Turning Point

On 9 to 11 October 2011, i was very overwhelmed with the opportunities given to attend a seminar conducted by my own institute. The venue was in Naza Tallya Penang. Nice view because the hotel is just like side by side with the beautiful beach of Batu Feringgi. Upon arrival, I did enjoy the astounding view of the beach. Me and friend Zuraida did posing with the hotel visitors. The lady from left is from United State and the the second lady from right is from Bangladesh. The latter actually is a newly wed couple. Hmm a week ago, that what she told us. Her husband is the person who took the snapshot of us. Obviously you can witness the beautiful scenery of the beach and ocean behind us.

The keynote speaker for the seminar is Associate Prof Madya Dr. Norzaidi Mohd Daud, a visiting professor for the King Saud University. He is from UiTM Shah Alam and surprisingly he is only 38 years. From the information he told us, he received his phd since 2008. And I was very astonished with his successful in his area where currently he has written 70 published article and 10 books. Aspired with that I hope I will have one sooner or later.

Starting the keynote address with the title "Quality Research", he asked us to take out a piece of A4 paper and mentioned that he wanted to teach us to do some magic with the paper. In my mind ("aha, so excited coz i'll know one magic trick, and can't wait to share it with my student"). He later asked the audience to draw "a leaf". So everybody started their creative invention of a leaf. Nicely drawn on the piece of paper, me too did the same thing. Without further benefit my right side of my brain, I just drew the leaf as what i have been taught since in primary school. Later we passed up our fancy and creative art work to him. He later analysed the drawing one by one, very fast and each of the art work was given the same comment, "common", "not creative enough" etc. Till later he at last found two pieces of art work which were differ from the others. And later he continued his speech by mentioning that in order to have a quality research, we must brave enough to think out of the box. So that's the point of the magic trick. I felt so defeated with the introduction but I appreciated the induction he gave. So this is how to be creative. Yet I can apply this to my class. he he. Thanks prof...

He did asked the audience. "who has already holding a phd", "still struggling for one"and "haven't even started yet"... So each of the audience did raise their hands accordingly. Well, still fresh in my mind he did said that in the making of phd most of the effort comes from ourselves. Majority (95%) from the student own effort and only 5% is contributed by the supervisor. Wow, is that so!... Couldn't answer that yet, coz I myself haven't started one yet.

Hope one day....

need to stop here first. It's time to do some other thing. To be continue later, with some of the priceless contents i managed to grab during the seminar.