» May 4th, 2006, 0300 hr.

Early morning..
The birds are yet to stir.
The chirping of crickets and other insects of the night have stopped.
All is quiet in the neighborhood but for an occational dog bark.
….. *Woof*…… *Woof Woof* … … . .

» 0315 hr.

*RING!!! RING!! RINGGNN!!!”
*RING!!! RING!! RINGGNN!!!”
….
** unlock bed room doors **
*RING!! RINGGNN!!!”
** patter patter patter patter patter patter **
….
*RING!! RINGGNN!!!”

(sleepy voice) Hello?
~~*~~!
&=~< +^:`~!
(awake voice) Is that so?
*~-_!
Ok,
*~-_+^:`~…
Ok,
~*~~!
Right, thank you very much.

Hey! Hey! Every one wake up!!
Get up everybody.

May, wake up, we got Tsunami alert, get dress up, we have to go higher ground.
(mumbling)…don’t touch me…no..bull shit..
What!? You little! “SLAP!”
“Arrgghhh!!” What did I do!, let me sleep!!
Go dress up now and get important things ready. We’re going to Toorak or hospital, it’s the only higher place I know.

Important things?…Ok. I got my identification card in my jeans. That’s all I need.
In any case something happen to me and people can identify my filthy body, they should atleast get to know who I was.
So yes, I’m ready.

Listen to the radio
Message from BBC in regard to tsunami alert.
Early morning 3 o’clock there was big earth quake at scale 8 in North side of Tonga.
So tsunami alert come up for Fiji, NZ and other small islands.

Well luckly we didn’t have to go anywhere and nothing serious did happened.
While we were preparing things and calling up friends to warn about tsunami alert, we got another radio news saying the alert has been lifted.

Thank god for that. You never know what will happen to this tiny island like Fiji.
So about 2hours this morning we were worried sick and around 6:30am after radio announcement, we got relaxed.
My dad canceled his trip to the west and he told us not to go to work today.
But then we got some stuffs up at work and everything back to normal so here were are at work.
What a hard working freaks we are!

I really don’t want to think about tsunami as I’m never been prepared for those kind of catastrophic disasters. I guess if something happen, I’ll be the very first gonner.

Oh well, nobody can tell the faith. So if I must die then I will die no matter how prepared I am or not.
So I don’t really worry about it.

Anyway just blogging about my morning here at Fiji islands.

Shuuuuu…
Our boss started trying his hand on blogging.
Oh yes, it’s the incredible WordPress.

And Jason’s StrangePants is coming slowly too.
He’s using textpattern though. I bet we gotta read some interesting stuffs over there.

We apologise for the title but the following article does NOT contain profanity.

Being an IT degree holder with no other accomplishments common these days such as A+, N+, MCP, MCSD, MCSE, etc, I place an obscene amount of value and pride on my single degree.

To me, a degree from CQU Fiji International Campus is comparable to a qualification from one of the Ivy League colleges in the US. This is because IMNSHO, CQU is the best institution available in the Fiji Islands.

My degree is my dearest procession. It is my bragging rights to other less fortunate and less gifted than me. It is a thing to put on display as an awe-inspiring object for the uneducated. Why do you think we get the option at graduation to get the certificate in gold plate or sliver, or carved into wood? If not to flaunt it?

I care very much about issues that would belittle my esteemed degree.

I can’t take any comment that puts a degree from CQU, its students or the institution itself in a bad light – especially those of slander from other universities’ graduates on the quality of my university’s degree, its education or the work of its alumni.

Lately, I have been hearing comments from some of my friends still studying in CQU that programming courses are becoming easier year after year. Every one or two year, ‘the powers that be’ take out a few topics of study from the course COIT11134. Fundamental subjects I studied back in my days have been moved to a higher level course. The assignments are so easy any of my mates from my year can do them in 10 mins flat after a night of binge drinking.

I am a programmer by profession. I can’t take this kind of rumours, if it is true, who’d respect a programmer that came out of my university?

