A great conclusion to a great internship at a great company!

Thanks to lenglui for reminding me to conclude my blog =P; I just came back yesterday after having to spent a night at Beijing. I'm glad to say I'm fully recovered from jetlag! =D.

Anyway, this internship experience has been a very memorable one for me. I've never sat in a plane nor have I went to anywhere else other than Singapore - which by the way is a really nice place - and this internship opportunity with National Instruments gave me all that and more. It was beyond my expectations and it made me proud to see that we MMU students are selected among many other private and public universities in Malaysia! In fact, I was told by my supervisor, Tim that we're the first university that NI visited.

I have learnt (American spelling is "learned") many things while working at NI and also the way the Americans work. I've seen first hand how they work together to achieve a common goal which is to complete their project that was given to them. I've also seen the behaviours that made them really good at what they do. We may have a long journey ahead of us but I believe we Malaysians will be at the level where the Americans are. Malaysia boleh!

Throughout my stay in Austin, I've found Americans to be very friendly and courteous and the people I work with are always very willing to help you whenever you have problems. They're also very supportive in what you do and I found that to be very motivating. In addition, they're very honest people; I'm not sure about other places but in Austin, people abide by the rules!

Maybe you don't get courteous drivers (like in Austin) and not as developed as them but I take in pride in knowing that Malaysia is a special place like no other. Where can you find a country where three races live together and respect one another (with the exception of the politicians) and have the ability to speak languages other than English (most of us know 5 languages!)? Besides, who can beat the variety of foods that we have in Malaysia? You got Malay foods, Chinese foods and Indian foods all in one place; beats US hands down! Hahaha... I love Malaysia! Malaysia, tanahair ku!

PS: Since I've already finished my internship at Austin, I might not continue with blogging anymore in the future. Therefore this would be end of my blogging days...

My Internship Presentation at NI (finally!)

After a technical problem that forced my presentation last week to be postponed to today, I finally managed to present my slides. It wasn't just me presenting, Hann Huei and Hon Mun also presented theirs as it was our last week here at NI.

It went well, aside from me speaking a little too fast (it was intimidating to have almost the whole mat salleh engineers which amounted to about 20 coming to the presentation). Since my projects don't have much interesting stuffs to talk about unlike the other intern who has demos, I had to make my presentation more livelier by adding and making my slides funny and entertaining.

I took some hints from Steve Jobs's presentations and I was successful in making the audience laugh which made me feel good because I sacrificed my weekend trip and lots of hours just to design the slides to make it look interesting. And then I have to rehearse and rehearse until I was natural. So when you finally presented your slides and entertained your audience, you'll feel great.

It was scary and I felt very nervous at first but hey, even Steve Jobs felt the same everytime!

How did yours went? Let me know.

Lovely Bike-friendly Buses

Picture courtesy of University of Texas

On my previous post, I mentioned about the fact that Austin is a bike-friendly city with loads of nice special lane for bikes; well, that's not all. :D

I love Austin's bus transport! Why? They this great idea of allowing (environment-conscious) cyclist to take their bike along when they ride the bus! Sounds cool? It's awesome!

The buses in Austin, CapMetro are equiped with a rack in front of the bus which allows two bikes to be loaded on it. Two sounds little but it's way better than nothing.

The first time I tried it when I took my bike for the triathlon myself, I was apprehensive because I can't imagine putting my bike in front of the bus, dangling (almost). Here's how it goes: When you stop the bus and let the driver know that you're using the rack, he/she (it's not rare to have female drivers) lowers the bus using some hydrolic system (it looks cool when you see it yourself) and then you place your bike on the rack and lock it. Simple? Yup. Scary? Pretty much for the first 20 minutes.

I was restless in the bus, especially when the bus stops because I was kept having ominous picture of my bike getting trampled under the bus. Thank goodness, that didn't happen. I guess the rack is sturdy enough to hold the bikes.

Here's a detail guide to using the rack

I wish our (LambatKL) RapidKL buses have this bike rack...

Presentation presentation presentation...

I've finished almost all of my loose ends of my projects so these few days I've been concentrating on my presentation which is going to be next week Wednesday. I'm a worried about this presentation because it not going to be like in MMU where you'll be presenting to your friends; my lovely audience here would be senior mat-salleh engineers!

