Trento and Venice, Italy

Hahaha, I'm not quite done with my travel log yet. The weekend after Düsseldorf, I went to Italy for my scholarship/studies program's workshop. It was a great opportunity to finally meet all the EuMI scholars and get to know one another. We had quite a few fruitful discussions on improving the program as well. Left Bonn on Thursday evening after German language test and arrived in Trento at about 2am. As the hotel was on a hill, we took a taxi, not just any taxi but a Mercedes C-class (could have gotten a BMW 3-series but a fella cut our queue and so we had to wait for another one). The trip up the hill was quite a good lesson on uphill drive. Throughout the whole trip, the guy's revs never went below 2000 rpm. He never braked unless necessary and just relied on down-shifting to show the car down. Fantastic!

Anyway, the workshop lasted till Sunday. Some photos on Trento



Went to Venice after the event as well for a day and night trip with 2 EuMI friends (you'll see a lot of their photos in the slideshow) and another EuMI friend with his family (wife and cute baby:). The place is really beautiful. The first day was a bit cloudy and so the view wasnt so great but on the next day, Mama Mia! I now understand the magic of Venice and its attraction. Just walking around the island, taking photos was quite sufficient:)



Then, I found the Ferrari Store. Being one of the 8 Ferrari stores in the world (a few in Italy, 1 in Spain, 1 in Las Vegas and 1 in Shang Hai), I knew I had to get something there. Bought one of their colognes. Extremely pleased. They had a F2005 on display. Not allowed to take video but you can take photos. I tested that rule and found that they are quite strict in the implementation:P

Then I went on another mini spending spree. I bought a pair of Oakleys. My eyesight's quite bad lately and been wanting to get a pair of sunglasses. What better place to get then Venice, right? No, not really. Everything is super expensive here. But just thought after events of past few months, I needed to treat myself to a few things nice:) I hope people from EuMI dont read my blog:P

The only mistake we made during this entire trip was to fly Ryanair back to Germany. Partly our fault, we didn't do enough research on where we're landing in Germany. Ryanair says we're going to land at Düsseldorf airport when in fact, it's actually Düsseldorf (Weeze). Get the difference? I dont but the difference is that we landed in an airport which has very limited buses back to civilization. So although we reached Weeze at 11pm, there was only a bus at 12am and we finally got to Cologne train station at about 2am. And the next train back to Bonn is at 5am. The travel mishap bug has struck again!! I'm ready for it this time and didn't complain much. Just take it as it comes. Again, I met someone nice to chat with. This time, it's a Romanian journalist who works in Deutsche Welle. We just shared about our traveling experiences and she talked quite a lot on Romania and Transylvannia. Learnt a lot about Romania from this single conversation.

Work Work

It's inevitable isnt it? Yup, the drawback of going back to studies is the notion of assigments and exams:P Thank God I only have 4 subjects but each of them have assignments aready:)
Studying Applied Databases, Distributed Systems, Java Programming and a Research Review course.

Research Review's pretty cool. Based on my area of interest, I get to do a paper on a subject matter, requiring me to go through journals and stuff. I'm specialising in Databases and so my supervisor has given me a topic on Web Services. Should be fun since one of the topic is to review 2 web services offering. Planning to talk about Google Maps and Youtube:P


Thanks to Farul, I will still get my healthy dosage of wholesome American TV programs such as Lost and Desperate Housewives:P So it aint too bad:)

What An Amazing Year!

Just a chronology of events that had happened since September 2005:

September 2005
The third and final kaki-linux/business-partner/colleague/all-round-buddy left for UK to take up his masters. Shawn, following in the steps of Jay (2002) and Chuan (2004), went to Edinburgh to do his masters. I was the only one of the quarter left in Malaysia.

