Beloved Mum, Dad & Brother
Gone from this world, now together
In a glorious & heavenly abode
With everlasting beauty to behold!
Loving souls don’t really part
Though miles, miles & miles apart
Your loving presence always felt
Very close to our hearts
Your loving voices we don’t hear
Your smiling faces we don’t see
Loving arms around us we miss
But happy for you in heavenly bliss
Though grief stricken & in pain
Memories will always remain
In sunshine & in rain.
Our loss is Heaven’s gain
Fondly remembered
Forever cherished
Forever in the hearts of
ALL IN THE FAMILY
&
BELOVED FRIENDS
by Katheeja Alavi
Mama’s words...
Read User's Comments(0)
The PTPTN issue...
I am pretty much happy with the new government but there are
a few things that I don’t agree with one of their manifesto that has to be implemented
immediately. My take on the PTPTN issue, well, if the government wants to give free
education, if you are in a position to do it, by all means yes I am happy. But
with the recent debt being made known to all being RM1 Trillion, I don’t think
we should be moving that way yet. Giving a leeway for payment of PTPTN debt to
individuals who are not able to pay is one thing but making it totally free is
another. I am in agreement if they want to allow debt takers with a monthly pay
lower than RM4k to pay later but what’s with the lift in immigration and CCRIS
to all bad paymasters? If they can travel overseas on a holiday or for what
ever reason, they can surely start paying back at least RM100 monthly.
There so much talk about the country’s debt but when it
comes to getting off debts, so many are just so happy to just let go of their
responsibilities. Even those earning lesser than RM4k, if you can take a
holiday in the country, that means you can definitely start servicing your
debt, don’t say you can’t afford it if you can, that’s just wrong. PTPTN has issued Sukuk’s to fund the
education of Malaysia’s and it is a government guaranteed debt, meaning if you
default or decide to pay later and cause problems to their cash flows, the government
will have to step it and pay it. So, are we really helping the government now
by doing this? Its not the time to demand and feel entitled, just pay your debts
and let the country manage the free education in time when it has the means to
do it.
I just shared a post on this on FB and gotten some idiotic
comments from some people who just feels entitled to everything and expects
things to be handed out free by the government. Comparisons were made to other
countries with free education, but compare them wisely, what are their tax
rate? Is that country in a huge debt situation? Well the government has to earn
their income from somewhere to clear up the mess that we are in, so try helping out
by paying off our own debt. And if the government wants to just give away all
this money, why don’t they pay those good paymasters what they have paid too, why
reward the bad paymasters by letting them off their debts? To those free
loaders and entitled people, remember that it was that debt taken that helped
you get the education and help you earn a living now. Don’t just think of
enjoying yourselves, help the country, think of the future generations and
start paying up.
Bad experience at the Immigration
I had written this on
Friday to post, but never got around to doing it, here's me letting off some
steam..
There goes my day
yesterday. Seem like Malaysia has quite a cleaning up to be done. Why drag a process,
when it can be done in a faster manner to save my time and also the department
time. Wasting my time and all the resources for half cooked job….
Here I go on to tell
you why I’m so pissed…. It not once but twice…. yup twice
On 17 May 2018, my
husband and me visited the immigration office… if you are wondering why, my
husband is a Singaporean and he wanted to renew his Visa… Does that sound
difficult? I don’t think so…. We submitted the spouse visa extension, when we
were at the counter, the officer told us that my husband can get 2 years, since
he has already completed his first year visa. Great news right, save the
hassle to visit in a year time….
As we were thinking
wow, that a great news, guess What???
After waiting
from 10am to 3pm including waiting time to submit documents, payment
and collections, that about 5 hours, yup 5 hours … no joke, right????
With all the waiting they
only gave us a 1-year extension. Really, yes only 1 year … have to go
through this hell again in 12 months….
On the interesting
part, and when asked why, they said its up to the officer.
Yup the Officer, I
guess he did not like our looks…. Yup what the heck right??
Where is their SOP or
process? You say one thing and do another? Don’t they have a
process to follow? For what reason did the officer reduce the visa term? Why
were we not informed? You mean you can do what you like after telling us one
thing?
And yes all the bad
words start blurting out but no loudly @@##@@@###.... You know why, because we
are civilised enough not make a scene…. Plus we were fasting, it was the first
day of Ramadhan...
To add oil to the fire…...Is
the next encounter is from my mum’s visit to immigration today 18 May 2018.
Let me tell you here,
my mum is senior citizen… so what runs in our mind the office will have brains
not to keep these old folks waiting right… Prihatin….
My mum to renew
the visa. extension for my grandmother who is 90 years plus. Yup she is 90
years old…. You might wonder why bother to renew the visa…. but my mum being an
obliged citizen, wanted to do her part….
And yes, my Grandmother
has been in and out of Malaysia for long donkey years, they should just allow a
few years extension at one go, not make her renew it every 6 months!
