AKEPT's Program Pembangunan Kepimpinan Tunas Akademia

I had involved a lot with politics during my service in MMU but I didn't hear anything about AKEPT. Even though I'm not really that young but I'm still required to attend the Tunas Akademia program from December 19^th to 21^st handled at Palm Garden Resort Putrajaya. I also just found out that UPNM is actually the Secretariat for Zon Tengah.

The main target for such program is to ensure that the academics, especially the young ones, are inline with the government's inspiration. It is not entirely politics but the stress is also put on their academic competency.

One of the talk.

Me during my group presentation of our discussion outcome. It was presented by Miss Hajar from UiTM.

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The Week's Journal (Dec/12 - Dec/18 2011)

This blog has been ignored again. It looks like I can never find a free time if I would only be updating this blog when I'm free. Well, I cannot let that to happen any longer.

UPNM SLAB Training Module 5 (Dec/12 - Dec/13)

For the comeback, I'm updating this boring life of mine with the SLAB course module I attended this week. This round the course is about managing and analyzing data in qualitative research using NVivo. The course is pretty interesting. If only I have learned this technique before, my masters research may not have been so messy.

The course was conducted by Associate Professor Dr. Roslani Embi from UiTM. The interesting thing about him to me is the fact that he got his PhD from Virginia Tech, USA. He actually encouraged us to pursue our PhD in US. It is a lot easier to get through US system as the students will be given a 2-year course specifically about what they are supposed to do for the research. Unlike British system which just let the students to suddenly fly high on trial and error basis. However, Malaysian PhD candidates rarely choose USA for placement due to some trivial reasons like interview for visa, GRE, TOEFL, etc. It is true that US requirement is more stringent but that is NOT the reason why our PhD candidates did not choose US.

Electrical & Electronics Engineering Department FYP Presentation (Dec/14)

It was time for UPNM's EE students to get grilled by the lecturers and proved that they are ready for the project work in the next semester.

Official Opening of General Tun Ibrahim Library UPNM (Dec/15)

UPNM's new library has been operating for almost a year but the official opening had just been taken place this Thursday.

Some pictures to show the atmosphere around the ceremony:

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ICSECS' 11 at UMP June 27-29th, 2011

Just few days before I went to Singapore for that last KTM ride from Tanjong Pagar, in the same week I attended The Second International Conference on Software Engineering and Computer Systems (ICSECS’ 11) in University of Malaysia Pahang (UMP). The conference was in cooperation with The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (SDIWC).


I never knew before that UMP was running in a place that was used to be an industrial area. The staff and students housing is in a housing area with apartments. It reminds me when I visited University of Malaysia Kelantan (UMK). Since it was running in a shop lot area, walking around the campus is like walking for shopping in Kota Bharu. That was walking in UMK. Walking in UMP, on the hand, is like walking in a SME area.

The conference was great and full of colors. There are presenters from Mexico, Japan, all over Middle East, some from Europe and many others. The conference received more than 500 papers but only around 200 were accepted, which means the acceptance rate may be less than 40%. That is what it takes to be ISI and Scopus indexed and published in Springerlink proceedings. My own paper, which was on UML and design pattern, was actually rejected five times by other conferences and finally accepted by ICSECS after so much polishing and revising.



The interesting part in this conference is that the conference chairman (or chairwoman), also the lady dean of the Faculty of Computer Systems and Software Engineering of UMP, was actually my cousin. The more interesting part is that she knew I was there and she greeted me, and I didn’t immediately realize that was my cousin. What a shame!

Well, that’s how absent-minded I’m. Anyway, this is her photo with some VIP-s in the conference during dinner. The dinner was in Bukit Gambang Resort we all stayed.

Associate Professor Dr. Jasni Mohamad Zain (middle) with the VIP-s

And some other pictures at the dinner.

Me with some ladies from the committee and two guys from Japan and Egypt

The gentleman with songkok is Rahmat Widia, from Indonesia, who is a PhD student of Prof. Jasni's - he happened to sit next to me during the conference opening

The short me being sandwiched by Ben Sadeh (left, from Norway and now an exchange student in NUS) and Kai Evenli (right, from Austria)

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