With this in mind, feedback was needed to see how overseas university compares to our local university, as the request comes directly from the PM, we can imagine how serious our government is taking the issue. Thus far the feedback line is still open (to my knowledge) and just now I saw something on TV that suggests while our PM was abroad he talked to Malaysian students and lecturers there to hear what they have to say.
One particular comment that was highlighted was from a Dr. Syed Nasrin Syed Zainal Abidin who previously taught in USM for 3 years and in the UK (Univ of Birmingham?) for 6 years. The comment was that when comparing our students in the UK and when he was teaching in USM, he believes that the students in Malaysia (USM) put a lot more effort into studying, their downfall was only that they are not proficient in English. He also believes that we need to prepare our student for the global market and not just for our region (South East Asia).
Here was the point that got me thinking, if our students are alreading putting their backs in studying, but still getting no luck in securing a job then it is our local university that actually does a bad job of preparing a student for the workplace. The university mainly focuses on the professional courses such as Medicine, Pharmacy, Engineering and so on (even bragging how good they are), while continuing to fail in preparing students with a general degree to have a grasp on what they would face when they enter the marketplace. This has been mentioned a lot of time, the university needs to know what the employers want, they can’t simply stuck a syllabus to a degree without realizing which part of the syllabus is actually going to help the student when they are working.
For a science major, I felt that my syllabus was designed as if all of the students wanted to be researchers and lecturers and enter academia. That is an impossibility in itself, some courses were plain useless and at times redundant, with more than one course covering the same basics. As an example is there a major difference between Enviromental Management and Aquatic Environment Management? not by much if you took the course, just the focus was changed.
The idea has been mooted for sometime now, the University need to have feedback from the employer what basics they want in their future employee. For the professional courses it is simple for the professional body to give feedbacks to univ, but other employers? I would not deny that some jobs would require extensive on the job training by employers as the job requirements are too highly specialized. But somehow I can see that most students comes out without even the basic knowledge. Some degrees have it the other way around, even though they are not professionally linked, they are somehow too specialized, making it hard for the graduate to find the exact work that will fit their degree. Thus making the degree just a requisite for higher pay and not knowledge.
For me I was lucky that along the way I picked up some basic human skills that is needed in almost every other job. Luck plus plain interest in the field of human psychology To which I can happily say that I have had a multitude of job while I was still studying, and not all in the same field. Thus, I gained experience on what my future employer would expect of me. To be on the crazy side, I chose a job which was not related at all to my degree and I’m having fun doing it
Which leaves me to my final question. Have your university education prepared you for your current job, or did you pick up the skills on your own? Leave a comment.
Till next time, Adieu

