The Quest Continued

It has been tough and miserable, but the quest for Andalusia at West goes on. May be you don’t understand what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter I’m just saying it.

My first attempt for the quest failed terribly due to some unforeseen crash of the world economy. I’m back in Malaysia now, resuming my life as an academic, now in The National Defense University of Malaysia. Hoping my next attempt, by the will of Allah s.a.w. will be fruitful and less unorthodox.

The fight will continue. Either I reach The Andalusia at West or the end of my life.

This blog too has been left un-updated for so long - more than two years. That’s how frustrated I was. But life goes on. This blog accompanies me with the quest. The plan was to write this blog from US, but plan can change, not the destination.

More details and stories in the coming flashbacks. For now, here is the picture of the entrance of my current university.



And the picture of the Sungai Besi Camp gate, where the university is in.

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Back to Midwest

It has been long since I last updated this blog. The posting on the Indonesian restaurant was the last one. It was hard to write in a tough situation in California where I tried my best to look for a job placement for my CPT for MUM Compro degree.

Now I'm back in MUM campus in Fairfield, Iowa. Let's talk about the hardship of job seeking in California some time later after I actually get a job. I have to set my mind away from the hardship in order to continue focusing on job search.

Now that I'm back in campus, the Computer Science Department has given me some job to do so that I don't accumulate too much debt in my loan. Having to do the job just means that I'll have free food and place to stay, but nothing will be coming into my pocket. After 2 weeks or so doing some support jobs at the Computer Science Technical Support, the department gave me a teaching assistance job. Perhaps they realized that I have 10 years of teaching experience.

I was given TA job for the 2 preparatory classes for MUM's Compro program - FPP (Fundamental Programming Practice) and MPP (Modern Programming Practice). FPP is basically Introduction to Java Programming, and MPP is Java programming with some flavor of enterprise level programming. I couldn't disclose how much the TA pay is, but I can just say that, converting to Malaysian Ringgit, it might be more that what I used to make as a full teaching lecturer in MMU - the MMU lecturing job was 40 hrs a week minimum, while this TA job is 20 hrs a week maximum. The sad thing is that half of the pay has to be used to pay for my room and dining hall meals.

Check out some pictures in the class. The first picture is me in the class with one of the student (Compro grad student), Ramzi, from Jordan [Facebook]. I took one picture with him because he was in the best recommended dressing code for MUM students - long sleeve shirt and tie.

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The Week's Journal (Oct/27 - Nov/2 2008)

There are quite a bit of things happened this week and I think they are worth putting in this blog.

Job Fair at Irvine

On Monday October 27^th, I went to Dice.com job fair in Irvine. I was hoping to find a few employers to get some interview for my CPT placement. It was a little disappointing though because there were not many companies there. Dice.com wasn't so successful to attract them.

Job Fair at LA & The Indonesian Restaurant

Tuesday October 28^th, I went to another Dice.com job fair in Los Angeles. On the way I had to go to a Staples center to print some résumés. Near that Staples center I found this Indonesian restaurant:


It was my first time eating southeastern dish close enough to Malay dish since February this year. I was so happy that I think I want to help them promoting their restaurant. I feel that they are serious with their business since they have a website. This is their address, phone number, the website and Google Map location:

Indonesian Food Warung Pojok,
13113 Harbor Blvd.,
Garden Grove, CA 92843
714-638-8716
http://www.warungpojokindo.com/

And this is another picture of me, Ms. Eriza the manager, and an uncle who I suppose is the owner of the restaurant.


Now about the job fair. The one in LA was better than Irvine. I managed to get some numbers and promises. I even queued up a long line to talk to a representative from UCLA. It turns up there are quite a number of openings match my skill in UCLA. More than in most companies I already applied with failures.

The two job fairs didn't turn up like I expected. But I learned something. Compared to recruiters, direct companies are more open to the kind of work authorization I have. Almost all recruiters turned me down once they heard that I only have F1 visa. But those non-recruiter companies, they just asked "would you be able to prove that you are allowed to work in US if you are hired"?

The First Distance Mid Term

Saturday November 1^st, I had my first midterm for my first distance education course, Distributed Computing, in Riverside. It was a long round trip drive of about 100 miles just for the test. The question was on JSP, servlet, remote method call, etc. I answered all questions and hoping to get most of them correct.

While driving back from the test I realized I saw rain for the second time in California. The first one was during the Lakewood open house. That how dry California is. But, there was another significant rain on the election day November 4^th.

The Malaysian Restaurant

Sunday November 2^nd, I still had the car I rent for the midterm. When I was in the Indonesian restaurant, I learned that there is a Malaysian restaurant, named Yazmin, in Alhambra, Los Angeles CO. I Googled it, found it, then I drove to LA late that day and arrived on time for dinner to go:


I'm helping this restaurant's business too by providing you, my visitor, with their location and contact should you come to LA:

Yazmin Malaysian Restaurant,
27 E. Main St.,
Alhambra, CA 91801
626-308-2036

And this is a picture of me and Mr. Lee, the restaurant owner. There is a picture of Pak Lah in the restaurant in his visit to LA.

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