Chow YN – Page 7 – A Learning Journey

All your customers are entitled to quality customer service

All your customers, regardless of their spending budget, expect and deserve good quality and prompt customer service, if you fail to provide this, they can always vote with their feet.

I was a guest of Professor Lin Hsiou-Wei, Dean of Management College, Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan in late July 2016. It was my first trip to Taiwan. Upon arrival at Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei, after immigration and custom clearance, I was looking to buy a local SIM card so that I could stay in contact with the office (and my family) back home as well as with my host. A counter was spotted and I proceeded towards it. I saw five very elegant looking young ladies (PYT – pretty young things as coined by the late Michael Jackson) sitting at the counter. What happened next went on to show why Taiwan is such a great holiday destination.

As I arrived at the counter all five PYTs jumped up from their stools, greeted me with smiles and went on to sell me the most suitable SIM card package for my short trip. While one PYT handled my money, one was explaining to me the features of the SIM package, what I could do etc., the third PYT was busy working on putting the SIM card in my smartphone which had 2 slots for SIM cards. The whole episode took no more than 3 minutes, I was then able to send an “arrived safely” message to my family back in Malaysia. My first impression of Taiwan was several hundred percent boosted by this small encounter (PYTs aside!)!

Just a few weeks before, my former colleague Peter Tang brought his guest, Mr. Li Qunshan of Hunan University, China to visit me at Han Chiang College. Mr. Li needed to fly from Penang to Johor Baru (JB) at the conclusion of his visit to Penang. We booked him on a Malindo Air evening flight which required him to transit in Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). Mr. Li who could only speak Mandarin (and a bit of Russian as he is from the border region between China and Russia) made a frantic call to me at around 5:30 pm. He said that he was not allowed to board (15 minutes before his scheduled flight) and the people there could not tell him what was happening. I ended up asking him to pass his mobile phone to the airline staff at the boarding gate and spoke to the Malaysian Airline System’s (MAS) staff in Malay to discover that Mr. Li’s Malindo Air flight was delayed and the boarding gate for his flight was re-assigned. When I asked the MAS staff which was the new boarding gate, the answer was, “Saya tak tau, kamu suruh dia tanya orang Malindo sendiri” (I don’t know, you tell him to ask the Malindo Air people). By then, Mr. Li, who was to attend a key event in Johor Baru was panicking. I tried my best to convey the MAS staff’s message but Mr. Li kept asking, “Where should I go to board my flight?” I was not in the position to answer him as I was 500 km away in Penang. My attempt to get him to find the flights information LED screen was futile as Mr. Li reminded me that he could not read English. At the last resort, I suggested that Mr. Li look for a Chinese-looking staff or even young Chinese Malaysian looking person who might speak Mandarin for help. 15 minutes later, I called Mr. Li and both of us were relieved that he finally found the new boarding gate and his flight was delayed by 90 minutes so he did not miss it. Mr. Li told me that he asked a Cathay Pacific staff for help and luckily for us, he was willing to take the trouble to find for Mr. Li the re-assigned boarding gate.

I feel that the quality of service of Malaysian airlines (both Malindo and MAS) left much to be desired. Malindo Air, knowing that there was a transit passenger in a delayed connecting flight where the assigned boarding gate was changed in the last minute should have stationed someone at the arrival/boarding gate of the Penang – KLIA flight to take care of Mr. Li. But that did not happen. The MAS staff was even less customer friendly. It did not take much effort to look up the new boarding gate for the Malindo Air’s KLIA – JB flight as this sort of information would be easily obtainable from their computer terminals. They could have also alerted Malindo Air staff of Mr. Li’s predicament. But the MAS staff had chosen to ignore the problem. At the very least, knowing Mr. Li being a China National, the MAS staff could have just ask any of the passengers who could speak Mandarin (I am sure with 97% Chinese Malaysians having studied in Chinese primary schools, SJK(C), it would not be an issue) and helped Mr. Li accordingly.

Can Malaysia hope to attain her tourism target each year with this low quality of customer service at our international airports? I seriously doubt it!

On the international front, I think customer service quality is the determinant factor for the success of an international business at any market overseas if prompt service can be provided locally. In my “early” days of social media marketing of 2013, Facebook local office in the region did not provide technical or customer support. Often if you had issues, it would mean that you were on your own. There was once that we had a credit card issue (where a payment was refused by our bank and the advertising account was barred), it took us more than two weeks to get FB to resolve the issue. Luckily for us, we had a backup credit card, but even then it took about 48 hours for the switch of the credit card to take effect. It meant that we were really not able to have our advertisements reaching our target audience for 48 hours! Then recently Facebook which opened its regional office in Singapore back in 2010 decided that customer service provided at the local level was important and one of their staff indeed made contact with us to provide both training and technical advisory to allow us to make full use of FB’s advertising power and get us more bangs for our advertising ringgit. My digital marketing team (there were only the three of us, yours truly included) were very happy and learned a number of tweaks and tricks to stretch our advertising budget and to have more effective social media marketing campaigns.

We also have an advertising account with LinkedIn at my college. However, LinkedIn did not provide us with a full administrator access to our advertising account and as such simple procedures such as the change of authorized users would have to be requested by us and carried out by LinkedIn. LinkedIn also has an office in Singapore which, like FB, is serving the region. When recently I needed to nominate another senior staff to be given access to our advertising account I first sent a LinkedIn internal message to the service personnel assigned to our account. It took him a few hours to respond to say that it would be done. 24 hours later, the request was still not acted upon. A second message to this guy was replied a few hours later to say that for technical stuff, it might be best for me to contact the person directly…but neither the technical support person’s name nor his/her contact details were given! I waited for another few hours, to no avail. I then proceeded to do some research and found out who was the person actually acting as our “account manager”. But there was no way I could contact this lady directly. I had to send an internal message to ask to be connected with her first. After a day she accepted my request to connect and only then was I able to alert her of my problem. It took another few hours for her to get back to me to say that the request was acted upon. All in all, it took LinkedIn more than 96 hours to act on a simple “please take out User A and replace with User B” request.

