Fai

What's happened to me lately?

I've changed role within Microsoft Malaysia. I'm now the ISV Developer Evangelist. I'm not entirely out of academic evangelism, until my successor comes on board. Vico who is now working with Microsoft Malaysia, is helping to manage the Student Ambassador program, and he's doing great work with the SAs. UTAR did their campus launch in Jan 18, and it was a smashing success. There are 11 other campus launches this month in campuses around Malaysia. KTAR will run their campus launch in March. As a matter of fact, there will be an event in MMU Melaka this Saturday.

I'll try to blog more often here. Meanwhile, checkout BlitBlog. I'll try to post 2 videos every week.

Straight from the horse's mouth, go to BlitBlog

Awhile back, my colleague, Loke Uei, started this project called BlitBlog which consists of video blogs contributed by Microsoft Malaysia employees. This is part of our effort to make Microsoft Malaysia more transparent by presenting the people behind the company. You may visit the blog here BlitBlog. I've taken over the project from Loke Uei, who has since moved to Redmond to work as a Program Manager in the Mobile and Embedded Group (MED).

The videos are short snippets that does not last more than 5 minutes. This is to make it easier for anyone to watch them. A vast number of topics are presented, some are technical in nature and some are just about anything that the presenter is passionate to talk about.

Feel free to post comments there, because this is how we could gather feedback about what you would like to hear. What I do then is to bring the videocam around the office, and find unsuspecting colleagues, and do an impromptu video recording of what they have to say. Kinda like what Robert Scoble does in Channel9.

What a weird thing happened to my theSpoke blog

This seems really weird, I didn't realize that I have two accounts in theSpoke, one named Fai and one named HoongFai. I'd updated my blog with the hoongfai account a couple days ago, and I was perplexed as to what happened to my previous blog entries (from theSpoke v1), when I finally found out that it still existed with the "fai" account.

Anyway, I'm glad to start blogging again, hopefully this will not be a short affair like the previous one when I said I'm back, but I disappeared shortly after. I'll be updating the blog at "fai", not hoongfai. Cheers!

I'm back

After what seems like the longest absence from theSpoke. I'm back!

Displeasure has been elevated to anger

Please take a look at this blog aptly named Haze Haters in KL. It's funny, but the bigger message is that we just wish those fellas in Sumatera would stop doing slash and burn to their forests! The site was started by a colleague and his friends. Funny but it represents the voices of many KL-ites.

Another article in The Star, and I quote:
"But the real culprits are in Indonesia. It’s always around this time of the year when weather and the wind patterns are favourable that you see massive jungle clearing and illegal logging occurring in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Unfortunately, the winds blow the haze across the Straits of Malacca to Malaysia. "

The following picture is just for laughs, pity us here, our environment is enveloped in thick haze, what else is to do but to find the best remedy, laughter is the best medicine!

Disclaimer: Please don't hold me accountable for this image, I don't want to start a spat between 2 countries.. ha ha

We're living in a chimney in KL

For those of you outside Malaysia, you wouldn't believe how bad is the haze here. For those who are staying around KL or all the affected areas, take care.

No thanks to our neighbour in Sumatra, Indonesia, it seems like their entire country is burning and sending the haze to peninsular Malaysia. One of my colleagues is an Indonesian, and I told him he ought to do something about it. His answer was candid "darn it, I forgot to tell my man to stop burning. I need to give them a call now". Perhaps his countrymen were burning a huge campfire, and trying to send him smoke signals to come back home!

These pictures were taken not too long ago from my office.
*cough cough*

I'm back!!!

This is becoming a cliche, I'm a bad blogger. But my mid-year resolution is to blog more. There are tones to blog after attending Imagine Cup in Yokohama, and my personal vacation in Tokyo. More about that later.

Microsoft Office Communicator 2005

Today was the first time I experience using the Microsoft Office Communicator 2005. All Microsoft employees will be using the Office Communicator for both internal and also external contacts. It is important to distinguish between the two instant messaging tools; MSN Messenger 7.0 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 clients. I'll be learning how to do so along the way.

