I’m back from Hong Kong. But I will be going to Cameroon highlands tonight so I will need to delay blogging about my HK trip till next week. I’ve been tapping on the iPhone the whole trip so expect lots of coverage all the way from Guangzhou till Hong Kong.
Happy Holidays! Continue reading
I’ll be flying off to Hong Kong on the 6:45pm flight tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be connected while I’m there. If there’s anything urgent, send an email to my gmail account. You can find the address on the right hand side of the page.
Visa is for entering into China.
Too bad Kai Tak is not used anymore. I can save a trip to the theme park with this kind of landing:
You never really appreciate holidays until you are working. When you are in school holidays is something that is routine. You have tons of holidays throughout the year. When you are working you are given leave which you can take anytime you like. That may sound like a wonderful idea but then you realise that you cannot take a month off to meet up with your friends who will be coming back for their year end holidays.
Doing a job that you like might not drive you crazy but you still need to take a break once in a while. So this coming weekend I’ll be flying over to hk for a short holiday. I will be entering China as well. If any of you know what’s fun to do in HK or China do let me know. After the China trip I’ll be going to Cameron Highlands with my college friends. And hopefully sometime near Christmas I’ll be able to catch a flight back to Kuching to meet up with you guys.
Work has been very interesting. I’m on the Airbus A330 now so almost everything is new to me. There’s a thing between Boeing and Airbus. They must be different from each other. If one of them have the blackbox on the top, the other must have it near the bottom. Boeing has left, center and right hydraulic system. Airbus had green, blue and yellow systems. Boeing uses a control column with cables while the Airbus uses a joystick with full fly-by-wire system. So there is a little to get used to. Overall I think that the Airbus is easier to work on. Maybe it’s because I’ve done too many Boeing HMVs.
Today has been a very “door” day. Did door gust-lock inspection, slide raft auto-disarm system check and also door latches and bearing inspection. The gust-lock system is to prevent the door from slamming shut while it is open. The slide raft auto disarm is to prevent the slide raft from deploying if the door is opened from the outside. And the latches and bearings prevent the door from flying out during flight. There are 8 doors on an Airbus A330.
When I get back from my holiday I should be back in time for the last two week of the check. And then 3weeks more I be back in Kuching for a short time. Anyone going Damai this year?
Just for the record, this entire post was typed out on an iPhone. The keyboard isn’t that hard to use. Continue reading
My brother is currently sitting for his SPM now. As I am his elder brother, I have obviously taken the exam before. There are good things about exams and bad things about exams. The good thing about exams is that students can see how well they have done in school. Some of us need the challenge to prove to others that we are competent and that we can do everything that the teachers throw at us.
The Pyramid. A good way to encourage students to study… I think… not.
Unfortunately, the importance of exams has been overly emphasized in Malaysia. The common belief here is that if you don’t get good results in public exams, you’ll fail in LIFE. Therefore students are pressured to do well and since our education system is not tailored to everybody’s needs, some of us might not do so well.
Those who don’t do so well will get mocked by friends, sometimes by teachers, and even parents. Most parents are very competitive about their children’s exam results so they might not be happy if their children didn’t do well for exams. Unhappy parents means unhappy students and therefore they are pressured to do even better.
It’s funny if you look back after SPM. You’ve just spent the last 17 years of your life preparing to sit for 10 papers which will determine your future. Sure, the knowledge you have gained is very important. You obviously need to know what 1+1 is and how gravity works. But exam results shouldn’t determine your future.
I’m writing this because I just came across this news article today:
Year Six pupil found hanged
Subashini: Had been crying since obtaining her UPSR results. – Bernama
Quote from the article:
(Quote)Recapping the events that led to her death, Sivakumar said his daughter, who studied at a Tamil primary school, had been disappointed that she had not obtained the expected results in the UPSR examination.
“She had been crying since obtaining her results on Thursday,” sobbed Sivakumar, who said his daughter was a hardworking and bright pupil.
“I do not know what went wrong,” he added, saying that while she was confident of scoring at least 4As in the examination, the results showed that Subashini had only obtained 4Bs, 2Cs and 1D. (Unquote) Full article here.
This is an example of a devastated childhood. Instead of enjoying life, playing without a care in the world, we’re forcing our children to study and get good grades in their exams. Parents may not even be forcing them, but they are being forced because getting good grades is a norm among our society. Not everyone is the studious type. Not everyone can get 17A1 for their SPM. I got B3 for my moral by the way but I don’t go around killing people or robbing banks or vandalizing public property. In short, our exams don’t show the true potential in a person.
I blame this purely on our education system. Enough with memorizing facts to pass exams. And lower the importance of exams on future employment. Someone could be having a bad day when he took his SPM and he’ll be ruined for the rest of his life because no one would hire someone who failed 3 of his papers.
I propose that our education system be based on an overall assessment of a student’s performance instead of completely relying on exams. Exams will still be part of the assessment but it won’t be so important. What we need is a system that will make students think instead of getting spoon fed everyday. And we need to learn how to solve problems as well so we’ll be ready for the real world when we’re done with school.
Anyways, good luck to all SPM-ers. You still need your good results to enter college. Continue reading
This post is for Cindy. Hope you can use your msn soon 
There are many great mysteries in this world. But none are as mysterious as the act of blocking msn ports and preventing people from chatting. But there are ways of bypassing this restriction. One of the easiest way is to tunnel through a proxy server.
Http-Tunnel provides free tunneling using their client software.
After searching for a bit, I found Http-Tunnel. Http-Tunnel lets you download their client and tunnel for free. The downside is you get slow speeds. But I’ve tested it with loading huge pages and videos and it’s acceptable. Today I’m going to show you how to use Http-Tunnel to tunnel your way out to the wild.
First step is to goto Http-Tunnel and download their client software. Here’s a quick link: Download v4.4.4000 . After you have downloaded that, install it and run it. You should see the screen below. Now before you do anything else, make sure that your Internet Explorer is working perfectly. If you’re using IE now to view this page, you’re set.
Click on “Use Free Service” to use its free service. Downside: slow speeds.
Now click on “Configure”.
Then click on “Test” to test your connection. This will help you configure the settings too.
This will show if it’s successful.
Remember this value. It should be 1080. Just in case. You’ll need it later.
Now go to IE’s internet options.
Goto Connections and Lan settings.
Now fill in the blanks. The port number should be 1080. Address can be localhost or 127.0.0.1
Now everything should be working. To test it out, goto whatismyip.com. This is what I get when I’m using Http-Tunnel.
Look, I’m from the US!
This should help you bypass any restrictions or any bans on any sites. It’s like you’re paying someone else to do the dirty job for you. With Http-Tunnel on, whenever you visit a website, your computer is instructing another computer (another computer in the US in my case) to visit the website and fetch the content for you.
I’ve tested it out with msn and it works. So hopefully this works for you all who are having problems with blocked ports and banned websites. Use this wisely. Continue reading