Of NZCSRSC08 and ESEM08

Alhamdulillah...finally siap jugak paper tu...! Feel sooooo relief... dan takut jugak nak present ni.. NZCSRSC08 will be the first conference where I am going to present my work. I used to attend conferences back in Malaya, but I never have had any chances to present a paper. So this will be the first experience in my lifetime, insyaAllah.. aiyoyo.. panic juga beb! Despite all the gabra & panic, there is also a great excitement for having the opportunity to visit Christchurch this April. So, I am really grateful that the paper was accepted and thus will have the chance to visit around the South Island too. :-)

ESEM08 is another conference to be held in October at Kaiserslautern. It is still a long way to go, but I really hope that I can make it too :-) At this stage, I just can pray and tawakkal.. If ada rezeki, will go for it, insyaAllaah.. pls pray for me my dear frens... Thank you! :-)

Berita mengejutkan..

Hari ini dapat berita sangat mengejutkan di Uni.. Dr Santokh Singh, salah seorang staff CS department meninggal dunia semalam disebabkaan serangan jantung. Terkejut sgt.. Baru jer borak ngan dia Jumaat lepas..mcm tak percaya dia dah tiada..itulah kehidupan..kita tak pernah tau bila kita akan mati..Tetiba aku sedih..Terngiang ngiang lagi nasihat2 terakhir dia, tak sangka rupanya itulah kali terakhir aku berborak ngan dia.. Itulah kehidupan…tiada makhluk yg kekal di dunia ini..suatu hari kita pasti akan pergi meninggalkan alam fana ini.. setiap dari kita pasti akan menghadapi kematian.. Aku merasa agak terpana dgn berita ini, kematian memang tak pernah mengenal usia..Beliau baru dapat PhD 2 tahun lepas..di saat kerjaya baru hendak bermula.. tapi apa daya kita, kematian tak pernah menunggu itu semua. Tiba saatnya, selamat tinggal semua..

Ini bukan pertama kali aku menerima berita kematian dlm hidupku.. Aku pernah hadapi kehilangan paling besar dlm hayatku bila ayah dan ibu dijemput Ilahi lapan tahun yg lalu…Tak dapat aku kenangkan bagaimana laranya hati ini mengenangkan orang yg kita paling kasihi yg sentiasa berada di sisi kita, tiba-tiba pergi meninggalkan kita.. Menghadapi hari2 duka itu aku bagaikan orang buta yg kehilangan tongkat.. Bagai jatuh ditimpa tangga. Lapan bulan selepas pemergian ayah yg dikasihi, ibu tercinta pula di jemput ilahi.. Aku seperti tak percaya dgn ujian yg Allah beri untukku waktu itu. Kenapa aku diuji sebegitu hebat? Saat itu yg aku pohonkan hanyalah kekuatan dan ketabahan untuk aku menghadapi ketentuanNya dgn hati yg redha. Sesungguhnya Tuhan lebih sayangkan mereka.. Aku redha. Aku harus redha. Itulah pertama kali dalam hayatku aku mengerti betapa besarnya erti sebuah redha. Aku yakin aku akan dipertemukan lagi dgn kedua orang tuaku. Masih ada ruang dan kesempatan utk aku berdoa..

Apa agaknye reaksi dan persiapan kita kalau kita tahu saat sebenar ajal kita ingin dijemput? Ah mmg tak mungkin kita tahu, tapi suatu perkara yg pasti kita tahu adalah setiap dari kita yg bernyawa ini pasti akan menempuh saat itu. Cuma tak tahu bile.. Patutlah Nabi SAW pernah berpesan bahawa orang yg paling bijak adalah orang yang sentiasa mengingati kematian dan bersiap sedia sebaik mungkin menyediakan diri menghadapi kehidupan kekal abadi di akhirat sana. Dunia ini hanyalah kehidupan yg sementara, bukan utk dinikmati selama-lamanya.. Teringat lagi aku kata-kata Dr Fathy semasa ceramah maal hijrah baru2 ni.. “the wordly thing is nothing compare to the life in the hereafter”. Takutnya tiba2 bergetar jantung mengenangkan apakah cukup amalan diriku ini..Apakah yg telah aku lakukan dalam hidupku selama ini dengan usia sebegini yg Allah dah berikan.. Apakah lebih banyak dosa berbanding amalan? Apakah aku ikhlas, dan sejauh mana keikhlasan itu.. Semoga Allah mudahkan kita untuk menghadapi sakratul maut.. dan semoga kita dijemput pergi pada saat iman kita berada di tahap yg tertinggi. Semoga Allah menerima semua amal dan perbuatan baik setiap dari kita…ameen..