Talk about being pressured. Besides that, last week a guy from USM gave his presentation before leaving for Penang so me being a MMU student, I have to do better than him to show that we MMU-ians are better than those public university students! :P

I'm not really good at presenting so all your best wishes are very welcomed! :D

Wish me the best!

PS: Do you guys have end-of-internship-presentations for your company too?

10 Things that I'm going to miss in Austin

1. Clothes Dryer
They are so convenient, just dumped your washed clothes inside and wait for about 40 minutes and you're done! Nicely dried and soft... No need to hang your clothes outside and wait a day... Truly a wonderful thing to have.

2. AC (Air conditioning unit)
I'm going to miss my house in Austin and especially the always-on-AC! You come back from a hot day and cool yourself in the constant-temperature house... No more waking up sweating in the middle of the night...

3. Microwave Oven
This is one super convenient home appliance that I am most probably going to get one when I go back to Malaysia. You can do so much with this; you can make lunch, snacks, heat up your leftover foods... You guys might have this already but I don't, at least not yet. =P

4. High-speed Internet
Seeing your download speeds up to 300 kBps is really cool and so is watching YouTube without any waiting time! Why can't TM be like this?

5. Walking along the small forest to work
Nothing beats having a refreshing and cooling walk along the small forest behind my house to my workplace. And when you come back from work during the summer, the forest just shades away the heat. Everytime I walk to work, I'll walk slowly just to enjoy the nice breeze along the way. I wish my walk from Cyberia to campus and back be this euphoric.

6. Special bike-only lane
This is not necessary but in tight narrow roads, you'll be glad if you have a special lane for your bike more so whenever a big truck is coming from behind you.

7. Friendly people
People in Austin are known for their friendliness and courtesy whereby they would say hi to you or smile (girls smile back when you smile at them =D). People at the counters would greet you when you come in and so on. Even the drivers are friendly to cyclist; they give way to us, not like in Malaysia.

8. Weather
Yea, it was hot during the summer but it's just like in Malaysia but it's not humid. You don't sweat like a leaking pipe when you walk under the sun; great for me since I can even sweat when I sit. Nowadays, the weather is getting colder which is something between Genting Highlands and KL; not too hot, not too cold.

9. Lovely parks
You probably don't know that Austin is voted 3rd best places in the US for triathlete to train in. Mostly it's due to the fact that there are so many parks around and they're very well kept. Hiking trails are aplenty and the many pedestrian walks everywhere! Did I mention about the Barton Springs Pool?

10. National Instruments
You probably wouldn't be surprise with this; this company is THE place to be working at! Great and friendly and helpful people, environment-conscious company, company that helps you success in your career by enabling you to take up courses in the company, excellent working facilities (breakroom with microwave ovens and fridge, water coolers at every floor, etc). I really love working here, enough said.

UPDATE: I shamefully forgot to mention that in our breakrooms, there's a coffee machine that you can brew your own coffee (coffee powder is provided FREE) and a variety of tea flavors (sachets) that you can take and make tea yourself! All this is provided FREE! =P By the way, I like the Green Tea flavor... :D

The Austin Triathlon

The place to take your bib number and goodie stuffs


My bib number. Nice isn't it?


This is how a triathlete would lays his/her equipments out before the race. Swimming would be the first followed by cycling then running so you'll see the cycling shoe already attached to the pedal so that you don't have to waste time wearing it; you can wear them while cycling! It sounds difficult but once you practiced it, it's effortless. Once you're done with biking then it's running. The shoe has a special strap which you can just slip it on without tying. Fast and easy.



The transition area: It's where you coming from swimming, take your bike and go then come back and run. Believe it or not, people take about 1-1.5 minutes each time to change from swim to bike then to run.

Well, that fateful Monday came and against all odds I managed to finish my first triathlon race! It was tough at first because the most challenging course is the first event which is the 700 meters swim. It doesn't sound far but when you there on site and looking at the swim route, you'll scare yourself crazy.

The starting point, swim: That's the lake I swam. I have to swim until the second buoy and turn around and swim back. Pretty far I tell you. Took me about 18 minutes.


The black line shows the swim route that we're supposed to go and the blue is the path that I swam. I started freestyle but I could'nt see where I was going and ended up right in the middle of the loop when I realized nobody was around me. Then I turn back into the course and changed to breaststroke all the way.