Obviously, we can’t be bring
my grandmother (she is bed ridden) to the immigration to renew it
therefore my mum went there with my sister, which I think is the common sense
right….
after waiting for 3 HOURS,
during submission process, they tell her to bring my grandmother. Seriously
bring my 90-year-old grandmother who cannot walk...Again when I thought of this
guess what how @@### pissed I was….
Don’t they have any
empathy? What is a 90-year-old granny going to do if you extend her visa??! If
you really need to check on her, send an officer over, not be so disgustingly
inconsiderate, my mother is a senior citizen, at 70 years old has gone to renew
her mother’s visa in order to take care of her. Can’t you people use some
common sense?
Well that quite
interesting right??? Where are we heading to ??? Not respect at least a
sense of logical thinking in this matter would have played a part…. Who to
blame????
Another thing, since
the waiting period is so long, can’t they at least make it comfortable by
providing chairs with cushion to sit and not that low steel bench which is
about to break anytime?
I am furious since I
had to sit on it for 5 hours, there are no proper system in place, at least
when you give us a number tell us what time you will see us, not just ask us to
wait.
Look at how Singapore
does it, we are given a time, they have that much respect for people’s time,
here we are at their mercy like we are some kind of criminals. It’s really
disgusting how they treat people.
This are people going
to the office as a good citizen…. Sometimes I wonder is it worth to be so
obliging and obedient to the law… When we get treated so badly……
At least I’m
young, the joke of the year is they wanted a 90-year-old lady who is bed ridden
to come to the office…. This act really supersedes all act of intelligence ….
Bravo to a friendly and considerate Malaysia
The one where Big Data has made its name
In the previous class of Digital Marketing, we watched a video on Big Data, it kinda scared us! it's like we were being watch or something and all our actions are tracked through all the devices we use. Every time we use a computer, access our phones, or open an app on a tablet, we’re leaving a digital trail. Most people are vaguely aware that
Google knows what they’ve searched for, or that
Facebook knows who their friends are, but it goes much, much deeper than that. In short, the scary things that we let them know are things like everything we have searched on the search engines, our gender, age or age group, relationship status and whether its going to last based on the activities you do, it know where all we have traveled. In the UK, police have access to data from thousands of networked cameras across the country, which scan license plates and take photographs of each car and their driver. In the U.S., many cities have traffic cameras that can be used similarly. Your phone gives out so much more information like where you work, what's your routine, what you buy using internet banking or credit cards, and much more! just google it and you will find it.
So what is this thing called Big Data? Big data is data sets that are so voluminous and complex that traditional data-processing application software are inadequate to deal with them. Big data challenges include capturing data, data storage, data analysis, search, sharing, transfer, visualization, querying, updating, information privacy and data source (Wikipedia, 2018).
This reminded me of the series I used to follow on "Persons of Interest", it uses the same but to track people and know of things before hand to enable the higher ups to take action. It uses "The Machine" that is capable of collating all sources of information to predict and identify people planning terrorist acts. Anyway, back in the real world as we know it, people were using basic analytics to discover the market trends and insights before big data analytics appeared. Since Big Data Analytics has been discovered into businesses,
it helps companies to gather, organize and analyze the information which could be helpful for both present and future decision making. Businesses can now identify the trends, insights, patterns and relationships for instant decisions. With the speedy and efficiency of big data analytics, it provides businesses the capability
to work efficiently and stay agile which provides a competitive advantage to the companies.
So, its not all bad, there are useful things people do with these Big Data especially to market their products, well sometimes its annoying when they flood your mailbox with reminders but sometimes it can be useful.
A Joint CSR Project Al Rajhi Bank and International Business School of UTM
As part of our Doctoral Seminar in Exploring Opportunity for Social Responsibility and Sustainability or in short the EOSR class, we are required to engage a company and perform a joint CSR programme. Our class decided to build a mini library for a home, we put up our proposal to Al Rajhi Bank and it was accepted. Thank you Sure Club of Al Rajhi Bank! I am glad to say that we did a good job! :)
We started off looking for homes that needed a mini library, we got some recommendations from the social media and called up a few homes. Then we went to visit the homes and shortlisted the home that is most suitable to receive the library. We called them and told them that we have chosen their home i.e. Pusat Jagaan Baitul Hidayah, they were delighted.
Some pictures during the event, there were performance and games, we all had fun :)
Stressing out
This sem I was so ambitious that it caused me my freedom, okay not that way just that I took too many subjects and attempted to do my independent study which takes me to proposal defence. Having to work on three other courses assignment is already heavy enough and I have to also work on defending my thesis.
