Updating Blogs

Before the month of February ends, I thought I do another post here. I have been keeping a few blogs of my own. Some of them have not been updated so long until recently. Since I'm pretty much at the end of my career, I thought I share what I know and my experiences as much as I could before I go. Hence my decision of reactivating all blogs. This decision was made at the end of last year but have only managed to do it only recently.

First, this blog Frequent Seas was initially meant to be my diary in a way. Ever since this blog was read by so many people, I have began to tone down the personal matters particularly my rants and frustrations. Some of my overseas colleagues led me to realise that we tend to complain most of the time without looking for solutions. Besides this, I had to act more responsibly given the heavier duty that I'm at the moment shouldering. I do realise how true it is when people say, one will never know what others are feeling unless one are in their shoes (in this case, an administrator). Being a responsible administrator requires a broader vision of matters, somewhat impersonal but yet humane, building trust and aspirations, wise in execution. So now when I look at complains, my instinct is to look at the matter in some broad sense and often these complains tend to stop at a personal level. This does not mean to say whatever problems from the complains will go away. One just has more perspectives to handle the things at hand.

Another blog that I had updated frequently since the last year or so is Equatorial Frequencies. Again, this blog is meant to be my research blog where I would pick up anything vaguely related to one's own research or interest and write about it (much like Baez's This Week's Find). However, I find this hard to do since one needs a fair amount of knowledge to write such reviews (particularly the fear of understanding them wrong). Finally I ended up making this blog as my weekly link dump of articles in the arXiv that I find of interest at the time. So in a way, if others want to find out what I am interested to read and do research on (what my frequency is), this blog will be it. I often start a post during the weekend and was hoping that the weekly task can be finished before the weekdays start. Again I was wrong and took quite a fair bit of my time during the week. I have to find solutions to this problem. A quick solution is certainly to limit my scope of interest, which I have yet not willingly to give up.

Another technical blog is Ketchup Spills which is originally meant to be my teaching blog. Finally I decided to use this as part research, part teaching blog since in both matters, I tend to do some catching up on the materials anyway. If I get more prolific in writing, I may reconsider separating them.

Finally I have a blog in Malay which I thought should cater for more local interests.This may be on topics of science, philosophy or even religion. By writing in Malay here, I hope no one considers me as losing my roots or anglophile, which I believe I am not. I called the blog Acu Frekuensi for which the first word refers to what shape my thoughts and as a person of Malay race.

I hope that my blogs will be beneficial to someone. I pray that I can continue writing (even if this does not fall within my KPI).

Family Holiday in Gambang

Right after the Singapore trip, I decided to take the whole family for a holiday during the Chinese New Year holidays. We went to Bukit Gambang Resort. Now some asked why not go for a holiday overseas and my answer is this is what I can afford for now. In fact, we took a flight to Kuantan to save time and energy. We know fully well that there will be heavy traffic during the long Chinese New Year weekend holidays. We also took the hotel package that includes the water park and safari park tickets all in.

As we reached there, we saw the place was packed with people. We made our way to the Water Park for the first day for which me and my other half did not join. Here are pics of the kids.

The owl is just on our way out of the Water Park. The next day, we spent the full day at the Safari park for which my other half and family enjoy. Here are the pics.

These are pics of the white lion as we enter the Safari Park.

Heading further into the Safari Park.

The animal show:

Binturong (it has been awhile since I've heard this word):

Feeding the birds:

The bird show:

The safari ride:

The tarzan show (me and my third son did not join):

The final day (me and my third son did not join):

Overall, we enjoyed our holiday and in particular the Safari Park which is huge. Must say that they did a fantastic job with it and can understand the headache that comes with this huge place. Here is our group pic: