Christmas illumination

Somehow, i realize... my passion for language maybe is more than my passion for engineering. Yet again, the love of first sight as it might sound, at the moment when listening to the Irish Gaelic version of Silent Night, sung by Meav Ni Mhaolchatha of Celtic Woman, the beauty of this Irish language has intruded me like a long sword. It made me wondering yet again if Europe will be a perfect future studying/working environment for me.... or Tokyo will still be the best.... Understand Japanese language is still one of the most greatest achievement in my life. It represents the key to one of the greatest science & engineering communities on earth. I learn knowledge through my own ways with my own rhythm and own passion. It might not sound like my boss will like me with this kind of rubbish attitude but this is my way of living and nobody could change it. 

Merry Christmas as it happens, light illuminations conquer everything in Tokyo. The city has everything on 25th December but a holiday. 2 degree celcius might be a little cold, but somehow, it is the temperature where my hemoglobins are at their best. It hasten my desires to go out and run in the cold and work towards my first full marathon in life next year!

Winter wondering

The yellowish ginkgo leaves and the reddish maple leaves make the perfect autumn. The shuttle sounds of Japanese DSLR cameras overshadow the melody of the autumn wind under the ichou tree. It was spring with sakura, and it is autumn with ginkgo and maple, everything comes before you realize it and vanishes before you know it. It is the change of the season again. It is the end of the yellow and red of 2012. Here, the white comes, the snowboarding and skiing shops are being decorated insanely. On weekend, roads are often closed for marathon events. Japanese love running. I love running. Here comes the winter, a season of run, a season of snowboard and ski. Nothing could compare to my passion for sports. Autumn and winter are just perfect, like what Apple has claimed: the iPad mini is just perfect. Good thing doesn't last. For this land of the rising sun, 2012 is just perfect. The land is especially calm, disturbing high energy earthquakes did not happen. Typhoons were not coming. It was just too calm with nothing. Thanks to this, the country is able to concentrate on disasters reconstruction efforts. Broken pieces from the tsunami are still being transported to each prefecture to be burned. The country may not have the luxury of being a major player in consumer electronics anymore, but efforts on future new energies are taken very seriously. Much efforts have been paid to discover new type of energy. The fusion maybe the answer. The space solar system and the wireless power transmission maybe another. However, electrics energy alone is not perfect. Magnetism maybe a major player in the future. With the superconductive maglev shinkansen is set to be launched in 15 years time. For now, nothing is more important than "energy" in this country.

Walking into a drug store in japan, it is immediately become clear how important bio-medical sciences is here. The survival of a country lies in her ability to maintain the health of her citizens. The efforts put by japanese medical companies are just awesome. High energy physics is playing a small role in this medical world. The unbelievable PET scanner with the use of antimatter positrons is one of the example why the research of sub-atomic particles at CERN etc will not be a complete waste of money. The tale of the three brothers, appeared in Harry Potter and the deathly hallows book 2, is one of my favorite. I finished reading the last book in 2 days. i'm hoping to read the book again. Some english reading is just nice to maintain globalization mindset while working here.

discover the undiscovered

I, a rubbish programmer + engineer, eat with vitamin C#, drink with vitamin C, sleep with vitamin VHDL will one day gone crazy. People think about dinner while waiting trains, i think about codes while waiting trains. However, i proved to have resistance to insanity as i still able to board the train after it stopped. This day, the train took me to Tokyo station. Then i realized, before more and more vitamin C bombarding my mind, it has successfully functioned correctly by ordering my hand to put my NEX camera into my bag before i walk out of my room. As a result, i arrived peacefully at tokyo station with my camera in hand, which is a great deal as i don't wanna miss a moment of this beautiful creature.

Looking at a thing with only eyes, and looking at a thing with eyes, ears, mouth and nose are completely different. With photo today, it is not enough to show the emotion, the real feels of the environment. By coming here, i feel the awesomeness of the tokyo station. By looking back at the photos afterwards, it feels only like a photo. Hence, you need really to come and look at this tokyo station yourself to feel its greatness.
A coding and manga otaku like me also did not wish to miss the moment of this.

As a side entertainment, i joined Pink Ribbon smile walk event in tokyo midtown that day with my heart!

 i have a weird personality where i don't actually like to travel yet i like to stay in an oversea country. This sounds nonsense but what i'm trying to say is i like to live in a city to experience the cultures and society of that particular city. As for now, i have the chance to live and explore the awesome Tokyo and Yokohama, where i feel so fortunate and thankful to be here. Weird, as i may sound, but i never feel bored with the place i live. I feel motivated by the environment. I learned an important thing from one of my seniors in my company that, if you didn't receive praises and motivations from people, then do it yourself!... praise and motivate ourselves for every good thing that we have done. I think this is very important to survive and excel no matter where we are.

On the other day, i have had the chance to attend a seminar in pan-pacific hotel at minatomirai, yokohama. It  was a usual place where i went often, the beautiful and futuristic seaside city.

Everything was normal until i decided to have a small walk from Queens Square at minatomirai to Yokohama station after the seminar. Then i discover this beautiful long path that i was thinking :" OMG!!! i live in yokohama for 2 years and i never came here before?".... How sad as at that time my camera was not with my bag. However, it proved that Minatomirai is the best part of japan i love. I'm convinced that i'll go for a walk again from minatomirai to yokohama with my NEX camera, and iphone5 too!! perhaps :)....

2nd holiday in malaysia

i seldom give myself a holiday as striving hard towards my goals constantly is part of my life. Too much holidays will disrupt my planning and demotivate me but not this time when i had my holiday in Malaysia once a year. There were a few unfortunate moments in my holiday as always, misfortunes dominated my life. However, as always too, i was lucky enough to receive people's helps every time. In fact, i feel so grateful and bersyukur where since my days in primary education til life in Tokyo, my path in life was not exactly because i worked hard or chosen by me, but was the results of people's helps. I remember everything that i received. 

Working as a "junior engineer" in Tokyo again, teaching me to be humble, low profile and be patient in life. I couldn't say that i really love my jobs but i'm learning to be patient. There maybe some moments in the next few years that i need to be not in patient anymore, by that time i guess i'll need people's helps again and i know exactly whose helps i will ask for. =)

Again, in my holiday in Malaysia, i was travelling around the country with my old car that i drove in University. it broke down as it should have a few years ago, where i was once again, getting helps from people. This time it was a technician in Perodua service center near my university, MU. To facilitate my "balik kampung" schedule, the technician helped me to overhaul the engine and the surrounding items til midnight in one particular day without overtime paid. We completely didn't know each other, we are from different races, yet i feel we are Malaysians. At the same time, i was lucky enough to receive helps from friends and even my Professor in university, for getting me to the places i wanna go during my no-car-days. There is a bond in Malaysia where we not only know English, but we know each other's language. There might be dirty politics from all parties on the way to try to manipulate everything, but we are moving forward, a bit by a bit. It's about helping each other in life and i really hope what i learned oversea will one day contribute back a tiny bit to my country as an engineer or educator. Hence, staying focus and self-motivated have been an important part of my life. Same goes to everyone i believe. 

Energy

As pointed out by "The dark knight rises", the key to the future clean energy is the development of a stable nuclear fusion technology. As pointed out by Watanabe Ken in the advertisement of Suzuki, the keyword of future in engineering is "energy". As pointed out by some corporations, the key to the future of energy is harvesting the sun's energy from space. As pointed out by some scientists, the key to the future of mankind is the inter-planet civilizations. As pointed out by CERN, the key to understanding the creation of the world, is the discovery of the God Particle. No matter what it is, i really hope that my country can be parts of the teams in the future. It can, if in future, Malaysians living oversea return to Malaysia. 

 

One day at Akihabara

Akihabara, the famous electric town of Japan, offer plenty of things that an electrical or electronics engineer needs. So it's a heaven for a guy like me. Furthermore, it is an anime heaven too and wonderful for a guy like me, who love One Piece. (although i don't fancy AKB48 or Gundam) but there are a nice AKB48 cafe and a gundam cafe just outside the Akihabara JR station, which are attracting plenty of customers from morning til night everyday. There is even one AKB theater in the town (i didn't go in before coz i don't fancy them). One more thing i don't fancy is the "tax-less" electrical appliances shops in the electric town that targeting oversea customers. i don't really understand about the concept. I rather buy these kind of things in my own country as the prices here are still more expensive even in no tax condition. (although i'm an engineer, i don't fancy buying bombastic and sophisticated stuffs, all stuffs that i possessed are cheapest in price-performance graphs).

So today i came here for seminars. One of the things an engineer should do is to constantly update and upgrade his/her knowledge with the latest info/technology on the planet so that he or she can engineer a better product. For me, it's not effective enough to stay working everyday 14, 15 hours and trying to figure out what went wrong. A fresh day with new inputs helps to clean up and refresh ur mind. i always got some new ideas for my project after attending seminars/exhibitions.

i attended some seminars today related to stuffs like microcontrollers, computers, microprocessors... it was a great day listening to a few great speakers. But i must mention this, from the many times i attended these kind of seminars, i noticed that except for a few guys include me, most of the attendees were uncle (ojisan) level. Where were those young japanese engineers disappeared to??? Are not they suppose to come to this kind of events to learn more while they are still young?? Is this what we called an "aging society" that troubling Japan? I really hope all those bosses will let their young employees to go out and breath in the latest knowledge available, and just don't keep them do all those photocopying and document editing stuffs in the office, it's not gonna help. Sooner or later the R&D knowledge will start vanishing to nowhere for a developed society like Japan. One more thing, only asking the youngsters to attend those "newbies training programs" is not gonna help either. they should be exposed to more than that, i think.

So one of the hot topics recently in Japan is the use of ARM processors. Like Intel computer, we can do programming and other stuffs with ARM computers. So what's the ARM processors? it is the brain that powering the Apple's iphone, almost all the smartphones in the market => includes samsung, toshiba etc, our cars and many more. They are using the same technology, or we called "core architecture" designed by this british company, ARM. So for Japan, the good news is they also start to use this processor to design their products. It's great becoz in this globalization world, use of foreign technology is not a big deal. But, the problem is.... Until recently, Japanese company were designing their own computer architecture for their products.  However, in order to cut cost and other factors, people start buying license from ARM so they no need to design their own stuffs. Good thing is, you save money in short term. But, bad thing is, you are losing those computer architecture designers that formed the backbone of the electronics industry in Japan. When you stop doing R&D, you stop passing knowledge to younger generation, and you will start depending on imported technology. Hence, it's a complicated situation.

But in conclusion, i really hope that Japan will keep on designing the architecture like what we have in the past. One of the representative products is the "Cell Processor" jointly developed by Toshiba, Sony and IBM that was used to powered the Toshiba's 3D glassless TV, Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox 360 and others.....

One day at Tokyo Big Sight

i've just visited an exhibition at tokyo big sight. i kept laughing out of curiosity throughout the visit, because i saw lot's of interesting products that i never saw before, the first reaction was "へーー！こんなのあるんだ！知らなかった！！！well, many people are crazy and came out with lots of weird stuffs. But my main purpose there was to find new idea for my projects. So first i proceed to a seminar very early in the morning. The speaker was Prof. Sakamura Ken from Tokyo University. He is the creator of the real-time operating system, TRON that eventually used in plenty of Japanese engineering products. (you may not know but i guess your Toyota, Honda, Nissan and others are powered by plenty of them). He made some very good points about how Japan's industry should proceed in the future by giving development examples of how European Union, America and China manage their funds, organize their R&D activities to develop their countries. He made a good point that while we are technically very top here in Japan, we are not able to translate the knowledge into business results like companies from other countries. So what's wrong? it's our way of doing it (やり方).  Let's change it!

After finished listening to this inspiring talk (i'm not sure if all the japanese attended have been inspired, but i was inspired), i proceed to my main purpose -> look for Embedded System Expo. Those were things like Intel processors, ARM, computer architecture and many mores. 

So the recent hot topic in Japan --> Microsoft Kinect for windows

Tens of companies were displaying their motion and sounds controlled products by utilizing the Kinect device by Microsoft. It was once a pure gaming device for Microsoft Xbox but no more, just like the Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, which once a pure gaming device, have evolved into scientific calculation frontier. 

And there were many mores in the exhibition, like M2M, Data Centers, Servers, Smartphones, Information Security, E-commerce etc... This is one of the good things working here in Japan as events like this do not open to students and publics. Furthermore, to acquire various details and information and FREE GIFTS, we changed it with our name cards! lol.... glad to have name cards!! The free gifts were awesome in EXPO like this, there were even few lucky draws on a few company booths that offered iPAD as grand prizes. i'll aim for one of them next year.

Well, surely nobody will understand what i'm talking above, let us enjoy some views of tokyo big sight below. 

Tokyo big sight is near to Maihama station, so i stopped by to have some coffee while enjoying the feels of the Tokyo disneyland nearby.

sakura & my future

The most amazing moment during spring here is the blossoms of sakura flowers, which is always so awesome that every year there are festivals around the country and people are gathering under sakura trees to amaze its sweetness.

