Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Reminder

Thanx James for the tips - a real reminder for us:
  1. Don’t wait for the one big research idea. Try something out. The best ideas evolve out of failed ones.
  2. Eat well, get enough sleep.
  3. The internet doesn’t count as a break. Get away from the desk.
  4. You have a life outside the lab or library. Decide what’s important to you and make time for it.
  5. Decide what you’re going to work on before you turn on the computer.
  6. Be interested in other people’s work
  7. Get to know the people who can make things happen.
  8. You’ll probably get most of your results near the end, because you’ll be better at what you do than you used to be.
  9. Hours at the desk don’t count as work. Set targets, achieve them, go home.
  10. Don’t worry about what you don’t know. You just need to be good at what you’re doing.
  11. Downloading papers, printing them, then leaving them on your desk doesn’t count as reviewing the literature.
  12. When you just can’t get going, turn everything off, and think about what needs to be done.
  13. Simplify it all to a to-do list of just one thing
  14. It’s much easier to write a chapter once you know how it ends.
  15. If it’s not working, do it differently.
  16. Don’t use perfection as an excuse. A competently finished thesis beats an imaginary perfect one.
  17. Writing your thesis is not the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Suria KLCC Park






Another photo page in a series of photo posting today... a lazy day after two days of long journey to Kuantan and Muadzam Syah in the past two days for meeting with the research respondents. 

Last Sunday we went to KLCC wading pool. It was fun especially for the kids. The two brothers were really enjoying the day whilst Ainaa seemed to be fear for her safety in the kids water park. Throughout the afternoon,  she remained in our cuddle, refused to go into the water.

    

Happy birthday our dear Atuk

Happy fathers' day

To all fathers with love

Happy birthday Mak

Makteh is engaged

Congratulation our dear Makteh.
Will be someone else's significant other soon.
Wish you the best in life.

Istana Kehakiman

Istana Kehakiman aka Palace of Justice
Putrajaya

Happy birthday Fahim

Happy birthday to Fahim.
From your cousins, Farhan, Ammar and Ainaa.

Mini Maha 2011



Mini MAHA 2011, held at Indera Mahkota, Kuantan Pahang.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Testing the service of inter-library loan?

To save time and cost of journey to different libraries, the service of inter-library loan (ILL) would be indispensable. ILL is the service to get books borrowed by a library which we have borrowing capacity from other libraries in the country especially university and public libraries including the National Library.

But the experience that we had so far is sadly frustrating. Coming back from a country which I could rate the ILL service as tip-top, it is still long way for the libraries in this country to improve. It was not that I had never tried to use the service before starting my current undertaking, which the performance could be considered overall as low, but just hoping that things had improved over the year.

Out of 12 requests that I made since last months, only 2 requests were successful so far, which reached to the base library only after about 4 weeks. There were 6 requests made to the library of an institution that I attached with. The 2 successful requests were from this library. The other 6 were made from u-pustaka, which none was successful. 

On top of that, despite the so many online services exist in the university, the request for ILL could only be made through a paper form to be signed and sent to the base library.

So, shall I just forget the service?

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Special gifts

We are still in the home country for the fieldwork. In the course of this up-and-down process, we also came across with more than what we expected. In Kuantan, we met with an old friend from the university that we studied before. He had just finished his PhD and already published his first book. Congratulation our dear friend. We hope to follow suit.


In FRIM, we met with Dr Lim Hin Fui, a senior researcher in the forest research institute. He gave us a special gift - he said a gift for life. It is indeed. It is about healthy food which is a good guide for everyday food to avoid diseases. It is ironic that we are always worried about so many things and risks against life and healthbut in fact it is the food that we take every day that could be the real cause for concern.