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...