it took only 5 minutes to fill up the packet (450ml) and the needle didn't really induce much pain. I have made a promise to join the second donation.

Try to involve yourselves if there is any blood donation campaign near your area, help the people in need :)

The lecturer

Having the top scorers among the international Cambridge A-Level candidates in the world, I thought one of the best colleges in my country, yet maybe also the smallest in size, Kolej Teknologi Timur to have experienced and excellence lecturers but I soon doubted about their credibility to give lecture to the students who will soon pursue advance study in different critical fields at oversea.

Yes, according to the seniors this doesn't appear to be the fundamental problem, and you might find me grumbling against trifles, because the students here could have been depending on themselves to pass the AS and A2 examinations with flying colours. It doesn't matter to have "good" or "bad" lecturers. However in my point of view this has contributed to an intensely unhealthy learning style. Students and lectures should be interactive to enhance understanding. What's the point of repeating the texts in the text book word by word to us? Let alone the sleep-inducing tone, grammatical errors and the way she was speaking English, especially when pronouncing the terminologies. Try to listen to the pronunciation of "mas" in BM and at the same time understand that she was actually trying to say "mass". I'm not going to pinpoint which lecturer I'm complaining about, and I don't mean to degrade the lecturers here, but it is saddening to know that the better lecturers are in charge of bringing the students undergoing 1 year programme up.

I will be going to my first Biology lecture later. I hope it won't end up disappointing myself again. I promise myself not to disappoint my college too :)

I'm here, far away from my hometown

For the very first day I came to Sepang whereby its roads vary so much from the map given by the JPA, taking more than an hour finding the location of the smallest college in the world in the remote town. I guess everyone who had been coming for Kolej Teknologi Timur would be in surprise once he saw the location and the size of the college which is far beyond his expectation as if he had gone to the wrong place. This college appears to be a single-blog-building comprising of our hostels above the lecture halls. It is very long, about the length of 13 shops in a row.

First day ( 06/07/09 )

• I discovered that there are so many scholarship holders coming all the way from Sabah and Sarawak, maybe 40% out of the 112 of us who will be going to India for medicine.
  
• The lecture hall which I registered as KTT student here is smaller than my previous tuition classroom.
  
• Tranquil, this is the best word if I'm to describe this place by using only a word.
  
• I had established the wi-fi connection provided by the college as a trial user, which means that I will have to subscribe to the "KTT HOTSPOT" for RM40 per semester starting from next week. However I didn't have adequate time to stay online.
  
• The hostel is old, but it is spacious. It consists of two small sleeping rooms and a wide living room ( 10 feet x 26 feet ) . My roommate is a Chinese from Sarawak and a Kadazan from Sabah as a housemate. There were only three people occupying this room.
  
• The advertisement board was fully pasted, there were all the second hand items to be sold by the seniors. I saw a “special combo”- a fridge and a washing machine which costs RM600 for the total.
  
• I bought a set of original Chemistry and Biology text books for RM300, I got two free gifts - a disc with questions of pass year papers inside and a Chemistry reference book under the package. This is the first time I spend so much in purchasing books.
  
• I met my seniors from the same secondary school here. There are five currently but two of them ( Indonesia-bound ) will be leaving the college by this week after their 1-year-programme.
  
• During this orientation week, we would be divided into 10 groups. When it was the time to introduce ourselves to the other group members, we found a girl who is not willing to do what she will be doing soon, dentistry. She told us she was forced by her parents to do so.
  After voting, our group was named “Aramaiti”. It simply means the sharing of joyfulness among the people.
  
• We heard something scary and mysterious. It has something to do with the “Tangga 11” while my hostel is just located at tangga 10. The facilitators didn’t want to tell us more about the story. We instinctively thought ghost incidents happened there.
  

Second day ( 07/07/09 )

• I was facing a difficulty in remembering my group members’ names, especially the Malays’ during the ice breaking session in the morning.
  
• All of us have to prepare something for the group performance in the coming closing ceremony, and my group got the title “ Dikir Barat ” ( a kind of Malay cultural performance whereby there are rows of performers sitting on the stage clapping their hands and singing accompanied with the music of Malay traditional musical instruments. ) I knew what it is but the other Chinese in my group seemed never heard of it.
  
• We had to create cheers for our team, however I didn’t have any idea. ( I was experienced in creating cheers, but in Chinese )
  
• We were made clearer about how to use the transport system in this college. There are three vans and a bus which charge different payments for different places we want to go, such as LCCT, KTM, Giant ( the nearest fast food restaurants are available there ) etc. We have to purchase a ticket in the library before using the service.
  
• I paid another RM260 for the old books and pass year papers to my senior. They are all in photocopies.
  