I'm already loving its features such as:
- ability to send and receive instant messages that are secure and encrypted within Microsoft
- add custom note to my online presence to communicate rich presence information
- have voice/video conference between two parties, with enlarged video windows
- view free/busy information and detailed out-of-office messages in my contact list with Microsoft Exchange and Microsodft Outlook integration
- place VoIP PC-to-phone call to any number in North America or to any Microsoft office world wide (woo hoo!)

and many more..... so much that I just have to proclaim "FAR OUT!"

Announcing Imagine Cup Malaysia 2005 (Software Design Invitational)

Albeit a delayed announcement, here it goes! It was a momentous occasion on June 21 as the Chief Secretary to the Government, Tan Sri Samsudin Osman, and Butt Wai Choon, MD of Microsoft Malaysia, presented the winning teams of Imagine Cup Malaysia 2005, Software Design Challenge. The ceremony was held at the Microsoft Government Leaders Conference (GLC). The ceremony was also witnessed by Saw Ken Wye (President, Microsoft South East Asia).

Announcing the winning teams of Imagine Cup Malaysia 2005, under the Software Design category…

The 2^nd runner up goes to Chung Sheng Hung, Khor Ean Teng from Multimedia University who developed the OrderAnywhere Sales Management System that benefits the supplier, the sales organization, and the consumers.

The 1^st runner up goes to Chia Sheng Sin from Multimedia University, who developed a biometric authentication system using iris recognition for a homeland security scenario.

And the winning team who will represent Malaysia at the Imagine Cup worldwide finals in Yokohama, Japan are Chuah Shang Jun, Ooi Wen Fong, Saw Kee Leng, Tan Boon Siang, from Multimedia University. They developed an RFID solution based on a retail and emergency evacuation scenario. Their system, aptly named Object iDdentification Information Network (ODIN), assists in dissolving the boundaries between people in four major ways; the social boundary includes differences in culture, race and religion; the boundary of distance separates us physically; the boundary of physical ability prevents the sick and disabled from fully utilizing existing services; and the boundary of information widens the gap of understanding between us.

The winning team presented an impactful presentation with a tech-savvy video to a conference-roomful of government leaders.

The GLC event attendees consist of more than 200 high-level government officers, professors and other academics in Malaysia.

In our “Advancing Education” track, we received registrations from more than 120 professors, deans, and head of departments.

The press coverage was also extensive. Journalists from the 3 largest dailies in Malaysia came to cover the prize-giving ceremony, and conduct media interview with the winning team. The dailies with the largest readership in their respective languages were present and these include The Star (English daily with 1.5 million readership), Nanyang Siangpau (900k Chinese readership), Berita Harian (2 million Malay readership).

The media also interviewed Dr Ewe Hong Tat, Dean of Faculty of IT in Multimedia University (an MIT alumni), who gave testimonial about Microsoft Malaysia’s commitment to help his students realize their potential. We also recognize the effort by Dr Ewe in promoting Imagine Cup to his students since the first Asia Pacific .NET Student Competition in 2001.

The students setup a booth at the solutions gallery at the GLC. Their solution was among those from our partners such as HP, and Brilliance Information who won the best application platform under the .NET category at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2005.

I look forward to bringing Team ODIN to participate in Imagine Cup 2005 in Yokohama, Japan!

Who needs a stress ball when you have a view like this?

I think it's a cliche already that everytime I start writing my first sentence in my blog, it's about how much I had neglected my blog for weeks. It's no different this time, and I think I've said enough.

The past few weeks have been really really pressurizing, and somewhat intimidating too. At work, I was busy with 2 events, MEDC, and Microsoft Government Leaders conference (GLC). More about the winning teams of Imagine Cup Malaysia 2005, under software design challenge, later.

(my drop in office)

I'm now in Singapore, using one of the drop in offices, it's so serene here, I have a fantastic view of the marina. Let me back track a little bit as to why I'm in Singapore. I'm here to attend the Indigo training. Indigo is the new set of .NET API for building and running connected systems, or you could also say that it is a new breed of communications framework in the new WinFX API. Everything taught at the training are leading-edge stuffs. It was conducted by William Tay, the Microsoft Regional Director (contrary to the title, he doesn't work for Microsoft, he works for a partner called NCS in Singapore). I met William in TechEd 2004 in KL last year, where I ran a pre-conference workshop on WSE 2.0, and he delivered some 4 different sessions about WSE or any advanced web services-related topics. My hats off to William, he really knows his stuffs well, I could see that he is very passionate about Indigo, he is not required to do much of that at work, but he just dedicates a lot of his free time to learning, interacting with people about Indigo. I have a lot of respect for this guy for what he knows in this area.

