All our lectures are done in the Julian Hodge Building (photo above). It’s a dedicated building for the Business School with all the state-of-the-art facilities for students.

During our orientation week (the week before week 1), we had an election to select our MBA Representatives. Since our cohort is around 220, we  needed to select 11 representatives. Me, along with another 35 students, nominated our names for the election.We had a submit a photo along with a write up about ourselves for the voters.

The elections were done online, and since it was during orientation week, where we still haven’t met most of the class, campaigning was a challenge. Some of the nominees tried reaching out out using Facebook, which in the end turned out to be the most successful method of gaining exposure.

At the beginning of Week 1, the results of the MBA Representatives election were announced. I was glad to hear I was elected. Below are the results:

MBA Reps 1

MBA Reps 2

In terms of nationalities, the representatives are well balanced. We have:

• 1 American
• 1 British
• 1 German
• 1 Russian
• 1 Palestinian
• 2 Indian
• 3 Chinese
• 1 Malaysian (me!)

We had meetings with the MBA Engagement Coordinator every week starting week 1. Our responsibilities includes attending to students issues, disseminating information from the business school, and providing feedback to management.There were not many issues during the first few weeks as most of the students were still easing themselves into uni life.

As promised by our Course Coordinator, the first few weeks went on really fast. By the time we knew it we were swamped with reading lists, tutorial work, and a major assignment coming up in week 6.

Related posts: Siem Reap Day 1, Day 2, Day 3

Part of the tour package we signed up with Seagul Tourist was a half-day visit to Tonlé Sap. In Khmer, Tonlé Sap means “Large Fresh Water River” but it is popularly translated as “The Great Lake”. Tonlé Sap is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia, 2^nd largest in the world.

Note: click on images to enlarge

Tonle Sap Map

The Tonlé Sap is a major attraction for two reasons: the lake expands and shrinks dramatically based on the monsoon season. From November to May, Cambodia’s dry season, the Tonlé Sap drains into the Mekong River at Phnom Penh (2,700 square km). However, when the year’s heavy rains begin in June, the Tonlé Sap backs up to form an enormous lake of nearly 16,000 square km! That’s with 8 meters gained in depth! (check out the map above for the difference between dry season and wet season)

On the way to the Tonlé Sap jetty we passed by a few villages. It was interesting to note that the traditional village house in Cambodia looks exactly the same as the one in Malaysia. Even the sarong and the top that their women wear looks similar!

Soknin's family

I had a long chat with Soknin (our tourguide)throughout the trip. He told me more insider stories about the Khmer Rouge. Yesterday he told us how his parents, both teacher and university professor, was killed by the Khmer Rouge and 7 of his siblings died during the period. Today he told me he spends his evening teaching village kids for free, mainly history. He said living in Siem Reap is financially tough, and most of the money he gets goes to education. He wants his 2 daughters (refer to photo of his wife and kids) to be fluent in English as the English teachers in government schools are not that good. He explained that extra English classes in towns are expensive, but he believes it’s worth the money as fluency in English would open up a whole world of opportunity for Cambodian kids.

Jetty & boat ride to Tonle Sap

The jetty was 15KM away from town, and it took us around 20 minutes to get there. Upon arriving, Soknin purchased our tickets from the counter. From the jetty, we rode up the small Mekong canal up to Tonle Sap. The journey to Tonlé Sap took about 15 minutes. It was along the way that Soknin explained that it is the “dry season” now (meaning the lake is shallow, around 1 meter deep). He pointed out to the surroundings, at the markings at the trees that indicate during the monsoon season the water reaches up to 9 meters.

Tonle Sap Floating Village

We arrived at one of the villages in Tonlé Sap. The lake is so massive that you wouldn’t be able to see the other end of it. The water looks a bit murky but that was due to the low/dry season. We saw boat houses, shops, churches, and yes, and boat basketball court. Imagine that. Everything is on water. These people have been living this way for the past few hundred years, most probably post Angkor period.

Soknin explained to us that majority of the people are Vietnamese and Cham. Most of the Vietnamese on Tonlé Sap are stateless people. They are not registered neither in Vietnam nor Cambodia. The Vietnamese people of Tonlé Sap want to be official citizens of Cambodia but the government is not doing anything to officially register them.

Tonle Sap - crocodile farm

At Tonlé Sap’s “village center”, there was a catfish and crocodile farm. The crocodiles are reared for their meat and skin. I even spotted a local girl with his brother, both holding their snake pet. Mind you, their “pet” snake looks like a massive python! The girl scared the tourists as most of us refuse to go anywhere near her! I also saw a few boys peddling around in their mini “boat”. I guess that’s what little boys use to move between houses in this floating village.

Tonle Sap kids

After Tonle Sap, we visited a local jewelry shop that sells Cambodian precious stones. (It wasn’t that interesting for me.)