In desperation, before I was able to find and connect with my “account manager”, I even tweeted a message to LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner but of course, I did not get any response. I am just a small fry of a customer in little ole Malaysia! The Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) applies, I guess and I belong to the “80” crowd!

Even clients with small budget deserve to have the basic service quality from Linkedin. I am not sure if LinkedIn realizes that some of those in the “80” crowd, if they are treated well, could well turn into your “star” customers of the future!

I wonder if it is because of the fact LinkedIn now is owned by Microsoft that it has a different customer service philosophy or if it was because of the relatively small (by their standard) advertising account we have which put us in the back of any customer service queue? Now would you wonder why advertisers are not flocking to LinkedIn?

I monitor my college’s social media pages closely and I have been known to show my displeasure to my staff if there was a delay in answering any Facebook messages left on our FB Page, respond to messages left on our “live chat” app by enquirers during our “office off” hours etc.. With the internet being used as the first line of enquiry today, providing your potential customers (and existing customers) with prompt and quality service is the key to success. This holds true regardless of which industry you are in but it is more crucial for service industries like higher education. If prompt responses are not forthcoming, the potential students (and parents) today can just move on to the next college for answers and may enroll with your competitor instead. Thus high-quality service is even more important in the private higher education sector in Malaysia which is facing tremendous turmoils with cut-throat competition amid a dwindling local student market where more and more alternatives are available both locally and overseas. I think colleges that provide the best quality and prompt service will be the ones that will ride through this storm.

I opine that the key to Taiwan’s tourism industry raking in good sales could well be the tourist-friendly nature of the Taiwanese people. Throughout the short four days visit I had in Taiwan in late July 2016, I was amazed by the care and quality of customer service that was provided by everyone in the service industry from the friendly hotel staff, the waitress at the local cafe to the express bus service counter guy, everyone was making me feel very welcome and everyone took pride in their jobs and exhibited great work ethics. If Malaysians could emulate even 20% of the Taiwanese attitude towards visitors, we will be very much closer to being a developed nation and could rake in more tourism earning! The “not my problem” attitude shown by MAS staff towards my visitor, Mr. Li will not be productive towards Malaysia’s aim of 2 million tourists from China for 2016.

All your customers, regardless of their spending budget, expect and deserve good quality and prompt customer service, if you fail to provide this, they can always vote with their feet.

Compact Calendar for 2017 specifically for Malaysia (Selangor)

Dave Seah is the inventor of Compact Calendar that I have adopted for many years now.

I first introduced its use in 2008 when I was the Deputy Principal & Academic Director of Technology Park Malaysia College. This practice was extended when I took up the job of CEO & Principal of Han Chiang College in 2015.

Nothing beats the compact calendar when you need to plan events for the year and stay clear of “pit holes” like the eve of public holidays (have your event just before or after a religious event in Malaysia can bring on many complications and unforeseen political baggage!). All Han Chiang College’s academic calendars (for different programmes) are now done using Dave’s compact calendar that I have introduced which are adapted to Peang State (to accommodate the differing state holidays in Malaysia).

I am enclosing links to the compact calendar that I have adapted for Selangor state where I will return to reside upon the completion of my stint in Penang. Two files are available, one is in PDF format and the other an Excel file (customizable by my readers, just change the holiday lookup table to your particular state). I have included the school holidays taking data from a holiday website and confirmed the data with the Ministry of Education Malaysia’s site. Of course, the school holidays are meant for Selangor state (where Perlis, Perak, Penang, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, Pahang, Sabah, Sarawak and the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya & Labuan are in the same group which observes Sat & Sun as the weekend).

To download the editable Excel file, please click this link. For the Compact Calendar 2017 customized for Selangor State in PDF format, please click here.

A word of caution for those wanting to customize this compact calendar. You will need to use Excel. Open Office / LibreOffice will somehow mess up the formatting a little. Google Sheets is a big “NO NO” as the formulae and formatting both have issues and affect the compact calendar. Please do not forget to read the instructions before you do any customization.

Enjoy your annual planning and say thanks to Dave Seah for his invention.

Pursuing just a single PhD is tough enough!

The achievements of former beauty queen, singer, actress, producer, successful business woman, Soo Wincci have now debunked the negative notion about beautiful women. Dr. Soo is the first Malaysian beauty queen (dare I say, Malaysian actress/singer too!) who has earned her Doctor of Philosophy in business administration from the Open University Malaysia. Even someone as capable as Soo Wincci took 6 years of part-time studies to complete her doctorate studies. “Earn” is the key word here as those of us who have been through the PhD journey will tell you that you have to have what it takes to earn your PhDs!

*Dr. Soo Wincci, the first Malaysian beauty queen, singer, actress to earn her PhD (This image was taken from Dr. Soo Wincci’s Facebook page)*

December 17 this year marks the 26th year of my being conferred a Doctorate degree by my alma mater, the Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Everyone who has completed his/her PhD journey will have a story to tell. Each and every one of us who, I have often jokingly call ourselves, “the permanently head damaged”, has a unique PhD journey.

