Maths and Science back in BM

The initiative of PPSMI or Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Inggeris began in the year 2003. I was the first batch and it goes very well. In fact, there is an increase in the number of As achieved by students. In addition to that, majority of the students opted to answer the entire paper in English.

According to news for PMR 2008,

This year, 51.2% of candidates chose English, compared with 30.8% who answered in Malay and 18% who used a combination of both lan­guages. Last year, only 21.5% of candidates answered the PMR Science paper wholly in English.

Education director-general Datuk Alimuddin Mohd Dom described the increasing trend of candidates using English as “very encouraging”.

The subject that showed the biggest improvement in performance was English — the pass rate increased by 3.6 points from an average of 71.2% from 2003-2007 to 74.8% this year.

The disparity between the performance of urban and rural students was also narrowing. “Each year we see an improvement in the achievements of rural students,” he said.

For 2008's SPM,

Students in the rural areas, including the interior as well as Orang Asli students, who sat the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination last year outshone their peers in the urban areas where Science and Mathematics are concerned. And these two subjects were taught in English.

As such, Education Ministry director-general Datuk Alimuddin Mohd Dom said the arguments that the teaching of these two subjects in English caused the rural students to lag might no longer hold water.

... a whopping 89.1 per cent of students who took up Additional Mathematics, answering the first paper fully in English.

... 76.8 per cent of those who sat for Chemistry Paper 3 writing their subjective answers in English.

"The gap between students in the urban and rural areas has been bridged and this is visible in their (rural students') better performance compared with their peers in towns."

Since the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English was introduced in 2003, there had been a steady improvement in students' performance in the subjects.

If there's such good feedback and result from students, why is there a need to revert back to BM? Just because they felt the national language is threaten by English, they revert it back. In fact, there are quite many BM words that are being derived from English words such as.... *deep breath*.... here goes... aktif, bos, boikot, komplex, komander, etnik, global, suspek, seksyen, abstrak, proses, teknik, aktiviti, mentaliti, personaliti, respirasi, realiti, majoriti, demostrasi, imaginasi, fungsi, misi, visi, aksi, reaksi, seksi... etc etc. All the words had gradually derived from English long before this PPSMI being initiated. Why only now they felt threaten while the use of those words had merged itself in BM long time ago? So much for protecting the national language... Malaysia Boleh!

How can Malaysia improve and develop to be competent in the global market if this continues? Doesn't all the previous students had problem translating terminologies from BM to English upon starting their tertiary studies? It is such a hassle and time consuming process as they need to adapt to the use of English terminologies.

Anyway, since this blog is about technology and IT, I'm going to relate it with that.

ENGLISH :
That server gives a plug and play service to the client using either hardware or software joystick. The joystick goes into the port of the client.

What happens if BM is used?

*hardware = barang keras
*software = barang lembut
*joystick = batang gembira
*plug and play = cucuk dan main
*port = lubang
*server = pelayan
*client = pelanggan

BM :
Pelayan itu memberi pelanggannya layanan cucuk dan main dengan menggunakan batang gembira jenis keras atau lembut. Batang gembira itu dimasukkan ke dalam lubang pelanggan.

Ackward isn't it?

Influenza A(H1N1)

As of the time of writing, there are 196 cases in the country. With H1N1 cases on the rise, what we can do to protect ourselves?
Wear masks like how we went through SARS?

This 2 video sums it up :D

Although this first video is about SARS, the things is still applicable.

For those who likes Korean... this is a parody from Wondergirl's Nobody with H1N1 issue...

Go wash your hands now ^_^

Humanitarian Week

This Humanitarian Week is 1 of the most interesting week that I've ever had. I've participated in this Humanitarian Week as my club was opening a stall that sells body painting (mostly arm), heena and nail art.

On the first day while sitting at the stall, there was a sound of something that hit the floor. When I look back, I realised that it was a Nokia. It was separated into the 3 parts; phone body, battery and the battery cover. It was dropped from level 3.

