My Father Hospitalised for Stroke

Merely a week after I was hospitalised for food poisoning, my father was hit with stroke. Although he did not lose his ability to move his limbs, but he was unable to move his body about without somebody else's help. He also lost his speech ability, which made it hard for us to know what he wanted. We were in the Raja Perempuan Zainab Hospital's emergency room for one day, before being transferred to Bendahara ward for a week. On the eighth day, we brought him back home, when it was clear that nothing seemed to improve.

sisMAKAN

I just finished a course on sisMAKAN, a system for recording information of the school canteen. I am now an official JU (head coach) for Gua Musang SMM, and now also the JU for sisMAKAN. As in previous post, I was down with food poisoning, so I am particularly keen to uphold this system and make it work. This system is made compulsory for nationwide schools, so all the reported food poisoning will be recorded in the system, as well as the schools' actions when hit with the problem. The course was presented by Mr. Haris Fadzli bin Awang, from SMK Convent, Klang. The course was conducted at the Kota Bharu PPD near SMK Zainab at Telipot.

Hospitalised!

I applaud the recently kicked off 'Ops Gempur Kantin' by the Kelantan JPN not only because of the noble cause, but from my own experience. I was admitted to Tanah Merah Hospital for one whole day because of food poisoning. It started when I ate at the school canteen on Thursday (21 May 2009) during lunch, after which I started feeling nauseous. I drove from Gua Musang and started vomitting at Kuala Krai. Luckily I arrived safely at my father-in-law house in Tanah Merah. For two days afterwards, I vomitted all my food, which couldn't find their way to my stomach. The third day, Sunday 24th, my father-in-law sent me to the emergency ward and I was held for lost of lots of body fluids. 10 bags later, and after a night at the ward, I was released. The doctor gave me a whole week to recover my body strength, which I gladly taken because I was feeling so weak. Frankly speaking, I am still to have my full body strength, but I am grateful to Allah because of this beneficial experience.

Now I know how the students feel when hit with food poisoning.

Happy Teacher's Day

Yesterday is fifteen,
Hari ini enambelas,
Recess go to canteen,
Masa mengajar pergi kelas.

Yesterday is Friday,
Hari ini hari Sabtu,
Happy Teacher's Day,
Khas untuk kalian yang bergelar guru.

I got this poem from my fellow colleague. Nice touch, mixing both main languages we used in our school. Thanks, Mayo.

I would like to express my gratitude to all my previous teachers, many of whom I forgotten their names already; my kindergarten teachers, my primary school teachers at SK Paya Bemban, my secondary school teachers at SMU(A) Ma'ahad Muhammadi Lilbanin, my International Islamic University lecturers, my Qur'anic reading teachers (especially my late grandfather), my chess coaches (Rizal Ahmad Kamal and Ismail Ahmad), and more importantly my parents who have taught me about life.

Sultan Kelantan Is Ill

I just received a news that Duli Yang Maha Mulia Tuanku Al-Sultan Ismail Petra ibni Almarhum Al-Sultan Yahya Petra has just been admitted to HUSM because of illness. However, by the time of writing, the cause of his illness has yet to be revealed. Bernama said it was because of asthma attack, but it remains to be determined by the doctors. A HUSM assistant director, Dr. Rosdi Abdul Rahman, said that the Sultan is in stabil condition but refused to revealed the cause of illness when asked. Let's us pray for our beloved Sultan's health.

Can You Read This?

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid, too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe tuo fo 100 anc.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

If you can read this, your brain is 50% faster than those who can't.

EduwebTV Course Successful?

The internal course was conducted from 28 - 29th April at the school Access Centre. It was a follow up course after the course I attended early last month. Fifteen fellow colleagues, teaching various subjects, attended the course. I tried my best to share my knowledge of how to benefit from the educational portal. However, I would be lying if I said that it was a completely satisfying course. There were many glitches, mainly concerning technicality of playing the videos, which are the most important part of this course. I did not have ample time to check every computer used for this course, thus rendering these technical slip-ups to happen. Sorry to all the participants, but luckily they did not return home empty handed. They knew how make a playlist, download a video, and how to use it beneficially in their PNPs.

Some pictures from the course:

EduwebTV Course

Tomorrow, I will be conducting the EduwebTV course for the teachers. It will be a two-day course because it is held during the school day. For starters, I only open it to 20 teachers on the first-come-first-serve basis. I will see if this course is a successful one, I will consider conducting another in the near future. I know that many of them do not have the opportunity to attend courses outside the school, thus slimming their chance of fulfilling the 7 days annual requirement for the in-service training. Therefore, they really need this course and any other courses in order to complete their requirement.

Virus, Virus, Oh Go Away!

