Idazuwaika 2.0

New house, new job, why not new hair as well.

A colleague criticised the new hair saying that it makes the cheeks look chubby, which I didn’t mind. Let’s attack the problem at the source i.e. start losing weight and stop resorting to food therapy for all my mildest problems.

I initially cursed the hairstylist, for didn’t tell me clearly about what he planned to do. OK, fine .. he did inform me clearly. Real truth is, he mentioned “perming”, “waxing”, etc, and I simply agreed so not to appear foolish for not knowing what those terms actually meant 🙂

Anyway I like new things. New house, new job, new hair .. I wonder what else can be new. New blog sounds right, but I haven’t had time to hack the WordPress source code. I have already listed features that I want, but building them needs dedicated time.

New car? No money.
New phone number? Pointless.
New lifestyle? Been trying every new year, always fail.

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A Go Night

Yesterday was the first time I went to Hock Doong’s place. It was quite far from Japan Club, and I had real trouble tailing Mr Tiong’s car. Especially since we had to go through a number of tolls, and he had Touch ‘N’ Go while I had to queue in the cash lane. Anyway, all’s well that ends well (or something like that *shrug* )..

I was extremely jealous of his book collection. While I certainly win in computing and IT department, he trample me in every other element. History, philosophy, language, management, religion and also Go. I feel lucky to have a very well-read friend. No wonder he writes very well on his blog too.

Anyway, I had a number of games there. I played with Hock Doong first, then with Philip. Then all of us played triple-Go where me, Alex and Dennis played against Mr Tiong, Philip and Hock Doong. Numerous mistakes were there, even as early as 15th move, resulting from my decision to choose an Avalanche line.

Curiously enough, mistakes from both sides balanced out and we had a fairly balance game. In the end, our team lost to Mr Tiong’s by 2.5 moku. 😦

Prior to that, we had dinner in Japan Club where I had my usual Chirashi Sushi. Felt bad a little because I was not in someplace dark to express support for Earth Hour.

Oh, I won another 2 league games against Shu Wen and Xin Wen (they aren’t siblings). Remaining league games will be tough. I still haven’t played Suzanne, Mr Tiong, Lao Zhuang and Billy. I have to congratulate my friend Alex for directing this league. It will be good for me to learn to deal with pressure of serious games.

p/s: I wore cap nearly the whole day to push my hair down. The hairstylist made it spiky! How can I go to office tomorrow like this 😦

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Career Related Angry-ness.

---

Solution Integration Unit
vs.
Research and Development.

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Apparently I did well in recent interview. The Solution Integration Unit (SIU) within Retail department wanted me, and HR was in the process of issuing formal letter for my new appointment.

But just now, I walked into HR office and told them that I wanted to move to Research and Development (R&D) to join Core IP/ Next Generation Network (NGN) team. I wanted them to cancel the issuance of letter of appointment to SIU. It was a hard decision to make, because so many people were saying that I should go to SIU.

Going to SIU means I will stay in the business mainstream, and stay within the corporate radar. Over time, the corporate higher echelon might notice me, and put me somewhere up there as well. I will have better networking with other important people. That’s the scenario many people painted to me.

Nobody imagines that far when it comes to R&D. They only ask, “So .. you just gonna do research?”. Like it’s a dead end. Like my career advancement is sealed there. Like no greatness awaits me once I choose to go to R&D. Like I had not think through. Like I’m a total loser.

If this is Go, it’s like I choose to defy proverbs and joseki because I thought I saw something after reading 10 moves ahead.

Heh, here are 10 reasons I’d choose R&D over SIU:

1. The notion of hoping someone of higher echelon to notice me does not intrigue me at all.
2. Technology is at its exciting time with transition to IPv6 and transition to Next Generation Network (NGN). To be among first truly experts of new technology in Malaysia sounds attractive.
3. I can bring up my programming skill to higher level and will be more ready to go freelance one day.
4. Part-time teaching for extra income will be easier with all the theoretical and academic knowledge.
5. Cute geek-ish girls will make my days, better than those confidence-radiating high-heeled ladies.
6. With theoretical knowledge, I can write books one day.
7. I read technology and computing books in my extra time. Now it will be my job, so I can use my free time for more fun stuff.
8. My energy and stamina for studying is tremendously plenty at the moment, somehow. Better make use of it fast, before it dies down.
9. I suppose, with research experience, it’ll be easier to get scholarship for Ph.D studies later.
10. Attitude will play lesser importance, skills and delivery more. It’s a more comfortable domain for me.
11. Easier to go into consultancy later, with the knowledge.
12. Job rotation is emphasised. It’s better that I go into R&D now than later, if I have to go there anyway.

