Learning – Page 2 – A Learning Journey

Reviving old laptops with Puppy Linux (part 2)

In this article, the author shares his experience in creating such a bootable USB flash drive, comes complete with a working Puppy Linux distribution that is persistence. Unlike “live” bootable USB flash drive of other distribution, where once a session is over, all the updates, software installed are lost, Puppy Linux will keep all the these to make it persistence & adapt to the user’s needs.

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In the previous article, I covered the basic information relating to the preparation one needs to do in order to set up Puppy Linux on a USB flash drive that is bootable. I also gave the rationale for using Puppy Linux and shared some examples on how revived old PCs / laptops could be deployed. In this article I will share my experience in creating such a bootable USB flash drive, comes complete with a working Puppy Linux distribution.

Unlike most other Linux distributions that have the USB flash drive bootable feature, Puppy Linux has an added advantage. Puppy Linux installed on a bootable USB flash drive is in fact persistent in nature. What this mean is, unlike “live” bootable USB flash drive of, say LXLE, where once a session is over, none of the updates, software installed are kept, Puppy Linux will keep all the updates, software installations etc. I guess these are kept in the “personal file” as described in the last segment of this article. So you can keep updating Puppy Linux!

How to set up a bootable USB flash drive that can run Puppy Linux?

Launch Unetbootin and select “Diskimage”. Keep the default “ISO” option.
Click the “ ….” tab to the right of “ISO”. Navigate to the folder with the Xenialpup iso file (for this example it is saved in “Downloads”).
Put something like “100 Mb” for the “Space” used to preserve files across reboots”, since Xenialpup is Ubuntu-based.
Under “Type”, make sure “USB” is selected. Plug in your USB flash drive, & make sure it is mounted (you can see this using File Manager).
If you don’t see your USB flash drive listed, go back to “Type” and reselect “USB”. It will look for the newly plugged in USB flash drive and under “Drive:” something like /dev/sdc1 will be shown.
Click “OK” and the installation of a bootable USB flash drive with Xenialpup OS will run automatically.
If your USB flash drive has any files on it, this message will show. Click “Yes to All” [Warning: this will wipe clean an used USB drive!]. Wait till the installation process is completed.

To run Xenialpup, reboot the laptop. Keep pressing and releasing F12 (the function key, F12 works for both my Dell and Toshiba laptop, different brands may have different function key for this, but there is surely a function key to bring up the boot up option screen of the computer) till the screen like the one below is show.

Use the arrow key to move to “USB Storage Device” or something like that and press Enter. That’s it!

The OS will load as shown on the screen captured above.

You will see a screen with a cute puppy when loading is done! Select “Xenialpup” and hit Enter on your keyboard.

The OS will load automatically. When the loading process is completely done and the OS is successfully loaded the screen with a cute squirrel will be visible (as shown below). You are then set to rock with the old laptop / PC again!

What software are supplied with Xenialpup?

Puppy Linux is not just a distribution of Linux. It is a combination of different parts of different Linux distributions and thus comes with lots of pre-selected-installed-with-OS software. It works on the RAM of your computer and thus it can be very fast if you have 1 Gb of RAM or more.

Xenialpup comes with almost all the software and applications that you will need. These are grouped into categories such as Desktop, System, Setup, Utility, Filesystem, Graphic, Document, Business, Personal, Network, Internet, Multimedia and Fun. You can obtain additional software clicking the cute little puppy at the Desktop, called “quickpet”(as shown below). Expert users of Puppy Linux have been configuring additional applications and software specially optimized for Puppy Linux and shared with the community of Puppy Linux users. These are called “.pet”.

If you need to read Chinese text like I do, you will appreciate one of these “pets”, CJK_fonts-ttf.pet that you can download and just click to instal.

Likewise, you can download other software via “quickpet” such as Vivaldi browser, LibreOffice and install them with just a click (but make sure that you choose the correct version for your old laptop / PC, both of my old machines were based on 32 bits architecture and softwares for 64 bits machines will not work on them).

What you are expected to do?

Puppy Linux will automatically detect what sort of hardware that your old laptop / PC has and will do its best to optimize these for your OS to work. But two areas that you may need to do some tweaking are Internet settings and sound settings.

The first screen you will see in the Quick Setup screen is shown above. You can set up the country, timezone etc. here. You may want to enable Firewall and Time from internet too.

For Internet settings, the OS auto-detects what internet connections that you might have (such as wired connection via RJ45 cable or wireless-WiFi). There is a choice of setup tools but the simplest is to use Barry’s Simple Network Setup.

In my case (as shown above), By selecting “Interfaces” tab and clicking on “eth0” tab (located at the bottom right of the box, with “wlan0” and “windows”), the app will try to connect with the internet over the network cable connected to my broadband router and a “success” screen will show. Similarly you can connect to WiFi using the same way.

For audio, you may need to configure the audio card. Go to Menu->Setup->Alsa sound Wizard.

Select the Multiple cards section (No. 3). Select a sound card and select the “Test Sound” tab below. A new window will open. You should hear sound generated on the left and right speakers follow by the bark of a puppy. If you do not hear anything, put the volume to maximum and repeat.

The only other setup you need to do is the printer. As there are many brands, it will be best to be general here. Go to Menu->Setup->CUPS Printer Wizard and follow the instructions to add a printer. Don’t forget to hook up your printer first.
[I must say, if you have a HP MFP laser printer, you may not be able to use CUPS Printer Wizard effectively. This is the only grouse I have with Puppy Linux and it is not its fault but rather HP’s complex number of models! At the time of writing, I have still not completely installed a proper driver for my HP MFP 1132 printer & scanner.]

Don’t forget to save the personal file!

When you need to exit, unless you are just evaluating and not saving the applications and software you have installed, you should save your personal files. Here is why you are advised earlier on to use a USB flash drive that is at least 8 Gb (16 Gb and higher is even better). The “system” file will need at least 1 Gb to work well (the more the merrier) and there is another partition that is made by the OS to serve as “swap”. I think “swap” as the name suggests, serves as the swapping of memory that helps the OS to run on RAM by “renting” or swapping memory on the fly (when you switch / load different software, for example). Although the system says that you will need to have at least another 500 Mb for your personal file, this is the bare minimum. I personally prefer the personal file allocation to be as big as possible to accommodate all the software and applications that I want to install. It will also carry my personal data files. But with the increasing use of cloud storage, I hardly store documents such as this piece of writing on the laptop, preferring Google Drive instead.

Thus if you are running the entire work from the USB drive, it is wise to have as big a memory as possible. I had chosen to save my personal files on the hard disk of my laptop to speed things up (and on account that I used only a 4 Gb USB flash drive!). But putting your personal files on the USB flash drive, you are truly portable! Provided that a host’s PC or laptop allows you to access the boot option (which most would), you can bring your entire computer on a USB flash drive and work on a “borrowed” PC such as at the internet cafe or a friend’s laptop safely.

With the second or third sessions of your usage, Puppy Linux will load a lot faster as it needs not tweak the system further as all the settings are saved before. So don’t pull the USB flash drive until the laptop / PC has shut down fully!

Happy Puppy Linux-ing!

Woof woof!