Part of my job as a person in-charge of ICT in the school is to ensure that all computer is virus-free There are many types of viruses found in our computers; some of them were malicious and some not that dangerous. However, I took no chances and tried to remove them all. Some of the viruses (and the method I used to remove them) are mentioned below:

1. Trojan.BAT.Shutdown.bi found in C:\WINDOWS\pc-off.bat
This is a very malicious trojan where I found it repeatedly shut down a computer in the computer lab, making it difficult for me to do anything about it. So, I hooked the hard drive to another pc and scanned it with Kaspersky, which deleted it from the hard drive.


2. IM-Worm.Win32.Sohanad.bm
This is a common virus found in our computers. It copied itself and made dubious new folders all around the system. Actually, according to the definition, it is a worm generation programme which can create different types of worms when residing in the system. Luckily, however, Kaspersky picked it out easily and did the job for me.

Virus Prevention Tip:

It is quite perplexing how users always neglected to scan their removable drive (eg. pen drives and diskettes) before using it. No amount of anti viruses are to be responsible for the insertion of the virus if they are not used. This is what they should do:

1. Insert the pen drive.
2. Do not open the pen drive (or diskette) when prompted by this dialogue box.


3. Scan with anti virus (Kaspersky is provided by the Ministry of Education, thankfully)
4. Use the pen drive safely.


There is also a technical way (using CMD.exe or Command Window) of removing pen drive virus I found here.

Basic Knowledge for Car Owners

Today was the first time I had to use my skill of changing tyres. Actually, one of my father's rear tyre burst during his drive to Tanah Merah to see his grandchild, 'Ammar. Luckily for him, the incident happened only 5 kilometres from my in-law house where I was at that time. I quickly drove to the scene and tried my hands at something I never done before. It was also quite funny to see that the spare tyre was so small! Carefully, I drove the car to the nearest workshop and bought a new tyre.

Look at the spare tyre!

Well, changing tyre is quite easy when you know the correct way of doing it. Basically, these are the steps for changing tyres:

1. Park the car on level ground and engage the handbrake.
2. Loose the wheel bolts slightly (but not completely).
3. Jack up the car.
4. Remove the wheel bolts completely and take out the tyre.
5. Put the spare tyre and tighten the wheel bolts slightly.
6. Remove the jack and tighten the wheel bolts completely.

There is a pictorial guide on how to change tyre I found on the Net.

Al-Fatihah to Asmady Zakaria

Road accidents have been the cause of death for many Malaysians nowadays. A look at the statistic provided by Malaysian Institute of Road Safety (MIROS) in their 10 year research shows that the number of deaths are steady at around 6,000 for the year 1997-2007. Last year's events, which ended in a sour note with fatal accident in Kuala Krai, are incapable of giving the lessons for our motorists, as this year started with equally fatal accident in Gua Musang, where 10 people died in the collision between a Kancil, a Kenari and a Nissan Murano. I am prompted to write about road accidents today as one of my friend, Mohd Asmady bin Zakaria, died today in an accident after Jumaat prayer. It has been a long time since I last saw him, but I was equally sad when told about the news this evening. May he rest in peace, al-Fatihah.

Found his blogs. Read and weep here and here.

Teaching Literature to Weak Pupils

Tomorrow, I will attempt teaching Si Tenggang's Homecoming to 4 Sejahtera pupils, a weak class in term of English studies (other subjects also, for that matter). Their level of command is around 5 percent only; their vocabulary is so little, even simple words such as 'reach' they got it wrong and wrote it as 'rich'. It will be an uphill task; I struggled getting them to understand Sonnet 18. However, I will try teaching the poem while at the same time upgrading their vocabulary by asking them to fill in the blanks in the poem's synopsis with several target words. This way, the pupils will learn at least 10 new words and understand the poem in general.

By the way, there's a great website on literature for secondary school pupils which I want to promote. You can enjoy it by clicking here.

How Did I Spend My Holidays?

I asked my students to write a journal on how they spent their holidays. Journal writing is one of the ways to learn English. At first, your writing maybe consisting of many grammatical errors, but it will be gradually improved once you write your journal frequently. The students can write on any topic, but sometimes it is better for the teacher to state the mutual topic for all students so that it will be easier for him to check their writings.