Anyway, once I reached the end of the swim, I was a little exhausted but extremely relieved that I finally finished the most challenging course. Feeling a little disoriented I managed to run to my bike, swallowed a pack of PowerGel, slip my shoe in, wear my helmet and my glasses and off I go! From that on, cycling and running was easy in comparison.



For cycling, I have to ride for 27km so I maintained my speed at 30-33 km/h as much as possible. Sometimes I got ahead of myself especially when there's a lot of people cheering and went up to 40... Uphill was easy but I was cursing during downhill; I was passingby people while doing uphill but they pass me by when I was going downhill... Weird? I wasn't aerodynamic enough. They're all using road bikes whilst I'm using a mountain bike with road tires.

Goodies that I got: They gave us a nice polyester t-shirt (those quick dry types), a nice running cap (also quick dry), swim cap (to identify your age category and also to see you clearly in the water so they can rescue you if you're drowning), a timing chip and some energy bars and gels.


Timing chip: This is a device that a chip that helps time your race accurately. It works by RFID whereby you run pass a receiver (a matt) and it transmit a unique serial code to the computer. It's self-powered through the use of a magnetic induction method. The coil inside is powered when you pass through a magnetic field (the matt). More details here.


Since Khai Ling and Kelmynn likes to self pose with their new clothes so I'm doing it too =P. Here's my actual tri clothes complete with my bib number. That's the same clothes that I wore for all three events without changing to save time.



Race day: Moments before my event starts.
Since there's a lot of bikes and you might get disoriented after swimming so what triathletes do is they try to remember where they park their bike. Some attached a cute looking helium-filled balloon while some just remember the closest thing to their rack. I park my bike on the second how from the top so I can easily find it.



Body marking: The closest I get to body tattoos =P
Every triathlete has to have their body marked with their number on their legs and arms. Their age is also marked on the calves. This is where you can see which girl is younger or older than you easily. XD


The live band performances after the race


Lots of foods were ups for the taking. It's eat all you want breakfast of tortilla with chicken or beef, loads of fruits, loads of sodas and stuff. I only managed to wallop one huge banana, a chicken tortilla and a coke. Small stomach =P

The 5km run was challenging too. I thought it was going to be easy but the weather wasn't forgiving that day. It was hot! I aimed for 4.30 min/km pace and managed to finish in 23 minutes. At the end of the finishing line, I was totally exhausted with sweats all over. One of my few motivation to push myself to run hard was to pick on someone infront of you and try to overtake him. Once you overtake him, you pick another runner. Great for kiasu people like me.XD

The finishing line. The cameramen were at the back of the line and I was just too tired to pose. I hope I didn't look bad in it.



Tim and I after the race:
Tim, my manager is the one who supported me. He loan me one of his bike and helmet and taught me a little on swimming (he wasn't good at it, he said) so I want to give my upmost appeciation to him and also Laurel (his wife) for their great support. =D

Thanks to all my lovely friends for their support too! And to my dearest May for her never ending encouragement; without her I wouldn't be able to finish =).

Tim went for the full distance Olympic category and finished in 2 hours and 28 minutes while I in the Sprint half distance finished in 1 hour and 40 minutes earning myself a 155th overall placing out of 731 (both gender) and a 12th place for my age category. Quite all right a timing for a first timer, I guess.

It was a really exhilarating and fun experience of joining my first tri race and I think I got addicted to it. All the hardwork of training for it; weeks of swimming, running and cycling and finally actually racing for it and giving it your bestest is feeling that is hard to describe. You've got to try it yourself to know. Will I join again? Of course! XD


The results for Sprint distance

D-Day: 4 days left

I really can't believe that the D-Day has almost arrived! 4 more days left before the big day. I wasn't this excited until I watched a few YouTube about some triathlon races; now I'm super excited! :D

It's going to be my first triathlon race so I'm not going to push myself too hard first. I want to get the feel of it so that's why I took the shorter Sprint distance; the next triathlon race would definitely be a full Olympic distance! Of course, being a competitive in nature, I might just go all out and go crazy! Wish me all the best! =D

Here's one of my favourite Youtube video that I often watch whenever I lose my motivation or just want to hype myself up for anything... Enjoy!