Revive old laptops with Linux, Puppy Linux (parts 1)

This article contains the sharing of experience & learning on how to revive old PCs/laptops using the light weight Puppy Linux as OS to replace Windows. It gives step-by-step details on how to fit the entire OS plus applications & software into a USB flash dive of a minimum of 4 Gb, with larger capacities being more effective.

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You have that 7-year-old PC / laptop lying around gathering dust. The Windows operating system (OS) is too old but your hardware cannot cope with the latest Windows OS. Worse, the web browser is old and the old OS cannot support the new version of the browser anymore. Thus there are security issues which are stopping you from accessing some crucial websites. You are thinking that this old laptop is as good as junk.

You have heard of Linux which is free (well most distributions are indeed so). However you are under the impression that you will be required to know a lot of programming stuff to use Linux. And you have also heard that the most popular and user-friendliest of the Linux distribution, Ubuntu is known to be getting heavy on resources. Thus Ubuntu may not work well with your old PC / laptop.

But hold on. Don’t junk that old laptop yet. There is a way to get more mileage out of the old workhorse. It is called Puppy Linux. Here, I share my close to a decade of experience with Linux, especially on Puppy Linux.

That’s life still in that old piece of hardware!

I cannot do any programming, I don’t know much about HTML, less so about php or java. But you don’t need to know these to use Linux. I had switched from Ubuntu to a light version distribution of it called LXLE in 2011. While evaluating the latest LXLE version (based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS aka one version behind the latest, LTS stands for Long Term Support, about 3 – 5 years) I discovered that although the OS worked well with my 8-years-old Toshiba Portege T210, it could not be loaded on my 11-years-old Dell Inspiron 1520!

Old laptop — *Toshiba Protege of 2010 vintage (left) & Dell Inspiron of 2007 vintage (right)*

I used to run my old PC (bought in 2004) on one of the lightest Linux OS, Puppy Linux. Puppy extended the usefulness of the old Dell for years till the PC’s motherboard died in 2017. Hence it is a no brainer for me to try the latest Puppy Linux on the 11-years-old Dell laptop. The latest version of Puppy Linux, Xenialpup is also based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. And it could be loaded on the 11-years-old Dell!

As long as the old PC / laptop has at least 1Gb of RAM (Puppy Linux could even run on 500 Mb RAM) and could run Windows XP before, it will be able to run on Puppy Linux. For older machines, there are even versions of Puppy Linux with smaller footprint that could ran on low level of RAM, as low as 256 Mb. A list of RAM-operated Linux distributions is available at Wikipedia, but I have only tested a few of these and found Puppy Linux to be best supported and relatively user-friendly .

How can I deploy revived old PCs / laptops?

When I commenced on operating a university college as its CEO in 2015, I faced the problem of dealing with many seemingly obsolete PCs. Most of these PCs were still in good physical working order, only the operating systems were out of date. This meant that most could not cope with the demands of resources heavy design and editing softwares. But, for simple web-browser-based usage such as searching for library information, wordprocessing, keying data etc. these old machines, if their OS could be updated via Linux could have a second bout of useful lives.

Together with my institution’s then Head of IT Services, we embarked on a small project to revive as many of these old machines by changing the OS from Windows to Linux, using the LXLE distribution which I was already very familiar with. Here are some examples of how we redeployed these revived machines:

As data capturing device for marking the attendance of staff, tracking keys to rooms & tracking of tools at the workshop:

Google Sheets can be hooked up with a barcode scanner to capture data from barbodes.

Barcodes on ID cards & cards attached to keys and tools are captured & recorded in Google Sheets for admin purposes.

We sourced for barcode readers (RM180 – RM350 per item) and hooked these up with a Google Sheets. Users just have to scan their staff identity cards to have their attendance recorded. The same set up could also track keys to rooms where a user just need to scan the barcode on the card that came with the key (or tool) and then his/her own staff/student identity card to have the record taken.
For students to fill in different forms created using Google Forms:

Almost all student admin work involving forms were converted to data capturing via Google Forms at the institution I managed.

I moved as many of the routine administrative tasks to Google Docs / Sheets / Form as possible to cut down on paper usage and to have almost instantaneous capturing of data. Thus revived PCs were placed at strategic locations such as the Registry, the Library and the Student Recruitment office for this purpose.
As terminals for accessing information at the library:
For accessing local server’s information (of the institution’s library) and on web-based information and resources, these revived PCs, with up-to-date web browsers could be used effectively.
For general usage of students in computer laboratories:

Revived PCs were deployed for general usage by students of the university college.

We refurbished the hardware of some of these old PCs to have higher RAM and deployed them at general computer laboratories for students to use for writing, doing email, data logging, doing desk research on the internet etc.. This allowed us to reserved the new PCs with resource heavy software (for design, programming and visual editing work) in other locations specifically for classes requiring such softwares.

The above are just some obvious examples of how redeployment of revived PCs / laptops can be implemented in an education institution’s setting. For private or business usage. The revived old PCs / laptops can, at the very least, used as a data entry terminals, extra desk research PCs and even playing presentation of videos or Powerpoint slides etc.

What you need

I shall confine this article to my experience with Puppy Linux’s Xenialpup version. But most of the steps are applicable if you choose other versions / Linux distribution.

In terms of software here are the ones that you need to download.

The image (iso format) of the OS, Xenialpup. Don’t worry if you do not know what iso do. Part (b) shall cover this.
Download and install a copy of Unebootin, the little application that allows you to write your OS onto a USB flash drive. There are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac. The instructions to use Unebootin will be covered in a section below.
To install Unebootin for Windows is easy. It comes in a .exe file, so just click on this file.
For Linux users, there is a bit more work to do:

– Note where you have downloaded Unebootin (it will be a file with a name like unetbootin-linux-661.bin). Usually this will be the folder “Downloads”
– Alt-x to bring out the Terminal.
– Type (without the quotation marks) “cd Downloads” or the exact location where you’ve the file.
– Type “chmod +x unetbootin-linux-66l.bin” or whatever name the downloaded file is called to make it executable. (you can also do the same to change the attribute of this file in File Manager: highlight the file->Right click->Properties->Permissions->Execute (change it to “Anyone”))
– Type “./unetbootin-linux-661.bin”
– The small application will be installed.
(For making a .bin file executable & run it, I followed instructions from this site)

For hardware, you will only need a USB flash drive. While I used an old 4 Gb drive, you should use one that has at least 8 Gb capacity with 16 Gb being even better (as we shall see later why this is so). If you are using an old USB flash drive, you need to know that during the “burning” of the iso file, your existing data could be wiped out.

*It is best to use a USB flash drive with as large a capacity as possible, min being 4 Gb.*

In the next article, I will cover the details on how to go about creating a bootable USB flash drive containing the entire Puppy Linux OS. I will also share our experience on how best to configure the OS so that it works well with an old laptop.

What to do when your WordPress just refuses to load?

What should you do if your WordPress site just stops loading? This article shares the writer’s experience with this issue where a step-by-step solution for the problem is given. Also highlighted is the usage of Page Builder plugins & their associated supporting plugins. Never update plugins en mass is the key message.