My full-time PhD journey took me just about three years during which I worked long hours in the laboratory or in the greenhouse. My PhD journey was shorter than many because my Master’s degree required me to embark on a one year research project where I had horned in many of the basic skills required of a PhD students and my scholarship would only support me for 36 months! My PhD journey is a “typical” of all who are lucky to have secured scholarships / sponsorships to make the journey as full-time researchers. The first six months of my PhD journey was one for soul-searching. I read copiously, made plenty of notes (it was in the late 1980s… we had no internet and the PC was a luxury that all research students and staff had to share) and tried my best to figure out what I should be doing for my PhD. In my case, I was helped greatly by some of my former lecturers and I was lucky to have my main objective very clearly: to find a way to clone Narcissus (daffodils) bulbs using plant tissue culture technology. A travelling scholarship from the British Royal Society which partially financed a one-week study visit allowed me to learn from experts in bulb science in the Netherlands. Dr. Piet van der Linde (of the Flower Bulb Research Institute at Lisse) selflessly taught me the key laboratory technique to obtain healthy and microbial-contaminants-free cultures. I thought then my work could be easily mapped out.

How wrong I was! For over 18 months after the visit (i.e 2 years into my PhD studies), I was not progressing well and I could not make the cloning process produce sufficient number of cultures. Even if I could do the magic in cloning masses of shoots, the end products required were bulbs. I was in great distress to say the least and at times my PhD degree seemed like a pipedream. Then, I happened to “mistreat” some of my cultures on a gloomy wintry Friday night in late 1989 mainly due to frustration. I did not know then that this “mistreatment” (I was brutal in the way I chopped the culture down) was the first turning point of my PhD journey. I had another turning point shortly after which allowed me to “make” bulbs out of shoots. The end of the tunnel was insight by early 1990 and I completed my work (actually was “barred” from the laboratory by my supervisors so that I could concentrate on writing my thesis) within 6 months and was awarded my PhD in December 1990.

The “brand new” Dr. Chow Yong Neng on December 17, 1990 with his late mother, Mdm Wan Sim Then and late father Mr. Chow Kong Yong by his sides, taken on the lawn behind the Lanyon Building, Queen’s University of Belfast.

I happen to belong to a closed Facebook group, “Doctorate Support Group” which I think Dr. Soo is also a member. This is a mutual support group of those pursuing doctoral studies as well as some “oldies” like yours truly whose main aims for being in the Group are to (a) give moral support to fellow PhD aspirants (b) to receive and provide information on research, jobs, learning etc. All those who belong to this Group, especially those who have completed their PhD journeys have at least 3 things in common:
(a) being through “hell” is inadequate to describe the kind of hardships that all have been through; (b) everyone has been through a period of soul searching, self-doubt and in severe cases, depression during the course of this PhD journey; and (c) everyone has to sacrifice some sort of family or personal life in order to pursue her/his PhD dream.

Having a PhD does not show that you are smarter than those without these 3 little letters behind your name. Instead it shows that the PhD holder has the kind of tenacity, the ability to apply knowledge and skills to work on a complicated problem, and to communicate her/his new found knowledge in an effective manner. Each and every one of us who has been awarded a PhD has one thing in common regardless of our fields of studies, be it social sciences, engineering, computer science, physical, chemical or biological sciences, we all have created a new piece of knowledge for the betterment of mankind. It is this new piece of knowledge that ultimately earned us our PhDs! By “permanently head damaged” it means that all who been through the tough process of working on their PhDs would have successfully endured the challenges, which at times created great nightmares, anxieties, sense of helplessness, dejection etc. which may affect the PhD students’ psychological well-being to the extent that some “damage” could result. I can assure my readers that (and I hope that other PhDs agree with me) all these “damages” are worth every single effort that we had to put in and all these “damages” are transient in nature!

I have met my fair share of “pretenders” – those who hold dubious or fake PhDs. In most cases, those of us who have actually earned our PhDs like Dr. Soo just did would have little difficulties in figuring out the “dubiousness” of these so-called PhDs by asking 3 – 4 simple questions relating to these people’s PhD journeys. You cannot earn your PhD because of your “life experiences”, this is especially so if one is very young. There is no shortcut.

In 2003, when I first met Professor William Purcell (then of University of Newcastle, Australia and now the Deputy Vice Chancellor of University Technology Sydney) and mentioned to him about an individual who was an active Chinese educationist having laid claim to not one but three doctoral degrees. To this, Professor Bill Purcell’s response was a classic, “What’s wrong with the first one?”

I can understand someone with lots of determination, time and resources, after earning a PhD in one field (say engineering, or biological science) could then went on to study up to doctoral level in another different field such as management. These sort of people are very rare indeed as we can see from Dr. Soo’s example, it would take someone with a job and not working on the doctoral studies full time, around 6 years to complete their doctoral studies. Incidentally there is at the time of writing of this article (Nov 02, 2016) a Hong Kong TVB drama series where a very attractive actress was playing a boffin with not one, two but eight PhDs… we all know that in reality this is not possible!

Honorary doctorate degrees are another kettle of fish. These are awards often given out to people in recognition of their having made great contributions to society, to the community or to the awarding university. People holding honorary doctorates are, by tradition not supposed to call themselves “Doctor” but rather they should put their titles in parenthesis i.e. (Dr). It is very rare for an “average” person to be honoured with even one honorary doctorate as one might imagine the magnitude of contributions to society etc. that this person must have made to warrant the said honorary doctorate. Thus I read with great amusement (the story was picked up by the mainstream and online press) about a sort of “marketing whiz kid” cum motivational speaker who claimed to have not one but three honorary doctorates. These claims were resoundingly refuted by the institutions in which this gentleman claimed to have given him such awards. The tell-tale sign of this person’s dubiousness was the fact that he insisted on addressing himself as “Dr” XXX! No honorary doctorate degree holder worth her/his salt will want to show his/her ignorance by calling himself/herself “Dr So & so”!

