Another day...another presentation

Tomorrow morning I will be at one of the private universities, giving a presentation at a knowledge sharing session. The audience will be from the university community, lecturers and students, researchers and govt agencies related to technology and research.

I have an one hour slot to fill and so far my slide count is at 33 slides. That comes about to 2 minutes of talking per slide. Hopefully there will be questions for me to answer to fill up the time.

Wish me luck.

Tears of Joy.... tears of sorrow..UPSR results comes around

UPSR results are out. I was at AF1's school for the results. Mama and I got there at about 12pm just in time when the Year 6 kids are assembled at the open hall of the school. Parents were starting to arrive at that point.

The Headmistress started to announce the overall results. There were improvement in all the subjects but not by much. probably around 10% increase in A achievements. Overall there were 70 students with straight A's compared to 64 last year.

The teacher called up each student one by one to get their results starting with class 6A. AF1 was in 6E so there was quite a wait for us. When her class' turn finally came, they let her class teacher do the honours to callup the students to get their result slip and announce the results as well. I was really really nervous waiting for her name to be called up. At least I dont have to wait long, her name starts with A and sure enough when the teacher calls up her name... 'AF1........5As!'

And I was going 'Alhamdulillah' all her hard work and our prayers have been answered. My eyes were swelling and tried damn hard not to let any tears flow. I was overjoyed, I was ecstatic and when I look over to her, she was smiling and still calm, keeping her composure.

Out of 40 kids in her class, one boy failed to get 5As. He ended up crying, consoled by the class teacher and his mom. There were contrasting scenes all around. There were kids crying tears of joy hugging each other (the girls of course), there were boys jumping for joy at their results, punching their hands in the air with triumph.

There were kids smiling although they got 3As. There were kids crying because they only obtained 4As. Overheard this one kid saying 'I'm dead man! I'm dead! My parents will kill me!'. There were kids running to hug their parents to show off their results. There were kids consoled by the teachers. There were kids comparing results, there were kids keeping the results to themselves. There were kids that was still sitting down, being cool as cucumbers...and AF1 falls in that category, grinning from ear to ear with her 3 best friends who got the same results as she did.

Maybe the expectations were different, maybe the circumstances are different. To some it was an achievement. To some it was satisfaction. To some it was a disappointment. And maybe to some it is expected.

It was really noisy and the teachers were having a hard time getting heard whatever announcement that they had to make.

Overall, I was happy she got the desired results. Whats next? Trying to get her into Kelas Rancangan Khas (KRK) in her Secondary school. AF1 doesnt want to go to boarding school and we are fine with that. So KRK is the next obvious choice. Got all the forms and all required attachments ready. Kiasu? I guess you could say that...definitely.


Whats next after that? 3 years.... AF1 will sit for her PMR and AF2 will sit for her UPSR. At least I can prepare mentally and physically for that...:)


Alhamdulillah

SunHunt 2008... foiled again

The Sun Motor Hunt has gone past... and again I did not meet my target. My target was simple, get a top ten placing in the open category. My team mates expectation was higher... get a top three placing....ouch.

Final results... we did not even break into the top 20. granted we lost out to the 2oth team on tiebreak... but I came to the conclusion that we are just not good enough. To get 6 Qs wrong and 1 treasure is just abysmal in a competition of this nature.

I tried to put everything into perspective and analyse what went wrong. I came to some points to ponder.

1. We did not analyse or decipher or understand the question thoroughly. We did not look for the indicator (anagram, container, synonym, homonym etc) and we did not find the fodder for the indicator properly. Basically we were running on instinct and adrenaline alone.

2. We rushed through spotting the answers to the questions. We were not observant enough. Take for example Q7 & Q8 which have the same answers... we just assumed that it has a different answer. never bother spotting the same board for the answer.

3. We didnt decipher the treasures carefully. Although we got 3 treasures correct, although one was tembak... we were not sure of the Pepsi revive treasure.... we just failed to get the other one that was broadcasted on MixFM. I was at fault as well.... I knew I was looking for Vita - something. I was really searching for Vita milk if I interpret the question correctly. but once i read the work 'container' I was fixated on a carton of Vita milk instead a bottle. I dont know why but somehow I equated the word container=carton. Stupid of me. I was at the last Petronas shop on the NKVE, where I missed the treasure by not looking at the section where they stock the bottles. That 5 points would have inched us nearer to a top 10 finish.

I retrospective, we cousl have and should have answered at least 5 more questions that we got wrong correctly. Granted the question "Bays?"got us totally stumped and even after understanding the way the CoC thought of the question, I would still have not got the answer.

Ah well, God willing there is still next years hunt which we will still be in the open catagory :)

To all the winners, congratulations

UPSR results

Well the UPSR 2008 results will be out this Thursday 13 November 2008. Am I nervous? Like hell I am.

Is AF1 nervous? I dont know... she still looks cool enough. She will have her school farewell dinner in one of the Hotel in our area on the 12th....wondering if she will enjoy the dinner with her friends.

Already enrolled her in her Secondary school last week, she got into a good school.


Fingers crossed and a lot of prayers for her results....