End of September 2005
My family had a major financial crisis as my dad's workshop just could not sustain itself anymore, after 20 years in business. Rising costs, increased competitions, expensive machines, change in market expectations all contributed to it. My dad even had mild depression and was admitted to hospital for a few days. We finally decided to close the shop and he went off to Tampin and became the service manager for a friend's Perodua service centre. Praise God cause the moment he reached there, he and my mum who visits him every weekend, started attending the local church and met very very great people there, who gave such strong encouragement and support. We were also able to refinance the business debts etc though the interest was very very high. Banks, nothing but legalized "ah longs":P

October 2005
My then girlfriend, Pohar, left for New Zealand for her 6-month working holiday. Started this blog and initially called it "Stuck in Malaysia":)). Also began my yearly masters applications to UK. Applied for British Chevening, Erasmus Mundus, Shell Chevening. Later on, added Khazanah Scholarship to the list.

November 2005 - Februrary 2006
Work was tough. Plenty of pressure, training the juniors, coping with finance department's demands to finish projects fast to get payment. Work motivation went down down down. In between, was called for scholarship interview by British High Commission wrt British Chevening. Wow! First time in 3 times I was called for interview. Must have improved since started applying in 2002:)

March 2006
Finally quit Open Source Systems (3-1/2-year first job) and went into Shell IT, thanks to the recommendation of housemate, Leng Chye. First day at work, found out no need to work shift as I was placed into the Unix Security team. Fun! Love the tasks I gotta do. So everytime people ask if I'm busy, they're always surprised when I said "I'm constantly occupied":P

April 2006
3rd setback of the year. Pohar decided to break up with me to concentrate on her work. She found a wonderful job towards the end of her working holiday and would be in NZ for at least 2 years. Though it was tough, I wished her all the best and blessed her. I believed God wanted to use this experience for me to really learn to rely 100% on Him and Him alone. Btw, I also failed the British Chevening interview:(

May 2006
By God's grace, everything turned for the better so so quickly. My family and I were able to turn the business loan into a house mortgage thanks to UOB. The rates were fantastic! We now only need to pay RM2k a month instead of RM3k, saving RM1k of interests alone each month!! (That's why I said, banks=> legalized loan sharks!). Praise the Lord!

June 2006
Even better news! I've finally got the chance to take up my masters! I secured the Erasmus Mundus scholarship! It's so amazing because God's timing was just perfect. Though I didnt get the British Chevening, I actually got the best scholarship out of the 4 I applied! Even more amazing: Khazanah and Shell Chevening actually contacted me for interviews as well after that. The callers actually sounded disappointed when I apologized and said I already had another offer. Wow, God's blessing just kept pouring in! I was really humbled by this whole experience!

July 2006
Started to handover my work to colleagues. As I reflected back on the 4 short months of work in Shell, I realised I actually did a lot more stuff than I thought. It was just that I enjoyed them so much that to me, it wasnt really an issue. Amazing how job satisfaction can actually make one work so much better:)) This was on top of the team-building, inter-D stuff I was involved in as well. This 6 months in Shell has been fantastic!! (Got one last event I'm joining, wont tell yet what is it:P) Also passing Pohar's car back to her family, after doing some minor repairs:P Finally free of a "under-powered, small wheels, high centre of gravity Korean car":P

5th September 2006
It will be my last day in Shell!

7th September 2006
Will arrive in Manchester and stay a few days at Jay's place.

9th September 2006
Hope to be in Edinburgh then.

11th September 2006
Course induction will start!

What an amazing year! What a turn-around! And one thing has been consistent throughout this major-ups-and-downs year! God's presence: in difficult times, He has kept my chin up and heart strong. In good times, He has kept my feet on the ground. Thank you Lord!

Erasmus Mundus Scholarship

After 4 years of anticipation and looking towards the Lord, I'm gonna get the chance to do my masters! Thanks to the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship program. More importantly, thanks to the many many prayers that I've been getting from my friends! By God's grace, I'll be leaving this September and will be spending 2 years in Europe studying Net-Centric Informatics.