• There are two cafeterias in my college, Indian style (Mamak) and Malay style. The roti canai is my favourite :D
  
• I washed and ironed my clothes for my very first time, by using hands. I know what you are thinking, I never helped in household works before.
  

Third day ( 08/07/09 )

• The lecturers were emphasizing “cut-off points” for A-Level repeatedly. We have to gain 12 points taking from the best three subjects. For an A, 5 points will be given, 4 points for B, 3 points for C and so on. That means, in order to clear the cut-off points, we have to at least get three Bs in the examination. However getting only 3 Bs is below my target.
  
• We had a lot of briefings about the rules applied to us in term of our behavior. The penalty for all the violation towards the rules is money-related.
  
• I felt very sleepy throughout that particular day. I was suffering from sleep deprivation. The mosquito last night was furious.
  
• A telematch was held. We played four games. I felt they still have a huge margin to improve in designing games for us.
  
• The group members started to call me “Leng Zai” which means “smart or handsome guy” in Chinese (-__-lll)
  
• The seniors started to knock our hostel doors to promote their items for sale.
  
• We took the whole night to collect the ideas for our performance. We created a poem talking about KTT. We found it tough to create the claps and the melodies.
  
• There came another housemate, a Muslim from Sabah. He is friendly but a little bit shy.
  
• I had booked the plane tickets from AirAsia company for two to-and-fro trips for the coming semester break in August ( 22-08-09 to 31-08-09 ) and Hari Raya break in September ( 17-09-09 to 27-08-09 ).
  
• My roommate, John is experienced in Internet business, the field that most of the same people at the same age with us don’t traverse in.
  

Forth day ( 09/07/09 )

• Our schedule from the morning until the afternoon was fully arranged with subject briefings. The heads of subjects were giving some words regarding the subjects we are going to taking once the lesson starts in the next week. I will have to take Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics and also IELTS which I worry the most.
  
• They college did an aerobic exercise for us. It is as similar as the previous telematch.
  I went to the top of the small hill located behind our college. I could see that the small town was slightly covered in haze. However there was windy. It is an ideal place for everyone to release tension and enjoy the refreshing air.
• We spent the whole night practicing “Dikir Barat”. All of us did a good job in giving cooperation and the complicated performance was soon settled in fast progression.
  
• The girl who is miserably choosing the wrong course remained silent and looked saddening. The facilitators had counseled her.
  

Fifth day ( 10/07/09 )

• A female Indian sitting in front of me showed me her hand phone that remained intact although it was accidentally flung out from the balcony on the third floor while she was waving to the seniors passing by.
  
• I have registered the subjects I will be going to take - Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology.
  
• My housemate, Ali told me that Chinese is diligent in his point of view. He salutes us very much. However in my perspective it is academically obssessed, not really diligent.
• I was dressed in Malay costume for the first time.
  
• We turned out to be the champion of the group performance competition :)
• My housemates watched Madagascar until midnight.
• I found that the Malays are totally different with me. We don't even share a sense of humour. Most of the time I can't understand their slang.
  

That's all for the first five days. I enjoyed very much during the orientation week. Although sometimes I would find it hard to resist the sleep-inducing-tone of the lecturers while briefings ( I didn't fall asleep ) , we do know more about the college lifestyle, the average learning hours for each subject, the operating system of the library etc. Starting from next Sunday, 13-07-09, I will be sitting in a lecture hall listening to the teachings by the lecturers respectively. I will post some of the photos in the next time. Keep in touch!

Matriculation

When my friends had enrolled in the matriculation course, I thought they could start adapting themselves in the new learning environment without having any extra problems. However the luck was not at their side.

Some of my friends were not allowed majoring in Biology. The authority insisted them to take Physics by depriving their right to choose what they needed for. However, the bumiputras were granted the same right. The uproars lasted for two weeks before it could be settled down. I wondered if they did consider the possible consequences by doing so. One of them had already left the unfavorable college to enrol in form six before the positive respond came upon their appeals.

Besides that, puzzlement arose when those who were awarded JPA scholarships to pursue their tertiary study in one of the local public universities, had to take matriculation. However there were lack of instructions by which college to stay whereas there were scholars who were already accepted by their matriculation college respectively. They sought for help from the seniors in forum or any other similar ways. My friend also told me that he was then accepted a list of local public universities he could apply for but the top universities such as UM or USM were not in the list. He wondered if it would be better to reject the JPA scholarships.

It was just a mess.

SPM

“We want to streamline this as it will also be an easier way to determine the awarding of scholarships.”

Some 450,000 students sat for the SPM exam last year.

Muhyiddin said teachers would also be able to focus better if students were only allowed to take up to 10 subjects because they would not be burdened with teaching other subjects.

“Parents also will not have to rush their children for too many tuition classes.”

On the grading system, Muhyid-din said instead of giving students 1A, B or C, their grades would include A+, A and A- from next year to make it more effective in deciding who was most qualified for a scholarship.

