Thursday, December 27, 2007

Pernah rasa macam sampah?

Walau di puncak Sang Kinabalu
Resminya tanah diinjak jua
Walau mengaduh menjerit mendayu
Resminya sampah diketepi jua

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

If you are good ...

If you care about others but no one gives a crap about you
If you being affectionate but no one bothers to care
If you smile but no one smiles back
If you listen but no one hears your heart screams
If you wipe tears but no one realises you are withholding yours
If you offer your warmth but no one feels how cold and lonely you are inside
If you run to others' rescue but no one lift you up when you fall
If you tend to wounds but no one sees you are bleeding
Then ... why would you even bother being good at all?

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

The past few months had been difficult for me. Read any of my past entry and you'll see how painful it has been. I feel like being a soldier in a battlefield. All my comrades had fallen, and while I'm still battling my pain and wounds, there, on the horizon another battalion of enemies ready to butcher me alive. Despite the fact that I have no chance of surviving this battle, I must not give up. And today, I shall still stand firm .. but does not mean I have to cry through my suffering, for I can decide to be free of pain and today of all days, I have decided not to feel pain.

For that, I need to do a few things. First of all, I need to thank those who are concern enough to at least ask me what went wrong. You know who you are. Some are close friends, some, I haven't even talked to for quite some time. Sorry if I lied to some of you by saying there's nothing wrong with me, that I just want to blow some steam off, that things are dandy, that I'm still smiling ... Things are not fine but what I feel is so painful, I can't even bare talking about it.

And to those who do care and yet I somewhat alienated you, please forgive me. No matter how much I tried to control the pain in me, sometimes, a spark or two would slip through. Please forgive me for my harsh words or my expressionless face.

Secondly, to those who actually cause me pain without a flicker of regret, I forgive you. May God spare you from this cold, gnawing, wretched, painful, unrelentless, unbareable loneliness that you have smilingly brought unto me.

Thirdly, I would like to forgive myself, for not being faithful enough to believe that God will help me through this ordeal. For not being believing in what I am capable of doing, for not being stuborn enough to not let my heart cry alone in these dark winter nights.

I shall not give up yet I refuse to feel pain. I have more important things to do today then squirm at someone's mercy

Monday, December 17, 2007

How much do you believe in fantasy. If you ask me, not much... in fact, not at all even. I'm a pragmatist, I don't dwell in anything intangible. This is excatly the profile of Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey's character) in he movie Enchanted.

But what if one day, a miracle falls down on your lap (literally in case of Robert). What would you do? Refuse to see it? Well, that's what I did (and what I still do). I just refuse to see it. Not because it was not a miracle, but... I guess, just like Robert, fantasy had been painful for me. All those days hoping, believeing and in the end finding yourself beaten to the ground bleeding to death in winter cold teaches me not to rely on fantasy.

And yet, gosh, and yet ... deep inside me, I desperately hope that I am wrong

I guess Giselle (Amy Adam's character) represents that miracle... a wide eyed, innocent miracle that you just fall in love with... well at least Robert did. Should I embrace my own miracle? Unlike Robert's this is the real world. There is no miracle here. Even if there is would the pain be worth it?

I don't know...

Maybe the movie is a sign, for me to hold on. Just wait a bit, miracle takes time sometimes.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Kerusi baldu di laman kita
Mengkuang layu di laman orang
Ku sangkakan diri ada harganya
Rupanya kain buruk di mata orang

Thursday, December 13, 2007



...aku takkan mungkin pulang [Please listen to the music while reading]

Musuh terakhir ku tumpas jua. Betapa angin malam yang membelai medan perang ini terasa panas berbau darah. Ku lihat ke kanan dan ke kiri, tiada lagi teman yang berdiri, habis semua menyembah bumi. Ku pekik kan nama rakan seperjuangan, mengharap ada seorang dua yang masih bertahan, rupa baru aku sedar... di medan ini, aku kini keseorangan.

Nafas ku masih berlari kencang, akibat pertarungan yang baru sudah. Baru ku sedar, seluruh badan ku penuh luka yang parah, keringat di dahiku mencurah-curah, baju ku kini merah dengan darah, kepenatan mencengkam buat ku lemah.

