Tearjerker....well,not so

"My mouth fell open

Hoping that the truth

Would not be true

Refuse the news

I'm feeling sick now

WTF am I supposed to do

Just lose and lose..."

It is easy for any Man Utd fan to feel sad and sentimentally disturbed during C.Ronaldo's official presentation ceremony as a Real Madrid player last few days. The amount of goals scored, the amount of assists made, the ground covered, the minutes played and many more of his contribution to the team simple will be remembered. Some will not forgive him to ditch Man Utd and move on but I think many others also understand how he felt about Real Madrid. Real Madrid is not the biggest club in the world nowadays but they will remain as the greatest club for most of the brazil,portugal and spain-based fan. Like us in Malaysia, Man Utd will always be the greatest club in the world. So I personally wish C.Ronaldo best of luck in the Primera Liga this year. I think he could do well there,but we'll see.

Meanwhile, Man Utd have made 3 additional player to their senior squad. Luis Antonio Valencia(Winger/mid from Ecuador), Micheal Owen(Striker from England) and Gabriel Obertan(Winger/Forward from France). There are no indication the new inclusion will stop there,and I think few more new faces with soon join Man Utd.

Post-life after C.Ronaldo, will not be that different. The goal,assist will come I sure. In fact, the re-building of the new team will be focus around Wayne Rooney,the true star of Man Utd. I am more worried about loosing Rooney rather than Ronaldo. Speed, goal, assist can be replace but loyalty and affection are not.So for me, loosing Ronaldo is not that bad, it will be great to see Man Utd play this new season with a few new faces. Good luck Ronaldo,we will not miss you.

This week...

My wife, Ain ,went to Vietnam today with her HONDA team for business trip. She will be there for about 4days. I am a little bit worried that my daughter, Fareehah will not get used to it( I know Ain won't!...heh,sure rindu giler kat Fareehah tuh). We never leave her that long before. I am sure everything will just turn out to be okay eventually, but this is just a father concern about her daughter. Previously when I went for USM trip for few days, Ain had done great job dealing with the situation. I hope I can do it just fine too. I also think this is a good opportunities for me to spend more time with Fareehah. So what to do Fareehah? Will you teman abah tengok live football game around 2:00AM tonight? Do you want to follow abah go to sport equipment shop later today? Do you want to play tennis with abah tomorrow evening?Hey...how about a trip to abah's office? Lets hang out in the USM library afterwards...(although you can't enter the library because you didn't have USM smart card..). Hmm...so...many things to do ya.....wish me luck!!

Champion of the PERODUA ECO-CHALLENGE 2009

USM won!Remember the Perodua Eco-Challenge 2009 entry that I wrote few months ago? Well guess what, my university won the challenge. We got two 1st prize, one in the engineering presentation category and another in the longest distance category for automatic transmission. I am very proud with our USM team. I think this is quite a big achievement to us. Next,Shell Eco-Marathon, and we need to work even more hard this time because it's an international level competition. About the Perodua Eco-Challenge,I hope Perodua will organize this competition annually because we surely want to defend our status as the champion, winning is not easy but defending what you have won is more difficult. So guys, more effort please!! We did proved that with a proper understanding of the concept,technology and systems, we can make improvement. On the race day we get 23.5km with 1 litter of gasoline. Pretty great huh!

Now, about the whole competition,my view point is this competition theme still lacks the ECO aspects. I know that their theme," by consuming less fuel, we are reducing the pollutions as well"but the point is I did not clearly saw that "we are going towards a better environment quality" kind of theme in these competition. What I see is " Buy Perodua cars because we have better fuel consumption compared to Proton".Perodua should use such opportunity to show to the world that they are not just thinking about profit through an "advertisement competition". They should involves more environmentally aspects of things. I didn't even see any "recycle garbage bin"(separated to glass, paper,can etc.) around on the race day. I did saw WWF booth, but that just it. It is more like a funfair with them doing the "hullahoop shoot the duck and you won a teddy bear" booth. Its a circus. I know that the race day should be a fun day for everyone, so are we having fun yet?Anyway, it is the 1st Perodua Eco-Challenge, so lets work together to improve the competitions. This could be a great annual competition and if they really make it right, it will only be in a matter of time before this competition becomes an international challenge,with many oversea universities wanting to participate in it,which will be great for our country.

So guys, really proud of you.What a great sets of people we got here in USM!

(pictures taken from Henry,thanks buddy!)

Number 3

Three years already? Feels more like three days. How time flies so fast. In my early twenties, me and few of my friends, we sort of made a pack. Our pack was “We will stay single as long as we can to enjoy bachelorhood and only will start to think about marriage when we reached 30 years-old. Guess what…I think I was the first person to broke the pack when I was 26, and so did some of my other friends which decided that its time to move on to family life. So now, most of the so called “Single till I’m 30” club members are married and also already have at least 1 child. Well that’s life. You never know what will hit you. You can make plans, stick to the plans, but sometimes Allah provides you with a better one.
The truth is, I never really miss bachelorhood live. Yes, we have some fun back then, I always enjoy hanging out with my friends but nothing beat what I have now with my family. Waking up every morning besides the person you love, seeing your precious little princess still in deep sleep with her cute tiny fingers move a little bit when you kiss her cheek, coming back home from crazy day in office and your daughter/son running towards you with the her most anxious and happy face before grabbing and hugging your leg, hanging out in the living room with your wife after dinner… chit chatting, gossiping, and so many other great little details that you experience in this live as a family men that makes you wonder, am I destined to be this lucky? I know I am not the richest person or the most famous person in the world, but the happiness that I feel is so great and real, I don’t need to fantasized about anything, my life is spectacular and I am thankful for Allah for everything in my life.
Time move so fast, I will be 30 next year and guess what, Allah revised my early plan, I am 4 years ahead of my plan. Now, there will always be at least 3 extra years of happiness in my whole life, no matter when I die. Alhamdulillah.
Oh, by the way…happy third anniversary Honey! I love you!!!

