Blessed and Merry Christmas !!

Blessed and Merry Christmas to everyone !!

Due to the hectic short 2nd trimester, I hardly have much time and energy to think about Christmas celebration.

In previous years, the Christmas season is at the beginning of the long 3rd trimester and we could afford to be more relax and plan for Christmas party. In previous years we would have BBQ, sing Christmas songs etc, usually one or two weeks before Christmas.

MMU have pushed the beginning of the academic year to a much later date of the year in order that those students who joined national service could come in at the right time. As a result, in the years to come, MMU people will not be able to have much holiday mood even during Christmas and year end, while the rest of the people in Malaysia are having school holiday etc. Though myself and many of my colleagues were on leaves in these last two weeks (or more) of the year, we still have to conduct classes prior to the students' examination at the first week of next year, we still need to sort out all the end-of-trimester matter such as marks etc., on top of that there are final year projects reports and presentations to be evaluated.... all during imposingly holiday season and while on leaves !! We simply have no options as we can't just go away for holiday at this time.

Short trimester in nature has always been a depressing time for everyone, staff and students alike. I doubt any students can really learn much with only 8 weeks in a trimester, though the classes are doubled, there simply aren't enough time for the students to digest all those being taught, especially for technical subjects.

Unless MMU do away with this monstrous, crazy, almost 'hellish' (for staff and students) short trimester, this scenario will not change in years to come.

Anyway, let's put this aside, there simply nothing much we could do about that for now. I am suppose to talk about Christmas !!

In previous years, I used to put up my Christmas tree at least a month before Christmas. This year, I only get the time to take out the Christmas tree on the night of Dec 23, two days before Christmas. When i took out the lighting for the tree, I found that it is not working. The bulbs are connected in series, so if one is broken, half of the lights will not work as well, since there were 140 light bulbs and the way they are connected, it would be very difficult to figure out which is the broken one. So I was still without Christmas tree even on Christmas eve!

Thank goodness, I managed to buy the lights on Christmas Eve itself and put it up at about 1am on Christmas Day (the night of Christmas Eve) ..just in time I suppose.

Here it is:















So how did i celebrate Christmas?

Well...nothing much....in previous years usually Christmas was celebrated one or two weeks before Christmas itself (mostly just get together with friends) as most people will be going home or holiday during Christmas Day itself. Back in Penang time, we would go to church to sing Christmas carols on Christmas Day... really missed those time.

So for this time, I just spent my Christmas Eve relaxing with 3 of my friends, chit chating, listening to Christmas songs/carols playing cards (no gambling!) and drink some wine (just one glass each!) after they helped me to set up the Christmas tree. Oh..we went to play an hour of pool game at the South City Plaza before that, the table there is in very good condition, we gave up on the bad condition of the pool table at Mines! We were playing the cards (more like training in strategy and logical thinking) till about 8am! .. then these crazy four of us decided to call up another friend and ask him to drive us to Puchong to eat Dim Sum for breakfast! After eating Dim Sum, we drove to the park at Bukit Jalil to 'jalan-jalan', while I was enjoying the scenery and the fresh air there, 1 ot 2 of my friends were like zombies and drunken master trying to stay awake! After we went back, all of us slept through the Christmas afternoon!

On top of that, of course, Christmas is also a time to catch up with far-away friends through the wonderful technology of internet, phone calls and SMSes.

I should have been going to church to sing carols, which I really would have enjoyed a lot, which I really missed back in yesteryears in Penang.... long story why I did not do that this time. Oh, I did not lost my Christian faith!

Nevertheless, Christmas to me is not about a religious festival. To me, it is about the Greatest Gift of Christ, it is about love, joy and peace. I will not embark to write about the True Meaning of Christmas which one could easily read about over the net.

Most importantly, Christmas is about people.

Due to busyness in the last few weeks, I have not been able to catch up with as many people as I wished to and wish them 'Merry Christmas', hopefully will get to catch up on that in the next few days. If you are someone I know personally and you are reading this and I did not call you, please do give me a call :) ... of course if you are in Malaysia la.....if not then email me, yahoo me or skype me... :)

Christmas has always been a time of reflection and a perfect time to think about next year resolutions before the new year arrives!! Hmm.... it has been quite some years that I have not actually write down in back-and-white my new year resolutions...may be that is the reasons so many things not get done.....:( I think I would actually write my new year resolutions this time.... will post some of them here... :)

It is over 2am now, the night of the Christmas Day. I should stopped here as tomorrow I still have lecture at 9am, it is actually a revision class and the last class in the trimester.... I am still on leave and I doubt many people will turn up... I could have just tell the students there are no more lectures as we have finished the syllabus and I do not have to wake up early tomorrow. Nevertheless, I just carry out my responsibility and the rest are beyond my control.

Blessed and Merry Chistmas again to everyone !!