Tiba-tiba terasa sunyinya medan ini, air mata mula mengalir di pipi, terkenangkan teman yang tiada lagi. Pedang yang ku hunus terjatuh dari jari jemari, keletihan memaksa aku berlutut memangku diri. Ingatanku melayang teringat orang yang disayangi.

"Kenapa Abah perlu pergi, Abang janji abang tak notty," kata anak sulungku sepurnama lalu. Ku sedar air matanya mula bertakung, namun sengaja ditahan. Nah, itu lah dia anak pejuang.
"Abah perlu pergi bukan sebab Abang notty, tapi sebab ini tanggungjawab abah,"
"Tangungjawab tu apa abah?" tanya anak bongsu ku pula sambil memeluk teddybear tersayang
"Nanti adik akan faham sendiri apa itu tanggungjawab" kata ku sambil mencium pipi kedua mereka.

Tiba-tiba, bunyi trompet musuh menyentak aku kembali ke medan ini. Nun di kaki langit, beribu jamung dapa kulihat. Rupanya masih ada lagi batalion musuh, mungkin seribu tentera, mungkin dua.

Benak kecil mula berbicara, bukankah senang untuk aku lari sahaja?. Berlari pulang pada Abang dan Adik. Apa yang mampu aku buat di sini? Mana mungkin mampu aku hadapi, tentera beribu bersenjata rapi, sedangkan aku hanya sendiri.

Ya, aku mesti lari. Mungkin kah aku pergi ke utara, ada hutan yang lebat di sana. Mampu aku bertahan sehari dua. Atau aku pergi ke selatan, gunung-gunung nya tinggi mencecah awan. Gua-guanya bersimpang siur. Buat musuh menjadi kabur.

Atau harus kah aku berdiri di sini? Tak putus harap dengan rahmat Ilahi. Hati tak goyah bagai dipatri. Bacul pengecut jauh sekali.

Lalu aku bangun berdiri. Walaupun kepenatan tak tertanggung lagi. Kegenggam kemas pedang di sisi. Sedia untuk perjuangan yang sekian kali.

Hati ku berdoa sepi, "Wahai Tuhan yang nyawaku di tangan, Berdiri nya aku di sini bukan mengharap kemenangan, tapi kerana perintah Mu memberi larangan, Jangan berputus asa di perjuangan"

"Aku takkan berputus harapan, pada Tuhan Yang Maha Penyayang,
Walau pun jantung berombak kencang
Walau pun aku tinggal seorang
Walau pun musuh beribu yang datang
Walau pun nafas ku semakin hilang
Walau pun kepenatan bukan kepalang
Walau pun kelukaan buat ku pincang
Walau pun kerinduan pada Adik dan Abang
Walaupun hari ini...aku takkan mungkin pulang"

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Anak keli tercampak ke telaga
Anak haruan dicelah batu
Luka di jari nampak di mata
Luka di hati siapa yang tahu

What is wrong with me?




[Please listen to the music, Take a few deep breath before reading]

What is wrong with me?
All of a sudden I feel pain,
Deep gnawing unforgiving pain.
The pain is familiar but I haven't felt like this for a long time.
It can't be true.
I'm a grown man now, I have aged with time...
And yet this pain make me fall to my knees.
I try to stand up again, Every time I do, the pain would come crashing on my shoulders forcing me to fall again.
It is raining and I'm soaking wet, yet my throat is dry due to my panting and breathing.
Wish I could drink a whole river but I can only sip any rain drops that fall on my lips...
I guess for now that will do.
Right now I don't even know if I will ever get back home again.
Right now the only thing I have is faith and prayers for I have done my all.
God please save me... you're the only one I have left.

Monday, December 10, 2007






Can't you tell?

I was soaked from head to toe
Serves me right for running in the rain
I just want to bring this flower to you
And I'm not asking for more than a smile
The night is dark and windy and the candle is flickering
And here I am missing you so much
I make excuses to call just to see if you're fine
I pray for you every chance I get
I look into your eyes to see if I can read your mind
Please look at me
Can't you see I'm in pain
Can't you tell...
That I love you

Friday, December 07, 2007

I never thought my poem could make people cry

azrulhasni (12/7/2007 12:43:37 PM): sedey sangat ke sajak tuh?
friend R (12/7/2007 12:43:51 PM): dh kuar air mata dah tadi
friend R (12/7/2007 12:43:56 PM): naseb baek aircond
friend R (12/7/2007 12:44:01 PM): cepat kering

