Visitation with a difference

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Yesterday, I had steam boat with some of my NSS students at a coffee shop opposite Shaw Tower. The food was good but the company was better. I thank QiFeng for organizing it. Among the students, I got to meet were four students who are currently on Industrial Internship and under my charge; something I failed to pull off myself as they are frequently required at the customer’s sites.
I lost my hand phone the day before at the NP Convention Centre and I was pleasantly surprised by the support and advices from them. The phone was a very old model and I was quite confident that it would be returned to me soon. But apparently, it was not to be as it was switched off ever since I noticed that it was lost.
My responses to their feedback on my module:
1. I will push for TeraTerm more aggressively from now on for it supports Secure Shell (SSH), a common industry practice. Previously, I let the students choose between TeraTerm and HyperTerminal for they serve our purpose equally well. However, the industry wants SSH and HyperTerminal falls short in this aspect.
2. IOS upgrade is a common task in the industry. While our students knew about TFTP, they did not link the two tasks together. I will put a note in the VCN lab and use Packet Tracer for simulation practice.
3. It is heartening to hear from the students that the exposure to VoIP help them in their confidence. They may not know what to do exactly but they have a toe hold on the problem on hand.
Everyone at the table was inspired by Jackson’s feat – he obtained five professional certifications during his internship. I wish them Godspeed in their quest.
“What is the maximum number of connected switches in the spanning tree protocol?”
“Which has a higher priority: routing or voice packets in QoS?” (routing packets refer to packets sent by routing protocol)
“What is the minimum/maximum load size in an Ethernet frame?”
These are very technical (dry) questions if I were the one asking them. But this time, they were checking each other out. They were all ears. Why? They were sharing questions that their supervisor loved to ask during interviews. This is Learner-centred-Learning (LcL) in truth and in practice.

I dreamed a dream

Version 1( 47 yearsold singer ):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALQCkizx4UI

Version 2 (15 years old ): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcMJlTjzZgs&feature=related

Version 3 ( ?? years old ) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt-IBJpEMzA&feature=PlayList&p=DF3A74E6CEC5D5E5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2

My opinion score:
Version 1: very entertaining.
Version 2: superior in the delivery but less emotion and less entertaining.
Version 3: very classic, I liked the subtitle, it helped me enjoy the performance better.

Another superstar in the making: Charice Pempengco

Food, taste and hunger

Winner of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival on the theme "Food, taste and hunger".
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/1081/Chicken-a-la-Carte

ECE FOC 1-3 April ’09

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Let me recounted some ups and downs of this camp. Ups and downs, ups come first, so let’s begin with ups. This was the first time we have a real camp fire. The atmosphere was really great when you compared it with a camp fire created by torch lights. The cheers were solid, so solid that I was prepared to receive complaints from the residents. There were variety in the performance and skit. There singing, dancing and acting. This is in contrast to the previous years where students perform mainly hip hop.

As we walked around, it really gratify our hearts to see so many talents among the students:
They showed their enthusiasm and passion in their cheers.
They showed their assertiveness and their creativity when they prepare for the skits.
They showed their endurance and patience when the meals were late.

This was also our first time we used Camp David. We only managed to secure the camp and the trainers quite late. By the time we realized that participants must wear track pants, we have already sent out the welcome letters to the freshmen. We did the next best thing which was to call them up. Unfortunately, the information passed down was also distorted. The message became ‘to bring track pants in case it was cold at night’.

Vulgarity
Throughout the camp, I heard only one expletive and it was uttered when one student mess-up a scene in a skit. The whole camp jeered at the offending student and he apologized promptly. I was very happy with that because it showed that such behavior was not acceptable.

OTOT
We needed to work on the OTOT. I learnt this abbreviation from Wei Hao. It means ‘On Time On Target’. Our timing control was not very good: the camp fire was supposed to start at 9pm but we didn’t get going until 10pm. When Nancy complaint to me about the timing, I told her it was 9 pm, Indonesian time.

Mass Dance
All the campers were invited to perform the mass dance on ECE Induction Day. I looked forward to hearing their cheers again and the Tai Ge Wu (a kind of modern Taiwanese dance). This is once in a life time chance to perform in front of such a large audience of about 700. In all my years in NP, I got to speak to such a large crowd only once when I was the chairman for FOP two years ago. It did not last more than 5 minutes but it was very memorable. I hope the students will feel this way too.

Camp Leadership
I am particularly pleased with the composition of the leadership team which was incredibly diverse and yet able to rally together.

Embedded pipe

As part of my duty, I was given the opportunity to stay at the Loft@94, a student apartment with condominium facilities for 4 days with a few of my colleagues. On the first night, I was kept awoke by an intermittent yet resonating noise. At first, I thought it was a motor cycle at the car park and it would go away soon. But it persisted and persisted. After tossing in the bed for what seems like eternity, I got up and checked with my other roommates.
The reason for the noise was we shared a common wall and the water pipe was embedded in the wall. When he bath, the pipe vibrated and the noise was trapped in my closed room. On top of that, we were on the second storey; the water pressure was maintained by a pump instead of water tank on the top floor. When water flow, the pump was activated causing the noise I thought was from a motorcycle.
I only got to sleep after my colleague finished bathing, which was close to 1 am.