Malaysia, negaraku!

Winston and Hon Mun with our Flag of Glory (Jalur Gemilang)

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Something to show my patriotism at National Instruments, Austin, US. Apparently, putting up flags of your country or university (mostly) is a common thing here. Since I couldn't find any Malaysian flag at NI, I decided to ask my sister to send me the flag. :D

Did you guys hang any flag at your company?

Biker Rules in Austin!

Since I've been riding for a few weeks here and have experience first hand at how traffic goes I guess I'm qualified to talk about it a little... =D

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First of all, it took me a while to get used to look at the proper traffic direction when I got here. In case you do not know, driver is on the left side. So to be safe, I look at both sides before crossing...

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Secondly, Austin drivers are extremely law-abiding and courteous! They don't cut queue (unlike us lovely Malaysians) and they follow this first-come-first-go system at intersections - meaning if you reach the crossing first, they will let you go and then the 3rd driver to arrive will give way to the 2nd driver and so on. It's the same when two roads combined into one; each driver on both sides take turns to go.

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One more thing, drivers here really do a COMPLETE stop at the stop signs! Even when there isn't any traffic, they'll still stop! So when I ride, I had to stop too (sometimes I just slow down before going to save on momentum =P).

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Another thing I like to mention is that they treat any 2 wheel vehicles (bicycle included =D) like a normal car. That means, when I have to wait at the traffic light junction, I take the whole lane to myself. It's the law here really (my fav) - we bicyclist aren't allow to weave between cars like what we usually see those motorbikers and cyclists alike doing in Malaysia (me included).

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Besides those awesome rules, I think the Austin government here just implemented a law that says drivers must give at least 3 feet of distance between themselves and cyclist or pedestrians whenever possible. Cool isn't it?

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I left the best for the last; Austin is known for being a cyclist-friendly city in US. There are numerous DEDICATED cyclist lane along many of the roads here! Awesome! I'm being so pampered here I'm worried I won't get used to the crazy traffic in Malaysia...

Cyclist lane along many of the roads in Austin

The Voice of A True Malaysia

I saw this heart-warming YouTube video from Khai Ling's blog which initially came from J10's blog. It shows the united Malaysian which is pretty much envied by many other countries, developing or developed. With the push for eliminating the race requirement in many forms, I only hope we all Malaysian will be called as Bangsa Malaysia; not Cina, not Melayu, not India but as one Bangsa Malaysia.

Let us all stop bickering over small matters and together start building a better future for us Malaysian!

I wish every Malaysian no matter where you are, a Happy Independance Day! Merdeka!

Open waters swimming...

In a tri race, swimming is the first event and for most beginners, it's the hardest and most feared part; especially for me. Well, I've gone from swimming like an elephant to a water hippo :D. Last weekend I went to do a pre-race simulation - meaning I did cycling, running and swimming - at Barton Springs. My supervisor told me that I should try to swim in open waters first before the race so I won't freak out during race day and so I did, at Barton Springs Pool.

It's a natural pool whereby the pool is filled by spring waters and its temperature is maintained at a cold 22 Celsius during summer. That's colder than most offices are and the pool is not only "blessed" with cold waters but also water plants and fishes. And did I mention that it's DARK and DEEP. The deepest part is 6 metres deep and it's dark there. The first time I put on my goggles and started swimming, I panicked! I'm so used to swimming in swallow bright swimming pools that I freaked out when I swam among plants and fishes in extremely cold and dark waters.

As I managed to control myself from shouting for help and continued with my swim, many dark things started to go through my mind. Here's an example: Would I find a badly decomposed body? Would the scary fungus coated plants becomes alive and grab my legs?

And this is another thing that scares me; sometimes when I was swimming, the water would become warm then after a while and almost suddenly becomes extremely cold. Of course I know why it was that way (shaded area are colder than non-shaded area) but reasoning doesn't get into your mind when you're at the edge of fear...

So yea, I'm still here and even managed to get 20+ minutes of swimming before I had to run then ride back home. I have never been so afraid like this in a long time but I had to what I have to do... I don't have time for fear...

Time Crisis

Gosh, it has been long since I last updated. I apologize for that; training for my race has been taking almost my entire free time. I have 13 more days left to my race day so I need to push really hard... I just want to share this quote with you guys...