This is an angry post, although one that retains rationality. I am angry because, I am full of doubt over my decision as well. ARGH ! (Anger apparently made me confuse between 10 and 12)

I am thankful to my cousin who’s in HR, who gave me the best advice. He said, “just go there and regret.” Haha .. What am I so worried about? I have plenty of regrets already, adding another one or two won’t matter. 🙂

Cut first, think later.

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Dragonball Evolution

My head is still dizzy from spending a large portion of yesternight playing Metal Gear Solid 4, so I chose to have a quiet lunch today at San Francisco Coffee. I grabbed a copy of Malaysian Today (a newsletter, not Raja Petra’s newsportal), and came across a review of Dragonball Evolution.

The MT reviewer rated it 3 stars, but I would give 3.5 (out of 5). The movie was pleasant, and I dont find the fact that Goku went to high school to be annoying, as the MT reviewer had found it. Come on, where else would Goku meet Chi Chi then? Somewhere near a burning castle as in the original storyline? I guess I prefer the high school version.

All characters were played well, especially Bulma and Master Roshi. But I expect more action and acrobat from Goku, but the movie does not have many more moves than those shown in the trailer. The fight against Picolo was also too short, just like the whole movie itself.

In brief, the following are things I would have liked to see in the movie:

1. More world destruction from Picolo before he’s terminated
2. More fighting from Master Roshi (Chow Yun Fat). Instead the movie showed too much of Bulma and Chi Chi fighting, which did not interest me at all.
3. Goku to beat up those high school bullies. Who cares about his pledge not to fight in school. That would be real fun 🙂
4. Harsher training for Goku. The training shown in the movie is not even 1/100 of what was in the real manga.

Well, that should be enough. Still, I would recommend this movie, because it’s fun, cute and reminds me of old times where I spent days after days reading manga 🙂

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Job Interview

I never intended the previous post to be the main post for so long, yet a week it has been. I have been quite busy lately.

Regarding work, it is now confirmed that I have to leave Regulatory department. I have sent my Career Profile to HR, not sure what they have done with it, but now I have got my first interview.

Guess with who?

SALES ! I remember clearly saying that I’d jump off window from Sales Department if they ever send me there. Exact words are :

It seems that I will have to start searching for a new post within this big corporation. Or I might just leave it all to HR. Big gamble ! If they put me in sales, I just hope the department has a window for me to jump off the tower.

Haizzz.. Seriously, how does recruitment and staffing work around here? Cant they see that if they put me in a technical division, they’ll have the most passionate staff who will work to near-death exhaustion? Or do they really know better, and I should just go with the flow?

Perhaps, I should not worry too much. I am certainly not Sales material. Look at the parts of the job scope :-

1. To tap into group resources and capabilities to compete against competitors in the market.

   Is that something I can do?

2. Perform solution development and also solution delivery functions.

   Is that me?

3. To manage with marketing innovations and business strategy in sales groups accounts through a single point of contact for customers’ needs and demands hence increasing sales revenue.

Why did they even consider me to do this? I have ZERO experience in sales, self-centric too much to be customer-centric.

Hmm.. I’ll just attend the interview (without tie and sleeve up though!) , and correct any misconceptions they have about me.

Wanna see my Career Profile? I was quite upset that the corporate template for Career Profile provided no room for non-career achievements. There was no place for my Go achievements!

Strength and Extraordinary Characteristic

1. Strong analytical skill, highly focused and enduring mental stamina.
   Being a competitive board game (chess and go) player, I have been in continuous training to withstand mental pressure derived from challenge from adversaries, and time constraints. It also trains me to maintain focus for long hours.
2. Adopt both work hard and work smart attitude.
   I always seek to simplify work execution through preplanning. Where applicable, I often exercise my programming skill to automate repetitive processes. This is most visible from my regulatory work with NNDB project where I wrote SQL script and Excel VBA programs for error checking which previously were done by eyes. This cut down reliance on Geomatic department and improved error-detection to 100%
3. Strong dedication to self-improvement and skill growth.
   I consistently equip myself with knowledge through reading, particularly of technological, management and political areas. Also with my spare time, I study for Master in Information Security, learn intermediate Mandarin Chinese and Japanese chess (shogi).
4. Positive, passionate and self-motivated worker.
   In my commitment to self-improvement, I find motivation for daily working and learning. Even for dull tasks such as writing minutes and filing, I entertain myself by making them a practice of XML, XML-FO technology.

Yes, I must mention Go !

Personal Aspirations

I aspire to be a part of a world class team of experts, competing with other teams and emerge as winner. I want to be a world class expert, a high-impact, high-performance individual that could do next-to-impossible things.