To those who are working tirelessly on their PhD studies, do take Dr. Soo as a role model and do get yourselves into the closed “Doctorate Support Group” where people like me (the oldies) and some “youngster” (I dare say Dr. Soo and a whole cohort of recent fellow “permanently head damaged” people ) will be there to cheer you on. To those who aspire to come on board, do not wait. You do not need to be a genius to pursue your PhD studies, but what you do need to have is a strong will to succeed. Pursuing your PhD studies is a tough job but as the saying goes, “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going”!

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Online degree from top universities made possible via MOOC technology

DaphneK_Coursera061515 — Dr. Daphne Koller, Founder & CEO of Coursera (photo source: Coursera)

Coursera’s founder and CEO, Dr. Daphne Koller was reported by the BBC to opined that within the next five years complete undergraduate degree programmes will be available from top universities.

The disruptive technology of MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is really the underlying cause of this development. This was somehow not covered in the BBC’s story. It has instead equated MOOC to “traditional” online learning.

A lot of ivy league universities have been dabbling with MOOCs for at least 3 – 4 years by now and most have had gained great expertise on how to produce good MOOCs. It is a natural progression for these institutions to move from offering short courses to “specializations” (a bundle of courses) and to see some revenue from the verified learning tracks. A few institutions under Coursera have indeed offered credits for MOOCs as evident from the following:

However there are only a few institutions offering full MOOC-driven degrees as shown in the next photograph:

I think even the US universities are having to deal with accreditation issues when putting degree programmes online. Putting MOOC-degrees online thus comes with a few hurdles, especially on the regulatory side. In Malaysia, the soon-to-be finalized MOOCs Guidelines by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) (for which this author had the privilege to provide feedback at the drafting stage) will be treating any MOOCs the same as conventional delivered courses when it comes to the recognition of these for academic credits. MQA’s further limit the number of MOOC courses that can be credit transferred to a maximum of 30% of an academic award. Somehow MQA’s guidelines are silent on the accreditation of fully MOOC-delivered academic qualifications. I think it will be necessary for MQA to state its position on this when it has the chance to study the decisions of other accreditation agencies.

But as Koller has said, full online proctoring of examination is not as difficult as people have thought and with MOOC technology, it is much more secured. Firstly MOOC technology now have produced artificial intelligence smart enough to detect a learner’s keyboarding style and even writing style. Online proctoring of examination as I found out in 2013 was no rocket science. My own son, Leland Chow was still in Malaysia preparing for his studies at the University Nebraska-Lincoln and I encouraged him to take Udacity’s “Statistics: The Science of Decisions”. The online proctoring on the day of the final examination was simple. The online invigilator contacted Leland to instruct him how to angle his webcam along with a mirror by his side. That was it. The invigilator supervised the entire duration of the final examination. Because of the online proctoring, UNL gave Leland 3 credits for the MOOC course.

With competition among universities getting more intense for the best students, the more “student-centric” a degree programme is, the chances of attracting better calibre students are better.

However, as a 20-years veteran in the higher education field, I think that for younger learners, a blended approach is still the best. In addition, all 18 year-old students would need to experience on-campus life to forge life-long networking opportunities with their peers. This is something MOOCs cannot provide effectively. Human-to-human direct interaction after all is still the best way to provide a holistic learning package for young adults.

Having said this, I think MOOC-degrees will be the thing to come. But it may still be targeted at adult learners rather than school leavers.

If I score 10 ‘A’s does any one owe me a scholarship?

A student from a remote village in Sabah who did not have the means to attend private tuition classes for key subjects may scores “only” 5 “A+”s compared to a student from Subang Jaya who attended private tuition classes for these subjects who scored 8 “A+”s. As an educationist, I will put my money on the Sabahan student being academically a better student compared to the student from Subang Jaya. Further, because the Sabahan student could thrive without the benefits of tuition classes, I will opine that the chances of this student faltering at university-level studies will be much lower than his/her Subang Jaya counterpart. However by evaluating students based initially on just the number of “A”s scored the odd is stacked heavily against the Sabahan student.

This article is rather long and in its original form was published in two parts in Han Chiang News. It was written in response to the recent news in Malaysia of government bursaries/scholarships students who were promised full funding for overseas universities being told that the coffer does not have enough money and so the power that be had to renege on its promise. I have decided to republish the unedited version here in its entirety.

In recent weeks the press has highlighted the case of many public service department (JPA) scholars having their collective dreams of a fully paid for undergraduate studies overseas being dashed. The lack of fund was the main cause of the drastic decision by the JPA to reverse course for these students who did spectacularly well in their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM – Malaysian Certificate of Education) in recent years. However all were given full financial support for pursuing their studies in local public and private universities.

This case begs the question, “Does society owe a student who has scored straight “A”s in SPM an oversea scholarship?”

While it is disappointing to see talented students who obtain top scores fail to continue their tertiary studies overseas, one must view this situation in a holistic manner. SPM is not an easy public examination for one to score straight “A”s. However those who scored straight “A”s in SPM are not necessary the same people who eventually shine well at university studies. There are many cases of SPM holders with more than 10”A”s who struggled and even tumbled at their undergraduate years.

All of us who have been to college know that there is a big gap between SPM and STPM/”A” levels or equivalent pre-university qualifications. The gap from pre-university to tertiary level is even bigger. Although in general those who did well at SPM would be able to cope with pre-university studies, there are many examples of students with very good SPM and pre-university results faltering at university studies. Thus for a country to commit so much resources to send its citizen to study overseas at this early stage is somewhat of a gamble. The safer bet is in fact what the JPA has done: let these students with great SPM results and pre-university qualifications study for their undergraduate degrees in local public or private universities. If these students turn out not to be what the Chinese described as “Xiao Shi Liao Liao, Da Wei Bi Jia ” (小时了了, ，大未必佳－ being bright at an early age does not necessarily bring success upon growing up), the country can then commit great resouces to send them overseas perhaps on a 2 + 2 model, saving great resources at the same time allowing the selectors to fine tune their selection. Many established private institutions of higher learning have attained great expertise, reputation and network of good overseas institutions to take on this responsibility. For those students who have proven “track records” the country can then commit greater resources to send them for their Master’s or even PhD studies overseas.