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go"

I don't think I've gone far enough... =)

Updates:
Here's my training timetable if you're interested... Who says you can only have timetable for classes? =P

BestBuy Store

We went to have a look at BestBuy yesterday and all I have to say is that it's nothing great about it. Maybe I had my expectations too high before coming into the store or maybe I just didn't have much things to buy there. It's huge, lots of spaces between and mostly they're concentrating on products like GPS, phones (mostly with contract), console games (PS3, XBOX, Nintendo Wiis, Nintendo DIs, etc), computers and its accessories, home stuff, CD albums, home theater systems, home appliances and such. It's like the upper floor section of the usual Carrefour stores back in Malaysia but with more choices and bigger area.

Nothing really interesting there except for the moment where me and my housemates were playing GuitarHero Band for an hour or so! =D

BestBuy is not my cup of tea, but REI is! I'm going there today to buy my tri clothes, a backpack and some sport bags! Woo hoo!

Have Food, Will Nap?

I have to admit, I love to take afternoon naps now and then; even in class! 10 minutes of nap can do wonders; hence my grades... =P When I came to Austin, afternoon naps has become a luxury. I was told by my supervisor (after one of us got caught napping on the desk) that napping even for a while it is a stigma here in US; it's very bad. We were advised strongly against napping while working especially after lunch. So there goes my nap...

Though I stopped napping since then, once in a while after a huge lunch (which is always) my body would go into a "trance" whereby my eyes would shut and my body frozen (my cubicle mate told me that) for a few minutes. Damn, old habits do die hard!

Is it all right for you to take naps at work? Do let me know how is it in your workplace.

PS: My supervisor told me that he walks around whenever he's sleepy and that's been working for me...

Realizing Your Dreams

I was checking out my friends' blogs and I found this interesting video called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". It's about professor named Randy Pausch giving his last lecture about how he achieved his childhood dreams. There's a book by him with the name "The Last Lecture" which I believe some if not most of you might have heard of it or even read it; I haven't read it yet though but it's on my next-book-to-read list, hehe.

It's an inspiring lecture and make you aware that each of us can achieve our own dreams as long you work hard for it. If you got the time (the video is about an hour 16 minutes long) to spare, do have a look at it. While you're at it, read the book too!

Thanks to Ms.Kristin (aka bunny girl?) for sharing this really interesting video to us all. =)

Have a bike, have Austin!

Tim's mountain bike with road tires, Schwinn frame

That's a Shimano Deore XT groupset and a Bell helmet


Last Sunday morning I did my long run but with a difference; instead of running to some random place, I ran to my supervisor’s house, Tim. I asked him earlier whether could I borrow one of his bikes for training and he said yes. So I told him that I’ll run to his house to get it from him today as he didn’t drive to work for the whole last week; and run I did. It wasn’t far; about 14 km away and it took me around 1 and half hours of running. He wasn’t at home so he left his bike beside his garage and was so kind to leave some energy bar (chocolate brownie kind of energy bar) and a bottleful of water in addition to the helmet and spare tube. I was thankful for that energy bar; I was feeling a little hungry then. Afterwards, I cycled back to my house and that took only 37 minutes! Such huge difference! With the bike now in my hands, I can conquer Austin!

Between two extreme (temperatures)

I've noticed that every single house in Austin are equipped with air-conditioning (AC) for short. Call me ignorant but I never realized that even though I watched countless Hollywood movies. I know that they use it for heating the house during winter but didn't thought they would also use it for cooling. The AC is usually left on the WHOLE day, even when you're not in the house!

It's like having two weather here; one is a cooling 75 Fahrenheit (around 24 C) and the other, a blistering 100 F (38 C) - it sometimes goes up to 40C or worse! I feel too pampered by the cooling AC in my house; I'm afraid that I might not stand the outside heat once I get out of my comfort zone... I'm a sun-lover, I can't be scared of the heat can I?

Tell you a secret; I sometimes push the thermostat up to 80F (27C) and switch on the ceiling fan to save on energy. We're a bunch of Malaysian, why are we scared of the heat anyway? Call me a Green freak if you want...