(the training room was on black-out mode, so sorry you can't see anyone, it wasn't intentional).

While I was enjoying the fresh air downstairs at the lobby, I noticed a group of security personnel inspecting the drain with some mirror-gadgets, and look at the dog with a job. Nice doggie, but I bet it's trained to attack too.

The title of my blog was inspired when I was working from Kurt Messersmith's desk (yeah I hijacked his workstation because he wasn't around). I now have a total of 5 stress balls (3 of which had the Indigo branding to it), I just wonder, why do I need a stress ball when I have a view like this? See it for yourself.

In the evening, the view is slightly different (I don't drink in the office, it's at my hotel lounge you silly!), nothing beats unwinding with a glass of red wine (it's good for health anyway).. it's all about the serenity...

Edit: I missed the Bill Gates Live event at the Suntec Convention Center. I was on a conference call with my team mates in KL. Sigh. Despite giving up the opportunity to see BillG, my team mates called me a traitor! ha ha... we love to pull each other's legs, and tease each other. That's the fun of working in a team.

A good weekend

It's been a pretty productive weekend. It started with an awakening shock on Saturday morning, that literally threw me out of bed, and straight into my car. It's fun! You should try it sometimes, anything that pumps up your adrenaline level while you aren't feeling that well is a good thing. Somehow I stopped coughing after that. I'm talking about my appearing at the INTI .NET Day 45-minutes later after jumping out of my bed. Not too bad considering I had to travel to another state for the event.

I went to the office to setup yet another machine for the MEDC HOL. Another machine to go, and I'm all set for the event on Thursday. There will be plenty of talks this week. I can't wait for the weekend.

On a separate note, I'm concerned about a good buddy of mine, he's going through some tough times. Let's hope everything will be all ok. I know exactly how it feels, I'd been through it before. Throughout the years I'd been away from Malaysia, I always make it a point to keep in touch with my good friends from Malaysia. Right now as I'm away from Singapore, it ain't any different. What keeps friendships alive is a good effort. If you take it for granted that the friendship will always be there, it won't. I'll be in Singapore this coming weekend to chill out with my friends there. It's good coincidence as I have a meeting in JB next Monday.

I treated my dad to an early Father's Day lunch today (Father's Day is next weekend, or should I say this coming weekend).
I spent a lot of time playing with my new gadgets. Sorry no pictures, it's part of this classified project in which I'm involved.
Washed my car too, I just love it when my car looks squeeky clean. Unfortunately it doesn't always look like that. It takes a blurry windshield to remind me that it's time to treat my car to a nice shower!

Mobile & Embedded Developer Conference (MEDC), KLCC Convention Center, 16 June

There are only less than 7 days to register for MEDC in Kuala Lumpur, so don't wait until the eleventh hour to do so.
You may not find this elsewhere, but I'm organizing an self-paced hands-on lab (HOL) there, and these are the labs available:

HOL201S	Building a .NET Compact Framework Application for a Windows Mobile-based Device Using Visual Studio 2005
HOL208S	Introduction to the New Managed APIs in Windows Mobile
HOL336S	Developing a SQL Mobile Application with Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005
HOL330S	Incorporating COM Objects into Your .NET Compact Framework 2.0 Application
HOL206S	Using ASP.NET Mobile Controls to Build an eBooks Browser Application on ASP.NET 2.0
HOL320S	Building Network-Aware Mobile PC Applications
HOL334S	Tips, Tricks, and Techniques for Debugging .NET Compact Framework Applications
HOL322S	Building Power-Aware Mobile PC Applications
HOL202S	Administering, Using, and Troubleshooting Exchange ActiveSync
HOL324S	Developing 3D Graphics with the .NET Compact Framework
HOL326S	Developing Multithreaded Applications with the .NET Compact Framework 2.0
HOL328S	Developing Orientation-Aware and Resolution-Aware Windows Mobile Applications in Native Code
HOL332S	Introduction to the New Native APIs in Windows Mobile
HOL439S	Migrating a Windows Mobile GAPI Application to DirectX
HOL212S	Migrating an eMbedded Visual C++ Application to Visual Studio 2005
HOL214S	New Native Development Features in Visual Studio 2005