Rase rendah diri dan terharu la plak, anyway, thank you for all you support :)

Thursday, December 06, 2007

GRAFCET and resource state management

My idea on using GRAFCET as a coordination language was quoted by an article on infoq by Jean-Jacques Dubray. The author made a very interesting remark about how services, resources and business processes are tied together: resources are modeled as business objects which states are mutated by services. These services are then tied together using business processes. In this posting I would like to put forward an idea on how resources state management can be done with GRAFCET (Jean-Jacques proposes a solution using BPEL+BPMN+SOAP)

First I would like to emphasis that this is just another way of looking at the problem. It has it's own advantages and drawbacks (especially since this is just an unpolished idea at this stage)

One of the advantages of GRAFCET (and also JBPL and Petri nets) is the notion of tokens. Tokens is what actually mutates the state of a GRAFCET. A step with a token is active and a step without a token is not active. When a step is active, an action attached to the step is then invoked. [In your usual industrial setting, we would not evoke the notion of tokens because there is only one type (or color if you prefer the Petri net notation) of token at one time. In such a case it would be easier to argue in terms of active steps instead of tokens]

Now integrating the notion of colored tokens into GRAFCET (yes yes, colored tokens are not part of the IEC standard but having colored tokens is just like having GRAFCETs without colored tokens duplicated and runned in parallel), we can easily model a resource as a particular color of a token.

So now, a GRAFCET can model exactly the state-machine of a resource. In fact, with the notion of parallelism integrated within a GRAFCET, we can go beyond single active state state-machines: I.E. a resource can be in several states at the same time (imagine for example, a document is being reviewed by 3 different reviewers and thus would have three distinct state at the same time - Reviewed by A, reviewed by B, reviewed by C) and these parallel states can evolve as independently as needed but can also be synchronized at some point.

To accommodate this idea, the actions in a GRAFCET should be modeled as loosely coupled services that accept tokens, mutate the tokens' state and return the tokens back to the originating GRAFCET. Note that in such a case, the GRAFCET is not strictly centralized since actions can be distributed. [In fact, the GRAFCET itself can be distributed (Gemma + master slave architecture) but that's a topic for another day]. The tokens are actually "injected" into an action, prompting the action to start working and returned back (outjected? - borrowing from Seam framework) to the GRAFCET once the action is over.

Note: The token is actually passed around and therefore can contain data such as history, say for compensation. These data do not have to reside directly within the token, rather, the token's id can be used as a key to the data residing in some database somewhere.

Note2: An action in a GRAFCET does not necessarily have to be a computation. It can also be human intervention. A token can be passed to a web server that will take display the token (remember a token is a resource, like a document for example) on a user "task portal". The user can inspect the token, mutate its sate and click on "done" by which the token would be delivered back to the GRAFCET.

Note3: GRAFCET is a reactive system. I.e. a step is not active until a token is delivered to it. An action does nothing until a token is injected to it. Because of this, GRAFCET is ideal in long-running processes. It can be days before an action is done but that will not bother the GRAFCET a bit. In fact, the whole GRAFCET can be serialized and stored somewhere and deserialized back once a token arrives from an action.










God, please take me home

Have you ever felt that the whole world is against you and yet you just can't give up, not now, not when you're so close, not with all the signs you've been seeing... and yet, it's so painful to stay.
God, where am I? Please bring me home....


Hati... [Please listen to the music while reading this]

Wahai hati tenang lah
Seperti tenangnya Ismail ketika pipinya mencecah batu penyembelihan
Kerana seperti Ismail, Tuhan akan menyelamatkan mu
Kerana yakinlah Dia akan menggantikan nyawa mu dengan korban yang agung

Wahai hati tegarlah
Setegar hati tentera Talut ketika kehausan
Nah dihadapan mereka seluas-luas sungai, namun Tuhan mengizinkan minum hanya seteguk
Betapa dengan seteguk air itulah yang membakar Iman dihati mereka untuk menang