/* Ok, for this section, I must admit I was very influenced by the book I had just read, The Race for A New Game Machine. */

Limitations

Job scope may limit the areas in which I could gain experience.

Development Needs

Challenging problems to be solved, trainings, involvement and participation in high-impact projects.

Regulatory, Sales … my career has a weird fuseki.

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(..not) All My MSN Nicks :)

I chat quite often, although not a hardcore. I use MSN. Few of my friends said that I often have my User Friendly Name hinting around Love, Being Single, Girlfriend etc. I disagree!

Luckily for me, I can prove that this is not the case. Firstly, my MSN records all conversation (as I had configured), and secondly, all my User Friendly Names have certain pattern, all begin with “Waq” i.e. Waq is yawnful or Waq : Girlfriend or freedom? . Some people call these nicknames, but I use User Friendly Name because that is the term used by the chat history XML files.

Below is the list of all my User Friendly Names since about 2 years ago. (Actually not all are recorded, but just ones I had using my laptop 😦 ) I wrote a Perl program to extract this from MSN Chat history. At first I thought of using XML solution, but then using regular expression is so much easier. I’m not good with Perl, very embarrassed at the non-aestheticity of the program, but in the spirit of knowledge, I put it at the bottom of this page.

Love, Loneliness, Girlfriend related User Friendly Names are highlighted in pink. Only 9! Okay, maybe all these 9 happened closely, but then, 9 only la ..

Waq : All is well

Waq : Argh slow news. Politics getting boring again

Waq : Be productive

Waq : Blog Go Bahasa Melayu di http://idazuwaika.net/me

Waq : Can I be more?

Waq : Climbing ethnic ladder

Waq : Climbing the ethnic ladder

Waq : Doing work with eyes closed is fun

Waq : Dont boycott Olympics

Waq : Genetic is kind to a few

Waq : Girlfriend or Glory ?

Waq : Girlfriend or freedom ?

Waq : Going Pulai Spring

Waq : Happy Birthday Vix. May it be better than Samy’s Birthday

Waq : Happy Birthday anyway to Samy Vellu

Waq : Happy Birthday myself 🙂 I’m 25 , so ancient

Waq : Happy Birthmonth to me

Waq : Happy New Year

Waq : How to increase mental stamina?

Waq : I HATE STREAMYX !

Waq : I am a man afterall

Waq : I met Go Seigen

Waq : I won’t rest

Waq : I’ll traverse unknown path, and call such life my own

Waq : I’m OK

Waq : I’m not happy

Waq : If they are racist, should I be one too?

Waq : Just got Astro. I will be LAZIER !! HELPP

Waq : Kang Dong Yoon won Gold for Individual Men’s category

Waq : Keep fighting !

Waq : Kit Siang too used to opposing everything

Waq : Learning Korean

Waq : Leaving for SEA Games, Korat

Waq : Love… is it really beautiful?

Waq : MC today

Waq : MS SQL 2005

Waq : Malaysia is so happening

Waq : Mental limit. Am I sane?

Waq : Need energy

Waq : Never knew paintball that fun

Waq : Nizar can speak Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and Tamil ?

Waq : No more exams ! Cant wait to start on individual project !

Waq : Obama !!

Waq : One more paper to go !

Waq : Outstation.

Waq : Perlis, small state with BIG issue

Waq : Pleasant 15 mins with a cute stranger

Waq : Rock songs can be so soothing

Waq : SQL is fun 🙂

Waq : Sabah 13 – 17 April

Waq : Sabah 13 – 17 April, now in Sandakan

Waq : Say yes to Love Story

Waq : Selamat Hari Raya

Waq : Shopping is best medicine

Waq : Should I go to Taiwan?

Waq : Singapore Trip was Fun 🙂

Waq : Suddenly I want to play Chess

Waq : Super many coursework to do !!

Waq : Taylor Swift makes me want to love

Waq : Tired of being single

Waq : Together, through good times and bed times.

Waq : Traitor !

Waq : Ulcer sign of stress?

Waq : What can life offer?

Waq : What numerical year is it in Chinese calendar?

Waq : When will I see BoA on MTV again?

Waq : Who good with SQL?

Waq : Who wants to go Singapore this weekend?

Waq : Why have my imaginary friends left me?

Waq : Will of steel

Waq : XML and XPath

Waq : Yay, one less work

Waq : Yay… Celcom 3G Broadband reactivated 🙂

Waq : Yes !! Wireless networking at home

Waq Blog : Weekend Go Trip to Singapore

Waq Blog : Weekend Go Trip to Singapore. https://idazuwaika.wordpress.com

Waq Blog : https://idazuwaika.wordpress.com

Waq Go Japan : http://msiago.wordpress.com

Waq Go Story : http://msiago.wordpress.com/about

Waq SEA GAMES GO VIDEO UPLOADED :
http://msiago.wordpress.com

Waq in Korat, Thailand

Waq is yawnful

Waq observes politics, studies abandoned !