Artisans D'Angkor

Soknin wanted us to see how modern day Cambodians preserve and nurture their engraving skills, so he took us to Artisans D’Angkor. It is a school of Cambodian fine arts and crafts. This is where the Khmer people educate their younger generation on the ancient knowledge on wood carving, stone engravings, silk making and  creating impressive sculptures. In other words, they are giving their people the same knowledge on what it takes to built Angkor Wat. It was impressive. With all the highly skilled people being killed during the Khmer Rouge, this is definitely a step forward. Kudos to the Khmer government for envisioning this.

We headed back to the hotel afterwards. Since we’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, we said goodbye to our guide. We thanked Soknin for his patience, hospitality, and for all the stories that he has been telling us of his people. We gave him a handsome tip of USD20, and I told him personally that Cambodia could use more people like him. We wish him all the best.

Cycling around Siem Reap

We had lunch at another Khmer restaurant (our 4^th Khmer food restaurant) in town. After that, we scouted for a bicycle shop and rented 4, one for each of us. We cycled to the nearby villages using a map obtained from the hotel. The villagers are so used to seeing the tourist that they merely wave at us whenever we pass by. Some just ignored us.

After our cycling session, we went for a Khmer body massage, which later I found out it’s more like a modified Thai message. At USD8, it was definitely the cheapest body massage I’ve ever had, it’s even cheaper than the one at Krabi (south Thailand).

Pub Street - evening

We had dinner at a nice restaurant on Pub Street. We had dinner on the second floor, near the veranda. It gave us a nice view of the street and the evening scene in town.

Tomorrow is our last day here. Our flight leaves at 8:45AM. All in all it was an amazing trip. I only wished that I could stay here for a week and explore more temples. The Cambodian people are amazingly friendly. They have been through a lot and looks like things are getting better. They have what it takes to better themselves, and I’m pretty sure 10-20 years from now we’ll be seeing huge improvements in Cambodia.

Related posts: Siem Reap Day 1, Day 2, Day 3

As usual, before playing around with the registry, always back it up (guide here). But to be honest, this is just a minor edit, hence the risk factor is very low.

To quickly enable it, click start.

Click Run and paste the following command into the text field:

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Click OK. That’s it! That should solve your problem!

I just finished wathing Agora and I find it to be a really refreshing movie. Basic knowledge of our age are taken for granted when ancient philosophers spent years trying to figure out something as simple as the relationship between the earth and the sun.

Below is a short review on my thoughts on the movie [spoiler warning].

The movie was set in old Alexandria, Egypt around 391A.D. Alexandria was part of the Roman Empire and the major theme of the movie is religious extremism (yes, we can all relate to that in this day and age), the lost of culture and knowledge. In 391A.D, it was a time when Christianity was growing rapidly and the old Roman religion was quickly dying out. Even the Emperor Theodosius himself is a Christian. The main character, Hypatia, is one of the earliest women philosophers in history. She teaches philosophy, astronomy and mathematics. Throughout the movie, various scenes of scuffles are shown between the early violent Christian fundamentalist (similar to the Taliban of our time) and other religion, mainly, the Roman pagans and the Jews (Islam only came later in 6th Century).

The fundamentalist, lead by pope Cyril, forced their agenda on everyone, to the point that some government officials had to be baptised to have a career in Roman politics. The fundamentalist were also against knowledge (they have their own version, as opposed to Hypatia’s primitive science), where they would burn all the priceless books and scrolls from Hypatia’s library, which is the Library of Alexandria.

In the end, Hypatia was killed by the fundamentalist mob, and her discovery of the eclipse and the central position of the sun was lost for a few hundred years. The same attitude towards knowledge persisted for a few decades and with that, the Roman empire went further into decline. By the 7th century, the dark ages loomed and the rest is history.

I was so taken by the notion that a discovery so profound was easily lost due to narrowmindedness and religious extremisim. In short, the key takeways from this movie is that religion must be practiced in moderation and must not be forced onto others. Knowledge should be appreciated as it is the single one thing that marks the progress of man kind.

Tiger Woods

This came to me as no surprise. It’s the right thing to do. It was all over the news. Accenture staff even received an email notification to inform them of this. Speculation on online media has stated that his average loss in sponsorships could be as much as US$50million per scandal! Looking at the number of women that has come forward, that’s easily US$500 million down the drain! Below is an excerpt from MSN News:

A major sponsor of Tiger Woods announced Sunday it was ending its six-year ties with the golf star, saying he “is no longer the right representative” after a blistering sex scandal.

The billionaire athlete and married father of two, once a ubiquitous figure with priceless advertising value, has seen his squeaky clean image decimated by a string of affairs with a porn star, cocktail waitress and other women, raising concerns of sponsors pulling away from golf.

“For the past six years, Accenture and Tiger Woods have had a very successful sponsorship arrangement and his achievements on the golf course have been a powerful metaphor for business success in Accenture’s advertising,” the Dublin-based technology, management and outsourcing consultancy said in a statement.

“However, given the circumstances of the last two weeks, after careful consideration and analysis, the company has determined that he is no longer the right representative for its advertising. Accenture said that it wishes only the best for Tiger Woods and his family.”