Aku tahu wahai hati, soalan mu
Di bahu manakah bakal kucurahkan tangis ini,
Di laut manakah bakal ku layarkan gundah ku ini,
Di gunung manakah bakal ku jeritkan isi ku yang selama ini memamah diri secara perlahan,
Di pohon manakah bakal aku berlindung dari hujan sunyi,
Di pangkuan siapakah tempat aku mengadu ketika terasa seperti seluruh dunia menentang setiap usahaku
Di langit manakah bakal aku berteduh memohon doa kepada-Nya


Wahai Tuhan yang memiliki hati ini
Engkau kurniakan sekelumit rasa buat menguji
Betapa hinanya hamba-MU kerana menangisi takdir-Mu
Tapi hati hamba-Mu ini jauh sekali dari hati seorang insan bernama Ismail

Hati ini cuma hati yang kerdil bersimpuh hina mengemis di hujung rahmat-Mu
Pinta diubati luka yang masih berdarah, Pinta dikurnia barang secarik sayang
Ampun kan lah hati ku yang tak mampu menghadapi ujian-Mu

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

A cut is always deeper that it seems (sad ain't it)

I had a cut on my finger at the office today. It was a fairly deep cut (right thought my finger joints). I was squirming in pain and the toilet sink was red with my blood by the time I finish cleaning the cut.

I actually cut myself with a scissor while opening something I bought earlier. Blood were flowing and I quickly applied pressure on the cut while squirming in pain. I ask the girl sitting next to my office if there's some medication, I just had a deep cut. While still gleefully chatting and giggling with some online boyfriends, she said no. I ask if she could look around and find something. Maybe someone else in the office had some medicated plaster or something. With a I'm-sorry-but-my-boyfriends-are-more-important-than-that-squirming
-pain-you-have-or-your-very-existance-BTW look she left... and continue
using computers somewhere else.

Empathy is so low these days (unless of course you're that cute hottie from Korea with your messy hair and pretentious attitude) it's appalling. I'm not asking that that people rush me to the nearby ER or anything, but to just stop what you're doing, try your best to help a guy in pain is not, in my humble and apparently utterly useless opinion, to much of a "pain"

God forbid if I do need to go to the ER, i guess they would only find out a few weeks after that when they smell rotten flesh coming from my office.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

a friend: i am now struggling with the lowest point in my life..

a friend: so when i read your new entry..pedih itu pada yg memiliki..

a friend: it really come to my senses..

a friend: tq



Always glad to be able to help :)
Open source - the Malaysian definition

A few years back, I went to this seminar conducted by one of the University here regarding open source (The real name of the university is not revealed to protect the innocent from raging open source fanboy-lunatics). There was one brochure that was interesting, it list out all the open source software made by the University, and they were a plenty. I approach the organizer for futher info.

Me: Hi, I am really interested in these open source software you have
Organizer: Yes we use open source extensively here
Me: Cool, so, where can I download these software
Organizer: Download? well... no, these software is ours. It'll be wastefull to let outsiders download it rite? *smirking*
Me: But, isn't it open source
Organizer: Well, we use php, apache, mysql so it's open source
Me: Under what license are you releasing these software
Organizer: License? err... what license?

Well, I found out indirectly that these software are actually not open source. They are in fact proprietary... and guess what, I have encounter this again and again in the Malaysian IT industry where open source is redefined.

Open source: A software build on a LAMP stack, regardless of its license.

Non open source: Anything else despite being licensed under GPL, build usig Netbeans, running in Glassfish on top of OpenJDK in an open source OpenSPARC processor.

This stupid definition trickles down to developers.

Everywhere else: An open source developer = a developer who donate his code under an OSDL approved license

Malaysia: An open source developer = someone who uses LAMP

This stupid definition actually hurts the open source adaption in Malaysia. Previously, there was a certain degree of advocacy of open source in the Malaysian gov. as far as IT procument is concern: when there are two products of similar functionality and quality, an open source product must be given priority. But guess what, due to the stupid definition above tons of proprietary php projects has been shoved into the goverment's collective throats. In fact, it gave Microsoft a bullet to shoot down the advocacy by saying "hey, it's not open source guys, so why don't we drop the advocacy anyway"... so there goes the advocacy.

If there's one thing open source advocates need to change in Malaysia is that stupid deifnition that sticks in so many heads here.
munkin hidup ini perit supaya kita sentiasa rindukan syurga-Nya

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Pedih itu pada memiliki

Last night I was reading Abg Has' blog about a father struggling to accept the fate of his son. [I suspect that the son is terminally ill ].

