City of temptation, Here I come!

The largest city of the Malay speaking nation, Kuala Lumpur in which I will have my living here for two years for my pre-university courses in University College Sedayah International. In spite of not being the most floushing city in Asia, Kuala Lumpur is a city full of temptation, the gloss and glitter of the city would seem pretty fascinating to us, especially the outsiders which are from sururban or rural areas of the country. I hope I can focus on my study anyhow in the college besides learning how to live a urban life.

Obliging + Valiant

Yesterday, when I was on the way to a nearby seven-eleven store to have my DiGi number's credit reloaded, I had met with an old lady by accident, who was almost my grandma's age was sitting on a pavement, exactly in front of a drugstore. The aged woman hopelessly watched the heavy pedestrian traffic on the pavement, rubbing both her hands with her knees. At that moment, I could surmise that the woman must be having a slip and fall before she sat on the sidewalk, since as far I know, nobody have ever taken or would like a rest on the dirty pavement.

Meanwhile, I moved to a very slow walking pace and I stopped when there were perhaps ten paces between me and the old lady. I beheld the lady in a furtive or circumspect manner as I was having a hesitation about what to do next: Keep on moving to 7-11 store or doing the opposite way.

Well on that time, I had many facts to chew upon before I could make up my mind whether or not to help the old lady - I chose to have my phone credit topped up at the end without acting out my compassion for the lady. One of the factors leading me to have such utterly ruthless decision was due to my doubt or uncertainty about the woman's actual need.

When at home, I started to feel a pang of remorse for being over-rational when coming to lending my hands to somebody in need of help. And in the end, the decision that I thought to be the most rational one was actually the most irrational one. :(

Never try to rationalize the role of a Good Samaritan. Sometimes, we would have found helping the needy to be an irrational act, well, at least we would feel gratified to see how much our work (our help) is appreciated when others say 'Thank you'. An obliging person is not necessarily a valiant person, this is what I am trying to say.

Translation or Transition?

Globalization is having a quickening pace and is predicted that it will continue to have a growing impact on business organization and practice. (One of Thomas Lauren Friedman's stances or opinions about globalization). It is thus a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together, which is with some sort of great difficulty, for example a difference between the cultures and languages amongst the citizens of various countries, which are trying to be in contact with one another.

Due to recent advances in information communication technology (ICT), there are quite a number of big corporations earning revenue from advertising related to Internet Search, Web-based emails and social networking: for instances, Yahoo and Google have conducted researches by requesting their engineers to be engaged in the innovation process by spending about 20 % of their time working on a chosen project and thus producing many not-for-profit tools such as Google Talk or Yahoo Messenger and Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

The corporations also develop their own translation tools through Google Language Tools and Yahoo Babel Fish to alleviate the problem related to difficulty when talking to a foreigner who does not know one's language, so a person would be easy to understand a single word, a phrase or a sentence, and even an article without even knowing a language which the piece of writing is in. However, the so-called translators really suck. In lieu of translation, they carry out transition, making a mess of the actual or real meaning of a particular piece of writing. The translators sometimes make the meaning or of a simple word or sentence, or even a message to be misconstrued by the readers, consequently resulting in a succession of problems.

Well, we should proclaim something with proofs, i.e. the translation results as follows: P/s: The translation results are sometimes hilariously funny.

Google translation (from English to Simplified Chinese)
E.g. To begin with, I used a common insulting remark:

"Shut up! You Moron!" Pretty scary result: 闭嘴！你木伦！

After that, I had performed a reverse by translating the two given Chinese characters: 木伦 to see the term's meaning in English, and to my amazement, a translation result appeared, which made me faint: Wood-Lun

How about using something scientific?

"Data that is presented in a table can be understood easily."
Not-quite meaningful result: 数据是在一个表是可以理解的容易。

Again, I translated the result given into English and surprisingly, I realized that the translator had changed the actual meaning of the original sentence: Data in a form that can easily understandable What differentiates between table and form?

I decided to have other alternatives in translation of the similar sentences from English into Simplified Chinese and the following shows the results I had:

Yahoo Babel Fish Translation:

闭嘴! 您蠢人! Not bad :)

在桌里被提出的数据可以容易地被了解 Well, scientific data you've collected from an experiment, according to Yahoo Babel Fish, is related to your drawers. :D

Huajian Translation:

闭嘴！ 你白痴! Prefect!