Some would say that they want to be a teacher because in their old job they had to do overtime till midnight and a teacher only gets to work till noon. What a mistake, you will hear a lecture on how a teacher’s work never ends and that you will most likely have to bring home work to do. Being a teacher is like doing a non-stop presentation, you have to get prepared everyday, and when else do you get prepared if not at home.
Some will have reasons related to their families, which would end up as being the same as above but with a little twist, here the lecturers might go softer on you. When it comes to holidays they were all smiling, yes teachers get tonnes of holidays, but never when we really need em. You can’t easily get of work to visit a dying relative and so on. The procedure to get a day off is not that easy.
Why are the lecturers bullying you with all these impossible to answer questions? because as one lecturer once said, “I’m afraid for my grandchildren” yes that one sentence means a lot. If our heart is not truly in teaching, wouldn’t we be teaching just for the sake of getting the montly pay and not teaching because we are responsible for the student’s future. One more thing is, all of the lecturers at the teacher trainee college are teachers who were upgraded to the status of a lecturer. To be on that level they must be passionate about their job.
If you don’t really love teaching, wouldn’t you burn out after a few years (yes teachers usually burn out, especially english teachers). Then what would happen after you have lost your drive to teach? Robotic teaching I suppose, nothing of real value that will sustain the student for life, maybe just for sake of passing exams.
Most of all they are so hard on us, because teaching is a noble profession, but it is being devalued by teachers who teach in a lackadaisical manner. Teacher’s are no longer looked up upon, instead parents use them as a scapegoat for their children’s problem. How many students nowaday hate their teacher? Which is saddening, but then wouldn’t it also be because the teacher himself is not pulling his own weight? As the lecturers are also teachers, (they still prefer being called cikgu rather than lecturers) they feel it as an affront to their profession.
Then you will ask, why am I writing this piece, fret not I will give you the answer. It is because I am sick of people who thinks that being a teacher is a way out of another job that they don’t like. I am sick of people who thinks teaching is a last chance job. For me, I joined up not because I don’t have a choice, I do have a choice, a choice I never exercised. I made a conscious decision to be a teacher, a decision I made after working part time as a teacher during my univ holidays (and afterwards). The satisfaction that you get as you see ur students progressing in their studies is more rewarding to me than getting 10k for a project that took me 2 weeks to complete. (Yes I used to do webdesign and that was my rates those days.)
I could have applied to get a job at a multitude of government agencies. But I did not, instead I only chose to go to only 1 interview, the KPLI interview.
The true reason why I applied for KPLI was because one day during my second stint as a part time teacher I realised that I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing. The student was not understanding what I was teaching. In the 1st stint, the students actually understood something, but now they are not. I was actually afraid at that moment because I realised, that I am not teaching them anything. I was untrained, I don’t really know how to handle these kids. That’s why I applied for KPLI because I wanted to be a trained teacher.
The principal of that school once said that “A doctor can kill his patient one by one, but a teacher can kill a generation.”
p/s: So for those who came to my blog wanting to find out stuff about MTeST, here is a challenge. If you are still up to it, go ahead, by all mean be a teacher but don’t be a mediocre teacher, be a great one. That is a challenge both for me and for you.

The trek that I went for with my friends was near Pangsun, specifically we went up Gunung Nuang up to Sungai Lopo. The place is not your regular spot, as usually nobody goes up there. Only the irregular enthusiast that walks up there, and the locals who goes up to their land.
As it is, I went on the trek twice, each time with a different set of people. The first time around I went with 7 other persons. Most of them are not friends of mine; instead they are friends of friends. Of the 8 of us, 5 were guys and the rest were girls. 4 were Chinese, one Indian while my friend and I accounted for the 3 Malays. The second time that I went there, it was in a smaller group comprised of 4 persons (2 guys and 2 girls).
For each of the time that we went up, we spent around the same time getting up and down. Also, almost the same time was spent up there. All in all, around 2 hours was needed to get up to the place. But, going down usually it is only 1 hour and a half, or less.
The place is simply astounding, no amount of word can be used to describe the place. The water is simply cold, icy cold and tastes sweet. (Even plain water has taste, you just have to develop your senses to it). The view is the kind of view that put words into authors mind, and notes in a musician’s sheet. If you stay still for a minute, you can hear the music of the forest, the rushing of water in between the rocks, the trilling of birds up in the tree, the blows of the wind upon the high leaves, the rustles of the grass in between your feet. It was simply an amazing experience just to be there.
It felt awkward going down, because I felt heavy hearted leaving the place. Wanting just an extra minute more to savour the beauty and serenity of the place. But in the end you realize, that you have to leave the place and journey back to the brick jungle.
My friend and I agreed on trying to make it our weekly activity, and till today we have succeeded in going on it twice. But looking at his schedule and mine, I am not so sure that I will be able to go on it as much as I wish. He with his work and me with my studies, but hopefully I can go on trekking for at least five more times.
Note: My lecturer’s husband is asking to join me trekking, should I say yes or no?

Back in the old days when I was in USM, I didn’t manage to do any sniping. Firstly coz back then, camphone was real expensive and I was already luggin around my huge Nikon F60. So basically its useless. As sniping demands that you be discreet and my Nikon tends to attract attention the minute I put my hand on it. But guess what, among the best pictures of people (girls ) was taken on that camera, and I usually get permission first, or later
And I did dreamed of getting longer range zooms as to allow me to snipe from a distance, but as a lowly student I didn’t have the cash So I resorted to honing my people skill, and making them pose for me. Or for the few, I’ll take the shot and tell them that I just couldn’t resist.
Preference wise I like to take pictures with permission, as you won’t unnecessarily waste film on bad shots (remember film is expensive). So Daylight Murder is more of my style.
So here’s a few tip and tricks to get you started.
For Snipers. The basic is simple.