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Just under four days ago, I found out to my horror that my website-blog running on WordPress just refused to load. This was after I did the routine updating of plugins and themes. So I Googled what one is suppose to do (and what could have gone wrong). I tried several “remedies” found on Google and am sharing my learning on this with my readers.

Don’t click the “Update” button!

Previously, as advised by many experts, I dutifully would go to the “Plugins” page to manually update each affected plugin. I was getting lazy and lately had been clicking the “Update” tab found at the top menu of my Dashboard. That was the key to all my woes (as shall be divulged below).

There were several plugins to be updated. I clicked the Update button, the updating proceeded, but it then STOP! The screen of my website (aka this one that you are reading) went totally blank!

My website went ‘dead’! Panic set in! “What the devil did I do?”, I asked myself.

Frantic search for the solution

Off I went to Google “wordpress site won’t load after update of plugins” and found several useful sites.

The best of these was one with a good advisory which gave more or less this message: “Don’t trust the Update button, do your plugin update one by one so that if you hit trouble, at least you can easily identify the culprit.” So I learned that I had to do a lot more to overcome this outage. I followed the instructions given and here are the steps I took.

I accessed the control panel (cpanel) of my website hosting.
Using “File Manager” I traced my path to the public.html and found the folder with my WordPress installation.
Diving deeper, inside my WordPress folder, I located the subfolder “wp-content” where it has a sub-subfolder called “plugins”.
I renamed “plugins” to “brokenplugins”. Then created a new folder which I named “plugins”.
I opened another tab on my web browser and tried my luck in accessing my website. And it was back on! But as the “plugins” folder was empty, none of the plugins worked.
I then went back to the “File Manager” and copied the plugins from “brokenplugins” to “plugins”, doing so one at a time. For each plugin that I copied over, I would go back to my website and reload to see if the newly copied in plugin caused any problematic files (aka corrupted files) that would crash the website. All the plugins seemed to have uncorrupted files. But in this way of copying, all the plugins are still inactivated.
Next step was for me to activate each one of the plugins, one by one. And I found the culprit! It was Caldera Forms. WordPress was good that it detected the problem and did not allow me to activate Caldera Forms.
I deleted Caldera Form from the “plugins” sub-subfolder and I thought my problem was solved.

Removal of a plugin, removed content associated with it too!

Of course when you remove a plugin, the associated features and content would be removed too! In my case it was the contact form and order form. The latter actually was put in as “shortcode” on multiple pages of my website.

Once bitten, twice shy. I realized that I should have just used the “default” contact form from WordPress instead. I could also create a simple order form that served my needs from this too.

However, I noticed another issue!

I couldn’t load Elementor, the page builder plugin!

During earlier updating of Elementor and the third-party supporting plugins, I presume somehow the main Elementor editor was prevented from loading. Elementor is a very useful page builder plugin that takes that pain out of having to learn html coding for WordPress users like me. It allows users to do lots of web page design work using its standard elements which are supplemented by many third-party’s plugins too.

With Elementor not loading, although all the content I created using it was still showing, I was prevented from editing any content created with it. Hence I could not replace the forms previously made using Caldera Forms (and the ‘shortcodes” for these forms which remained after Caldera Forms was removed as a plugin were very glaring on the affected pages!).

Lot’s of advise on Google but …..

I found a lot of advisory via Google to tackle the Elementor plugin not loading issue. Well, at least I was not alone. One of these was from Elementor itself which gave instructions to change some settings. This did not work for me!

I then found another page from Elementor which advised that increasing the memory allocated to WordPress may solved the issue. But I would have to edit the associated php file, wp-config.php which was found in the main WordPress installation folder. I was a bit apprehensive about messing around with a php file but the instructions given by a different web page seemed to be showing that this was just a one-liner addition. So I increased my WordPress allocated memory to 128 Mb. But this did not bring back Elementor’s editor either.

I went back to Elementor’s support page and followed its advisory and proceeded to deactivate and reactivate each plugin in turn to see if any one of these was stopping Elementor editor from loading. I found out that the culprit was indeed a supporting plugin for Elementor, “Premium Addons for Elementor”. I could not even deactivate this plugin (after it was activated earlier). As such it would not be possible for me to just delete it via Dashboard of WordPress. I ended up having to remove the culprit using “File Manager”. However a warning message kept showing up at the Dashboard which warned about the missing “Premium Addons for Elementor”. Emptying the cache several times did not remove this message. [But after a reload of the website, on the next day, this message was gone!]

Again, I had to rewrite all the content that was created by the elements provided by “Premium Addons”.

Lessons Learned

Never update plugins on WordPress en mass! Do it one at a time so that if something fouls up, at least you can pinpoint the culprit!
If you create forms using a third-party plugin, such as Caldera Forms, it is best to have at least a screenshot of the form so that you can recreate the content if things go wrong and you have to remove the offending plugin.
Always keep a copy of the content that you create with Page Builder and its supporting addons plugins. You will lose the content if you have to delete the addon plugins or the main Page Builder plugin.
You should keep life simple. Non-design heavy content, such as a blog page like this should be presented using the “native” WordPress editor. This will save you from a lot of headache and work which using a Page Builder will cause should the same page building plugin has to be deactivated or removed.

Learning to work with WordPress plugins & add-ons

Due consideration must be given when applying plugins to WordPress software, especially when a plugin is an “add-on” to a core plugin for a page builder. Incompatibility after an update may render elements of an “add-on” not functioning & thus losing your content.

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When this blog was hosted under WordPress.com with a domain name registration using the “free hosting” package (which is no longer available to new registrants), the decision to update plugins was not provided to subscribers. WordPress.com takes the responsibility to update/upgrade plugins and solves any technical issues that might appear. All themes and plugins offered under WordPress.com are “tried and tested”.

This makes life relatively easy for the subscribers, with one big major drawback. The themes and plugins available under the “free hosting” being pathetically few in numbers and provide only a plain, “vanilla” version of WordPress.

[In fact, the “free hosting” is not really free if you want to use your own domain e.g. theplantcloner.com as you have to pay for the registration of the domain as well as the “redirection” of the “free hosted” site to your domain name. This came to US$18 for my package, unfortunately, this package is no longer available.]

If you want features, you got to pay a lot more!

Only if you pay for the “Business” package (at US$25 per month) then you can install any plugin (I think these have to be pre-verified by WordPress.com as well). The other “cheaper” packages; “Premium” at US$8 per month and “Personal” at US$4 per month only give you a better selection of themes.

Image Source: https://https://wordpress.com/pricing/

Thus it was not surprising that when I gained more confidence in working with the WordPress software I found the limitations of my “free hosting” package not something I could live with. Hence the consolidation and relocation of this blog to a “self-hosted” WordPress site in Mar 2018. WordPress (under WordPress.org) is offered as an open source software.

Plugins galore but which are the most suitable?

I installed a lot of plugins and test-run many more before settling with a core number of around 30 plus plugins. The most useful, as far as the design and customization of the look-and-feel of my site was concern were the page builder plugins. There are many different “brands” of page builders. After trying and testing a few major page builders (you can identify these as “major” plugins by the number of downloads and reviews shown), I had settled down for the free version of Elementor. The reason was clear, other page builders (the free versions) might have more features and had downloaded more often, with better reviews, Elementor was the easiest to use.