在表格里被提出的数据可以容易被理解 Not bad though can't still distinguish between form and table

Kodensha Translation:

沉默！ 你愚笨! = = "

在桌子中被表示的数据容易能理解 A round or rectangular one provides you with accurate and precise data?

Systran Translation:

闭嘴! 您蠢人! = Yahoo Babel Fish

在桌里被提出的数据可以容易地被了解 = Yahoo Babel Fish

Click2Translate Translation:

闭嘴！你低能者! Fantastic

数据那在一张表中被赠送能够容易地被理解 = Complimentary?

Look at the power of the translators, do you dare to use them for translation when talking to a new friend who does not know your m0ther language? :)Well, to read more about such funny translation story, please move on to another post by one of my bloggy friends: Surely You are Joking, Google Translation.

Be Bold, Man!

How you define the word 'bold'? Bold does not mean radical, but it is an appropriate adjective to be used when coming to wikis. The following shows a quote from an article of Wikiversity:

Wikis only work if people are bold. Go ahead and change something here by editing something there, correcting a mistake or by adding a new perspective or improving the language, whatever you like, as long as it is not a bad edit like vandalism. Wiki is what you are expected to do. Even if it is not the best it can be it is still good to put something down because chances are other people will come along and help improve it. Over time, things improve. Surprisingly, it is something that actually works as long as civility is maintained.

You'll quickly notice the natural and understandable impulse of authors to "own" and protect their writing; this is counterproductive when it comes to wikis. It is a good idea to get rid of that tendency by being open to other people's edits. That's the only way a page will improve over time. Think about it: you might not know every perspective and every angle of a subject. Regardless of how thoughtfully you work, an additional set of eyes will always find something to improve. So be bold not just when editing other pages but accept it on your "own" as well.

Every visitor to my blog is free to treat this blog as a wiki, whereby my guests can give your comments about each post of my blog, probably doing something as mentioned above as an indirect way of editing my blog. Let's us form a community devoted to collaborative learning and treat my blog as your "own" as well! :)

How to Embed Youtube Videos in Your Blog?

A video is a good one only when it is shared. For bloggers who wish to share their original videos or Youtube videos, you can follow the procedure below.

The process is simple indeed, even a dummie can do it. For who wish to share their original videos, do sign up for a Youtube account and upload your video and get the embed code. Otherwise, you can easily insert any public youtube video into your blog. Before this, go to Youtube and search for the video. For instance, if you want to embed a video pertaining to funny kitty, just simply search it and copy the embed code onto your clipboard. After this, sign intoyour blogger account and click the New Post button and select the tab-option 'Edit html' before have the html code pasted.

Finally, publish your video by clicking the 'Publish Post' which is located below the editing board. And that's it, as you can see now, the video you wish to share is embeded in your post properly. If you like, you can change the width and height of the video by replacing the values to your desirable one. You can also make your video go center by adding <div align="center"> and </div> before and after the code, as follows:

<div align="center"><object width="425" height="344" align="center"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nTasT5h0LEg&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></div>

And that's it, you have made it. :) Hope it helps.
P/S: Thanks, Changyang for helping me with the XHTML Elements.

Kittens are Hilarious!

A youtube video by kjpar7: 'Funny Kittens'

Kittens are Hilariously Funny.
The video made me laugh my head off! Enjoy :)

Booty

Shamelessly request every passerby to have a look on my booty. :) 

There's a bulge in each single envelope, what do you think 'the bulge' is? Tada! The 'bulges' total MYR 290 $ )

Do you wish to have one of the 'bulges'? ;P
Footnote: The 'bulges' are the booty looted from my ex-school. :)

A Tiring Day

It's about 11.50 p.m. when I was scribbling something in this post and knowing that there would be approximately 10 minutes or less left to end my today's life and will start another new day ten minutes later. At this moment, I was trying to refresh my memory of how had I spent my life today, did I fritter away my time on useless stuffs? I could shamelessly say I had been spending nine hours (not exactly :D) editing my newly created blog on the same day besides setting up some useful add-ons for this freshly created blog like Flickr. I had never tried anything like this before, so I found it really hard for me to create every post smoothly, nevertheless, I had gained some experiences and I believed now I could manage to use the thingummies much better. I was kinda agreeing with my parents that I am pretty quick on the uptake, especially coming to technological stuffs. :)