The statement marked the end of a relationship with the 14-time major champion at the center of ad campaigns that once included slogans like “Go on. Be a Tiger,” or “We know what it takes to be a Tiger.”

The company’s website once read: “Famous not only for his success on the golf course, Tiger Woods is equally renowned for his work ethic, focus and commitment to continual improvement.”

Accenture, which had earlier removed an image of Woods from its website, said it would “immediately” transition to a new advertising campaign, with plans for a “major” effort to launch next year.

But it was only the latest in a series of companies to reevaluate their sponsorship of the world’s top golfer ever since Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade SUV into a tree and fire hydrant just outside his home in bizarre circumstances on November 27, unleashing a media firestorm.

Razormaker Gillette announced Saturday it would phase him out of advertisements while he takes a break from golf, calling it a supportive move.

“As Tiger takes a break from the public eye, we will support his desire for privacy by limiting his role in our marketing programs,” the company said, said without announcing a timetable for the resumption of use of the golfer’s image.

One major concern from the golf world is that with Tiger taking “indefinite” leave from golf to fix his problems, this would be a major blow to the golf industry. Viewership has plummet during the 6-ish months when he was on leave for his knee injury, and now with this scandal and him not playing for a few months, the popularity of golf might just drop to the point it being a “rich old man’s game”. Even though it might take a while for that to actually happen (months or years, in fact), unless Tiger picks up his club sooner, he might just sink the whole industry with him.

KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd has received a letter of award from the Government to implement the RM11.31bil high-speed broadband (HSBB) project.

TM said on Tuesday the project would be carried out in collaboration with the Government to deploy the access, domestic core and international networks to deliver an end-to-end HSBB infrastructure.

“The total cost of the HSBB investment for a period of 10 years is RM11.31bil whereby the Government will be investing RM2.4bil and the remaining RM8.91bil from TM,” it said.

TM said with the acceptance of the letter of award, the company and the Government would sign a formal agreement based on mutually agreed terms and conditions in due course.

It added that more details and relevant information would be announced when the HSBB agreement was signed.

On May 15, TM said it was pleased to learn the Government has approved the pertinent details and broad implementation strategies for the HSBB roll-out plan.

The plan was a key initiative in the effort to widen broadband penetration in the country. The HSBB coverage is expected to be available across 1.3 million premises.

News item from: http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/9/2/business/20080902181752&sec=business

This is hilarious! Who would have thought they published a book called “Work/Life Balance” for Dummies. I reckon the people that wrote the book are in desperate need for a decent work life balance themselves!

Frankly, the girl is old enough to know what she’s doing. And based on her video interviews at NewsOfTheWorld, she sounds perfectly sane and happy to be doing whatever it is she’s doing. Yadim should save their efforts and focus on local problems in Malaysia instead.

Full article at New Straits Times here.

And the Asian beauty defiantly claims that selling her body for up to £1,000 a time provides her with a far more glamorous life than she ever dreamt of when she went to Oxford University aged just 13.

“My clients love the fact that I can stimulate their minds AND their bodies,” she boasts in a shockingly frank interview with the News of the World.

“And I don’t believe my education has been wasted—in fact I usually take problem sheets with me to solve before appointments.”

Sufiah decided to CONFESS ALL after we revealed how the former child prodigy was working as a £130-an-hour prostitute while studying for a masters in economics.

It is the latest heartbreaking twist to a life that seemed so full of promise—but went tragically wrong when she cracked under the pressure of her bullying father’s cruel academic regime and fled university at 15.

Eight years on, he is now in jail for sexually assaulting two girl pupils and Sufiah has somehow convinced herself that her seedy new career is the answer to all her problems.

“People think escorting is sleazy and terrible but I don’t see it like that,” she says. “I’ve always had a high sex drive—and now I’m getting all the sex I want—and guys are much better in bed with an escort than a girlfriend.

“I have men who are thrilled about my passion for mathematics. In fact one made me recite equations while he pleasured me, then I gave him oral sex while he chatted about algebra. It drove him wild.”

And brainbox Sufiah has worked out that subtracting your respectability to become a prostitute can equal big money.

I can’t help but to smile to myself. “What if I already have it?”

Anyway, I’m not sure if I have blogged about this before, but I’m going to mention it again. The fee to study CCNA as a short-course at Monash is AU$1650 per module (Monash separated the CCNA program into 4 modules). At the academy that I went (Trainpro) in Malaysia, I get to study for CCNA and MCSE both at RM7000 (~AU$2500). Bear in mind that MCSE has 7 units, and CCNA has only 1 unit.

Just look at the difference. RM7000 (or AU$2500) for a total of 8 units, against AU$1650 x 4 = AU$6600 for only 1 unit (CCNA).

Furthermore, at Trainpro, ex-students have the luxury of a refresher course within a 1 year periodAU of taking their couse. That means that if you ever forget anything after a few months of learning, or if you need clarification on certain topics from the instructors, you can simply go there and discuss it with them. That’s definitely value for money.