Reli!?

Hyvee bread smells bad. Today is Earth day, so when is Sunday? Today is Rena's birthday too. Kudut is made out of coke and cheeseburgers. Treant hates asian chicks. Oil price is dropping! Finance crisis gg'ed Freddie Mac. I'm still a noob in brushing my teeth.
And oh! Zi Ting now has a blog: it's a mistake dot com. =P

Lessons Learned

Few days ago, my senior design team conducted a presentation at Rockwell Collins. It was a "report out" presentation, sort of a formal type, where we presented our results on the ideas we proposed few months ago.

Though we were prepared, but based on our performance, I think there's a lot to learn from. For exp don't let Ted drive. etc.

Later that day, I had the privileage to attend a  professional development workshop organized by the IEs, the focus was speech design and delivery! Had a great time with the inspiring speaker who taught us a lot. 

So here are a few lessones I learned that might be benefitial:

1. You gotta give a good Impression on your 1st minute of the presentation. A very very good 1st minute impression will make the audience excited about you talking. A bad 1st minute impression has put an engineer into sleep that day.

2. Begin a presentation with an agenda is unavoidable, really. However, if an agenda was created for the sake of doing it, it creates no value. A good agenda shuold have a good flow, good sequence, appropriate amount of topics, and clearly numbered.

3. Ted can't drive! It was the part where there's an optimus prime looking truck raced side to side to a compact car, while Vin Diesel (Ted) driving his compact car tries to do a front flip! or maybe 360 I really don't know! But failed. obviously. So for that 2 hours drive back to Ames I was so awake.

4. Focus on what audience needs to see, not what you want to show. So hide those 5 pages time studies data, 8 pages systemic layout planning, details, and explanations. 

5. After N months of hard work, what's the impact?

6. During questions and answers section, it's OK to say "I don't know, let me get back to you later".

(From the workshop)

7. Have a plan B if things don't go as you expected.

8. Talk to the audience, not your notes.

9. Have a good rate of activity: Slow down you gestures. Breath, speak, pause. Breath, speak, pause. Hold longer eye contact with each audience member (your rate of speech will slow down).

10. When answering a question, rather than beginning your answer with "er" or "uhm", use the person's name, then respond. 

Hope it's helpful!

Counting down the days..

1 day - Exam: Thermodynamics

2 days - Exam: Operations Supply Chain Management

2 days - Due: pattern allowance lab report

3 days - Due: CNC G code assignment

4 days - Perform @ VEISHEA parade

9 days - Due: senior design final report

9 days - Due: injection molding lab report

11 days - Event: Malaysian Graduation Night

14 days - Presentation: senior design final presentation

17 days - Due: Manufacturing fee/Collecting Incentive project

18 days - Due: Thermo power plant project

18 days - NO MORE CLASSES!

21 days - Finals week still got 4 exams

23 days - Parents arrive Iowa

24 days - International graduation reception

26 days - Graduation Commencement

Kai wan siao. It's not easy to graduate lor. I think this will be my busiest month of my college days (in terms of academic). I'll post more pics if time allow me to do so.

Why la do me like this.

ISU Blood Drive

Yes.

For the first time, I decided to donate blood. 

I'm still unsure of the reason I went for it. But I know I debated for half a day, and I skipped my duper boring thermo class and spent more than an hour registering and queueing up for it.

My badge lor.

Sadly to say, I weren't approved to do so. They told me that my home country that I visited few months ago has risk of exposure to malaria. 

DANG.

My last Spring Break

Was very fun.

Spent most of my time @ Hyland and ISU campus, the 2 places I'm gonna miss a lot after I graduate. That's my initial plan though, but I ended up travelling to more more places. I went Iowa City to shop, Independence Iowa for a plant visit, Sioux City Nebraska for Rachel's interview. The best part of all my travelling is the last part when I know I reached Ames. 2 reasons. The destinations were very sien, and Ames is just way too fun. Some pictures!

Started off with a pot luck on the first day of the break. 

Then all of us headed to Frederiksen Court to see what Keng Gee was up to. It was his birthday. We found his apartrment, rushed into his room! We spotted ZT spreading some love on his face!

Nah, he wished. It was some left over cheese cakes that we used to pawn him. That's all of us.

Partay after that! Look at ZT's dulan face pointing at the Mongolian lady with red hair band who puked on his bed haahha.

The next day, bbq @ brookside park. 

We had a visitor from Iowa City.

And another from the tree. 

It was Heng Li!

Learned slack lining. The new sport up in here.

Camwhoring on a slack line!

Haaa.. campus grass.

Rachel made 面粉糕!

Sioux City has a Floyd monumen that looks like a pencil.

Rachel poser.

Me!

Spring break has ended. Classes resumes. 9am class tomorrow. I shall enjoy classes. 6 more weeks only. 

=)

Quote of the day that made Siti a happy man:

"Ok la you are very handsome!" Jennifer Tan, one my my IE partner.

Hahaha she's right btw. =)

Mm.. Well, although I think she's right, but I doubt that she thinks so.. We were walking back home from class today, she was saying about how my brother and I look so alike, and I told her to be honest to say how handsome my brother and I are.. And so she did!