Am I squandering my time away on blogging? If this question is directed to my mum or other elders. Yea, they would have almost the same opinion for this and I think everyone is certain about the answer. I kinda agree with them in terms of my health if constantly getting on with my PC works like blogging, playing games and other typing stuffs. Then again, blogging is not bad if by which we can pick up something concerning knowledge, which is probably unable to be find in books that we have everyday. In the meantime, we are able to relax ourselves by doing something we love or expressing ourselves in a different way via texts, videos, musics and photos. 8)

Considerably poor or having a limited English vocabulary anyhow is one of my weaknesses realized during the blogging process besides having too little knowledge about what's happening around. I begin to feel self-conscious about myself whilst reading others' blogs and their experience-sharing pieces. I could only say: "Why didn't I just work harder on this language before this?" and nothing will change if I don't have anything done or changed to myself since there is an English saying that Actions Speak Louder than Words. :)

Do I Deserve?

A fair morning, not until the cuckoo said eleven o'clock, when my brother brought me an envelope measuring 23 cm × 10 cm with my name and home address typewritten in totally five rows and a blue circular stamp of my school's name on it. Didn't really take care of my brother's words on that time due to my annoyance at the way he talked to his elders, and I had the letter from his hands and kept on reading a paragraph in book by Rais Yatim. A minute later after finishing the paragraph, I took up the envelope and read its contents, as follows:

Encik / Cik,

Jemputan ke Majlis Anugerah Cemerlang Sekolah Menengah Dato' Idris 2008

Dengan hormatinya merujuk keada tujuan di atas.

2. Sehubungan dengan hal itu, pihak sekolah dengan sukacitanya menjemput encik / cik serta ibu bapa / penjaga hadir ke Majlis Anugerah Cemerlang Sekolah Menengah Dato' Idris 2008 yang telah diadakan mengikut butiran berikut:

Tarikh: 21hb Jun 2008 (Sabtu)

Masa: 8.30 Pagi

Tempat: Dewan Sekolah SMK Dato' IDRIS

Pakaian: Rasmi

Before scanning to the end of the letter for more useful information, I took a breath and let my mind wondering whether or not to attend the ceremony since I am leading a hectic life in recently to prepare myself physically and mentally before I commence my A-level on the first of July. Apart from my business, I was thinking about the exhausting tasks required by JPA (Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam or Public Service Department) to be done and handed in on the day of registration, namely the 30th of this June before I can get enrolled for the course in UCSI (University College Sedayah International) in Cheras and also my papa and mama's so-called business. My mum gotta to bring her *lovely* (That's what she thinks) students to Ayer Tawar for a Science Carnival held by PPD Manjung (Office of Education of Manjung district, not for sure) in SMK Ambrose on the same day. Without letting my mind to keep on wandering, I had made my mind up not to attend the ceremony but still continue with the letter:

3. Kerjasama pihak encik / cik amat dihargai dan didahului dengan ucapan terima kasih. Sebarang pertanyaan sila didahului dengan ucapan terima kasih. Sebarang pertanyaan sila hubungi Puan Ahainie ...

I made a fleeting glimpse to the end of the letter until the signature of the present principal of my ex-school. Apart from the signature of the new principal that I was not acquainted with, nothing else at the bottom of the letter had caught my attention to review the letter again. Wandering for the next five minutes and starting to mull over some seemingly unrelated questions: Am I worthy of the best academic award (since I was the best in my ex-school last year) which would be given to me tomorrow morning? Was the excellence due to my diligence before and during the examination or mainly by sheer luck? :(

Such thoughts had struck me unceasingly since the first day of joining ReCom (The Reborn Community, a worldwide portal for Malaysian students to hold discussion about their problems and share their thoughts) . Joining the community might be advantageous to me but somewhat detrimental to my confidence. Meeting different people in there, and have begun to feel myself being a nobody in this competitive world.

On a personal level, I am a deep person but considerably poor in self-expression. I love self-improvement and have numerous moments of self-doubt a day. Sadly, this has thrust myself into a position of awesome responsibilities and it is really exhausting and burdensome. I'm attempting to adapt myself quickly to this situation - and I hope all the efforts I had and shall have can surpass my expectation in the future.