Mobile and Smart Client Development Resources

You can now choose from four comprehensive Developer Resource Kits that help you develop mobile and smart client applications:

· Mobile Application Development Toolkit (098-101081) · Windows Mobile 5.0 Developer Evaluation Kit (098-99638)

· WeRock 247 .NET Smart Client Training (098-101433) · Football 247 .NET Training (098-101434)

These kits contain a wealth of articles, labs, videos, scenarios, and tools to help you build mobile applications. You can download

Sporadic blogging mood

I've been meaning to blog since last week. The easiest way to get myself to blog is by posting some pictures. I also have my moblog site, but it's been used mainly for demonstrating that cool .NET smart client app called Atomic Lava, and it's so satisfying when I get that "oohs", and "aahhs" for a good demo.

Lately I've been talking a lot, and to a lot of people, including friends, customers and colleagues, in fact I think I'm getting better at it! I always thought of myself as an introvert, but when I'm in the mood I'd have 101 things to talk about, say the sky? ha ha

When I was in MMU Melaka, I noticed these beautiful posters pasted on the window (thanks to the IT Society there, Li Zhao has a hand in that I'm sure). I also noticed that the posters were fading in color.
The drive to Melaka was a brisk one, taking me only 1 1/2 hour from my house to Bukit Beruang, or Bear Hill when translated to English. Bear Hill is a nice name, reminds me of Box Hill in Melbourne.


Last Saturday, I played golf again. I've been playing in the golf course regularly these days, and I think I'm improving my game too. I managed to get par at 3 holes, so much that my colleague pulled my leg, saying that I'm the resident pro there. Ha, far from it. However I have played at the UKM golf course 3 times, and once with the captain of the golf course, who's a single handicapper. To me, the signature hole at the UKM golf course is the tee-off at hole #3 (if I remembered it correctly). You basically tee-off from the "peninsular". The tee box is surrounded by water hazard all around. Pretty daunting if you were to imagine yourself hitting a ball that has a very high chance of sinking down the pond. The trick is not too be over-ambitious, there are signs at the other end that tells you how far it is. If I use my driver, I could usually drive the ball to about 150m, so that was my aim, and VOILA, the ball landed right after the pond! *phew*


On Sunday, I went to Raeven's birthday party. She's so cute! Raeven is Loke Uei's daughter, and she had just turned 3. Raeven has a blog, yup she does (all thanks to her mommy's introspection of her everyday life). Perhaps Malaysia's youngest blogger! A really embarrassing thing happened to me while I was at the party, I was getting some food (easiest way to let time pass by when I knew absolutely no one there except Loke Uei and his wife). I saw a large drinks jar at the other side of the poolside party, and it's cincau soya bean (fondly known as the Michael Jackson drink in KL because it's both black and white! people are creative here). I headed straight to that drinks table, grabbed myself a cup of that MJ, found a chair by the pool, and thought "hmmm I'll just enjoy my meal here". A little while later, Loke came to me and told me if I had known that there were 2 parties going on side-by-side. The fact alluded me for a few seconds, and then I thought "woah! what 2 parties, this ain't your side of the party??". I gracefully walked away. *phew* But the MJ drink was well worth that small embarrassment.

Kids are cute, I thought I was cute when I was little *ahem*. I have a niece and 2 nephews. Nope they hasn't started their own blogs yet, but they are avid players of online games though. I bought them presents from US, pretty nice t-shirts from Gap. I think Gap t-shirts would be unique because there are no Gap outlets anywhere in this part of the world, not even in Hong Kong. The nearest outlet is in Japan I think. Being kids, it would be special to wear something that no one has seen before. Their friends would envy them.

