Happy New Year! Welcome 2012!

It's that day of the year again, where everyone would be on cloud nine, fireworks could be heard everywhere, and the constant cheers and screams in the local mall could be heard all the time. Yes everyone, it is new years day!

Unlike most people that would get out with friends to the mall or places like Dataran Merdeka to celebrate the occasion and countdown every second until 2012 arrives, I decided to have a quiet and peaceful one with my family in my sweet home this year. Mum bought a marble cake to celebrate the occasion and I made tea. It sure is quiet, but it doesn't mean it isn't fun.

As 2012 has arrived, I have a few new year resolutions I vow to fulfill. The first is to reduce my body weight, which I didn't really give any concern to until recently. Also, I have just finished my SPM last year so I wish I could score decent results that could get me into college. I'm not really looking forward much to my SPM results as I'm not really the "score ten distinction" kind of people, my studies are below average actually, all I really need is 3 credits (one of them must be maths) so that I could enroll myself into the Diploma In IT Course in SEGi college, hope everything goes well.

What I would really be looking forward to would be the technology that we would be seeing in 2012. With the extremely fast pace that technology is advancing these days, I wouldn't be surprised if there are quad-core smartphones being made. And not to mention the annual update of the Apple products, we would be seeing an iPad 3, new MacBooks, iMacs and hopefully the iPhone 5, iPod Touch 5G and iPod Nano 7G. There are much to look forward to in the tech world in 2012. If all goes well, many great products are going to be released that would burn our wallets until it will be reduced to ashes, so start saving money people! :)

Lastly, I wish everyone a happy new year and have a great 2012. Peace! :)

Remember The Weak SPM Students, Too-By Johan Jaaffar

Found this really great article when I was cleaning up my room today and decided to post it here. Read it! Trust me, it's really a great article.  Take note that this article is written at the time when SPM results were just announced, so the time in the article may not be that correct. Ok, enough talking, here it is.

CELEBRATION time is here again! Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia super-achievers had their day of fame when the results were announced two weeks ago. Understandably, they were on cloud nine. Parents and teachers have every reason to be proud. The ministry ought to gloat, for this is the best SPM results in four years. According to the ministry, 368,559 students or 91.2 per cent got their certificates. There were 9,239 students who got A-, A and A+ in all subjects or 2.28 per cent of the total. There were 363 students who got all A+s, four of them with 12 A+s, making them the best overall students. Kudos to them. Despite worries that the Internet, TV and computer games are distracting our young, the results proved otherwise. Our students are managing the challenges well. I must add, among the super-achievers, May Lee Cai Ling from Sekolah Aminuddin Baki attributed her success to the creative works that she had been reading, among them The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series. These works of literature helped her to think critically and creatively. At least some of them attributed their success to other books, not just text and workbooks.

I must admit our students are getting better by the year. I don't remember such stellar achievements during my days in school. Yes, there were bright ones, and they scored some As, but scoring 16As, as someone did not too long ago, was out of this world. Had the ministry not capped the number of subjects that can be taken, we would have seen a few students with more As than players in a rugby team. Which is staggering to say the least.

The super-achievers these days get feted, photographed and their stories in the papers and on TV. Good for them. They ought to motivate the rest. They are an inspiration to others. More remarkably, they are able to cope up with the high expectations demanded by parents and teachers. I'm sure there are tiger mothers and fathers among them who expect nothing less than top performance.
I am just wondering aloud what happened to the rest -- the other 97.72 per cent of students. Of course, there are those who scored a few As. And there are those who did not do well at all, the below-average students, or those whose results are just cukup makan or worse. Little or no attention is being paid to them. They are away from the limelight, swallowing their pride, having to live with parents and teachers who might even label them failures. Result announcements are horrible times for them. You won't see VIPs having their photographs taken with them.

Naturally, we like winners, not losers. We celebrate success. We want to prove our worth by narrating the success of our underlings, our subordinates, our students. Nothing wrong there. But we need to give attention to those who did not perform well, too, the average and below-average students, whose results we don't normally bother about. And, of course, the weak ones, the bottom 10 per cent, whom we normally assume are losers.