Ayat ayat cinta (** Highly recommended)

"Dan di antara tanda-tanda kekuasaan-Nya ialah Dia menciptakan untukmu isteri-isteri dari jenismu sendiri, supaya kamu cenderung dan merasa tenteram kepadanya, dan dijadikan-Nya di antaramu rasa kasih dan sayang. Sesungguhnya pada yang demikian itu benar-benar terdapat tanda-tanda bagi kaum yang berfikir". Ar-Ruum (21)

Novel Pembangun Jiwa 'Ayat ayat cinta' by Habiburrahman Saerozi.

Two wrongs don't make a right!

4 days ago I signed up for a promotion for 1GB free broadband plus homeline with ihug vodafone. It costs 60 dolar per month and it seems the best deal I heard so far. I was so happy that supposed I could get the line immediately once everything settled. But I was so surprised when the person in charge told me that it will take maximum 10 days to get the connection. What???!!! 10 days??? I just couldn't believe it. Why it takes so long to get a simple home line and Internet connection during these millenium. owh that was sooooo funny! Having everything agreed earlier so I have no choice but to wait till they contact me. Fine. I went back home with grrrr...gerammmyerrr..
Yesterday, I saw a letter in my pigeon hole. I recognized its a letter from the vodafone looking from the envelope. I was anxious to see the what is it about. Oh gosh! What a shock to me when I was reading these lines: "Dear NSH, Thanks for signing up to Vodafone's ihug. Unfortunately there was a problem with your driver's licence details so we can't sign you up to any of our services at the moment. To kick-start your application again, you just need to call us to verify your driver's licence details and we'll take care of the rest. You'll be ready to go with Vodafone's ihug calling in no time!" Huh crazy....crazy tahap gaban punye servis. Firstly, it takes 3 days for them to inform me about it. Secondly, I never gave my driver's licence details, they photocopied my passport instead. Thirdly, they can be more efficient if they can call up their prospect customer just to seek for clarification.
Geram punyer pasal, today early in the morning I registered for a new landline of other company of course. At first, I felt like calling that V** company to seek for clarification and with the intention to tell them that their way of conducting business is actually making them loosing customers! Haha but I guess no need lah.. after all, two wrongs never make a right! ay?

A blessing in disguise

Alhamdulillah.. it has been two weeks at the new place. New people. New environment. More light. More air. MasyaAllaah & SubhanAllaah the view is really amazing, during the dawn, the sun rise, the day and night. Many thanks to Wawa, Norly, Fadhi, Syita, Ijah, makcik & Fariza for all the help :-) Jazakumullah.

Update on Systematic Review (SR)

Alhamdulillah another good thing, I have completed the six months of work on SR of empirical studies of pair programming. As the time flies, I just couldn't believe that I have been here for half a year. Time passes very quickly, I can't wait for the provisional period to end so that I can peacefully going back to Msia for a short holidays. Alhamdulillah my supervisor had given me the greenlight to go home (yieehaaa!!!) after submitting the work to ESEM by March 2008. InsyaAllah..May Allah make this journey easy for me and for my friends who are also doing their PhD. ameen..
Ok, back to the SR. Out of 320 studies, we found only 140 are relevant for the review. After getting thru the i/e criteria, only 66 were included in the finalized list. Well, it's a long stories but the protocol has been updated for more than 5 times throughout the actual review process. The hardest part is to design the quality checklist as instrument to assess the quality of those studies. There is no standard guidelines in measuring quality studies related to CS/SE research. Hence, the validity and reliability of the assessment is a very difficult aspect to be resolved. I will have another meeting with my supervisor next week, where we both will discover the patterns and identify the gaps found in PP studies. Accordingly (hopefully!) that will be a definite area of my contribution as well as to fit in the current body of knowledge of PP research. They are lots more to do...to read...to think..to understand..to write..about knowledge. Good luck everyone!

The end of hunting.. hopefully!

Alhamdulillah finally I manage to find an apartment before the vacate date of the current apt. InsyaAllah if everything goes fine I'll be staying at Eden Crescent, an area which is also very near to my current place, near to the Uni, to Foodtown (hehe :-), and Britomart as well!
Alhamdulillah..!
So I'm moving out this Friday, 11th January, insyaAllah.