So, I took it upon myself to investigate. I went to the course website, got the course profile. Alas! it is true. Half of what I learnt in this unit is deemed too advanced by ‘the powers that be’ and is now banished from the curriculum.

I wasn’t done yet, I wanted to check the assignments too. Oh? They have been locked for access by students only? Are we so ashamed of the pitiful excuses for an assignment that we have to hide it from prying eyes? That can’t stop me, nothing can stop a be-raved man, they’ve gone and destroyed my prized possession, my precious degree by cheapening its value with watered down versions of fundamental courses.

I’ve got contacts in uni who can get me the assignment details so I got one of them to email me the damning documents. And my choice of words was correct, they are indeed damning documents they have condemned the students doing this particular assignment to finish their degrees with half the essential knowledge if ever they were to choose programming as their careers.

The problem is not just with the course itself but with the course coordinators too. I have a choice excerpt from this term’s assignment materials which shows exactly what the designer of the course think of the intellect of potential students, and the amount of effort that he wants put into the course by them.

KISS
Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS). Don’t try to do anything fancy. There is no need. You won’t get any extra marks for complex implementation. Trying to complex solutions will only slow down your solution. Limit yourself to the material covered in Programming A and the first 5 weeks of Programming B.

I whole heartedly disagree with the above. I believe it is a stupid attempt to try and get more people to pass the subject by making the subject easier. Instead of thinking up such childish acronyms, lecturers and course coordinators should be spending their time actually teaching the less gifted students.

“Keep It Simple, Stupid”? Is it the ‘in thing’ now to insult students for no reason?

How about ‘Don’t try to do anything fancy.’? Are the submitted assignments so complicated that they are ‘out of the grasp’ of the university’s unending list of part-time tutors? This kind of attitude in teaching inhibits learning and creativity. If students didn’t think of doing any thing fancy, where will we get the polish and the flair? How do we discover new techniques? Where do we get our next Newtons, Edison or Einstein or even Bill Gates for that matter?

One word CQU, you are going about this the wrong way. Making courses easier to pass and pulling more students through your programs may be better for business, but it is not doing anyone any good in the long run.

Please don’t devalue my degree. It is my pay cheque. It is my rice pot. It is something my parents used the last of their retirement funds on. Keep the courses reasonable, teach the students well and let me and other alumni keep whatever good reputation we made for ourselves and for the university through hard work and dedication in our field of study and work. For all of us’ sake!

For my beloved university and respected colleagues.
Zatlite

Technorati Tags: Information Technology, Aung Tun Tint Kyaw, Bachelor Degree, Certificate, Central Queensland University, Education, Programming

Hi Yall!

Just a note to say, I’m back in Fiji and back to Mayvelous.
The trip was alrite, well…a bit of mix feelings. Nevertheless, it was pretty enjoyable getting to see many new things and places.

The only thing I got to say is, stop telling me that I’ve gone thinner.
I got to Adelaide, my friends saw my pic and said “May, you gone thinner than last year we met you”.
I came back to Fiji, the first thing my mom said, “My daughter, you’re so thin and dark”,
my dad said, “You’re like a slice of bamboo, got so thin”.

Oh please!
My sis didn’t feed me well back in Adelaide and I had to do lots of exercises like walking through parks, climbing hills, running after buses and carrying heavy stuffs. I became a hunch-back and cut down more fats.

Don’t worry, I’m back in office where no movement or exercise required and back at home with lots of mom’s cooking which definitely make me gain some weights. (hopefully!)

Oh, how I love that smell of my stinking old room, what a beautiful sight to see my stacks of old, dusty books and piles of unwashed cloths, what a delight to see my old buddies, cockroaches. LOL.
Such a great feeling to get up late and waken by a yell and a bang from my dear old brother and it’s so good to see my favorite cheerful people at office, they surely missed me. (NOT!)

Anyway it’s great to be HOME!

Out of 360+ photos I took over my 3 weeks stay in Adelaide, these are the one with “ME” in it.
I used up the monthly upload limit at my flickr account so am using 7ven backup account for these.
Cheers.