"Well it's a sad day, and I'm gonna make you happy ya." Jen Tan

It actually did.

Isn't it magnanimous. Thanks Jen~!

Ever since I reached Ames 3 years ago, I always felt fortunate to have a bunch of friends to hang out with and my sister taking care of me . I always felt warm. I have a bunch of great-hearted friends, we take care of each other, throw snow, throw strawberry juice, "consume", travel, celebrate festivals, supper, breakfast, and a lot more together. How to get homesick like this.

Some of us even take things and get things done to another level. We volunteer to spread our love and passionate of consideration to more Malaysians here. We organize trips, host events, raise funds, gain reputation, and a lot more.

We do this in order to achieve a common goal. I always emphasize on this ultimate goal, which is to have fun and be happy. At first I learn how to have fun. Then I often show others how to have fun. My alien-smart TA once said,"the only way to succeed in your academic is to find a way to have fun out of it." I think it's true.

This is what we practice since my first semester here. I can see that many many of my friends here are like this too. Jen is definitely one of them. We spread cheesecake on each other's face. We vacumn each other's balls. We comment on each other's stupidness.

We put a smile on each other's face.

We put money into each other's pocket.

This is what we do. You thought me that.

"Do you know what is friendship?"

You know. I know. HE knows.

Wtf were those posts for man?

~~~ It's our anniversary ~~~

Thank you for baking me the cake at such a busy day! For all the support and love and care and so much more from you, I wanna say happy anniversary dear and I love you dear!

My darling aka my Wai Sek Mau~

Woo so nice. It tasted great too!

Brownie Ms Wai made on Sunday. Topped with B&J's super fudge chunk equals to heaven ah!

Will be skipping class all day tomorrow to travel for an on-site interview at Whirlpool Amana. Hope all turns out smooth la~

What now, TARP?

Just another bad news for international students looking for jobs in this season of recession..

The Troubled Assets Relief Program aka TARP, is currently the largest component of the U.S. government's measure to address subprime mortgage crisis. Example (recently) famous companies under the program are AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, GM, Chrysler and so on..

Early this week the U.S. Senate has approved several rules on hiring H-1B,
(H1-B: non-immigrant VISA to be able to work in the US)

The rules are as follow:

1. If your company has been laying off people, you can't hire H-1B.
2. Can't outsource H1-B.
3. Initiate to hire Americans.
4. Simple, no TARP money if don't follow these rules.

Very straight forward rules. Basically, just don't consider international students, ignore their applications, put aside their resumes. Sad case.

I'm not sure how these rules came across their minds during this time of the season. Are companies that are hiring, taking advantage of H1-B dudes lately? Or maybe, vice versa? There are many approach to attend recession, and many other actions to be considered too but why la attack international talents?

It makes sense. Malaysia's unemployment rate is approx 3.5%, and I'm seeking a job in a country of 7.6% unemployment rate. TARP's action hopes to recover U.S. current economy, while making an effort to create as many job openings as possibler for locals. How about your citizens looking for jobs in other countries? Has TARP made any effort collecting local talents currently overseas?

It's getting harder to secure a job in the U.S. for people like me now. Like I say, just another bad news.

Craving for a delicious curry laksa filled with big prawns, juicy tou pok, and curry chicken. Craving for something I want, cause I know it's good. But it seems to be very rare over here now. I'm gonna go find it.

Zhng my Blog

Added a new cool feature: blog list!

It has rss feeds to all my favorite blogs I always read. Still under renovation though. Been checking it regularly with my bloglines.com, hope it syncs with my feeds, so I don't miss out new posts! This will replace the current feature blog links, subsequently bloglines.com. And then No Shit. will be my main source of daily supplement!

Trying out a few google gadget too, but so far most of it does not work here, I wonder why.

I just hope blog list works, and hope it is reliable. Yoiz!

Speed of time

My weekend =)

Started on Friday, I had classes till 5pm, rehearsal for lion dance Ames tour till 7pm, drove to Des Moines to attend Keny's CNY steamboat party, back at Ames at 2am. Tired and Zzz..

Sat started at 9.30am. Started our Ames tour at 10-ish. Went to East Hyvee, Thai Kitchen, West Hyvee, New China, Jungs, May House, New China again, and Madarin. Ended at about 5.30pm. Then a few of us went to buy food for steamboat at night. 7pm, reached home and managed to take a righteous half an hour nap . Steamboat was gooood laaa.. big fan of steamboat here yo~! Then I brought all fish ball sotong ball tofu in my stomach together gether go dance party haha. Too much dancing I think I burned a lot of calories.

Sunday was all about finalizing my project proposal, prepared my proposal presentation, how to determine datum reference, hanging out in black basement again, McD chicken nuggets, very itchy soar throat. 

It's Monday at 1.35am, I felt that my weekend was kinda nice and smooth. Despite the soar throat and lack of sleep, it wasn't as bad as what I expected to be. Perhaps well planned is the word. It's surprising that it's already Monday. Spped of time in Ames is really fast. It's always the case. Well at least, it was well spent. 

13 weeks to a new speed of time.