On the second day while halfway chatting with friends, there is a very loud sound near APIIT's entrance. It sounded like metal rods hitting the roof. Turns out that a wireless router together with some adapters and things fell from the computer lab.

When my friends and I thought interesting happenings are over, my friend was lucky enough to find an iPhone 3G 16GB in his bag... LOL



In this Humanitarian Week too, we watched Revenge of the Fallen with tickets booked 2 days earlier. My friends and I booked it at 12am as soon as GSC enables the booking for Thursday. It is tough to gain access to their site as people like us bombarded the booking system. My friend booked a 3pm show via telephone. About 5 minutes after his booking, I also managed to booked another set of tickets at 3.30pm show as backup in case the seating is not nice. On the day, we watched the 3.30pm show as the seating at 3pm is not nice. While we leisurely collected our student price ticket at the booking collection counter, we pity those who had to queue up.



This time around Optimus Prime does not made much of appearance and this may dissapoints those who are hard core fan of Optimus. The fighting scenes was quick and I feel its inadequate. This is especially true near the ending as Optimus quickly wins the fight with just a few moves. The fight in the first Transformers was more intense.

I give it a 8/10

Cheers~

Server overload

What happens when the blockbuster of the year is to be showed?

Yeap, enormous traffic to the cinema's site just to book the seats.

Degree Life

While I was in holiday after my foundation year, I have been wondering how my degree timetable would look like. Do I need to attend classes 5 days a week like most of my seniors did? Will I have 1 single morning class for the whole day? All these questions had been running through my head. Now that I have been through few weeks of degree level, things have been great right from the first day =)

In my intake, my course's schedule is the best among all. Probably the scheduler prioritise it since my course has the most student.

My current schedule is exactly what I expect in tertiary studies. The foundation year's schedule was crap. Nevertheless, I survived! Moreover, I also gone through foundation year without a laptop. People say that a laptop is a must-have upon entering college. I say: not necessarily. I live through foundation without laptop. Now that I'm entering degree level, I'm going to need a laptop since I was expecting most of my time to be in college. Therefore, I've got it during the PC Fair.

10 years ago, I'm playing with this.




10 years after, I'm playing with this.

Revenge of The Fallen Preview

Here it is... an one and half minute preview clip from Revenge of The Fallen :)
This clip was shown at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards.

Gosh I can't wait for it.

Terminator: Salvation

Yeah... watched Terminator: Salvation on the first day of screening. It is a movie which comprises of few interesting elements. Throughout the movie, I recognised some scenes and designs that are relatively similiar to scenes from a few games and movies.

First off... there's a scene that shows few dead bodies lying on surgical tables... this reminds me of a scene from Quake 4... specifically the level where the player gets hacked up and transformed into hybrid-like soldier.

Later, there is this big robot that resembles bit like the Decepticons ;)
To be specific, the scene where Blackout (the helicopter from Decepticons) pulls the server mainframe from the military base. In Terminator, this big robot does the exact same thing except that its pulling people.

The feel of the apocalytic world is the quite the same when I was playing Half Life 2: Episode One. Maybe its the quiet streets and junk cars lying around.

When another character reached a SkyNet terminal, that particular scene reminds me of the Half Life 2 spin off game, Portal. This is mainly due to the usage of white coloured things.

When fighting with a T-800, Connor make use of the surrounding by spilling the hot molten metal onto it followed by rapid cooling via shooting a nitrogen gas valve. This hardens it, thus immobilising it... for a while. This scene resembles a scene from the 2nd Terminator movie where the mercury-like Terminator (T-1000) is frozen with vast quantities of nitrogen.

The computer generated graphics in Terminator Salvation is just breathtaking as the CGI team succcesfully merges the fictional post-apocalyptic with the reality. Unlike in X-Men: Origins, where there are some scenes with lousy integration of computer graphics,in Terminator: Salvation you can hardly distinguish between the real stuffs with the computer graphics.

Storyline wise, for some it is not satisfying but for me, it is ok enough. Its worth the ticket price I paid for it. I give it a 8/10.