Judging someone’s ability to learn well and flourish at university based solely on his/her SPM results is not a very fair method. A student from a remote village in Sabah who did not have the means to attend private tuition classes for key subjects (like Malay, English, Mathematics, Physics, Accounts or Additional Mathematics) may scores “only” 5 “A+”s compared to a student from Subang Jaya who attended private tuition classes for these subjects who scored 8 “A+”s. As an educationist, I will put my money on the Sabahan student being academically a better student compared to the student from Subang Jaya. Further, because the Sabahan student could thrive without the benefits of tuition classes, I will opine that the chances of this student faltering at university-level studies will be much lower than his/her Subang Jaya counterpart. However by evaluating students based initially on just the number of “A”s scored the odd is stacked heavily against the Sabahan student.

I studied for my G.C.E “A” levels at a state-run technical college in England in early 1980s. The college’s “A” level students were mainly those who had taken the examination before but were repeating for one reason or another. Nearly all of them wanted just to pass. Because of clashing of timetable, in the first year of my “A” level studies I could only take the Applied Mathematics half of the “Pure and Applied Mathematics” as a part-time-revision-class which had 50% of the hours of the full-time class, covering only 60% of the syllabus. Yet, I was able to score a Grade A for this subject after studying only for 1 academic year. In my case, my “struggle” was recognized by the university selectors and I received two offers to read dentistry in 1982. The lower offer was just any two subjects at grade E or better! Unfortunately, due to my family’s lack of fund, I had to decline both offers despite meeting the minimal requirement easily with one further Grade “A” and two Grad “B”s. Compared to a boarding school student with dedicated school masters and a greater teaching system who scored 4 Grade “A”s at A Levels, I think my achievement under a much less favourable condition would be more reflective of my ability to learn and survive at university level and beyond. Who should you think is deserving of a scholarship to study at university?

To those students who are expecting (or have scored) straight “A”s at SPM and are now at a crossroad as far as tertiary studies is concern, I urge you to take note of the following points:

No one owes you a scholarship just because you scored well. There are a lot of other influencing factors that the selectors of scholarship fund need to consider. You have no right to demand for a scholarship no matter how well you think you have done in your SPM. As a holder of 2 postgraduate scholarships, I can tell you that getting a scholarship is a privilege indeed and not a right!
Because of (1), you must show courtesy under all circumstances. The matured response reported of the recent JPA “Bursary” students’ case in appealing for help rather than “exerting their rights” is the correct approach. You will not get far if you adopt a confrontational approach and project the image of the world owing you something just because you have the talent to score “A+”s!
Have a Plan B, C or even D.
- Local private colleges provide lots of scholarship opportunities. Most will regularly contribute to the Nanyang Siang Pau’s and Sin Chew Daily’s respective scholarship scheme. However based on this author’s observation, in many years, most of these scholarship awards were not able to find rightful recipients due mainly to the lack of qualified applicants. This shows that there are lots and lots of scholarships out there! Go and grab these!
- Be flexible in your aspiration. Have an open mind in choosing for at least one other alternative field of studies. Remember Sun Tze’s “Art of War”, “Zhi Ji Zhi Bi, Bai Zhan Bu Dai” (知己知彼，百战不殆: know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated in a 100 battles). Often you are your worst enemy in this context! Be realistic. Know your own strengths, weaknesses and interests, match these as far as possible with the different tertiary fields of studies. This will help you to formulate your Plan B, C and even D. Make use of the knowledge of your school counsellors, talk to your seniors who are already at universities/colleges, attend as many education fairs as possible. Whatever you do, be honest with yourself.
- Do your research on what scholarships are available early, preferable BEFORE taking your SPM. This will allow you to evaluate which fields of studies or which institutions are your top choices. You can also test out your own ability, aptitude and interest in each of the shortlisted fields. Do not wait till after your SPM results are announced to do this “homework”.
Have an open mind. Not getting a scholarship for overseas studies is not the “be all and end all” episode of your life journey. Remember the saying, “When a door shuts in your face, one will open up somewhere else for you.” In my case, not getting to study dentistry was a blessing in disguise. I found out why I did badly on 3 dimensional vector in Additional Mathematics and why I could not for the life of me figure out the technical drawing of my roommate only when I was already at university reading general agriculture. I have a form of learning disability in spatial recognition. I would have made a very lousy dentist, assuming I could pass in the first place! The “door” which opened for me was indeed my undergraduate studies in general agriculture, through it, I managed to secure two different scholarships for my Master’s and PhD studies! See a counsellor if you are really depressed but get this bout over as soon as possible. Remember the Chinese saying, “ Everybody has something that they were born to be good at （天生我才必有用 ). Your job is to find that “thing” that you are good at and pursue your tertiary studies in that “thing”. Having good SPM grades definitely will put you head and shoulder above most candidates.

The most memorable line from the highly successful local movie, “Olabola” was uttered by an actress in Cantonese: “Even though I scored As in every subject in Form 5, I am still stuck here as a rubber tapper…..” That was in the 1970s. In today’s environment with close to 500 private institutions of higher learning chasing after students, the protagonist would have secured a scholarship somewhere and PTPTN loan would have covered most of her tuition fees. However, if you are one of those SPM holders with less than 9As and wonder if there is any chance of getting some financial assistance, you will be glad to know that there are still opportunities available to you.