I spent an awful lot of time this winter to think about my future. I would like to focus on something, something that will determine my future. There are too many things to explore, to learn in this world that we simply don't have enough time to explore everything. It's time to choose, to decide which area i wanna focus for the next few years in my life. Furthermore, i wouldn't want to spend my time in works everyday doing things without dreams. it's always dream that keeps me alive. I need dreams to stay alive. It's difficult to make the decision but i have narrowed my choices down to a few areas that i plan to work on. We don't have much time while we are young so it's time to decide. I don't need so many targets everyday, i just need a dream to get forward everyday.

languages

i'm a fan of languages.... it's fun learning all the different languages in this world... new language is always a challenge but it's fun learning it. For example the japanese, it's difficult to master it but once we have a little bit of the language background, we'll be able to extract plenty of knowledge from this language. From Astronomy to Anime and comics! (yes, i love One Piece) and we have different kind of languages here, east asian languages, Europe, English, south east asian etc....

Then there is another kind of language ---> computer languages. it's not for talking, but for making almost everything in our daily utilities. From iphone software to music box... the deeper we know about the languages, the more exciting it becomes. and here we have hardware languages and software languages.

Another kind of language that i know is a picture/art/photo/diagram/figure. From a simple eye pattern diagram that helps connecting and communicating the world's electronics together, to Da Vinci's famous arts... and we have photos. A photo speaks of thousands words.

and we have musics too. the scripts that reflex the player's emotions and moods. I love all the aforementioned languages, but with english is still my priority as i don't speak english here. The only usages of my english for this past few months were facebook-ing, blogging, surfing internet, touching my iphone and BBC-ing. and it will be a disaster if after a few years i forget how to speak this language! emergency plans needed. Somebody please call and talk to me in english!

winter adventure -- running

Life is an adventure...

With a mission of running a full marathon in the next winter, i've tried out a 30km run at Ome, Tokyo last weekend. it is always tough and difficult to run for a long distance. What kept me going in Ome was the little kindness of the residents there. Along the way, along the 30km distance, i felt the kindness, the supportive spirits of Japanese, with uncountable number of people shouting supportive words, handling out water, sweets, chocolates, banana for the runners, it was this little gift that kept supplying us energy, kept us going i guess. I love to run and i guess i've come to a right country to work, haha...

Winter is gonna end soon. hence it's time to rest and recharge my energy and focus myself on some robotics stuffs while resting. So for the marathon, i guess my next event will be the Shonan International Full Marathon on this coming november. I'll train myself well for that. Another Mount Fuji expedition on summer will suit well for the preparation of a full marathon. And i would like to try out the mountains range at the Minami Alps too, a mountain area where mineral water sold in Japan comes from. Of course i would like to take part in Tokyo Marathon but i've no luck. hopefully next year i'll gain a bit of luck to get myself into the tokyo marathon.

The tales of books

Tales of the three brothers, a story about 3 brothers who met the Death himself, appeared in the book of harry potter: the deathly hallow. It's a story i like the most. and the book, it's the most interesting story that i ever read. One day, i would like to read it again in japanese.

i was really feeling happy this week because the luck was on my side again... this time on my japanese language proficiency test or JLPT.. 6 months ago i decided to try out N1 level, i promised myself to work hard and study but i didn't. My laziness told me that i was gonna waste my registration fee. i was quite nervous for the past few months as i didn't think about passing the grammar/vocabulary part but i was again with a little bit of luck, passed it. It was a promise as i've promised myself to pass the N1 in a year's time after i came here. it is this kind of targets from time to time, from year to year that keep me going in life. I couldn't live without a concrete mission in my life. So 1 year has passed, it's time to forge a mission for 2nd year. It's not difficult to set myself a new target, a new mission because i already have it.

when i was working these few days, i thought a lots about the projects that i've done in university. As the saying goes, calm down and the directions become clearer. While definitely, working life here is much more relax then my university life then. I was quite surprised with the things that i've found out on these few months since  i started my work. There are lots of things that i should have realized earlier, i should have known earlier but i didn't. i was asking myself, why? then i realized that i should have relaxed myself more, gave myself a little bit more time to think when i was a student. I should have realized earlier why the color sensors that i've designed would fail to work sometimes. I should have realize earlier why the robots we build were not reliable enough electronically. These are all in the books! In the books that we have studied for 4 years. And i just didn't know enough how to apply it into the real world. Lastly, the thesis, the camera that i build, why it had so much noise? I should have calmed down myself a bit, sat down and relaxed and gave myself a break to look at the situation from other perspectives. It was just so simple, sometimes we just need around 10 minutes to do some calculations and solve a problem that may cause us a few months' time. I believe we just need to give ourselves more times to calm down and think.