Why am I complaining now? Because my paper is due on friday (in 48 hours) and I need to rewrite certain areas in the next 2 days and ensure its within the 20% range of similarity index under turnitin. Yea the stress has been piling earlier this week, I thankfully i managed to get an extension from the earlier deadline that was on 7th May. I just realised I completed my paper without checking to turnitin and when I did, it was at 24% similarity y index. Got that sorted within a day and sent to my supervisor for checking and today she just came back with comments for me to enhance my background and problem statement. This is what happens when I get things done last minute...why oh why shaz!!
Now am sitting at KLIA, listening to GE14 results while rewriting my background and problem statement. Of course I took a break to write this blog since I am also behind on blog counts for my Digital Marketing Assignment. So yeah at least this is done!
Anyway getting back to my proposal defence submission, also just found out my date for PD presentation has been pushed further to 12 June, kind of relieved at the same time I will be carrying this stress another month until just before raya..oh well the price I have to pay to get a Doctorate... I really hope I don’t give up and I can take this to the end and earn that DR. in front of my name.
Experience Atttending the UX Malaysia Meet Up
This time
we are required to write a blog post to review the UX Malaysia Meet Up with the
focus on "Good UX Impact for Businesses" so here are some points I
had taken during the session held on 21 April 2018 at Seek Asia.
Firstly,
the organizers did not consider the background of people attending and I was
one of those with no knowledge to this area. There was no introduction given on
this meet and what UX was and also what the meet up was meant to achieve. So
then I had to ask what is "UX" to a friend, to which he responded its
"User Experience". The definition of UX from a simple google search
on Wikipedia states User Experience (UX) refers to a person's emotions and attitudes
about using a particular product, system or
service. It includes the practical, experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human–computer interaction and
product ownership. Additionally, it includes a person’s perceptions of system
aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency. User experience may be
considered subjective in nature to the degree that it is about individual
perception and thought with respect to the system. User experience is dynamic
as it is constantly modified over time due to changing usage circumstances and
changes to individual systems as well as the wider usage context in which they
can be found. In the end user experience is about how the user interacts with
and experiences the product.
A
formal definition of UX issued by ISO9241-210:2010: “A
person's perceptions and responses that result from the use and / or
anticipated use of a product, system or service” is ambiguous and needs to
be refined. (Law & Abrahãob, 2014) . In order to have a
good UX in anything, design plays an important role. The development of designs
should be carefully done by the businesses as it will influence the UX point,
therefore as pointed out during the discussion feedback is an important element
for design to ensure it works well with the users. One of the questions
thrown to the panel was to have or not to have a design team, one of them responded
that it is not priority during an early phase of setting up a business, efforts
are concentrated on marketing, operational and putting management teams in
place. Market acquisition is more of a focus, as start ups needs to obtain good
data and market research where people are needed to test it. For certain
businesses, User Interface (UI) is needed but not for UX, as business can still
survive without a design team.
For
a B2C, it was stated that they need to have a design but not necessarily to
have a design team in place at the start as it is costly, what is usually done is
a company uses a template and employ a part time designer to get things moving.
Until such time they know the market and start acquiring it, only then will
they spend money, time and effort to perfect it. A problem should be known
before starting the business and in order to sell the product created,
businesses should know how much people are willing to pay to solve the problem.
One of the panels stated that B2C is not a lucrative business but B2C is,
however tools are built for both platforms in order to have a reach towards
both areas.
When
you employ a consultant, they should know the entire business and provide clarity
to problem solving. Businesses should provide
structure or space to explore the problems. It was noted that a design should
serve a business purpose, most businesses are afraid of research as data can tell
them that the business was conducted in a wrong direction or such, but this is
a good thing as businesses can then steer away and manage the problem earlier instead
of later, after suffering losses. Most of the time, people within the business
or organisations are the designers without realizing it. They are the ones
creating value for UX, therefore, engaging the teams within the business is the
best way to solve a problem and come up with a design that will benefit UX.
According to (Brajnik and Giachin, 2013), UX covers at least the following aspects;
aesthetics, emotions, perceived usability, hedonic attributes, cognitive load,
interactivity, social responses, persuasion and acceptability. An on-going
process of improvements, transfer of knowledge and sustainability of processes
are a good way of managing the design puts in place by an external consultant.
It enables the business to survive and tweak the design as and when required without
having to go back to a consultant. Businesses should aim at an experimental
validation of the effectiveness of design factors that are expected to bear
upon UX, usability and accept- ability (Brajnik & Giachin, 2013) .
Therefore,
in order to have a good impact on UX, businesses should focus on ecosystem
building i.e. good platforms, partnering on data, research analysis, have a personalise
data experience and use the user persona and information sharing to build the
ecosystem and platforms. A design should be performed to reach a desired ROI.
References
Brajnik, G., & Giachin, C.
(2013). Using sketchesandstoryboardstoassessimpactofagedifference. Int.
J.Human-ComputerStudies, 552-566.
Law,
E. L.-C., & Abrahãob, S. (2014). Interplay between User Experience (UX)
evaluation and system development. International Journal of Human-Computer
Studies, 523-525.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)