Editor’s Note: Most private colleges have many academic-merits-based and need-based scholarships and bursaries specially designed to help students contemplating tertiary studies due to financial constraints. You don’t need to scored As in every subject in Form 5 to receive a bursary!

Remembering Dr. Michael Leong Hong Kah

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Chinese New Year is a time for reunion, not only for family members but old pals and schoolmates as well. This year’s reunion dinner for my school mates (especially for those who are based in the Klang Valley) happened on Friday, Feb 12, 2016. As I knew my guys would be consuming lots of alcoholic beverages for this function, and traffic in Bukit Bintang area (where our dinner would be held) would be a nightmare, I took the RapidKL 770 bus instead and planned to change at KL Sentral for the monorail.

Then the first “lightning” struck: one of the members of my Queen’s University Alumni Association Malaysia buddies, Andy Gan posted this on our Whatsapp group – “Our dear friend Michael Leong Hong Kah passed away this morning.” I spent the rest of the bus journey checking the various social media and chatting with Andy to verify this shocking news. Not wanting to accept this as Michael Leong just exchanged email with me in late November 2015 and he told me he was recovering well, I contacted our mutual friends, Dr. KK Wong and Seetho Tan who are based in Singapore (where Michael had been living since the early 1990s). I first heard of Michael’s fight with colon cancer when I read his blog in April 2015. In late November 2015, through an exchange of emails Michael told me, “I am still recovering from colon cancer. “ My worst fear was confirmed later that night when Dr. KK Wong called to confirm that Michael had left us. I have lost my best buddy of over 30 years. The second “lightning” struck!

Michael and I were real buddies. We helped each other with our respective weddings. I gave the “best man” speech in his wedding dinner and he was taking lots of photographs for mine…etc. and the list goes on.

Michael (front row, second from the right) was one of my photographers during my wedding dinner in 1991.

Michael and I came from the same hometown, Ipoh, but despite our being of similar age, our path never crossed until we both were in the UK. Our first meeting was around Christmas 1979 in London. But we were just acquaintances back then. Michael’s elder brother, Dr. Tony Leong was studying medicine at Newcastle University, England and I along with my three other friends (all former SMJK Sam Tet Ipoh boys) were students at South Shields Marine and Technical College, 10 miles away. Tony was asked by one of our seniors at school who knows Tony well to keep an eye on us as we were just 17 years old and living on our own for the first time in our lives.

In 1982, armed with my GCE “A” levels result slips I went to Belfast after meeting a fellow Malaysian, Clarence Ko in Dublin where I was accepted to read agriculture at University College Dublin (UCD). Clarence persuaded me to give the Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB) a try as it would mean saving of one year compared to UCD. Apart from Clarence, I only had two acquaintances in Belfast, Michael Leong and Khoo Thiam Chye. October 1982 was the start of my 30 odd years friendship with Michael Leong.

Michael took me to QUB’s admission office and then to different faculties to help me finally get a seat to read general agriculture. As I had to “waste” one year studying in Remove Class on account of my having studied in a Chinese primary school, Michael who was 1 year older than me was in fact 2 years my senior at QUB. As both of us were busy with our studies I only bumped into Michael once or twice during 1982/83 academic year. In 1983 I defeated Michael when both of us stood for the presidency of the Malaysian Students’ Society of Northern Ireland (MSSNI). I think it was not that I was a stronger candidate, but the fact that the “medic gang” (the medical students formed the largest contingent of Malaysians at QUB in the 1980s) was competing with the non-medic gang (mainly engineering students) and I being the “neutral” person somehow was the compromised candidate. Michael did get himself elected as the Vice President of MSSNI. I appreciated the great contributions from Michael especially when our Treasurer, Cheong Kok Wai had to relinquish the position suddenly. We had lots of fun together including successfully smuggling a fellow Malaysian (a young lady) back to Stranmillis College late one night after curfew! As we both embarked on our respective final year of degree studies (Michael’s medical degree took 5 years and mine took 3 years), we seldom get together in 1984/85 academic year. However I recall helping Michael take out the engine of his old Peugeot 305, sent it for repair and put it back together and did the test run. We also helped a fellow student, Mr. Lai to change his car’s clutch. All was done in the garage pit of Belfast’s Malaysian Centre.

564362_10150827606336799_1643002800_n — Michael Leong & I shared the joy of graduating on the same day with our respective bachelor degrees in 1985.

We also shared the joy of graduating with our bachelor degrees on the same day and at the same venue, the Whitla Hall of QUB in July 1985.

During my Master’s and PhD studies from 1985 to 1990, most of my peers had already graduated and left for home, save for the medical doctors working in Northern Ireland. Michael was always game to host a dinner once a month for our group of “oldies” and I was the only “non-medics” among them. In late 1988 Michael bought a house in Belfast and persuaded me to move from my digs (home for me for three years) to keep him company. Seeing that I was working well with my first “personal computer” , a now vintage Sinclair

Sinclair’s Z88 was a revolutionary computer at its time but still lacked the power of the IBM PC.

Z88, to write my PhD thesis, Michael went on to buy a second hand Z88 and proceeded to play with it. After 2 weeks, ever the entrepreneur, Michael learned that the Z88 was too limited in its functions, he promptly sold off his Z88 and bought a second hand IBM clone PC. He knew that I was already very familiar with the PCs having used these in my research work and naturally asked me to train him on how to use his new toy. It did not take Michael long to learn enough to do work on his PC. Soon Michael got a job working in a dermatologist’s practice in London and he relocated there. By late 1990s Michael got a job with a US multinational hardware company and relocated again, this time to Singapore as its medical systems specialist.