I've been struggling for months now utk meredakan pedih di dada ni. Tetiba baru aku sedar, pedih perit and jerih ini rupanya hanya pada yang memiliki ... dan kita manusia sebenarnya tidak layak memiliki apa pun.

Ini doa aku mlm tadi:

"Wahai Tuhan yang memiliki segala sesuatu, ini hamba-Mu yg fakir lagi miskin dtg merayu ke sisi Mu...

Wahai Tuhan ku, betapa miskinnya aku ... sehinggakan tangan yang aku tadah ini pun milik-Mu, hati yang sebak ini juga milik-Mu, rasa pedih rindu yang mengunyah2 jiwa ku ini juga milik-Mu.

Wahai Tuhan yang Maha Kaya, aku pinta kepada Mu seperti pintanya seorang yg tak berpunya. Jika ada belas ihsan Mu untuk meminjamkan ku barang sekelumit tenang, barang secarik sayang, maka kepada Mu aku bersujud.... namun jika takdir mu untuk aku terus begini, maka adalah selayaknya hamba Mu ini tidak menerima barang apa pun.

Sesungguhnya Engkau lah yang memiliki segala sesuatu dan tidak lah layak untuk hamba Mu ini memiliki apa pun. Ampunkan aku wahai Tuhan kerana kurang memahami Mu"

... betapa miskinnya aku, titis airmata di pipi ini juga pun bukan milik ku

Ahahahahaha!!!!

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Decoupling BPM and messaging

I was reading a post by John Reynolds asking why Java programmers hate BPM. The response from The Java community is mixed between "programmers don't hate BPM, they hate coding in XML" to BPM is a tool for managers, not programmers.

Here's my own take on why programmers hate BPM. My answer is, programmers don't hate BPM< they hate BPEL due to its complexity. Now why is that? after working with BPEL for a couple of years now, besides the usual "writting xml is not programming" reason (which I totally agree BTW) I suspect that there is a more sinister evil behind BPEL: mixing concerns which may or may not be congruent with each other. Specifically, mixing coordination and messaging.

Heck, one of the reason why the abomination that is BPELJ was introduced was to facilitate the transfer of Java objects through BPEL without going through XML serialization.

I really think the reason GRAFCETs are very successful in the heavy industry (for e.g. coordinating large scale manufacturing) is because GRAFCET is a pure boolean system (0 or 1). No messages are going through a GRAFCET. Now, this does not mean that messages are inexistant, they do, just outside of the so called "BPM".

This really facilitates GRAFCET design a whole lot. All the BPM needs to do now is, given the state and condition (which are boolean) of the BPM, an action is either fired or not.

I was wondering if "Boolean BPM" is not what is needed to do away with BPEL and allow for a simpler language like the GRAFCET to be used. (need to investigate this idea further). I wonder how this would effect, say, long running transactions within a BPM.

Note: I do a see a tendency towards this "Boolean BPM" ( especially in this discussion ). Several Jbossian were touting the new Drools rule engine integration into BPMs. Now, rule engine is very much a boolean system. So, maybe my thoughts are not that far off :)

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Feel like an idiot

Have you ever feel like an idiot
Trying your best at something when you know its hopeless
Giving up everything just to keep that candle in your heart burn just a bit longer
Standing up again after falling when all your bruises beg you to stay on the ground


maybe I am an idiot :(

Someone asked me once: If God really exist why is there so much pain in the world. I didn't know what to answer then. I guess I do now. There's so much pain so that we remember that life is not forever... so don't get too attached to it. Further more, wouldn't pain make you closer to Him? :)

Monday, November 26, 2007

Repost from 2001

9 Jan 2001

Today, at Laman MAP, i saw this one girl asking about what she should do becasue she got B instaed of A in Arabic (and all the rest is A). Well, I write to her about my story. Sorry it's in Malay :

Assalamualaikum

Dear adik sad_gurl

Di sini ingin saya ceritakan sedikit anekdot untuk adik. Saya sendiri adalah seorang pelajar sekolah agama (Sekolah Izzuddin Shah, Ipoh). Semasa PMR (ketika itu dipanggil SRP...boy, am I old :)) saya sendiri tidak mendapat A1 atau A2 dalam bahasa Arab (pelajaran lain ok, BA aje spoil :( ).Akibatnya, saya telah tidak dapat untuk ke sekolah berasrama penuh seperti KISAS atau SMAP Labu (my dream school at the time).