NI Library

Last week, Hon Mun and I found out that we can borrow many interesting books from NI's repository of books! Most of them are marketing, sales, howto books and some technical books. It's so easy to borrow one; first search for the book you want to read from the NI website, then once you selected it, the librarian will send it to your NI mailbox which then you'll go there and pick up your lovely book. The best thing is, it's FREE! I'm such a true believer in "The best things in life are free" :D

Oh ya, in case you're wondering, I borrowed The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell while Hon Mun borrowed the same and Blink, also by the same author.

The Austin Triathlon

The RM500 receipt

During dinner with Tim, Laurel and Mariel, I asked about the photo with Tim and Laurel together in a tri race and Laurel told me that there’s a triathlon race this coming September, The Austin Triathlon which Tim is joining (Laurel would have also join but she found out a good news; that she’s pregnant!). So I ended up joining the race too, but I’m going for the shorter distance - because I have never join one before - which is called the sprint distance. It’s a 700m swim, 27km cycle and 5km run; half of an Olympic distance. I just paid for the registration which cost me $143.40! That’s RM 500! I used to pay between RM 20 to RM 60 for my marathon races but this is so far the most expensive race I’ve ever joined; I sure hope I don’t get a cold before my race… There is nothing as motivating as having to fork out RM 500 on a race so I’m forced to wake up early almost everyday and train… The crazy thing is, I actually like doing this crazy thing! XD

Wish me all the best friends!

Dinner with Tim and Laurel

Last week, Tim and wife, Laurel invited us for a dinner at their beautiful house. It was really nice of them to prepare lots of American foods for us to feast upon! Laurel’s sister, Mariel who just came back from having her 6-months-long solo backpacking trip in South America also joined us (by the way, she’s only 20). We were served with lots of delicious traditional American dishes like oven-cooked pork with apple puree (I didn’t know apple and pork meat can go together so nicely), salads made from home-grown vegetables seasoned with olive oil, oven-baked bread that came in a can and you eat it with organic honey spread on it (extremely easy to make!), a special potatoes dish that Mariel made and some others I can’t remember. For desserts, we had a nice home-make pie topped with ice-cream! This is the most delicious and healthy home-cooked dinner I’ve ever had in America! I wish I can eat like this everyday…

Shopping in San Marcos

Just yesterday we went to San Marcos shopping paradise where there are a lot of shops located in one area. There’s two huge outlets called Prime Outlets and Tanger Outlets whereby in each of the outlets, there are a huge variety of individual shoplots situated side by side along a single row and they’re all concentrated around the main point of the place. It’s something like a shopping complex but instead of every shop being in a huge contained air-conditioned building like Piramid or MidValley, here it’s open air.

Each of the shops is on its own. Because they’re on their own, they require more spaces hence the whole area is pretty huge! You’ll have to walk a long walk from one end to another end in the heat (luckily it is shaded). I saw there’s even a mini bus to fetch the shoppers from one place to another quickly (still not air-conditioned which makes me think that people here REALLY love the sun). It’s a different concept from what we usually have in Malaysia but in my humble opinion, I rather stick to Piramid and Mid Valley even though I like the sun but I don’t like it when I’m all sweaty while shopping.

Rows of shops

There aren’t many places to rest except a few benches far in between and the restroom (toilet) are definitely rare. Anyway, the goods in most of the shops is quite cheap (if you’re working in US and some still cheap if you’re not) as most of them are having summer sales.

Someone bought a few Coach bags... ;-)

I bought a Levi’s jean (loose straights, my first Levi’s jean :D) for $34, one Dockers original style khakis for $29.99 (really cheap!), one Timberland shorts for $15 with coupon (again, extremely cheap!) and wallet, $17+ with coupon and my Nike athlete shorts, $24 (not cheap, still overpriced as always). All in all, I spent about $200 or so. Not bad for a one day shopping spree. I didn’t get any shirts because the smallest size is S and it’s like the L size in Malaysia… May Yeng told me that her friend (a guy) bought a girl’s shirt in US because of that… The last thing you’ll see me wearing is a girl’s t-shirt… >.<”.

The result of the shopping spree by 4 Malaysians, most of it is from Hann Huei. He scored almost $1000 getting a first placing beating Hon Mun! This guy shops like there's no tomorrow...

Humble me... I got the last placing... only spending about $200 :D