“Add-on” plugins are specially designed to expand the functionalities of the core features of page builders, some are specific for a brand of page builder, such as Elementor while some may be meant for another page builder brand, but some of its features may be compatible with Elementor. I applied a few features, called “elements” from these “add-ons” to make my website and blog look more aesthetically pleasant. Page builders like Elementor also add a lot more functionalities at my disposal.

Should I update the plugins?

When you self-host your website using WordPress, you will have to decide if you need to update your plugins and themes (as well as the core WordPress software) when these are available. Generally, the WordPress software itself will highlight which plugins need to be updated. You can also check the relevant plugin page under WordPress.org (right inside your WordPress software) for compatibility.

Thus for “standalone” plugins, I think if you go by the compatibility indicator, you are pretty safe in installing the update in most cases. However, if you have “add-ons” to a key plugin such as Elementor, the end result may be very troubling, as I found out.

Where is my Post Carousel? Where is my Modal Box?

I had installed three “add-ons” for page builder, two of which were specifically meant for Elementor while the third, “Widgets Bundle for Siteorigin” was meant for another page builder named Siteorigin. Somehow the widgets from “Widget Bundle“ worked well with Elementor as well as the native WordPress editor.

The attractiveness of “Widget Bundle” was that many of its elements were installed as widgets. Widgets are small additional features that you can apply to almost anywhere in your website whereas most of the page builder’s add-on features are only available within the confine of the plugin. Thus if you are not editing a post or a page using the page builder’s interface, these additional features are not available.

One particular widget, “Post Carousel” from “Widget Bundle” was very useful. It allowed me to put a random selection of my blog posts in a carousel at the front page of my website. However, one day, after doing the routine updating of plugins, I discovered to my horror that “Post Carousel” was missing from my front page. Mysteriously, “Widget Bundle for Siteorigin” too was missing from my list of plugins! I tried to re-install “Widget Bundle” but was informed that the folder for it was already in the system! I had to search, test and re-configure another, standalone plugin to return Post Carousel to my front page. But this plugin was not as features-rich as the one from “Widget Bundle”.

Then the next shock came just a day before this piece was written. The Modal Box which came via “Premium Addons for Elementor” went missing from my front page! A Modal Box is a box (text & image) that pops up when a page is loaded. I used it to welcome and inform my readers redirected from theplantcloner.com of how to find old articles. I resorted to using the “Alert” element, native to Elementor to replace the Modal Box. But “Alert” does not pop up when visitors come to the front page. “Alert” also does not come as a widget which would have allowed me to insert it near the top of the front page. Instead, I had to contend with putting the “Alert” box right at the bottom of the page (due to the design of my theme). Hardly an ideal location to carry a welcome message!

Lessons learned

Not all updates bring better utility and functionality to your WordPress software.
If you install “add-ons” to a popular plugin, you will need to be aware of incompatibility of these add-ons upon an update of the core plugin.
It is better to look for a standalone plugin (e.g. Post Carousel) to do what you want than to use a widget from one of the “add-ons”.
Elements from add-ons that are compatible with the core page builder such as Elementor at installation may be rendered useless upon upgrading (e.g “Widget Bundles for Siteorigin” was fully compatible with Elementor but when the latter was updated, problems arose!).
It is better to live with the native elements from a page builder.
You must check your website regularly to spot missing content due to plugin issues.

Securing website by installing SSL certificate

SSL certificate is essential for any website. This piece provides an account on how to get a free SSL certificate from either CloudFlare or Let’s Encrypt. Namesilo is great is providing information on free SSL certification. Mochashosting has Let’s Encrypt in its control panel that, with a bit of tweaking can install a free SSL certificate. CloudFlare has great DNS server but its the configuration of its free SSL certification is very challenging.

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A few months back I decided to consolidate the various domain names, web hostings and websites that I have. The key reason for this was economic. I realized that over the last 10 years while learning to “play” with all these web-based “learning toys” of mine I had spent quite a lot.

Consolidation of domains as mini projects

One of the mini projects I had set myself to do was to move my blog (previously on theplantcloner.com which is being hosted till Oct 2018 by WordPress.com) to my web hosting under Mochahosting. WordPress has a simple “Export” function to generate an XML file to carry almost all of the content of the blog. It has also a very simple “reversal” feature for me to “Import” the content into the blog’s new home, where you are reading this now, https://slc4u.org/learning.

My next mini project was to configure, “beautify” and populate my blog’s new home with features etc. which were denied me while the blog was hosted on my package with WordPress.com Then halfway on I realized that it would also be good to consolidate my key business websites (yup I have more than four websites!) into the same domain of slc4u.org. This will surely streamline the work and present a more informative, “one-site-find-all” business website and blog. In addition, I could perhaps generate some business for my consultancy from traffic to my blog.

Blog’s traffic slowed to near standstill post migration!

With the new self-hosted WordPress site done up for my blog, the time had come for me to make the final decision to move. Thus around mid March 2018, I started to “wind down” the previous blog hosting, having sorted out the issue of domain name transferring (that’s another story to come!). Gradually, as I gained more confident of working with the slc4u.org domain and the working of the self-hosted version of WordPress, I started to boost up the traffic to slc4u.org by telling my blog subscribers & visitors of theplantcloner.com and visitors about the new location of my blog.

WordPress.com took away all the pain of self-hosting of your blog using WordPress as the platform but there are two things that bugged me. Firstly, it has very restrictive in the selection of themes and even less so for plugins. These make the blog was very “vanila” in its look and feel. Secondly, although WordPress.com provides the generic hosting free by treating your blog as a subdomain (i.e. yourblog.wordpress.com), to use a dedicated domain, one needs to register this domain with WordPress.com (the US$18 a year package that I was on is no longer available to new registrants, now it is more like US$48 per year).

While under WordPress.com’s hosting, my blog, due to the tweaking, security and good search engine optimization, have a respectable number daily visitors. However, once the switch was done, the flow of visitors, even to my most read piece dwindled down to zero!

Being SSL certified is essential!

I tracked down the key reason for the drastic drop post-migrating to the lack of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and hence the “https” feature of slc4u.org. I discovered that search engines are not too kind to unsecured sites (i.e, sites without SSL and hence the lack “https” in their URL). People searching for my articles are just not able to find them. So it is a no brainer. I must get a SSL certificate and make sure that my site gets “https” in all the URL.

According to Digicert, “Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, are used to establish an encrypted connection between a browser or user’s computer and a server or website. The SSL connection protects sensitive data, such as credit card information, exchanged during each visit, from being intercepted from non-authorized parties.”

Thus without SSL certification on my site, traffic to it naturally would grind to a halt. I knew then SSL certification is a “must have” for my site. I must learn how to get my site SSL certified!

Trials and errors in getting SSL certification

I began to Google for “SSL certificate” and found out that most sources on the internet tell you that SSL certificates have to be purchased and nearly all point to some sources of SSL certificate vendors, most being domain name registration and web hosting companies . I was fortunate to find out that Namesilo (where two of my domains were recently transferred and registered) provides information for its customers to obtain free SSL certificates.