The Journey

I first heard of this Erasmus Mundus program when it came out in newspapers August 2005, I think. What really caught my eye was that it was gonna offer at least 40 places to Malaysians in 2006. And so with great anticipation, I went to the Erasmus website for Malaysia. I was not disappointed. They outlined very clearly how much they were gonna spend in 2006 and years to come. This program is really amazing. Every year each student will be given €21,000 as living and traveling fees besides the opportunity to really experience the European education system thoroughly.

They have several courses available. The application is sent directly the respective instituitions and I chose to apply for the European Masters in Informatics (EuMI) program, which was being driven by 3 very prestigious universities, University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Aachen University in Germany and University of Truento, Italy. Since it's a two year program, I get to choose 2 universities out of the 3 to study in. I chose Edinburgh as my main university as I've always wanted to take up my masters in the UK and Aachen as the partnering university (because I've heard great things about this university from an engineer from Sun Microsystems who came to Malaysia few months before and also because the opportunity to try out the Autobahn:P).

Everything was done online. I had to scan my certs and upload them to the server and sent hard copies via post later on. I've also applied for the British Council Chevening Scholarship as well but I guess competition for that was just too great and I didnt make the cut. But no matter, because in April 2006, I got news from EuMI that I've been tentatively selected for the program and my fundings are pending approval from the European Commission.
And finally on May 30th, I received this short email from EuMI:

Subject: European Commission - decision (they don even wanna give you any hint as you first open your email)

Dear Students,

this e-mail is to inform you that the European Commission has approved your names for the scholarships for attending the Erasmus Mundus Master Course in informatics. In the next days we will contact you in order to give you more information about the program (mobility plan, curricular, information about the visa procedures and ecc.).

Best regards EuMi school

Less than 50 words and yet it meant the world of difference to so many people. And so, I'll be going to Europe with 65 other Malaysians (65 because out of the 85 places mentioned in the article, 20 were for last year and the rest for this year. I know because I immediately emailed the EC delegate to Malaysia for clarification after reading that article:P) to pursue our dreams in various fields. I know at least one more Malaysian who is going on the same program as me. And so another phase of my life journey begins September 2006. I must admit that I have mixed feelings now. On 1 hand, I feel very elated at the opportunity of experiencing the European education system. On the other hand, I cant bear leaving my parents, family, friends, church members, colleagues in Shell (whom I've just begun to build up strong relationships) ,old colleagues from Open Source Systems and the work I'm currently doing in Shell.

But I do know I will be leaving with all my loved ones' blessings in my heart and that for me, is such an amazing feeling!

[update] Just received an email with finally some details. It came attached with an acceptance letter which I am supposed to sign and fax back to EuMI. Excerpts from the letter:

"accepts the Erasmus-Mundus scholarship for the Academic Year 2006-2007 and 2007-2008. The beneficiary is aware of the fact that the Erasmus Mundus scholarship consists of 16.000,00 € (a monthly instalment of 1600,00 € will be transferred for a period of 10 months), plus 5000,00 € as partial reimbursement of travel expenses and fees, for a total of 21.000,00 € per each academic year (total amount for two academic years is 42.000,00 €)."

Most important statement, without which, everything would come undone:)

"accepts the curriculum in: Net-Centric/Media Informatics
and the mobility scheme which foresees period in:
University of Edinburgh (September 2006 – May 2007)
RWTH (June 2007 – July 2008) <-- (Aachen, Germany)
University of Edinburgh (August 2008 – September 2008"

Oh cool, I thought I was going to Germany first since in the previous email, they put the mobility as Germany and Scotland. Or maybe they've just changed their minds. No matter:)

"The beneficiary is also aware of the fact that the tuition fees for the Master’s Programme are 6000,00 € for the first year; the amount for the second year could be increased in relation to the current inflation rate." Reminding me not to spend all my allowances and keep 600€ a month for fees:P

[End of update]