When I received the offer of a postdoctoral research position at the National University of Singapore in January 1991, I contacted Michael to seek his advice on accommodation etc. Michael found me a room and went on lending me two thousands Singapore dollars for me to get settled in. It took me more than six months to repay Michael.

After my stint in Singapore in 1996, my wife and I moved back to Malaysia. We kept in good contact with Michael and Irene by phone. For a couple of years, my wife, May also served as

Dr. Micheal Leong and Dr. Chow YN meeting in Kuala Lumpur in 2012.

a director of Michael’s Malaysian company. The Leong and Chow families had our meetings occasionally when Michael brought his family to Kuala Lumpur for holidays. The last time our families met was in 2012. The social media era of the past 10 to 12 years meant that I got to chat with Michael occasionally, usually via Facebook and sometimes via Gmail. The last time I met Michael and family was on June 02, 2014. May and I needed to be in Singapore to sort out some financial matters. Michael drove his family all the way to Changi Airport just

Dr. Michael Leong insisted on driving his family to Changi Airport to have dinner with the author and his wife in June 2014.

to have dinner with us. It could be that Michael remembered me as the guy who was a student surviving on subsistence level stipend, he would always buy the meal. I now regret never to have the chance to repay the compliment.

Michael was a quiet person despite the infectious laughs and that gentle smile of his. Perhaps only Irene knows his inner self best. In April 2015, not knowing the full extent of Michael illness I tried to help QUB’s Head of Alumni Relations, Ian Moore to seek a short meeting with him but Michael politely declined, “My life is for my family and for close friends only. Thanks.” That was his answer. By retiring at the age of 48 as a financially independent person Michael put his family first spending the last 8 years fully and filled with quality time with his wife, daughter Annabelle and son Aaron. I think not many of us could have had this joy of Michael’s.

On the morning of Feb 12, 2016 I lost a great buddy. The readers of pertama.com lost the “oldman”, Michael’s moniker. The community of investors in Singapore have lost a great role model. Most of all, his family lost a caring father and a very devoted husband.

Michael, may you rest in peace.

Author’s note: I feel that telling the story of Michael and his interaction with me is the best way I can preserve the memory of my late buddy. Michael Leong was a serial entrepreneur who was trained as a medical doctor. He had not practiced medicine since living in Singapore in 1990. My life has been made much fuller by having been Michael’s buddy.

Compact Calendar 2016 (optimised for Malaysia)

Compact Calendar for 2016 incorporating public holidays and school holidays for Malaysia is now available.

I have prepared a compact calendar based on David Seah’s creation for 2016. This calendar is optimised for Malaysia, especially so for the state of Penang (where I work).

The recently announced school sessions means that I was able to incorporate Malaysian school holidays into this calendar.

I now have the planning of the academic calendar of Han Chiang College (where I work) done on compact calendar.

As before, you will need to use Microsoft Excel to fully use this calendar. The 2016 Compact Calendar for Malaysia is available here.

I hope this compact calendar will help you in planning work / play for 2016 effectively and efficiently.

My time at Queen’s University of Belfast

I was contacted by Dr. Gerry Power, an old friend and the man responsible for keeping tab on alumni relations at Queen’s University, my alma mater to contribute to “My Time at Queen’s” in 2015. MT@Qub is in fact a series of visits down memory lane by former students, ‘old and young’. Here I detailed a new chapter of my life’s journey as a university student, one which took me close to 9 years to complete! I am one of the few living individuals who have earned not one but three degrees from Queen’s and this is my story.

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It took me a few hours to write and edit the original version which is quite long and detailed. An abridged version was published in The Graduate (page 37) in Oct 2015.

Here is the original contribution.

Until I met Clarence Ko (Civil Engineering, Class of 1984) in that fateful day in Dublin around late September 1982, I had not heard of Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB). In fact it was a coincidence that I ended up at Queen’s as I could not afford the high tuition fees of the universities in England and resorted to Plan B: study in University College Dublin. Clarence persuaded me to follow him on a visit to Belfast to try my luck at QUB. I have no regrets and am greatly indebted to Clarence’s kind gesture. As an “Accidental Queen’s Man”, I often wonder why I stayed as a student of QUB for almost 3 times longer than most people and perhaps ending up being one of the few living individuals who have earned three degrees from Queen’s. I graduated with a Bachelor of Agriculture degree from Queen’s in 1985, followed by a M.Sc in Biotechnology in 1987 and finally a PhD in plant tissue culture in 1990.

Life as an undergraduate in agriculture was tough for me as I had never been near a cow or a sheep until I read agriculture at QUB. My classmates were mainly from farming background and they had an upper hand when it came to understanding what our lecturers were teaching us. I had to content with the many different accents of my classmates but the generosity of some of them helped me cope and I blended in. There were only 3 foreign students (all were Malaysians) in the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Science during my time. Lim Wui Phen (B. Agr, Class of 1984) was my senior and free tutor. I also inherited a lot of books and notes from Lim. Having to be on field trips almost every week visiting different farms gave me a better insight to life in rural Northern Ireland than most Malaysian students would have and these were the occasions that I got to learn at first hand what was covered in class.

In 1983 I was elected as the President of Malaysian Students’ Society of Northern Ireland (MSSNI) more as a compromise candidate (there were two groups of Malaysians which could not agree on most things and as the ‘outsider’ not allied to either, I won!). I learned about the meaning of democracy truly when we were courted by candidates vying our votes for the post of QUB Student Union President. The low turnout at the Student Union AGM meant that Malaysian students, even if we had only 10 persons attending would be the kingmakers!