We’re having a serious 7s fever today. Most of us out of the office and those who come to office must stick close to TV set for live update of this 7s epidamic news.

Image source: FijiTimes

This weekend has been really embarrassing and educational for me as I learnt quite a few new words through hardship and stupidity.

It’s all stated on Friday night when I was chatting with two of my friends – a gal and a guy from aus. They were talking about shopping and stuffs, which is not my specialties and I wasn’t really paying attention to at that moment. I was busy fixing some stuff at the back.

Then on one point when my friend said he got a boxer, it caught my attention, so I stated to get along in their conversation by saying:
“You? Box?”, and there began the whole story.

I merrily took this “Boxer” as some kind of boxing gloves and I was a bit surprised cos’ he doesn’t seem to me as a boxer type. So I simply ask about that and try to joke at him. It was such a stupidest move ever!

My friends started laughing at me that instant and the guy said:
“FYI: Boxer = underwear”

Then I got hot to the face and said:
“Oops, well excuse the Fiji girl”.

He said:
“Yah OOPS, more like Fiji Thaw Thu”.

There, a slap to the face. “Thaw Thu” here means from the village or a bush, in Fijian something like “Kai Co Lo” (kai tho lo). The idiots from the bush. Haha.

Well, what can I say; it was my stupidity that I didn’t know that usage. My girl friend was laughing at best she could and telling me how silly I was.

I just told them with a bit of awkwardness that I don’t go shopping a lot and I don’t know about under-wears named boxer. I only know shorts, panties, undies and briefs.
So I slept through that night with –
Boxer = underwear,
Boxer = underwear,
Boxer = underwear, in my head.

Ok my unfortunate humiliation didn’t stop there, the next day (Saturday night), another girl friend of mine came to greet me with how she laughed about the boxer story the gal told her on the phone. That’s just great isn’t it, yah spread the world gal.

I started to think, they were a bit mean by laughing too much at me. How would I know all those fancy names they give to the underwear. So I went through that night with irritated feeling on my friends, being so picky on me for my small mistake.

Not done yet…
Tonight (Sunday night) I happened to watch “Hope & Faith” TV series and this particular episode showed how Hope forced her husband to wear a boxer and the husband got really uncomfortable about it.

Then it all came back to me about my embarrassing boxer and I tried to warn/educate my poor mother (who says lots of mistakes in some occasions) with my boxer story. I was telling her:

“You know mom, if you and your friends ever happen to discuss about underwears, remember the “Boxer” is one of those underwears and don’t ever ask them like I did to my friends.”
And I told her about my mishap.

I should have keep my mouth shut at that moment and let my mom thank me for the warning but NOOO, I just have to continue and show off my smart discovery (rather the worst, the stupidest move ever!) by saying:

“There see, it even comes in “Hope & Faith”, pretty popular brand this boxer must be. I thought it’s only in Australia, now they use those in U.S too. Wow it’s a world-wide brand and I didn’t know about it!

I can’t blame my friends for laughing at me now. Who wouldn’t know such a famous brand but me!”

$hit! Crap! Holly cow! Help me! Why it always happening to me! Eeehhehehee.

There came a loud cracking and freaking laughs from my brother and sister which really gave me a big shock. They were laughing at me for about 2 min without saying anything but “OH MaSu, you are sooooooooo STUPID!”

I was like…
“What? What did I say? So you know about boxer then? Good for you! Well I didn’t know so I’m telling my mom not to make the same mistake as me! You got a problem with that?”

I absolutely have no clue why they laugh that much for, cos’ they didn’t laugh much when I first tell my mom about the boxer story but now…they laughing like never been before. So I got lost there, and asked them what I said wrong and why are they laughing that much.

Then my brother asked me, what did I understand by this word “Boxer”. I told him, “well it’s an underwear, I was just telling mom about, what so funny about it”,
Then he asked again:
“What did you just said before about the boxer?”