Oleh kerana itu saya telah meneruskan pengajian di aliran Sains di Sekolah Raja Perempuan Taayah, Ipoh (Sekolah Taayah ialah sekolah perempuan, namun saya terpaksa ke sana kerana tiada kelas sains di sekolah izzuddin shah, namun asrama saya tetap di sekolah izzuddin shah) , sedangkan banyak kawan-kawan saya yang menjelajah ke SMAP dan KISAS. Apa boleh buat, tengok aje la.

Saya berasa amat sedih sekali, apatah lagi, akademik saya bukanlah buruk sangat, cuma C3 dalam bahasa Arab, yang lain A1, apakah mereka tak boleh buat pengecualian. Luka saya makin berdarah bila saya terdengar dari rakan-rakan bahawa ada juga pelajar yang dapat C3 dalam BA tapi masih dapat ke SMAP.

Terkadang saya bertanya, kenapa agaknya Tuhan letak aku di sini? Kenapa tak ke SMAP? Bagaimanakah masa depan saya agaknya? Ya lah, kalau di asrama penuh, selalunya, masa depan cerah. Apatah lagi gurunya cukup, kelengkapan sekolah canggih. Di Izuddin/Taayah, PC pon tak lengkap, tak cukup. Adakah saya mampu kenal apa itu komputer? apa itu internet? apa itu network?

Pada ketika itu saya berasa amat bodoh dan takkan berjaya. Kesedihan saya berpanjangan hingga ke Ramadhan '93. Namun, yang mengubah segalanya, bukan lah banyak, cuma sekeping kad hari raya dari seorang guru bernama Cekgu Umi.

Cekgu Umi adalah guru fizik saya ketika itu, one of my favourite teacher. Saya menghantar kad hari raya untuk Cekgu Umi seperti biasa, namun saya tidak mengharapkan balasan. Ya lah, kalau seorang guru itu mengajar 5 kelas dan mendapat 50 kad raya, hendak balas satu-satu, memang agak mustahil. Namun, tahun ini, buat pertama kalinya, sorang guru membalas kad raya saya. Kad Cekgu Umi berwarna hijau, simple. Di dalamnya tertulis harapan seorang guru agar anak didik nya berjaya.

Saya agak tersentak ketika itu kerana saya sudah hampir putus harapan kerana tidak diterima ke SMAP, putus harapan untuk berjaya, putus harapan untuk terus ke university, dan nah, tiba-tiba, seorang guru masih mengharapkan kejayaan saya.

Kenapa saya putus harapan sedangkan ada orang lain yang masih mengharapkan kejayaan saya?

Sejak hari itu, saya telah menukar arah. Tidak lagi sedih, tidak lagi menyesal. Saya teruskan pelajaran, dan nah, hari ini, saya berjaya meneruskan pelajaran diperingakt masters dalam information system engineering di Perancis biayaan Telekom Malaysia.

Kad Cekgu Umi saya simpan sampai ke hari ini. Menjadi inspirasi saya setiap kali kegagalan menimpa.

Selalu juga saya tanyakan kepada diri saya, kalau lah saya ke SMAP, apakah saya akan terima sebuah kad hijau dari Cekgu Umi? Sudah tentu tidak.

Jadi untuk adik, janganlah menyesali takdir Tuhan, tiap-tiap kejadiannya adalah untuk kebaikan adik juga. Mungkin bukan hari ini, tapi suatu hari nanti :)

Terima Kasih Cekgu Umi :)

GRAFCET - The forgotten coordination language

I have been following with interest some of the papers and discussion regarding coordination languages in multicore/multithreaded applications [here and here ]. In short, the current model that we use to tackle concurrent programs, using thread, is badly flawed (due to nan-determinism). This would be amplified a thousand fold once multi-core processors become more popular and can support more cores. An interesting way to solve this problem is to abandon thread and go with coordination languages. These coordination languages should be deterministic but offer controlled non-determinism wherever it is needed.

Suggestions come left and right ranging from Erlang to Labview to Petri nets. I couldn't help but wonder if ye old forgotten GRAFCET could be one of the top candidate for the coordination language post.