While the instructions from Namesilo are very clear: you have two choices, one is Let’s Encrypt (but this must be made available by your web hosting provider, and it should be easily installed with a few clicks); the other was CloudFlare which offers free SSL certificates (but will require you to configure a rather complicated set of settings).

Let’s Encrypt’s confusing instructions & CloudFlare’s complicated configuration

My first reaction was to go with the first choice of Namesilo. So I visited Let’s Encrypt’s website to see what I had to do to get a free SSL certification for my website. Let’s Encrypt gives a lot of information on how to get started. But there is a distinctive lack of clear and step-by-step instructions. You need to learn quickly (and decide quickly) whether your web hosting company grants you “Shell Access” or not. After reading the entire webpage a few times, I was utterly confused (though by then I learned that I should have “shell access”).

Off I went to explore Option 2, CloudFlare which have a very informative and step-by-step instructions for one to get hold of their free SSL certificate. Signing up was easy, I just have to use my Google login as my credential. Getting an account with CloudFlare and starting the ball rolling was easy too.

You put in your website address, select the free plan and you are in. But tweaking with settings to configure CloudFlare to work with your website does require one to have a lot of knowledge of how domain names and internet traffic works. You need to change your domain name server to that of CloudFlare (which means that you need to have access to your domain name registration manager). Then you need to know how and where to configure other settings. As I am a bit adventurous with this sort of challenges, by trial and errors, eventually I managed to get CloudFlare’s free SSL certification for my site. But when, as advised, I started work on putting the free SSL certificate onto my website’s “home” server, things started to get messy. I ended up, after working on this for over four hours, giving up on this part of my configuration which I had to do on the control panel of Mochahosting (not the most friendly to those who are not expert users). One thing I noticed was, when CloudFlare free SSL certification was working well, because of the superb DNS server of CloudFlare compared to Mochohosting, my website was loading a lot faster, almost below 10 seconds. CloudFlare does have a feature for one to “Pause” the working of all functions but the DNS server which could provide a different solution for those without a good DNS server from the “home” web hosting company.

Spotted the “hidden Mickey”

Just as I was getting frustrated over my not able to fully configure CloudFlare on my website’s server, I decided to take a look at Mochahosting’s control panel again. Hidden to the extreme right of the halfway down the home page, under the “Security” section was a small logo of Let’s Encrypt. But there was no instruction on how to configure this to work on my website. I clicked the button to install Let’s Encrypt’s free SSL certificate on my site and did not know I should do next to activate the service! I then decided to put CloudFlare’s SSL certification service on “Pause” and see if I could let Let’s Encrypt provide the much needed “https” feature for my website. While testing “https://slc4u.org/” I faced the problem of “SSL handshake failed” each time. Going back to the installation page of Let’s Encrypt, I spotted a message to say that my attempt to install a SSL certificate failed but without a clue on what I did wrong with Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate installation.

Start all over again

I realized that there must be a conflict in having two SSL certificates for the same site, one provided via CloudFlare and the other via Let’s Encrypt. It was time for me to start afresh and concentrate on only one SSL certification service at a time. I deleted all the SSL certificates from my site and went back to restart CloudFlare’s SSL “engine”. The many different configurations that I had tried could not to solve the “SSL handshake failed” problem. I knew then I had to abandon CloudFlare and try my luck again with Let’s Encrypt, starting with a clean slate again.

But before going back to the control panel of Mochahosting, I Googled “SSL certification WordPress” to see if there are any plugins that I can install on WordPress which will do the job of configuring an SSL certificate on my site without my having to worry about what to do with all those settings (as in CloudFlare’s case). I found a few such plugins exist but the one that appealed to me, I think because of its name, was Really Simple SSL I decided that I should try this plugin after I had a working SSL certificate installed successfully on my website.

Got https://slc4u.org to work, finally!

I went back to Mochahosting’s control panel to re-install Let’s Encrypt’s free SSL certificate, this time only limiting myself to my domain, slc4u.org and ignoring the other variants that popped up (all of which I included in the previous attempt on SSL certification). And viola! At last, I got a working SSL certificate installed on my website.

The next step for me was to install Really Simple SSL on my WordPress installation which runs my website (and this blog). The plugin, true to its name, was very simple to install, activate and configure. After testing with a few different browsers, both on the laptop computer and my Android phone, I was satisfied that I finally had “https” switched on for my website. However, the loading time of my website was over 1 minute long. It must be the DNS server of CloudFlare which I was still using (I only “Paused” its service whereby CloudFlare’s DNS server still worked in directing traffic to my website). A restoration to Mochashost’s DNS settings quickly solved this final problem. I now truly have a functional “https” url for my website!

All I need is to see if there is a resumption of traffic to my website, at least to the average level when my blog was hosted by WordPress.com under the domain name of theplantcloner.com (which is now redirecting all traffic to slc4u.org).

Learning to “read” classical Chinese paintings

This piece was extracted from one of the final assignments of a Massive Open Online Course, China Humanities: The Individuals in Chinese Culture from Harvard University that I have just completed successfully. In this essay (which this post is derived from), I tried to interpret the painting named “Fish and Fish Hawk” by Zhu Da (朱耷) (1626-1705). I was elated when my essay was one of the work picked up by Professor Peter Bol, the lead academic for this MOOC for the final discussion of this course!

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Learning Chinese humanities from the best

This piece was extracted from one of the final assignments of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), China Humanities: The Individuals in Chinese Culture from Harvard University that I have just completed successfully. I have gained immensely from this MOOCs, learning from top professors from Harvard (and free too!). One of the intriguing new knowledge that I picked up is from Professor Eugene Wang who introduced to us “how to read” classical Chinese paintings.

In this essay (which this post is derived from), I tried to interpret the painting named “Fish and Fish Hawk” by Zhu Da (朱耷) (1626-1705). I was elated when my essay was one of the work picked up by Professor Peter Bol, the lead academic for this MOOC for the final discussion of this course!

**The interpretation of Zhu Da’s “Fish and Fish Hawk”**

I have chosen Zhu Da’s “Fish and Fish Hawk” or more simplicisticaly translated as “Bird and Fish” painting. A image of the painting (shown below) can be found here: http://www.chinaonlinemuseum.com/painting-zhu-da-fish-hawk.php

What’s depicted

At first glance, this painting seems to show a hawk, which is interpreted as fish hawk by some, as a predator eyeing a fish swimming away from it (to the bottom left of the painting). The fish, with its eyes focussing upwards, seems to be aware of the imminent danger but it is pretending not to notice the fish hawk and thus making its escape as unnoticeable as possible but to no avail. The sense of helplessness on the part of the fish is evident. The fish hawk in fact has spotted the fish long ago and could pounce on the fish as and when it wishes! The predatory hawk is perching on a tree devoid of leaves, reminiscent of the “Cold Grove” style which in this case showing that the season could be late autumn or early winter. Thus it seems odd that, firstly a fish would swim to the surface in cold weather and secondly, it is also unusual to see fish hawk seeking prey, not in warmer weather but in the cold, desolate landscape.