Waq refuses to grow up

Waq’s Go Blog : http://msiago.wordpress.com/

The Perl program is the following. Underlined is the regular expression to match my User Friendly Name, to extract just mine, and not my conversation partner.

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Who cares about English?

Found an old picture I took during WAGC2008.

I am actually very divided regarding the issue of teaching of mathematics and science in English. Deep inside, I want Malay language to be used as the medium, but I realise it’s just too inadequate for the moment.

If Malay is the medium, perhaps I can make money writing computing articles … haha selfish selfish 🙂

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Singapore Day Trip

I used to be wow’d when meeting famous Go characters for the first time. In 2008, it was Lee Chang Ho, world’s top player who I met during Korea AABC. In 2007, it was KGS Top Player, Fondle/Tartaric. Before that, there were Yuki Shigeno 2p, Cornel Burzo and Ondrej Silt. Heck, back during my double-digit kyu time, I was even wow’d to have met a 3d Japanese amateur, Tomahaku Urascoe.

Those were the times 🙂 . But from here onwards, I shall be wow’d no more, because I have met the greatest character in Go for all time ever forever – Go Seigen ! Go Seigen, currently 94 year-old is a legendary figure in Go world, mainly remembered for his revolutionary plays and being the main architect of Shin Fuseki theory along with his good friend, Kitani Minoru few decades ago.

Go Seigen was present in Ing’s Cup Final between Lee Chang Ho and Choi Cheol Han held recently in Singapore. Current result is 2-1 to Choi Cheol Han, and the 4th and 5th matches will be held in Taiwan in a month to determine the ultimate winner.

I was among 10 Malaysians who flew to Singapore to watch the third match of the final, on Saturday 7th March. I took budget flight Tiger Airways, which I deeply enjoyed, mainly because I managed to sleep before taking off and wake up only after touching down. Both go and return trips 🙂

Malaysian Go players in the observer seats, along with a white guy who I believe was among those who persisted to watch the game from start to end. Amazing patience, considering the very slow nature of professional games.

Lee Chang Ho (left) vs Choi Cheol Han (right) with Go Seigen (middle) watching. Lee Chang Ho is also known as Stone Buddha, for his expressionless face, and I just learned from Karen’s blog that Choi Cheol Han is known as Poisonous Snake for his deadly attacking style. Well, for this third game, he really deserved the name because his attack came so suddenly and swiftly.

Gotta thank Mun Yi for helping me a lot, including sneaking up on Go Seigen and the players 🙂

Priceless picture with Go Seigen. Singapore Weiqi Association officials were kind enough to let us Malaysian players to trouble him.

By afternoon, there were just too many people in the observer room, and to make things worse – the air conditioner failed to work. Everyone got sweaty and started gasping for oxygen. Ugh.. tournament was great, but I guess I could do without this part.

About the game itself, it was rather suprising to see so many mistakes from Lee Chang Ho, as pointed by Go Seigen in his analysis. I wonder why, I just hope he was just experimenting with new moves in order to be an even stronger player. Many I know are actually quite upset that he lost, although his opponent, Choi Cheol Han is an easily likable character as well. My respect for Choi Cheol Han is currently building fast, especially after reviewing his games against Liu Xing during the semi-final. Splendid attack !

Hehe, Philip and Hock Doong conspiring with Mr Tiong to get Go Seigen’s signature. Mr Tiong, as Malaysia Weiqi president, had access to the restricted area. Ho already could not contain his smile. Go here to read his account of the event.

Hmm… so much fascination with Go Seigen. I guess you have to be a Go player to understand why.

p/s: Yawn … I still haven’t recovered from the day trip fatigue.

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Getting cover book images

I am probably causing many people to yawn with plenty of programming related postings lately. 🙂 Honestly, due to the very vague restructuring status in our department, I have not been tasked with anything. My boss seems not to mind to see me programming for whatever reason, and I think she would like that better than seeing me watching animes in office.

Anyway I found out that OpenLibrary.org has very easy to use API and more importantly can provide cover book images for most of the books that I have. Project #3 tab is now updated to show how it’s done.

About the initial intention of earning money online, I’ll delay that to next week. Hopefully by then I will have moved to the new home and have got a permanent addresss.

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Misery

Too lonely to live,
Too lonely to die,
I am forever chained,
Because I cant unlove you.

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