So, how did I spent my holidays? I went to Bangi to spend my holidays with my wife. We went to many interesting places. First of all, we visited National Science Centre. There, we viewed all the galleries and tried most of the games and science exhibits. What I liked most are the mathematics problems. My wife was amused when I solved all the problems. One of the problems was to put 9 numbers so that all horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines amount to 15. Next, we went to Alamanda Putrajaya. Nothing interesting there, except that it was our first time. We enjoyed watching The Geng movie at the Golden Screen Cinema inside the shopping centre. It was a good movie by a group of young Malaysians who were excellent in their graphics study and put it to good use by producing the Upin and Ipin characters. Although the target group were mostly children, but it targeted families as well. The next day, we went to Nilai 3 to buy a big Sarawak rattan matress for my mother for RM65. I don't know whether it is really cheap because we actually stopped by one shop only just to save time. In the evening, we went boat riding at The Mines Wonderland at Sri Kembangan. Initially, we wanted to experience the wonderland, but to our surprise, it is closed on Mondays.

They said a picture worth a thousand words. Enjoy.

National Science Centre

Under the fish tank

Putting the gears together

Math problem solved

Periodic Table as the background

At Alamanda, Putrajaya

Boat ride at the Mines

Maulid al-Rasul Celebration

The Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is our idol in life as a Muslim. What he did, what he said, should be our guidance, as it is a revelation from Allah the Almighty. To commemorate him, all Muslims around the world celebrated his birthday. Our school celebrated his birthday with the slaughter of a cow. The night before the expected celebration, the teachers made some preparation. They cut the meat into small pieces to facilitate the cooking. The next day, the celebration started with a speech for the Muslim students at Dataran Petra while the non-Muslim students listened to a speech at the canteen. After the speeches, the teachers distributed the rice with the cooked meat to all the students.

SPM Results Today!

Congratulations to all students who achieve excellent results in their SPM this year, especially to our own best student, M. Saifulil Rahman Ramli, who got 5As for his efforts. The school also managed to get better percentage compared to last year, even though the increase is not substantial.

I also want to congratulate Nik Nur Madihah binti Nik Mohd Kamal's (picture left) achievement of 20As (19A1 and 1A2) in her SPM. First of all, it clearly shows that poverty is not an excuse to excel in her study. Living in a house smaller than a garage for some of her richer friends, does not deter her from getting what most of them could only envy. I applaud the PKINK for giving her a better house to live in. Secondly, it shows once again that Malay students are better than others when it comes to education. Remember Azali Azlan and Nur Amalina, two previous best achievers in SPM? However, Madihah's preference of continuing her studies in the Arabic world is far better than her two predecessors who continued their studies in the US of America and United Kingdom, respectively.

Here are some of her pictures collected from the Internet:

The Lost World of Tambun

If you want to play water-based games, The Lost World of Tambun is the place to be. There will be a natural hot water pool, a main adult pool, a children pool, Tube Raider, water walk and many others to keep you and your family occupied from the morning until the evening. The fees were reasonable, but better still, you should come as a group and the fees will be more worthwhile. Put on the bar-coded bracelet on your wrist and you are ready to go. I went there with my mother's office mates and their families for their family day gathering. Although I did not participate in many of the events, I did enjoy watching them play, especially the kids. After that, we brought our tired limb and lodged in at Sun Inns hotel before going up the Cameron Highlands the next day.

Happy Birthday, My Son

4th March 2009 - It's been a year since my son, 'Ammar, was born to this world. Time was moving so fast I didn't even realized that 'Ammar is now a one-year-old handsome boy. We held a birthday party at Budiman 2, Jedok. The party started with the recitation of selawat. Then, 'Ammar cut the cake (with the help of his beloved father) and distributed it to the guests, who include his Mama To', To' Ayah, To' Bah, To' Ma, Cik Lang, Ucu, To' Teh, To' Su and many others. Afterwards, 'Ammar played the ballons until he felt sleepy. The party was a success, and I thanked all the guests before kissing him goodnight and headed for KB.

Some pictures from the party (especially for you, my darling):

Eduwebtv, Digital Education for All

I'm now at BTPN, Pengkalan Chepa for a course on Eduwebtv. Basically, it is a 2-days course on how to effectively use Eduwebtv, a website by the Ministry of Education. It officially started on 1st March 2008 and has 7 types of programmes, including:

1. News on events and activities under the MOE
2. Interviews with MOE personalities
3. Academical talk where teachers share their knowledge in respective fields
4. Documentaries
5. Interactive
6. TV Programmes on education
7. Live MOE events

You can download the circular at this website.

On day 2 of the course, we presented some PNPs by using the videos we get from Eduwebtv. I was in Group 5 with Jasmani from SMK Chiku 2, Rafeah from SMK Paloh and Zanariah from SK Sri Wakaf Bharu.

Here are some pictures from the course:

Tuan Haji Ibrahim bin Deris shared his knowledge with the participants

Group 5 (from left) : Jasmani, Rafeah, Zanariah and Yours Truly

Ashiq, Tuan Haji Ibrahim's assistant