(quote from The Star)

I have put the quoted phrases in bold as I found they are arguable. I wonder if the government did pinpoint the real flaws existed in the previous SPM exam system, analyse deeply and then make the decision wisely.

• Easier way? Even if the subjects are limited, the problems remain unsolved if there are still a bunch of candidates with a string of A1s under the artificial low threshold to score an A1 for each subject ( except BC ) . The JPA will be in hot soup again, just imagine that there are possibly more than two thousands 10 A1s scorers waiting for their deserved oversea scholarships, yet not to mention the bumiputras and the poors to be taken care.
• Focus better? If they really mean it, why do we ( non-Malays ) need to study Pendidikan Moral ? It is utterly useless!
  
• Tuition classes? Normally students who attend insane number of tuition classes just don't know how to manage their own schedule. They follow the tuition teachers blindly, but it has nothing to do with taking more subjects which don't really need tuition. It is subjective and depends on the students. Some students don't need tuition at all.
  
• Grading system? Well, what is the difference between getting 10 A1s and getting 10 A+s? I thought the term CGPA will be recommended when I saw grading system. To really make it more effective in deciding who is qualified for a scholarship, improve the grading inflation is the only way and once it is really tough to secure the A+, I believe no more candidates will consider taking so many subjects.

There will be another change soon, which is now debated hotly. Perhaps the controversy arose when the JPA scholarship had not been distributed evenly is the main reason to push the government to make the decision of limiting SPM subjects from the year 2011, but what is the motive of changing English to a must-pass-subject which is as same as Bahasa Melayu, to secure the SPM certificate? This is a stepping stone to bring the deteriorating command in English back from the edge but I don't hope to see that another artificial threshold is created again after finding that there are just too many who can't make it.

JPA scholarship (part 2)

It was another agonizing brief period between the date JPA announced its scholarship recipient and the moment for those who failed to check if their appeals result in positive response. However I couldn't describe the second disappointment for those who are no doubt qualified to secure the scholarship. They are seemingly left aside, tasting the grievance. Uproar continues. Some of my friends are still blaming the scholarship distributing system by attribute its injustice to the hidden conspiracy. They are still struggling for their well deserved scholarship via political organisation while the others are utterly given up after rubbing their tears and concentrate on their pre-university course.

Some of the changing policies of JPA sound ridiculous to me, for instance, there is a recommer who applied for biotech or pharmacy ( I'm not sure ) but it all ended up by getting medicine course. He accepted it anyway. Another case that might convince you about their unpredictable respond is happening to a guy who initially secured a place in IPTS for the pharmacy course and did not appeal, was then given the oversea program to New Zealand. It reminds me about the technical problem occurred in the announcement of the list of candidates selected to study in University Sains Malaysia (USM) which irks the parents of the 4574 candidates who never expected such an absurd error to be happened. The above incidents could be a kind of disgrace towards our country.

However, there are also a group of lucky people who would never satisfy with what they had gained. They request to change their country despite being grateful and appreciate the coveted "shark fin". There comes a recommer who got Canada and she is not satisfied with the reason "I'm not fond of that country". Her thread was bashed heavily later. It has no wrong with feeling disappointed when you didn't get the country you prefer, but being not to appreciate it would be a kind of greediness indeed. This morning an auntie had called me to consult my opinion about her nephew, who is selected by JPA to pursue his dentistry course in India. She told me that his friend is selected to Australia so she would like to appeal again. She is ignorant indeed to degrade the dentistry of India.

Medicine (part 2)

I was rudely awakened by my parents who seemed to be more excited than me to tell me that they had received the late coming letter sent by JPA in this morning. They asked me to guess which country I will be heading to. I hoped for the word " Australia " to come out between their lips. However JPA denies my chance for me to be my cousin's junior. I got India.

Well, although Australia tops the list but I'm glad to get India. India has always been the well-renowned country in training the professionals to excel and contribute in certain critical fields especially in health care. Some people even stated that there are so many corpses in India, which means to be a kind of convenience or advantage to the medical students there ( try to figure out why :p )

Every one around me feels proud of me, they keep on complimenting me as if I already got my medicine degree. They asked me to give discount if they seek for my help in the future. They even started calling me Dr. Lui. It is still a long way to go, to be what they expected ( specialist, general practitioner, blah blah ) What I have to do now is just preparing myself to endure the hardship. I don't think too much. It is still not the time for me to decide which specialist I want to be. I have not even started my foundation course, to be specific, Cambridge A-level which I will be taking at Kolej Teknologi Timur.

I did feel abandoned when all of my friends ( JPA scholars ) are registered in one of the college known as INTEC. However how will it be if I compare the five-year of homesickness to the 18 months of not having old friends? From another perspective, maybe it is better for me to not relying too much to my old friends. As time elapses, I might be more independent and confident to communicate with every one there in English.