As a student who did not come from a farm, I needed to gain some farming experience in order to graduate. I spent the summer of 1984 working at the experimental farm of Agriculture Research Institute of Northern Ireland, Hillsborough. I was the general farm hand and it was the first time I played the role of a sheep dog! Marshalling sheep, as I found out was a very skillful and physically demanding activity, especially for the “sheep dog”. It was during this time that I took the first driving lesson: on a farm tractor!

Organising the annual Merdeka Ball for MSSNI in 1984 took a toll on my studies. I received a sharp warning from my director of studies that if I did not work hard for the final year, I would have problems graduating. That made me worked on a tight regime of studies during my final year. But despite this, all of us living in the self-catered house (I forgot the name, it was the biggest house with the rugby team captain as the sub-warden) took time off studying for our final examinations in late April to watch Dennis Taylor defeat Steve Davis at World Snooker championship in 1985.

My postgraduate years at Queen’s were very “quiet” as the laboratory work was a lot more taxing than the undergraduate years. Yet I still found time to attend most of the MSSNI’s functions and as one of the “oldest” Malaysians, I was appointed the Chairman for MSSNI’s AGM twice. I came closest to the “troubles” on the eve of my Master’s graduation. After collecting my graduation gown, I took a lift back to the laboratory at Newforge Lane from Sean D’Arcy (PhD, 1987). We were on Sean’s Morris Minor driving on Malone Road when we were diverted by the police. As we were turning onto a side road, a car bomb went off in the next street. Neither Sean and I nor his beloved Morris Minor suffered any damages, but it was shocking nevertheless to be so close to a car bomb!

I think because of my years being a student at Queen’s (and my faculty), the selection committee awarded me the McGeough Bond Studentship / Harold Barbour Scholarship in 1987 for my doctoral studies thinking that I was a “local” student. In the end, my overseas student tuition fees almost bankrupted the trust funds! I had a “guardian angel”, Ms Audrey Griffiths who was the Faculty’s Secretary coming to my rescue when the Dean had an idea of cutting my stipend to pay for the additional tuition fees!

I found a great casual job during the final part of my doctoral studies: I was manning the security desk of one of Queen’s examination halls and earned a good sum during the 1990 May – June examination session. On top of that, I wrote about 70% of the first draft of my PhD thesis while sitting at the security desk helping to invigilate examinations! I could not afford a laptop computer then but bought a Sinclair Z88 computer instead. The now spoilt Z88 is still lying somewhere in my house.

Z88 – an idea of PDA/tablet computer that was 25 years ahead of its time!

Graduands must respect and appreciate university graduation ceremonies

This piece was inspired when I read about some graduating students at local universities pulling “selfie” stunt on stage during their respective graduation ceremonies. This article was first published in Han Chiang News on June 02, 2015.

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I read with much anguish and amusement recently about graduands of local public universities doing some antics such as taking a selfie while they were getting their testamurs on stage during their respective graduation ceremonies. A lot of debates have been generated in the press and in cyberspace over the “rights” of these students versus the “prerogative” of their university to take disciplinary actions on these “rogue” graduands. However, I think all these debate and discussions have missed a crucial point: that the “rogue” students have disrupted the proceeding of one of the most important academic rites of passage called the graduation ceremony. Their university owes it to the rest of the graduands (and more importantly, their families and sponsors) to ensure that this rite of passage, the most solemn of all academic ceremonies is carried out in accordance to the tradition, custom and ritual befitting their alma mater.

My first experience with a university graduation ceremony was in the late summer of 1983 when my elder sister graduated with a degree of Bachelor Pharmacy (Hons) from the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (which has since merged with University College Cardiff in 1988 and known as Cardiff University today). There we were, my late parents and I sitting in a great hall in Cardiff, Wales, as guests of my sister. The entire proceeding was conducted in Welsh, and rightly so as it was a Welsh university that my sister had attended. But, we had the entire proceeding translated in English for us in the graduation booklet so that we could be a part of this important rite of passage for my sister.

We could follow everything that went on during this graduation ceremony, even though not a single English word was uttered. The graduation ceremony was steeped in tradition and I remember watching my sister went up the stage, bowed to the Vice-Chancellor and then bowed to the President of the Guild of Graduates, who in turn took off his mortar board and formally welcomed her to the Guild. The English text in the graduation booklet stated that this would be the crucial step in the ceremony as a graduand can only be considered as a “graduate” after receiving the blessing and acceptance into the Guild by the President. Now, fast forward to 2015 and faced with these “rogue” graduands who disrupted the sanctity of a graduation ceremony. Do you not think that the rest of the graduands should have the right to have their rites of passage protected? Would it not be a waste of time if every graduand spends an extra 10 seconds to pose for a selfie / wefie?

No one with the right mind in Malaysia will think of taking a selfie if he/she is getting a prestigious award such as a “datukship” from HRH The Yang Dipertuan Agong. This is because we know that it is a great honour to be bestowed such an award and we need to show the greatest of respect to HRH during the ceremony. Yet many in the raging discussions advocated the freedom of expression to justify the actions of these “rogue” graduands.

What about a simple word, RESPECT for the institution and the leadership of these institutions for awarding an academic credential to a graduand? If a graduand cannot show the simplest form of respect for his own institution and the highest officials representing his institution, then IMHO, the said institution has every right to revoke the graduand’s academic credential or take other severe disciplinary action against him/her. When I saw photographs of some graduands of US universities wearing self-designed mortar boards with all sorts of ugly displays, it dawned on me that the founding Vice-Chancellor and the officials of my alma mater, The Queen’s University of Belfast must have had great collective foresights to do away with mortar boards altogether in our graduation ceremony!

(Featured photograph sourced from: http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/421528/slide_421528_5395340_free.jpg)