MICROTRENDS

Lately, I am blessed with time to read. As a student, my reading list goes like this:
1. Heat Exchangers: Design and Theory Sourcebook
2. Applied Thermal Design
3. Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals
4. Design of Machinery
5. Modeling of Combustion Systems
The list goes on….Many of you would find my reading list is boring, yes I understand the “geek-ness” of the list. So last few weeks, Ain and I went to Borders (by the way, do you know that there are no MPH here in Penang? I know they are selling books cheaper through their website, but what’s the thrill in there right! Makes me wanna open a decent Book Shop here you know, not the typical boring local-type book shop, but something with par with MPH or Borders…maybe one day I will..), and I get myself few “off the list” type of books. I already read one of them.
“MICROTRENDS: The small forces behind tomorrow’s big changes.” I must say this book gave me some insight about the importance of the small-small things around us. Written by Mark J. Penn, a guy used to work closely with US ex-Presidents. He is good with trend-spotting that could help politician plan their political issues. Microtrends are indeed important for politicians, designers, salesman or even educationist. This so-called microtrendist, are small group of people. But although there are only few of them, let say just about 1% from the community, if the trends somehow widen its scale globally, imagine 1% of world population. That is many. In this book, he wrote about 75 new microtrends that currently being spotted. I don’t remember all of them but some of them are:
1. Video-game player
Do you know what group of people is the most fast-growing video game player now?
Children?Teenage?Guess again…it’s the moms over 45!Think about all the new possibilities of video games out there. Spanking your children, throwing dishes to daddy are few of possible titles.
2. Love Cougar
Now days there are many young men who date women older(not 1 or 2 years old....waaay...much older) than them. So to all my single male friend, are you one of the statistics?If so, don't worry, it is the current trend.
3. Travelling Worker
Do you know that the average distance people travel to work is over 150km back and forth? Wow, where do you all live? For me, it’s like Parit Buntar-Sg Petani trip.
4. Left-hander
Do you know that left-handers numbers of people has doubled in the past 2 generations? Think about all left-hander friendly compatible items that we can create such as handphone, camera, computer keyboard etc?
Well, you read yourself to find the other 71 trends okay! This book is recommended to everyone who involved in business, politics or just like to spend time reading quality books.

(Rating : 7/10)

Stadium Story

I moved to our new home last month. The house is fine, Ain do not need to travel too far to work now. But today I do not want to talk about house. I want to talk about what is near the house. My new house is in Simpang Ampat, and it is not that far from Stadium Batu Kawan, Seberang Perai,Penang.

When I think about it, it seems to me that my home, no matter if it is the current or the previous one, will usually located near to a football stadium. The first one, is Darul Aman Stadium in Alor Setar,Kedah. I was 11 when my family moved to Alor Setar. We lived in a nice neighbourhood. Not far away there is one big stadium where football matches will be held on weekends. Aaa.... the first taste of live football match. I still remember the first football match that I saw live at the stadium. It was FA Cup match between Kedah and Sabah. Sabah won 1-0. I still remember few girls kept screaming crazily during the match. That was the day that I got to know that women too have passion for football.

Then, in 1995 when my family moved to Penang(the island), my house was near to Bandaraya Stadium. During school holiday when I was around,I used to cycled to the stadium when Penang play in the weekend. The stadium was small and old. But the football matches never been bothered by it.It was always a hot game in a cold night.

The next one, Shah Alam Stadium.It was just a walking distance from where I used to live.The first one was in the year 1997 when my family moved to Shah Alam.The second one was in the year 2005, when I worked in Shah Alam, lived there alone at first and then got married and continued to live there.It was a nice neighbourhood as well, we (Ain and me)always like Shah Alam and probably will come back and live there one day, Insya Allah.

Strange enough, even when I went to overseas in 2007, I lived near a to football stadium as well. St. James Park, the home of Newcastle United FC in UK was just 15 minutes walk from my place.I managed to go to Man United game once, it was a precious memory especially because my honey and my daughter were there too.

Well I think this is an interesting trivia about my life. How many of you lived near to 5 different football stadiums in your lifetime?And I went to football matches held at all of those 5 stadiums.

Actually I never planned it to happen this way, although I am a football fan, house near to a stadium is not an item for my "Things/Places That Need to be Available in/near the House" checklist.It just happened and I only realise this now!

Perodua ECO-challenge

My lab decided to participate in Perodua Eco-Challenge competition. It is a competition that require the participant to improve Perodua MyVi fuel consumption. We will race our improved version car in Sepang circuit in July this year, but the 1st one to arrive at the finishing line do not win the competition. The winner will be the car that run the longest on the given amount of fuel.Every participant need to gather a 20 people group. They will provide the group with one MyVi. So we can thrash things around, cut some parts etc., go creative on the engine,but the vehicle weight should not be less than 800kg. As usual, the vehicle decoration is 1/3 of the full marks(typical Malaysian automotive company that pay less attention to the vehicle actual performance...sigh!)

I think it is a good chance for us to involved with this kind of stuff, to level up our skill in automotive aspects.We only have like 3 months to complete the task for the competition.

We have few ideas already about the engine(How to reduce the weight), about the fuel injection system(instead of currently Port Fuel Injection type),how to reduce the rolling friction, how to increase aerodynamic aspects of the vehicles...etc.Let see if we are really up for it!

By the way, I think the title of the competition is miss-leading...it says ECO....but I do not see any environmental aspects being a key judgment point in the competition. They only care about the looks and the fuel economy(another typical thing in Malaysia automotive company).