I'm still having worries about the interview I have to pass in order to secure a place for me in the universities in India, or maybe I think too much. Here I come, India :)

JPA scholarship

Nowadays the system JPA giving out the oversea scholarships has been criticised either in positive or negative responses. People accuse JPA for its lack of transparency, unfair treatment towards the candidates who did extremely well in the 2008 SPM, the uneven distribution which doesn't follow the quota at all etc. When I flipped the newspapers to get myself into the news of this issue, there are only unsolved endless cases of students claiming that they have more A's for their previous SPM results therefore they should have awarded the coveted JPA scholarship. Yes, this problem had been existing since a few years ago when it was believed that the SPM level started deteriorating in term of syllabus. Check this out, there were only 60 candidates who managed to achieve straight A1s in the SPM more than 10 years ago but there were nearly 2000 candidates who did the same thing in the last year! Here raises some new thoughts - are these new generations getting wiser? Or the level for the candidates to score A1 in each subject is decreased? I would absolutely agree with the declining level and for the former one, I guess not at all as I am the one who has come through such a "easy-to-score-A1-era". Okay,if it doesn't sound convincing, I'm just showing some examples here, for the less shocking example I would like to mention my friend A who had abandoned the whole form 4 syllabus of history subject in SPM 2008 without fear but yet he managed to score an A2 for it. OK FOR THE SHOCKING EXAMPLE ( actually I'm not very sure if it is true but it will sound ridiculous if it is true ), my friend B who did only a question in his additional math ( index number, section C, which was taught by his friend one week before the SPM ) could unbelievable pass that subject! I would call that miracle. So please judge the whole case with another perspective and stop being very proud of our "more-and-more-brilliant-students". No offense. I know some are great indeed.

However, there is also a welcome sight for us (2008 SPM candidates). The hard-to-score-A1-subject which is generally believed among the Chinese that it is just a type of conspiracy played by the politicians to reduce the number of Chinese candidates with straight A1s IS NOW slightly ( or greatly for some people ) "improved" by setting the threshold to obtain A1 lower than the previous year,that is from 1~2% to 5~6%. Will the percentage keep rising or drop back in the next year? Who knows?

Okay here comes the well-known trend among the young candidates. Sadly most of them have a misconception that "the more the merrier" in term of A1s under the effect of A1 glorification after the most A1 record had been broken,again and again. Can u determine a person with 16A1s is definitely smarter than another with only 10A1s? Yup I agree with the statement that the former has a great ability to cope with more subjects, but do consider there are boarding schools which just allow the students to take not more than the compulsory subjects. Perhaps the students will be the innocent victims in this scenario by being rejected in applying JPA scholarship. Does the SPM result slip ( tuition-boosted ) with more than 15 or even 20 As smell better? Is it a necessity for a student to take more subjects which he doesn't like at all rather than to concentrate on the subjects he chosen for his interests just to prove that "ohya I can do what u did, I am more deserved to pursue my tertiary studies under JPA scholarship"? It is unhealthy. Some people might say that if we can exploit and benefit ourselves from the flawed system ( scholarship awarding system ), so why don't? Yes the system is flawed, therefore we should improve it but not exploiting it. To address this problem, we should not blindly follow the unhealthy trend by choosing 20 subjects in SPM. The quality should be emphasized but not the quantity. ( Perhaps, in the future, there are 1000 branched subjects, each subject consists of a couple of questions and a student must end up with 300A1s to secure the JPA scholarship )

I think it is a must to discuss and improve the procedure of choosing JPA scholars. There was an example that a candidate who had taken 10 subjects but ended up with 9A1s and an unlucky A2 in moral education. He was excellence in co-curricular activities, yet he was rejected by the JPA scholarship givers with the reason : not having A1 in moral. Oh my goodness, doesn't it sound illogical for him to get rejected just because he cant follow the dead format ( nilai + elaboration1 + elaboration2 + blah blah ) of that useless subject? ( to prove that it is useless, get knowing with one of my friends who did score A1 but lack of virtue and be proud of using rude words in his communication way ) I will be the first one to agree if this subject is been asked to be abolished :p

Today there is a saying that the government will limit the total number of subject to be taken in SPM for each candidate to 10 by the coming 2011. It is believed that in the coming years there will be no students appealing for the same case. But, seriously, is that the best solution? I would like to know if JPA will have a lot more of fun in choosing JPA scholars among the straight 10A1s candidates if they really enforce this. For me and perhaps everyone that has a better perception in this issue, increasing the difficulty of the syllabus and setting the new threshold in getting A1 to a higher level is indeed the most rational solution. Don't forget the JPA scholarship derives from all the money of tax payers. Do appreciate it if you get it ^^