How I “read” this painting

I think “Fish and Fish Hawk” is an important Zhu Da’s work as its hidden meaning could depict the life story. Zhu Da, as a direct descendant of the royal family of the former Ming dynasty living under the shadow of the Qing rulers has to tread very carefully in order to survive and not present himself as a threat to the new rulers. In fact, his bouts of seemingly insanity and his seeking of a monastic life for 40 years are his ploys to present himself as a harmless, eccentric or even mad and thus “worthless” descendant of the former royal family and hence he poses no threat to the Qing rulers at all. All along, like the fish in his painting, Zhu Da knows that he will be under the watchful eyes of the officials of the Qing rules as depicted by the fish hawk. After around 40 years of such “play-acting”, and perceiving that the Qing government’s lack of interest in him, Zhu Da only dared to leave the monastery to live a life as an artist. Zhu Da’s use of 八大山人(ba da shan ren) or “mountain man of the eight greats” gives two interpretations, both serve to cement his personality and political predicament. Firstly, as pointed out by some commentators, if one views Zhu Da’s signature of 八大山人 written vertically on his paintings, the words laughter (笑） and cry （哭） can easily be depicted. Secondly, by using the term 山人 (mountain man), he is telling those monitoring his actions that he is resigned to a rustic life, a life in the mountain, literally speaking and thus poses no threat to the Qing government at all!

In this painting, it is obvious that the predator, fish hawk represents the power-that-be or one of its functionaries which is watching over the scene tightly, even during the winter months!. I think Zhu Da depicts himself as the prey, the fish which is trying its best to get away quietly from the predator, but fully aware of the fact that he is not out of danger as yet. The fish hawk could strike at any moment!

As traditionally, fish hawks have been used by fishermen to help them to catch fishes. The presence of the fish hawk could also depict that the predator is under the “employ” of the Qing ruler, it is han jian （汉奸）, a traitor among the people!

Relevance to present day

This painting is relevant to life today as many people, inclusive of people living in seemingly democratic nations are feeling just like Zhu Da did… where “big brother” is always watching. In our case, the surveillance for perceived threat to the power that be is extended now to social media realm and virtually all electronic communication too. We also feel like the fish, wanting to escape but not able to do so quick enough, knowing that if we make the wrong move we could be in serious trouble! The desolate scene depicted by Zhu Da also signifies the economic hardship felt by the poor denizen of the world, with a high unemployment or underemployment, income that has not really rise up for ages and real inflation eating daily into the living standard of the people.

Final thoughts

Obviously I am not an expert in classical Chinese painting but merely a very junior learner. I shared my work with these intentions:

Promoting lifelong learning via MOOCs.
Informing my readers about this free (well auditing is still free) learning from a top university & top professors.
Encourage more people, especially those who are Chinese Malaysians who, like me, do not have a good grasp of the Chinese language, culture or humanities to take up this MOOC in the next offering (in fact this MOOC is open till Mar 2018 and you can still enroll and complete it if you work hard, like me!).

After this MOOC, I will now look at Chinese paintings, or more like “reading” these with a different mindset!

The simplest of solutions may be the best

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I have made it a habit to routinely scan the feed of the business social medium platform, Linkedin for updates, news and sharing of articles etc. from my 500+ contacts. It is amazing what you can learn from your Linkedin contacts these days. One of the many learned friends from Linkedin platform who has consistently sharing great articles is Jason Schrott, CEO of Gateway Education USA. I picked up lots of updates, reviews and news about higher education, especially in relation to higher education sector in Asia by simply reading what Jason has shared! It is therefore not surprising that this article was inspired by Jason’s latest post about Greek universities using blockchain technology (aka the technology that drives the now almost ubiquitous cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin) in order to secure the authenticity of college testamurs.

A novel way to use blockchain technology

The Greek universities, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Democritus University of Thrace and Athens University of Economics and Business embark on this open source pilot project using blockchain platform in order to provide a transparent system for their graduates to proof the authenticity of their academic credentials electronically and securely. The article also mentioned that with the use of this technology, not only will the authenticity of the testamurs issued by these three universities be secured, prospective employers and just about anyone wishing to authenticate the academic credential of graduates of these universities can do so electronically and thus will no longer need to contact the respective universities for assistance, saving time and resources.

During my stint helming a university college from 2015 to 2017, I faced precisely the same problem of how to secure the authenticity of the testamurs issued to graduates from fraudulent usage. We received almost two to three enquiries per month from prospective employers and companies doing background verification of candidates for employment. Without a good and foolproof system of systematically checking and verifying academic credentials issued by my institution, the very reputation of not only the institution but that of all the alumni and current students would be in jeopardy.

Microdot printing is great but expensive & not easily available

I remember learning from a former colleague who ran a high-tech printing firm about the magic of microdot printing technology whereby authentication codes etc. can be easily hidden among the letters and symbols etc. that are usually printed on a document. However, after two weeks of relentless, but fruitless search for a vendor with this technology (and I was subsequently advised by the same ex-colleague of the high cost of the security feature), I had decided to abandon this technology all together.

A tried-and-tested “offline” method

It was around January – February, in early 2015 that I suddenly remembered what I had to do in order to officially graduate from my alma mater, Queen’s University of Belfast. I have a better memory of this process than most people as I happened to have to go through the same process three times during my eight and a half years of studies at Queen’s, for my Bachelor, Master’s and PhD degrees! The process was simple, a graduand will only be recognized as a graduate if he/she register his/her academic attainment at the Registry of Queen’s. All graduands are obliged to seek out the services of the Registrar (or his/her authorized deputy) who will verify and authenticate a graduand’s academic records and attainment before allowing this graduand to sign on a big book (two feet by one foot in size) which serves as the roll of graduates. The entry will only be valid if the signing by the graduand is witnessed by the Registrar who will countersign on the relevant space. Thus a graduand will be deemed to have graduated if she/he has completed her/his entry into the roll of graduates successfully. And it is this roll of graduates which is the definitive proof of one’s graduate status. Hence this process is totally “offline” and will not be subjected to “hacking” as the roll of graduates is kept securely by the Registry.

Needless to say, I emulated my alma mater’s process and only spending a few hundred ringgit to “custom-make” a few volumes of the “big book” (my version was a bit more modest in size, about 1.5 feet by about 1 foot). Although this created a tried and tested system of using a physical roll of graduates, it still did not solve the problem of how to ensure the authenticity of our academic testamurs issued to graduates. Without the use of microdot printing technology, fraudsters can still reproduce almost identical testamurs or if blank testamurs fall into the wrong hand, it would be like giving away an “open cheque”! Thus, I had to ponder how I could solve this problem without spending a lot of money which would not endear myself to the Board of Directors!

Finding the “hidden Mickey” – that’s the key!

When my children were growing up, they liked to watch Disney cartoons on TV. I remember one of their favourites was a cartoon that had a very participatory feature called “spot the hidden Mickey” where viewers are given scenes from different cartoons and their job was to spot any sign of the classic Mickey Mouse’s head, symbols etc. “Why don’t I put in a “hidden Mickey” in a different spot for each year’s testamurs?”, I told myself.

