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Article Personal

Why I apply for this scholarship.

This is one of those essay where I write and suddenly I just spew everything out from my finger. Be careful, this articles maybe too frank.
Details of extra-curricular activities. And reason for applying.
Assalamulaikum, and hello. My name is Muhd Amirul Ashraf and this is my testimonial on my co-curriculum activities and also reason for applying for The Star Education Fund.
My primary school is SK Sungai Binjai. Needless to say, many of my activities there, is quite irrelevant right now. In my secondary school which is SK Meru, I do hold several position. Unfortunately I cannot say that that many of my position bring any meaning. Being a normal school instead of cluster or boarding school or MARA, many of the club there are simply just for “name”. Since I join the club in CFS IIUM I learn that the structure of (some) clubs in SMK Meru are simply wrong. In SMK Meru, most of the club advisor tend to just “veto” who get the position. Due to my academic standing which is quite good, teacher do tend to pick me especially since I’m quite active in volunteering on activities like the annual camping or cleaning up the mosque and also once become the access room prefect and later on my form 5 an actual prefect.
In form four, I was CEO of the young entrepreneur club. The young entrepreneur club is a little bit different that other club because it has a subclub called “Permata”. I was the CEO of that club. Under the program of “Permata” or “PUM”, a group of 25 student of each school (preferably form 4) will make a company, and do business. I won’t lie. My company went horribly wrong. That is why you don’t see the certificate of it. Because I do not want to put it in there. I could blame it on the Principal for being biased toward the Koperasi and Canteen, or the advisor for not allowing us to actually hold the money as the requirement of the program, making a real company. Or I could blame the economic downturn that year. But at the end it seems that it is actually my fault for not doing much to help it. The CEO next to me have the same problem (the implementation of program) and so do the CEO after him.
Also in my form four, I was the Director of the Theater team. That went quite well, as you could see on one of my certificate, my team won the Klang Theater competition in 2009. So the directing went well, everyone gave input, and I actually do something. Although the state competition was canceled do to H1N1 plaque, because it was the school’s first theater team, the accomplishment is quite appreciated. On the next year, we only get the third place in Klang’s Theater competition. The first place is won by Semetis, a new contender, which I agree they should win. The second place is won by Dato’ Hamzah, which I totally do not agree. Many competition, that I enter seems to have this strange attribute of “something is really wrong with the judge”.
Aside from that, I had also participated in numerous competition, like the Media Competition, Public Speaking, Chemistry Experiment, Biology Quiz, Forum and stuff like that. Notably the Physic Quiz, in which I received a national silver certificate which mean secondary level. Other than that, I cannot say I have any higher level certificate.
In CFS IIUM (Center for Foundation Studies IIUM), I mostly join a club called PEERS. PEERS is basically the club under the Counseling Unit, or in secondary school term, “pembimbing rakan sebaya”. There I volunteered and join many activities, like Mahabbah Visit to School to MATIQ, the syawal gathering, Counceling week, and others which I cannot recall. I did not accept any position as I fear things would get horribly wrong as in my secondary school. Other that that, I also volunteered on the IPTIM(Institut Pengajian Tinggi Islam Malaysia) Sport Festival 2012 as a committee of the Liason and Welfare biro.
Since I was young, computers has been very interesting for me. My secondary school is not really cooperating in allowing me to enter the IT class. And so, you see that I do not take ICT on my SPM. They say that I am too clever, “why would you want to be a programmer when you can be a doctor?”. So, when I get B+ in biology in SPM, I’m quite happy. Regardless of what people say, I started to learn programming on my own when I was form 3. At first I learn JAVA, and from there I’ve learn a lot as you can see in my resume. I’ve made several project of my own. None is really successful. I mean, if one of my project can generate some revenue, I won’t be applying for this scholarship right? Anyway, a project that I would like to point out here is the Automatic IIUM School Formatter. For me, that is my only project which people actually use. You can see it at http://iiumschedule.appspot.com/. At the start of a semester, I can say that at least 20-60 people use it. Not much, but these are people which is not in my social circle. Not to mention that it has only recently been ported for Main Campus user instead of CFS user. So, for me this project is noteworthy.
The reason I am applying for this scholarship is to get financial aid for my study. I did point out in my resume that I try to work as a freelancer. But frankly I am not good enough. And when I actually do have a client, I will have a hard time trying to manage my time. As an addition, because The Star Education Fund is actually funded by many corporate sector, a link for a starting career is really appreciated.
Categories
Article Personal Politics

Does it matter?

Assalamualaikum everybody. How are you guys? Today, I’m going to write about Sabah. As we all know, three week ago about 200 hundred Philippine who are members of Sultan Sulu’s army has landed on lahad datu in claiming that Sabah is theirs. Following that, 6 local policemen has died, said to be ambushed by the intruder, while more than 10 from the Sultan’s army also died. Then, Malaysian government has decided to end this by attacking the village where the sultan’s army reside. No known number of casualty has been reported until now. In another news, about 10000 militant supporter has been said to attempt to enter Sabah to aide the Sultan Sulu’s Army who is right now being attacked by the Malaysian force.

If you are a supporter for sultan sulu, you will probably say that the one who are intruding is not the Sultan, but Malaysian. As the sultan indeed has a legal binding saying that the Sabah is theirs although the document is almost 200 hundred years ago. My question is, does it matter?