Not all students are bright, studious or tenacious. Some are slow starters, some are academically adverse, others have their own personal issues -- dyslexia, family background, medical conditions, whatever. There are those, of course, who are mentally incapable of coping with certain concepts and ideas -- some have problems grasping with numbers while others have difficulty comprehending complex matters. Many of them have normal physical dexterity, adequate memory and common sense. It is just that learning or studying is not one of their strengths.

There are those with mentally deficient intelligence (low IQ) and whose social behaviour is less than what is accepted as age-level standards. And there are slow learners, too. We normally lump them as "weak students" and place them in classes with the other "rejects" -- the naughty, lazy, unruly ones. More often than not, there is no proper help for them, no counselling, and no proper system to accommodate their requirements.

Some schools, in pursuit of good results, leave these students to fend for themselves. They are nothing more than spoilers and culprits who will bring down an otherwise better percentage of passes. They are merely statistical aberrations. When you have a large student population, you tend to concentrate on the better ones. Teachers are being pushed to ensure good results. They, too, are feted and celebrated when they deliver the most As and passes for the subjects they teach.

But average and below average students need attention, in fact more so. Not all students are born equal. Not all are academically sound. Some are studious beyond reproach, others are playful but equally able. They may be weak academically but excel in other fields. Not all good students should to be channelled to the sciences. Many would want to opt for humanities and social sciences. The wisdom at one point was that all above-average students must join the science streams in national schools. We assumed only students in the sciences could propel this nation to greater heights. The bias and prejudice towards non-science students are evident in the system, even today.

We certainly need our students to perform well. And for the brightest to pursue their studies in the best universities in the land and abroad. But a nation needs all. We need workers of all types and grades with a variety of abilities. We need human capital that transcends all disciplines. And more importantly, we need creative and innovative people to compete among the best. We want "survivors", too, not just excellent graduates with few skills to survive in real life.

Creativity can come from anyone, the guys behind some of the world's greatest inventions were not all geniuses. The cyber lords were largely dropouts or ordinary blokes, yet they came out with ingenuity, freshness and originality in their creations. They made tonnes of money in the process. There are others who excel in being contrarian. Street-smartness can't be learnt in classrooms. In short, given the opportunity, lots of hard work, and a bit of luck, anyone can succeed.

To the super-achievers, congratulations. To the rest, lift your chin, walk tall, follow your hearts, do what you think is best, you will succeed in life, too.

I'm back :)

Hey guys :) (if there is anyone reading, lol)
I'm back here now :) after quite some time, a few months I think, hey that's pretty long time. I have long given up blogging, but well, I just can't figure out why I suddenly have the urge to post this here.

Well there is reason actually, that is, I can't sleep, lol. I went to bed at 1am but then I woke up at 2am and I'm unable to get back to dream land again, must the coffee I took earlier on, I looked up at the ceiling for half an hour and well, still can't get back to sleep. So I popped my iPod touch from the drawer beside my bed and fired up my router and modem and started tapping away entering the cyber world. Well, strangely, this time the cyber world seems pretty boring, that's really odd as the cyber world is like a "playground" to me. Of cause there's a reason too, lol. I checked Facebook and there are no notifications and I can't seem to find a perfect photo or status updates to mess around and annoy people. And the Internet is crippling slow today and I can't watch any YouTube video at all. And suddenly blogging came into my mind.

So I quickly opened a new tab and typed in www.blogger.com in the address bar and there it is, the good old blogger's homepage, how nostalgic. Quickilu signed in typed this post, lol. Well I have nothing much to say actually, I think I might just crap about my life so far since from my last post.

Firstly, unlike what I said from my previous post, I didn't managed to change my phone and I'm still stuck with my Nokia 6100. Hell yeah, the reason for this? Simple, I went to check out the phone that I wanted, the Nokia N8, turns out that phone is total rubbish and bullshit so I didn't buy it. So I was considering an iPhone or Android that moment, but well I didn't bought it since it's almost end of the year. Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2011 and Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011 is coming in a few months time, where new android smartphones and tablets would be announced. Not to mentioned the annual apple events throughout the year (April, June, September, October) is coming too where apple would announce the brand new iPads, iPhones and iPod touches. So I might as well all of this to be out first b4 I buy it, so I have postponed my phone-to-smartphone-upgrading plan to September 2011.