Today i realized, reading is still the best way to gain knowledge. I love books and i have plenty of books in Japanese. Although i'm an electronics designer, i don't like to have those sophisticated electronics devices around me. I don't like my iphone, i don't like e-reader, e-book, tablet pc etc.... all i need is just a normal computer. And i just like the traditional books with pages to turn.

彩虹的家

刚刚有一位先生拨电话到Aifm点了myfm的新年歌“天天好天”，结果主持人说：不好意思，我们这里没这首歌。。。(-_-)||||

想起“天天好天”，去年的现在，我最爱听的就是myfm电影“天天好天”的另一首主题曲“彩虹的家”， 觉得太好听了。。。

我好想念在大学的日子，现在的我得不到那满足感。好想回到大学，继续深造。。。
我相信这条路依然存在，而有一天，我会走下去，不论是哪个国家。。。

new year night...

快下雪了。。。在这大年初一的夜晚，好冷，但还蛮开心。。。

日本好没气氛，邻国都开开心心地在过年，这里竟然还在上班。。。太没意思了

所以今天我不出去，我房里比外头更有气氛多了！哈哈

透过网上收听那“恭喜恭喜”，那“大地回春”，好幸福啊。。。

spending my new year in japan for 2nd year in a row... 

thinking about malaysia while staying in room preparing a very important presentation the day after tomorrow.... 

the feeling is different but it's ok. i'll get the chance to see my friends and family this coming summer. 

concentrating on my 2nd circuit design in my company, will need to finish it by the end of this month.

nice new year but again, a moderate earthquake happened in japan a moment ago. no damage. 

There were lots of earthquake activities recently, especially after the mega earthquake last year.

today was a nice day indeed.... i wish to go to chinatown but staying in room was the right decision as i'm forcing myself to start and turn some pages of my "Korean : Level 1".... guess what, i'm seriously starting to learn it... great new year day, lol... 

 finally, happy new year! 新年快乐，万事如意。。。。

another chinese new year passing by

it's again very near to chinese new year. It will be next monday.
I've applied 1 day off to my boss, which i feel like i wanna have a rest during the first day of the chinese new year. but he doesn't approve my leave yet. i'll wait for tomorrow and check again whether i can rest on 23rd january.

today i spent half of my day cleaning my room. it looks fresher, brighter and cleaner. but still, without some new year decorations, it doesn't sound right. i would love to have some decorations in my room but where can i buy it? shit.... maybe tomorrow go and buy some red papers and do myself.

and the most shit thing of all, i still haven't started my korean learning yet. there will be a world expo in korea this year, i wish to fork out some money to visit it so i wanna learn it fast. need stronger determination on this, cannot play around too much here.

i'm listening to chinese new year songs on radio stations of malaysia. i like the environment of new year celebrations. when it is chinese new year, lots of new year songs on malaysian radio stations, same goes to hari raya celebration where there will be lots of raya songs on radio. so although i'm not in malaysia, i'll switch on the online radio from malaysia to listen to the raya songs, chinese new year songs, christmas song etc.... so nice to be a malaysian, i can listen to so many kinds of songs from so many races. and i like new year cookies very much too!! especially indians cookies. in my hometown, most of my neighbors are malaysian indians so they would send us lots of cookies in every deepavali. the cookies were very "hard" and "difficult to eat" but very delicious haha. contributed a lot to my teeth destructions nowadays.

chinese new year wish : take leave next monday!

New year 2012

2011.12.31 I went to Tokyo Tower for new year countdown. 2012.01.01 2am I went to Asakusa temple. 

It was a great experience especially at the moment when the golden tokyo tower was switched off and turned blue on the new year day. 

It was a great moment too at Asakusa.

This is the photo i took on the observatory of Roppongi Hills. 

Just a few days before the word of 2011 vanished.

I was quite happy about my year actually, the lovely 2011.

Everything here full of challenge! full of unexpected events.

I came here to learn, to seek engineering knowledge.

That was my 2011 objective and that will be my 2012 objective too.

i was asked : why engineering? why design? why don't politics?

The answer is simple : I loved politics, I loved management, I loved strategy planning, I loved languages

but i'm loving engineering design

without reasons

Happy new year 2012!