So I got confused, rethink what I said and explained him properly that this boxer must be the world famous underwear brand or a name tag.
Then my sister said:
“There you go stupid! Boxer is not a brand, it’s a term for men undies.”
I go like “HUH!!???” LOL

My brother said: “Have you ever heard of Boxers for men and Knickers for women?”
My smart arse sister added “Another name for women underwear is called – Lingerie.”

Ok that’s it. It’s official. I’m the biggest idiot of all time.
I didn’t know any of those and I have no idea how my 16 yr old sister knows about it and me 22 doesn’t.

Then I go: “OMG no wonder my friends laugh at me and called me Fiji Thaw Thu, I’m such a fool.”
My bro doesn’t help me but said “MaSu, even Fiji Kai Co Lo(s) know what boxer is.”

So I got nothing more to say and have to run for the dictionary.
My mom was laughing at me and said “You try to out smart me by telling me the wrong things that you don’t even understand of.”

There go another big “OOOPPPSSSSS!!” LOL

So now I noted down –

Boxer/Boxer Shorts – underwear for men.
n men’s underpants similar in design to SHORTS worn by boxers.

Lingerie/knickers – panties/undies for women.

1. (Brit) a woman’s or girl’s garment worn under other clothes and covering the body from the waist to the tops of the legs: wearing only (a pair of) knickers and a bra.
2. (US) = knicker-bockers.
   IDM – get one’s ‘knickers in a twist (Brit sl) to become angry, confused or nervous; to react to sth more strongly than is necessary: There’s no need to get your knickers in a twist – we’ve got two hours before the plane leaves.

Knickerbockers (US knickers) – short trousers gathered jut below the knee.

To add to those fancy terms, my sis bonuses me with the word “Thong”. I only know slippers and flip-flops so this “Thong” is new for me. Thank god I know now before someone tells me about Thong and I might go say stupid thing like “Ting, Thong, Thang” and make a fool of myself again.

Thong:

1. a narrow strip of leather, used eg. As a fastening or a whip.
2. (US) = FLIP-FLOP.

So this week definitely has been educational and most humiliated week ever – 3 days in a roll. Gosh!
So here I am sharing and spreading the world about my latest embarrassment.
I wonder what kind of embarrassing things you said/done lately and whether you know about the boxer.
Haha I bet you do, you can’t be that silly like me. If you feel like sharing some of your humiliating stories, please do so as I very much like to hear some.
I promise I won’t laugh.

Incase of live and death emergency such this, Buried alive, who would you save?

TWO children and their mother were buried alive after a landslide tore through part of their home at Vunivau outside Labasa at the weekend.

Their 70-year-old grandmother, who survived after being thrown into a nearby drain by the force of the disaster was still in shock yesterday.

I was just wondering…where this man was sleeping when the event happened…the wife close by and go for the mother.
Hmmm…Impressive!

Don’t take me wrong, I do pity this poor man on his losts. Just that I’m trying to think logically to who he should go for.

How is the level of affection and love between the mother, the wife and to the kids?
I might not be qualify to judge on this as I’ve never been married or have kids but what would I/you do in case of this.

I don’t know which one is stronger, the love for your mother or the love for your partner or the love for your own child?
Ofcos if my husband is an arse-hole then I would definitely ignore him and go for my mother or my kids.
But then on the choice of the mother and the kids, I would go for my kids…I guess that’s what all mother/parents would do. Ok lets not talk from a gal point of view. From a girl point of view, no girl would try to save a husband, should be the other way round rite?

Lets try from the guy(your) point of view, who would he go for? Why he couldn’t help the wife who was sleeping next to him and why not kids? They are lighter to carry…why the mother?
Gosh I sounded like I hate my mother. You know what i’m trying to say rite?

My way of looking at it is:
The youngers have lots of future ahead so the youngers should get more survival chance than the 70 year old elder. and what a 70-year-old do much for…say next 10 to 20 years?

Am I right in saying what I said or what would you have done? Hmmm so what’s your opinion on this?
Or do we just blame on the rotten fate?