Thus I quickly talked this over with the lecturer who produced all the artwork for the institution and we decided to “hide” a hidden message within the watermark of the testamur’s design. We would change the “hidden message” every year and “hide” this in different spot thereby replicating the key security functions of the microdot technology. However, this is still not fully secured as anyone who has stolen a “blank” testamur of the relevant year can still defeat our security feature.

Employing the embossing method with a unique seal

The final security feature was in fact, the simplest. All testamurs have to be embossed by a seal of the institution, that is the ‘standard practice” in all institutions. This embossing is usually done on a big circular shape on the testamur itself. However, anyone with the “right” determination can spend RM200 to “clone” our seal. Thus I needed something more. I went on to seek the help of an expert in Chinese calligraphy, none other than the head of my institution’s School of Chinese Studies, to create a text of the institution’s name in Chinese using a font that is not easily emulated. We then made another smaller seal with this Chinese calligraphy. This second seal would not have a “fixed” spot on the testamur but rather its position will be rotated among a number of “possible” locations, which will be different for each year of issue. To top it all, we would be having the Registrar or authorized Registry staff handwrite the graduate’s student identification number at the back of the testamur.

The system created and employed by my former institution cannot be fully “automated” as in the Greek universities’ using a blockchain platform. But, unlike our Greek counterparts, Malaysian colleges cherish the opportunity to network with prospective employers who need to contact us for verification/authentication of our graduates’ credentials. We also need to get as much information on our graduates employment prospect as possible and the best people to have the answers are these prospective employers!

The simplest solution is the cheapest and most effective!

Thus, by spending just around RM500, I created a simple solution that could defeat most but the very skillful forger. We do not have to rely on high technology solely to provide a solution. To guard against calamities, I had put in a process of taking photographs of the roll of graduates each year and storing these in the cloud, relying on Google Drive with access shared by key staff only. As Google “never forgets”, I think even if our roll of graduates is lost in a fire or a flood, the records are securely kept in the “cloud”. In my case, the simplest of all solutions is the cheapest and may be the most secured too!

The difference between interruption and interference?

As managers, we should worry more on the outcomes or outputs of a project or a task. We should leave it to the wisdom of our team members to figure out how to accomplish that. We should interrupt to check on progress, to offer guidance or just a give a word of encouragement. We should never interfere in how our team members get the job done or if they are doing it “in our way”.

When I was young, my family sometimes had more than one dogs in the house. I would always be fascinated by the behaviour of our dogs during feeding time. I learned animal behaviour & instinct at first hand: when it comes to food, dogs do not take kindly to interference from any party, me, the young master, was of no exception. I tried experimenting on our dogs feeding sessions by either taking a portion of the food from the feeding bowl of one dog and putting it to that of another dog’s or taking the bowl of one dog away and adding more food. In either cases, the interruption in their feeding frenzy or the interference by redistribution of food portion were rewarded by growling of the affected dogs! I learned the basics of dog’s feeding behaviour: neither interruption or interference were tolerated!

How do human handle interruption and interference in learning?

Personally, especially during the time I was teaching college students, I welcomed interruptions from my students during lectures and especially during laboratory classes. When I was a university student, I would like my doubts on a topic being taught by my lecturer cleared up as soon as possible (preferably during the class but in most cases I had to “ambush” my lecturer after the session had ended). Often the abstract concepts being taught would require a grasp of the key facts before one would be in the position of understanding the entire topic. Thus as a lecturer, later in life, I really did not mind being interrupted during class, especially if the interrupter had questions / doubts related to the subject matter. However, I would not take it too kindly if someone interfered with my teaching such as talking loudly in “competition” with my attempt to have the class’s attention or similar noise pollution from the next door classroom.

Interruption is good, interference is a devil!

When I worked as the assistant to a tycoon, I often received a 3-lines memo from him to put together a business proposal. The deadline usually was two weeks. It would take me a few days of desk research to gather the required information to commence work. I would not write a single word until I had constructed a concept map of the business proposal and find ways to interrupt my boss’s schedule (by stealing a couple of minutes in between his appointments) to get a confirmation on the outline and key expectations of my boss. Next, I would commence working on the financial projections of the proposal and would, if anomaly was found, seek further guidance from my boss. Although I was given two weeks to complete the business proposal, I normally would have on hand up to half a dozen more “cases”. It would be my boss’s habit to check on progress regulary. Usually three to four days after the confirmation of the concept. Again, I welcome the interruption as it gave me a chance to reconfirm the direction of my work and to allow me to suggest modifications / additions if appropriate and most of all to seek help if I could not find sufficient information. Because of this “structured” way that I worked with my boss, who often would tell me that I had not two weeks, but seven days to get the job done (due to external factors), I rarely had to work too late to complete my work and often did so ahead of time.

My boss, being a good manager, had never once in the nine years that I was with him, interfered in my work such as telling me how I should commence my work, how I should write, etc.. Instead, he was only interested in the end result, that is a good business proposal, the “path” that I took to get this done was immaterial to him so long as I produced the “goods” in good time and in the expected quality.

When I became the leader of a university college a few months after my stint with this tycoon, I adopted the same strategy. I would assign projects and tasks to my team but would not interfere in the course of their work. I made good use of my personal assistant to interrupt and check on progress for me. I would roll up my sleeves to help if anyone was stucked. My team soon learned to adapt to my working style and most would volunteer to update me on progress or to seek my guidance if they faced obstacles in their work. What I could not tolerate was someone sitting on an assigned task, making excuses for their incompetence, sheer laziness or their lack of a sense of responsibility. I am glad to recall that, for my two-years stint, I had only really given two individuals a good dressing down on their lack of professionalism.

Black cat or white cat, it makes no difference!

I think all managers should learn to appreciate these wise words of the great Chinese stateman, Deng Xiaoping, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.”

As managers, we should worry more on the outcomes or outputs of a project or a task. We should leave it to the wisdom of our team members to figure out how to accomplish that. We could interrupt to check on progress, to offer guidance or just a give a word of encouragement. We should never interfere in how our team members get the job done or if they are doing it “in our way”. We must always remember that there are more than one ways to skin a cat. We should never “sweat on the small stuff” but always have the big picture, i.e our goal, in mind!

There is no certainty in life, but you can make things more certain!

Urgent things may not be important but must be taken care of “urgently” such as the kettle boiling! But important things, though must be made more certain to be done on time, may not be urgent enough for one to drop everything, especially “urgent things” to do. “By-the-way” things are really not urgent and not important so that you will do this only if you have made certain that the important things and/or urgent things that you are supposed to do are “made more certain” of happening!

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When I was studying for my G.C.E “A” levels in a small English town of South Shields, in the North East of England back in 1981/82 I asked my chemistry lecturer, Dr. Ian Chalmers this question, “Dr. Chalmers, how sure are you that this will not come out in our A levels examination?”

I learned very early on that in national examinations, adherence to the syllabus when setting examination questions was the standard practice and hence I studied only what was in the syllabus! Thus when Dr. Chalmers decided to skip a small part of the Chemistry syllabus, I was naturally anxious.

“Mr. Chow, in life, death and taxes are the only certainties!”, answered Dr. Chalmers smilingly. This was really eyes opening for me, back then as a 19-year-old.