Last week, I also meant to blog about the iDog. Now I don't know whether this is for real, but upon investigating everything written on the box, it seems pretty authentic. It came from Japan. It even has a price tag on it. I found the iDog cubed-box on my colleague's desk but he wasn't around to tell me what it was. Apparently, it's a music player that plays you a different song depending on its mood, and how much TLC you're giving to it. If you stroke it nice, it plays you something cheerful I reckon. I think I'll go nuts when I go to Tokyo, my buddy has been telling me to spend an entire day at Akihabara. I'll go gadgets-crazy over there!


My team had been having meetings for the past couple of days. I have a new manager, and taadaa... he was actually Stanley's former manager, Tyson! So today, we had an informal introduction session where we're supposed to present just 3 slides, all about ourselves. First, what's my passion at work, what's fun, and what were the most intense moments at work. Then my hobbies, and interests. And finally something really out of the world as my aspirations. We were all cracking up at each others' narration of things about themselves. None of us shared the ppt slides, especially for me because there is this one picture that could get me into a lot of trouble, so much as to be barred from entering a country! ha ha, and this is no joke. It's nothing illegal, it's just all pure good fun! I can be quite a whacky character, but only when I'm with people whom I'm really comfortable. But even my SAs had seen both sides of me, being all serious one moment and grilled the hell out of them, then joked around during the break. That's life.
My colleague, Tang, threw a dinner cocktail to our partners at the Top Hat restaurant at Jalan Kia Peng. The attraction of the evening were two masseurs who were hired to give shoulder massages to our partners. Of course since we were the first to arrive, my colleagues and I decided to give it a shot to this pain-gruelling massage that is meant to make you feel relaxed! ha hah, what an oxymoron! I tried it too, but I'm not the the pictures below.

I totally can't wait to watch Eye for a Guy 2. Many colleagues in KL are rooting for Howard to win! I'm not even going to read other people's blog, especially if they reside in Singapore, just in case I stumbled upon someone announcing the winner in their blog. I can't wait to see Howard posting the episode on the internal file share tomorrow!

Have you guys registered for MEDC yet? It's going to be the equivalent of a rock star event in the mobile developer world. Do not miss it. You must go to the self-paced hands-on labs (HOL) that I'm organizing at the conference. Will post more details about this tomorrow.

Sleep cycle went bonkers

I'm a person who loves to get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. But since I came back from US, my sleep pattern had gone bonkers. I woke up at 5:59 am today, and just couldn't go back to sleep. I know I'm tired, but there were just way many things flashing in my mind that I just couldn't help but to indulge in some day dreaming on my pillows. I was thinking mostly about work, the weekend, my trip to Yokohama (double woo hoo!), my trip to Melaka a few more hours later.

Yup I'll be driving to Melaka later all by myself. I'll be attending a meeting with a group of lecturers in MMU Melaka. Looking forward to it actually. I shall not divulge too much details here, just in case some competitors are also avid readers of my blog!

The road to Imagine Cup worldwide competition Yokohama for the Malaysian SDI winning team begins. They will be kicking rears, oops excuse me for my explicit phrase (but it's politically correct, ain't it? I didn't use the word that begins with the letter 'a'). Again I shall not divulge too much details here because I know for sure that Stanley is reading my blog. And he is mentoring the winning team from Singapore, and both teams developed a similar solution, and as the Thais would say "same same but different". ("kotooook", with both of my hands clasped together and tips of my fingers touching my nose, and head stooped low, that's for I'm sorry expressed in a very profuse manner in case I offended anyone. hey one of my best friends is Thai) That's because the Malaysian team's solution is so innovative that I'll just stop right here. I need to assemble my intelligence team in Singapore to spy on Stanley and his team. Hah hah... just kidding. It's fair competition.

Bogus Microsoft e-mail

A number of customers have been receiving an email such as the one in the box below. This e-mail is a bogus email, and is accompanied by a file called update.exe and the user would be requested to install the file.
DO NOT INSTALL the file. The attachment is a virus.

Microsoft does not attach software, patches, or updates to email for customers to install. We advise customers to visit either www.microsoft.com/security regarding current or upcoming updates.

Microsoft Update Service

Subject: Microsoft Update Service - user id# 95517588740077194015

Dear Windows user.

We strongly recommend upgrade your system.

Please, download attached file and lunch.

After installation is complete you must go to http://www.microsoft.com/update for next step.