Well, since January 2011 until now, it hasn't been quite smooth sailing for me. Mom tried hard controlling my "computer times" and I got into quite a lot of arguments with her. Not that I wanted to quarrel so much with her, but, no human could stand 6 hours of studying a day. I also got into quite some trouble with school authorities, my offense? Spiky hair, great... Those stupid discipline teachers just have nothing else better to do and they focus on catching people's hair instead on those people with serious offense like stealing or truancy. My hair is the type that stands up easily and no matter how I explained, they just won't except. They even tried pressing my hair down themselves but they failed terribly. And guess what, they can't handle the shame and they applied some smelly hair cream and pressed it down. And after that I got a Surat amaran (warning letter) from them and threatened to expel me if I get caught again, stupid school huh. So I went home and applied lots of my mum's conditioner on my hair, wrapped it up with tower for one night (while sleeping) and the next day, Voila! All the hair went down.

Of cause there are good happenings too, that's CNY. Had fun at grandma's place with relatives, especially my cousin. This year's CNY is like the "CNY of tech" the iPad, iPhones, and iPods became the center of attraction for the day, kids played the iPad a lot while me and my cousin challenged each other with iPhone/iPod touch games. Yeah, I also watched The Green Hornet 3D on the second day of CNY with my parents, that is definitely the best movie of 2011 (so far). Good action, comedy, story line and stunts all put into a single movie which is awesome, really worth the movie.

That about it folks, it's 3am now and I think I could sleep bos, my eyes ate getting heavy, haha. Spent half an hour on this post wow!

Need A New Phone

My current phone is now really screwed up, the speaker has problem, i cant listen it ringing and i end up with 10 miss calls sometime. Somtimes it couldn't detect my SIM card, thats one big problem as I have to remove the battery to reinsert the SIM card, and i have to reset the settings. So anyone can recommend some phones? No iPhone please, i really want it but i just don't have enough money.

Exam End!

So, basically, exam has ended, YEAH MAN!!!!!!!!! It's time to party (only available for 4P1, 4P2, 4P3 XD)

Good Job To MCMC/SKMM

2 days ago sent complaint to SKMM/MCM regarding the slow Internet I am getting, the next day afternoon, my connection was back to normal. And just now I got a phone call from MCMC/SKMM regarding my report, hey that was a surprise, looks like they are really making an effort in improving the services now, good job. Keep it up.

Why UniFi High Speed Broadband is a big joke....

All Malaysians know about the UniFi high speed broadband that was launched on March 24 this year. This is my first impression about the UniFi, "hey how great, finally we have access to broadband that has speed faster than 10mbps". Everything was fine, until they told us the fucking price, which is insane.


Well, anyway that's months ago, and I haven manages to let go of the stress of the HSBB, lol. But recently, Streamyx reactivated my hate towards them, so they throttled my speed, WTF. My speed usually 100kbps over become 10kbps, now that a really primitive speed.

So I start to propaganda here and there about TmNet again, so this time my target is the insanely priced UniFi. Why do I say its expensive? People may think "what is this kid talking about, his asking for too much, with RM249/month for the 20mbps package, what more does he want?" So let me tell people who are thinking like this, RM249/MONTH FOR 20MBPS IS WAY FUCKING EXPENSIVE!

Ok, let's make use of our crappy internet shall we, take a look at this, click for larger image.

This is a service provider from Singapore, our neighbouring country. Look at that, 100mbps package for just $124.12 in sing dollar, which is roughly RM290. With just additional RM40, I can get 5 times the speed in Singapore. So this proofs that HSBB is just a joke, even is we have 20mbps, I'm pretty they will be throttling it pretty soon, so whats the point?

Why don't I just save up that RM249 every month and get an iPhone with a contract from Maxis or Digi, I can enjoy my money more like that, think about this TmNut.