a call from far far away

Dear earthlings,

So yesterday from morning till 5PM, a group of butterflies invaded my tummy..wanna know why? well, my supervisor from LJMU was going to call me up for a phone interview...oh my..oh my...

I tried to search online for possible questions...some mentioned questions like why do you want to pursue a PhD? why did you choose this university? what do you think makes a good PhD student and stuffs like that.. 

One of my colleague was also interviewed by her potential supervisor from the UK but her questions were more towards publications and journal writing...

At exactly 10.00 AM GMT, the phone in my office wrung..the interview was actually not too bad..he asked me what subject I was teaching, what syllabus did it cover and co-coincidentally, he was also teaching the exact same subject back in LJMU..

He then moved on and mentioned that I had a short stint in the UK at University of Manchester and asked me whether I was familiar with the Brits educational system to which I responded yes...

Then he asked about my Masters dissertation which was Extremum Seeking Controller and asked me to elaborate on what is the difference between ESC and normal controllers..thank goodness I already prepared myself since morning so I just explained as best as I could..

I also took that opportunity to ask him whether there's a control group there and I learned that the control group was established 30 years ago..he also explained what are the topics and research area that the group is working on..

After a few more chit-chatting and I took the opportunity to ask how long it will take for LJMU to come up with the offer letter and the answer I got was most probably between 1-2 weeks...Alhamdulillah...Hopefully after obtaining the offer letter, I can proceed with submitting it to my dean to approve and then straight to KPT..

Yours Truly,

Adventure Addict

Biro Tatanegara at Kem Bina Negara Tanjung Rhu, Sepang

Dear earthlings,

In order for me to submit my application to further my PhD overseas, I need to attend the Biro Tatanegara (BTN) course. It is a 5-Days-4-nights course which aims to instill love for our country...So from 25th to 29th May 2013, I was a being a very good BTN participant :)

Admittedly, I was not exactly looking forward to attend the course, since I have attended a similar course back in 2007. This time around, instead of Ulu Sepri, BTN was held at Tanjung Rhu Sepang, and alhamdulillah, the location and accommodation is way better than Ulu Sepri. At first I thought of going alone, driving on my own even though I was not too sure where exactly the camp is located but in the end, I ask my sisters to accompany me and they could drive back my car. 

It's a good thing I did not go on my own, because I would have surely screamed inside the car when I could not locate the camp. Suffice to say that the map provided did not help much, I mean, the huge landmarks such as the KLIA mosque wasn't even on the map, like how did that happen? Google Map doesn't have the location Kem Bina Negara Tanjung Rhu Sepang, instead the only Kem Bina Negara available was Kem Bina Negara Kuarters KLIA. My sisters and I thought that they were the same. teyyyyt!! how wrong we were..but alhamdulillah, with some instincts we managed to reach Kem Bina Negara Tanjung Rhu Sepang at approximately 345pm..

Basically, the first two days, we just had to attend talks by several speakers and I find that the talks are very enlightening...for someone who does not work closely with the federal constitutions or the government administration, the talks managed to instill the sense of love and belonging to our country..Each session began  with singing the Perajurit Tanah Air song and Satu Malaysia song..

The next two days were spent in groups discussing certain topics related to Malaysian history as well as the Federal Constitution...everyone had to participate..you have to voice out your opinion..whether you like it or not..and we had to focus since we will be tested on the last day. My group consisted of people from different backgrounds, we had a lawyer, we had a staff from bursary department and we also had a dentist so it was interesting to listen to their opinions..

On the last night, we had to perform a song, thank goodness our group got away with a fairly simple song which is the Tanggal 31 song...it's not just singing though, we had to make a short play, and we practiced really hard and in my (maybe biased) opinion, our group performed the best but, we didn't win any place at all..shesssshh...a tad disappointed there..

Anyhoos, we thought that after our performance, it's wrap since we had exams the next morning, but they weren't letting us off that easily. We had to play some games and it ended well after midnight.. Only at 1am we managed to actually land safely on our beds...

We really did not have time to study for the test but the good news is it was an open notes test..yippee yeay yeay..

BTN taught me a lot.. maybe when I attended in 2007, I wasn't mature yet..but this time around, it did leave an impression..of course there are side effects such as learning to manage my time as optimum as possible because the schedule was pretty tight..

air conditioned hall for the talks...

at the musolla during the maghrib and isya prayers..oh and subuh as well

memorable meeting point where we did our aerobics, chicken dance, marching  and played "basuh baju" game

Oh, did I tell you that the reception is terrible.. It's so hard to communicate with the outside world..maybe that is precisely the reason they chose to build the camp here...hehehe..All in all, I'm thankful for this experience despite feeling pretty reluctant at first..

Best Regards,

Adventure Addict