If you say that it does not matter, that there is no point of me explaining this to you. But if you insist on saying that Sabah is the Sultan’s and the one who is living in Sabah is foreigner, let me at least, try to consult you on this. First of all, by foreigner do you mean they do not originate from Sabah? Unlike the Chinese and Indian who obviously migrate here by the British, the Sabah people are still Sabah people. They are the indigenous people of Sabah. In fact, if you say that their ancestor are the people of Sultan Sulu, I won’t denies that. They probably are. But again, does it matter?

After World War 2, communist has been a threat in Southeast Asia, so the British has decided that to make it easier to eradicate them and also to make it easier to give independence to Sarawak and Sabah, if they would merge with Malaya. As you already know, Singapore exclude itself from Malaya, Brunei said they do not want to do so and the merging of the remaining Malaya, Sarawak and Sabah is now called Malaysia. This is roughly 50 years ago. Now of course at that time, Philippine said that Sabah is theirs because it was owned by Sultan Sulu, similar to the Sultan’s claim today. Indonesia also claim Sarawak as their. The situation become even more intense when Indonesia decided to enter Malaysia forcefully. So to resolve the dispute, UN send some commissioner to do a vote among the people of Sabah and Sarawak to see whether they want to merge with Malaya or with Indonesia or Philippine. A very large majority of the people voted that they agree to merge with Malaysia with the condition that they can control their border ( or something like that, I don’t exactly remember ).

So as you can see, Sabah and Sarawak choose to merge with Malaya and form Malaysia. The malayan people do not, just…. migrate to Sabah and repopulate quickly in order to gain dominance. I would guess that malayan simply… do not have the time or simply do not want to do so. I mean, what will they gain? Logs? What? The Chinese seems monopolized the economy there? Even in peninsular Malaysia the Malay do not gain control of the economy. The Chinese does. And if I’m not mistaken, the situation is much better in Sabah and Sarawak then in the peninsular. Is it the Chinese fault? They were here on the British age to operate shops. So its not something strange to see that they dominate the economic sector. And it is obviously not something that we will sacrifice peace in order to overcome. The Chinese and Indian are obviously not originated from the peninsular but still, they are here for more than 50 years. They are people too. What do you aspect us to do? Kill them like the Myanmar did at Rohinga? We are Muslim, we don’t do that.

What does the Sultan Sulu aspect to gain from this? Sabah? Even if they gain authority at Sabah, will the people cooperate? It is no longer the Sultan Sulu’s land. It is the land of Sabah people and they had already said that they want to stay. They do not migrate to sabah. They were born there and raised there. In Malaysia the land are not governed by the central government, It is governed by the State Government. In this case, the sabah people govern their own land. Sultan Sulu may say that the land is his, but what other claim can he give other that with the fact that his father or his grandfather owned the land but then lend it to the British. The people of Sabah has work their way to raise the state up to it current state. They have their own life. Do Sultan Sulu help? Just recently, a militant from the sultan sulu’s army was killed by 20 villager. If the villager support the sultan, why was the militant killed?

While I do agree that the Sultan’s Army should not enter Malaysia just like that, I also do not agree in the way Malaysian Force handle the manner. Just go bomb it? Now 10 000 more are coming. Are you going to bomb them to? People are still people. Regardless Philippine or Malaysian, we both do not want people to die. The current government will most probably not going to win an the election coming in a month of two because of this. The people need to think, where is their allegiance, at Sultan Sulu, Malaysian Goverment or God. If you are a member of the 10 000 people coming to Sabah, I beg you, do not use the name of Islam for your cause. You are not fighting for Islam, you are fighting for Sultan Sulu. And if you value Islam more than the Sultan, you will know in this case Islam loss the most. We loss people Muslim who were said to syahid, but in reality try to kill another Muslim who defend himself and his land regardless which side you are it does not matter, It happen because you came here. Because of this, the name of Islam had once again become associated with extremism, terrorism and irrational behavior. If the 10 000 people win, then the world will say they found another country build from tyranny associated with Islam, because obviously its a monarch and conquered forcefully. And if the 10 000 people died, the world will see again, the Muslim kill each other claiming “in the name of Islam”.

This whole thing will not solve a thing and will create more problem. Please open your mind. Sabah people has their own life. They were born there after sultan sulu’s reign, after the world war 2. If the sultan is indead a righteous and peace loving person, he would not came here with armed force in the first place. Regardless of his claim, It doesn’t matter anymore.

Categories
Projects

I declare thee V6! Now with support for Main Campus User

Assalamualaikum, and hello to everyone. Today marks a new version for the Automatic IIUM Schedule Formatter, now version 6.

Among new feature include:

  • Support for main campus user. So now it work on both CFS’s CRS and also IIUM Main Campus’s Confirmation Slip. This involves:
    • Modifying the code to accept main campus matric no.
    • Modify the code to compensate for the use of minute in the schedule, previously unavailable in the CFS’s CRS.
    • Modify the code to compensate for saturday and sunday class not to mention some class is at night, so the start time and end time of the schedule is automatically detected instead of the old 8 am to 5 pm fixed range.
  • A new tab called “settings” that allow you to specify settings previously not possible in Styler. Among them are:
    • Ability to select which day will be shown.
    • Ability to turn on or off minute align tweak which fix the minute alignment of the schedule.
    • And also, as previously available in Styler, the ability to show or hide the personal details and also course table.
  • You can now make your own color palette in Styler.
  • You can now make a report even if no error occur.
  • And also, a new look.
Visit the Automatic IIUM Schedule Formatter home page for information on how to automatically convert your Confirmation Slip/CRS into a day-to-day schedule as below.
PS: Please open your Confirmation Slip in a new tab. Otherwise it won’t work.