Ho... Ho... Ho....!!

It is a crazy hectic short trimester !!

At last I get to blog after a hectic month!!

Trimester II (which is a short and compressed trimester) in MMU is always a hectic one. It is almost impossible to get much of anything else done other than teaching and teaching and all the thing associated with it (preparation of materials etc.). Before you know it, the trimester is almost over! It's CRAZY time for everyone, lecturers, tutors and students!

The Trimester II this year which starts on Nov 6,2006 is an extra busy one for me. Busy sorted out classes problems in Week#1, attended (only for one day) M2USIC conference (nope, nothing to do with music) in Week#2, then attended a two-days short course on image processing in Week#3, attended three-days GRAPHITE2006 conference (MDeC sponsored us) in Week#4, Week#4 and Week#5 happened to be my turn to prepare the many course materials for the following weeks (I also need to prepare lots of other stuff in other weeks as I am the coordinator of the course), This week (Week#5), Ooi Yongson (who is my now-graduated former master student from USM, who is lecturing in KDU now) is visiting me for a week to discuss on some possible research collaboration, but the poor guy have to sit in front of my TV or in my office, or read his own thing most of the time while I was busy with so many teaching- and admin-related work.

This morning (Friday Dec 15, 2006), i just managed to complete the last teaching material for this trimester, what a relieve! ...that is why i am blogging now..... but the trimester is ending in another two weeks which means many other stuff are coming soon, such as FYPs presentation, test and exams marking etc.

With so many conferences and events, I have been over-eating quite a lot of good food during those events and I hardly cook anything in the last one month except simple macaroni ... too busy to even open my fridge except for getting some drinks and I think I smelled lots of rotten stuff inside... :(( So, too bad, no blog about own-cooked food in this blog entry... :((

I even forgot to pay many of my bills (those not yet in auto-pay for certain reason) including my Streamyx (internet broadband) bill until my account get suspended yesterday, luckily I can borrow my sister's account to use.

Streamyx sent the payment last reminder and warning letter to me but it was delivered to the mailbox of the right floor, right unit number but the wrong block! And here is the really weird coincident ... my niece's friend who is the neighbor of that unit accidentally open the mailbox of that unit (due to the stupid Cyberia mailbox keys of which your key is likely be able to unlock 30% of the mailboxes of your neighbor!) and saw Steamyx letter to me!! Unfortunately, he saw the letter just the same day after my internet line got suspended!

I just realized I gained 2 or 3 Kgs (that is really really bad!) in the last one month due to the many food tasting experience in the venues of those events. M2USIC was in PJ Hilton Hotel, the image processing short course was in Royale Bintang Hotel and GRAPHITE2006 was in KL Convention Centre at KLCC.

Nevertheless, it has been fun in the last one month, learning many things from those events and meeting really famous researchers too!

The image processing short course (got to pay RM1990, thank goodness MMU was paying for it) was conducted by Prof. Maria Petrou of Imperial College London. Here is the photo:












Prof. Maria Petrou is on the right and the guy on the left is my friend Dr. (Gideon) Ong Hong Choon from USM who was also attending the short course.

During GRAPHITE2006, we met the very very very famous Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann of MIRALab (Switzerland) and her husband Prof. Daniel Thalmann, nobody can be teaching/researching Computer Graphics and Virtual Reality without knowing who she is. Here is the photo:












(From left: Prof. Nadia Thalmann, Prof. Daniel Thalmann, myself, Ah Beh, Mr. CYPee)

After the first day of the image processing short course, I brought my friend Dr. Ong for a food tasting sprey at the famous Jalan Alur which is just in front of the Royale Bintang Hotel, just look at how amazed he was seeing that Penang is not the only place with lots of really good food:












Btw, here is him again with our food-tour-guide at my place:












Dr. Ong full name: Ong Hong Choon

Our food-tour-guide's name: Ong Hong Wai

They are not brothers nor related..... :)

The GRAPHITE2006 conference was held at KL Convention Centre at KLCC, I went there with some of my students, here is the photo with some of them with the Petronas Twin Tower:















(From left: myself, Jillian, Min Bee, Kuan)

Oh ya... the PC Fair was held at the different floor of the same venue, so after the conference, me and Mr. Pee went there to shop and I bought an Lexmark X7350 All-In-One printer (with standalone fax, scanner and photocopier), here it is:
















Since yesterday (Dec 14, 2006), I am on leave until end of the year but yet I still got a lot of works to do and conduct classes (can't just go away)... :(( .... I took the leaves just to clear them and to have reasons not to attend some of those boring and useless meetings, I still got 12 days leaves to be carried to next year (12 days is the maximum that can be carried to next year) !!

Now, I really need to catch back some much-deprived sleep...and also the much needed exercises......!!

...and catch up with research work and studies, and also my hopefully-healthy cooking !! :))