Of course my ole lecturer was right, nothing is certain in life but you can do something to make it more certain! In our case, I guessed correctly that the bits that Chalmers missed would not be asked in the examination for some reasons and the only way I would be more certain to do well was to study harder, which I did and scored a respectable Grade B!

It is important to distinguish something that is urgent,from those that are important and finally those that belong to the “by-the-way” category.

Around 1997, I was serving as a senior staff of a college in Klang. We had a collaboration with an independent Chinese school and were summoned by our director to meet him at his office in the business district of Kuala Lumpur (KL) for a 3 pm meeting on this collaboration. My team member JMJ whom I had instructed to get the college’s vehicle so that we could all carpool to KL was to be the driver. Traffic condition in KL of the late 1990s, due to the construction of the Twin Towers and monorail, was chaotic. I waited over an hour for JMJ to pick me up from my home in USJ en route to KL, a trip that would have taken just 35 minutes during off peak hours. By the time he picked me up and reached our director’s office, we were an hour late. JMJ, upon my questioning told me that he had to wait a long time for one of our colleagues somewhere in Klang who was just hitching a ride to KL with us! In this case JMJ did not think rationally, he did not know that his and my presence on time at a meeting with one of our “boss’s bosses” was both important and urgent and hence to be made “as certain as possible”. Instead, he concentrated on the “by-the-way” hitch hiker resulting in yours truly, as his superior, having to take the brunt of the rage from the director of the college.

So when my wife told me that she would send me to take the LRT to my usual weekly visit to my client at 10 am after her yoga class at around 9 am (or it could be 15 – 20 minutes later, she said) each Thursday, to be more certain of my reaching the client’s place as promised on time, I declined. I rather leave the house much earlier, at 8:15 am, walk 18 minutes to Taipan LRT station so that I would be more certain of reaching Kota Damansara via the Lembah Subang LRT station and feeder bus T807 before my appointment!

Thus, urgent things may not be important but must be taken care of “urgently” such as the kettle boiling! But important things, though must be made more certain to be done on time, may not be urgent enough for one to drop everything, especially “urgent things” to do. “By-the-way” things are really not urgent and not important so that you will only do this (such as giving a lift to a colleague en route to an important meeting) if you have made certain that the important things and/or urgent things that you are supposed to do are “made more certain” of happening. Quite a mouthful, I must admit!

I hope after reading this, my readers are more able to classify tasks / things to do etc. into these three categories and treat them accordingly.

A juggle between studies and on-campus jobs

How does a college student balance studies and part-time work? This is a story of Leland Chow who went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on a shoe-string budget and how he managed to get on-campus jobs to save enough fund for him to visit different parts of the USA without bankrupting his parents!

Commentary by Chow Yong Neng, PhD.

My son, Leland Chow wrote this piece for Han Chiang News in October 2015. I am republishing this here as most of my readers would not have had the chance to read this. Although he does not have to suffer the anxiety I had when I was at Queen’s University of Belfast (counting pennies & wondering if I had enough ££ to pay my tuition fees), I always reminded Leland that our budget was limited and he has a younger sister whose higher education cost would be much higher than his (she being 4 years younger). Hence Leland had to budget well & make the best of his time at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (UNL). If he wanted extra funds for trips or gadgets, he would have to earn it himself. UNL’s Global Laureate Scholarship which covered 60% tuition fees for Leland made possible for our tiny budget (made 40% smaller due to the devaluation of the Malaysian Ringgit since 2014) to stretch just enough to cover over two years of studies for Leland.

Well Leland has completed his studies in December 2016 and he had made several trips to different parts of the USA during his time at UNL, all paid for from funds he made working on campus. His is a classic example of how students pursuing tertiary studies can make the best use of their time and not bankrupting their parents!

Leland returned to Malaysia in late July 2017, after trying for months looking for a job in the USA without success. Currently he is back in the USA for two weeks to attend TwitchCon 2017 at Long Beach, California (a convention for broadcasters on the Twitch platform). This trip was made possible by the funds raised by Leland’s community of Twitch fans and friends who pooled together over US$1,500 for him.

Leland’s first journey to the West was in August 2014, I had written an article about how much work and preparation one has to do if one is planning to go to study in the USA.

By Leland Chow

Malaysian Ringgit has been very volatile for the past few months, causing the currency rate between the Ringgit and the US Dollars to hover around RM4.40 (until recently, where it dropped to around RM4.20). Hence, when it was time for my parents to send the money for my tuition fees, they had to face the burden of the weakening Ringgit and sent less allowance, telling me to be thrifty although most of my money is usually spent on food. Fortunately, I have not faced a huge financial burden in terms of allowance as I do have on-campus jobs here.

I currently work as a tutor and a campus tour guide in the university. As an international student in the US, I can only work up till a maximum of 20 hours per week when classes are in session, and 40 hours per week during holidays, including summer. However, as both of my jobs do not require that many hours to work, I could easily fit the both of them in my schedule without any worries. Therefore, I work as a tour guide during the day and a tutor by night.

As a campus tour guide, I give tours to prospective students and parents around the campus, where I have to walk all around campus, show them important buildings, and the essential purposes and usages of the buildings. I am generally not an active person; hence, the tour guide position suits me best as I get to do some leg exercises early in the morning! Besides, I have to also walk backwards as a campus tour guide, which seems very unusual at first, but can be easily mastered after a few tries.

On the other hand, as a tutor, I give advice and provide help to students in a learning community. My main focus is the lower level Math classes, but I also tutor Finance, Economics, and Communication Studies. In order to tutor a subject, I have to obtain an A in the subject, and also maintain a 3.5 GPA. This is different from other tutoring positions on campus, as the tutors here (at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, UNL) only tutor students in the William H. Thompson Learning Community, which is a learning community for students in the Susan T. Buffett Scholarship (set up by the wife of the investment guru, Warren Buffett who happens to be an alumnus of UNL).

During the past summer, I worked full-time on campus as a conference assistant for the university. As most residence halls were closed during the summer for students, conferences that take place also required accommodation for its guests. Because of this, the residence halls were converted into conference halls for guests to stay throughout the summer. I worked at the front desk which mainly involved checking guests in and out, answered questions, ensured their safety by conducting rounds around the conference halls, and most importantly, made sure that guests were satisfied with their stay at the university.

All of these positions require me to possess different skills and qualities, and I believe I have learned a lot taking on these various jobs. Some people might wonder if I am able to balance my academics and work at the same time. I can confidently say that I can.

For instance during last summer, I worked a full-time position and took 2 classes at the same time. I managed to obtain As for both subjects. This shows that with good time management skills, we can succeed both in academics and in work. My on-campus jobs also work around my class schedule and club meetings, so it is easy to study, work and play without sacrificing a lot for any of them.

Finding an on-campus job is definitely not difficult. It just requires some effort and time put into the search. I highly suggest talking to friends or professors, or even looking up at the campus career services website. These methods have helped me in finding on-campus positions, and I believe many people, especially my fellow Malaysians here, would agree with me on this.

Cover photo from http://conferenceservices.unl.edu/conference-assistant-staff (the author was situated on the 2nd roll, the 4th person from the right)