• Stay Low
• Turn off your cam’s sound effect if you don’t want to attract attention.
• Cover your camera with your hand
• Make it like your doing something else with it. SMS, playing game or anything (digicam won’t have any advantage for this)
• Get help from you friend, make him your shield, shoot from weird positions over his shoulder, in between his arms
• Try to get the smallest camera/camphone, with the best resolution, atleast 1 megapixel.

• Be Prepared.
• Always set your camera beforehand, a photo ops doesn’t come twice
• Memorize the necessary steps to take pic with your camphone. Models with a shortcut have an advantage

I don’t really have any experience doing this except once or twice with other’s people hardware. BTW. Handycams are good sniping tools coz they usually come with a substantial zoom which would cost way more with camera. And I have had good results from a Sony Handycams with a 22x zoom
For Daylight Murder, the basic is the same.

• Be Prepared
• When going out to take pictures, always prepare your camera before hand. If you prefer not to lose your photo ops, make sure the settings are all right. For me I set it to either Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority, And Auto or Nightshot for nights. Manual settings are for photoshoots only.
• Dress up like a photographer would, wear those photo vests (optional if u have the human skills
• Extra stuff for your camera if need be, battery and films (if using traditional camera)

• Human Skills
• Always carry a smile, dont scrunge your face or anything
• A polite word goes a long way in getting a good pic
• Sometime looking blur does the trick in getting your shot
• Develop some conversational skill, u may need it to cover up what you just did

You need not be discreet when taking pictures in this form, suffice to say, you shouldn’t be discreet else it would lose all the appeal and the fun. But taking cue from sniping, you could pretend to fiddle around your camera while doing it. Though my camera has this clicking sound that is very hard not to notice.
I prefer taking pictures in this style when there is a large crowd. A convocation for once is a good place as there are tons of people and also people with cameras, so you wouldn’t seem out of place (only what you are doing is). A wedding, open days, are all good places to go do what you love best, taking pictures. (of girls)
My Favourite Modus Operandi
Usually this is my MO (modus operandi), I walk around the place carrying my camera loaded and ready to go. Upon acquiring subjects I would close in and take the pic while smiling. This would reduce the awkwardness that may follow. And as fast I can, I would turn and walk away and look like I’m busy. If you can’t or don’t want to elude the subject you may continue smiling and saying that you are taking candids, then continue walking. (Info: this is also a good pickup line, offer to send the pics to her ) (BTW, I rarely do this anymore, not many opportunity)
My other MO, includes going close to people and taking blind shots (blind shots are taken without looking at the viewfinder. I have managed to score some portraits in this manner – huge pics just like ur passport photo ) You can also do this while holding up your camera close to your face and pretend to fiddle with the viewfinder. A piece of cleaning cloth is very handy at this point.
My most used MO, is simply to go up to people and ask if they would like a pic taken. You never know if they are willing or not It won’t even hurt a bit if they refused. And trust me when I say that this is my most successful and fruitful MO. I have gotten girls to pose single or in groups with this sytle. Even got one pic in which the girl was doing funny faces (and no she’s not my GF)
All in all, human skills are a must if you want to be a good people photographer. I do have to thanks my friends who have taught me to be bolder when taking pictures. But as my skills are not that good and my personal preference is taking panoramic views, so you won’t be seeing much of that part of me

* Sniping : The art of taking pictures discreetly
* Daylight Murder : The art of taking pictures with style.

*If you find this useful, please don’t hesitate to have a look at my wishlist
p/s: Sorry that I cannot post the pictures of people I have taken with this technique.
1. As most of the pictures that I have taken are taken with a solemn promise to the subject not to display it publicly
2. Also the issue that some of them are highly internet savvy and me not wanting to risk my own neck.
3. Some of them are already married /with bf after/before the pics… so again.. not risking my neck.
4. Too lazy to scan the photos hehe (come and help me scan )
Maybe later on in a private gallery for selected users (or anybody that buys me a Nikon Coolpix 4800 )