GRACFET was born to manage heavy industry, where determinism means "the machine do not goble up a person's right arm" [quoting from a Prof. of mine back in UIT de Chateauroux]. I.E. with GRAFCET determinism should, nay, must be a super top priority. But, having GRAFCET coordinates rows upon rows of production lines means some form of non-determinism is at work. Much like Petri nets (GRAFCET is based on Petri nets after all, with a bit of modification), non-determinism is controlled on certain part of GRAFCET and not everywhere.

Furthermore, GRAFCET is really really easy to learn. There are 5 rules you need to know and that's it. I wonder if the French are not investigating this right now

Sunday, November 25, 2007

A long overdue blog...

A few moons ago, we organized a suprise farewell party for Liya and Cik Fa. (check my flickr page )




















One of the most frequent question people ask about aikido is this: Would aikido be useful in a street fight?

Here's my answer: Well, unless you're a 4th or 5th dan, I really don't encourage you to get into a street fight with only an aikido. (maybe aikido plus a big iron rod ... but even then).

But then again, how many times you get involved in a street fight? (Please quit reading if your answer is more than 20 ... per day).

Aikido is all about love and peace, sugar and spice and everything nice. But aikido still resides in the real world and the real world is full of confrontations. We, as human, would face confrontations everyday, from our bosses, our children, our spouses, our friends, our coworkers etc. Heck, we even have confrontation with ourselves.

I really think that aikido, despite not being that useful in confronting a gang of thugs, is very powerful in confronting these day to day stuff. (and no I'm not suggesting an irimi nage on your nagging wife) .

Aikido is made of two things, practices and values. One of the values of aikido is to absorb negative energy from the uke (attacker), transform it to positive and give it back to the uke. Imagine in a, say, maritial fight between husband and wife and the husband knows aikido and its values. The husband could first absorb any negative energy (i.e. let the wife speak her mind, let her finish with her katatedori if you prefer) . Transform that energy into positive without being destabilised (getting angry, blowing the proverbial fuse, using adirect counter attack etc.) and send it back (smile, say you're sorry and give her a hug .. ok ok , so you may get the old "don't touch me" but that's better than a race to see who can shout the loudest) .

Now you see how aikido can help with day to day confrontation.

Some may ask, these values are universal and anyone can use it. Sure, but what aikido does is to transform these values into practice so that, as human being, we can absorb it better. I.e. through practicing aikido, we internalise its values and can use it wherever these values are needed.

And that my friend, sure beat kicking a** in a street fight.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

What do you do when you feel down? when you just kneel to the forces of nature and can't get your feet off the ground? Well, one thing that I do is to remember what people said about me... Here's one:

mmm believe me if i say he is the most nicest and sweet guy on

earth!!!betul!!!he's so sweet and so shy too,masa sis gi sana we went to

a lot of places laaa and i think he's such a good boy!!!tak lupa

sembahyang and he definitely tak macam owang lain..bukan sis nak puji

lebih2 tapi that's the truth!!!


.....

esp bila first time jumpa..dia malu tapi lepas tuhh dia

laa yang paling becok!!!herhehe tanya laa apa aja mesti ada citer pas

tuhh suka nyakat owang!!hehehe


......

..apa yang sis boleh cakap..is that he's really nice and dia very

bertanggungjawab...


Thank you sis, wherever you are today, may God bless you always

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Pain and life

One thing I love about aikido is how strikingly it describes how your body works and how that is, in fact, how life also works.

In aikido, intertia signifies blockage of your chi energy. When there's inertia, you won't feel pain but, suddenly your arm could break or your neck could snap *gulp*. Aikido tries to unravel these blockages so that the chi would flow smoothly, as a result... you feel pain, tremendous pain sometimes. But that's a good sign. The sign of something in you actually flows correctly.

How life is very much similar to that. Sometimes, we don't feel pain... and suddenly, things start breaking, start snapping left and right. This is due to inertia within us, we "refuse" to see the pain.

There are times when pain is grabbing us by the throat. We can bearly breath just thinking how painful things are. Unbearable, unsurmountable... but be sure, the pain is merely there to show how things are actually flowing correctly.... If you ever feel such pain, be patient. It will soon be your turn to be a nage* :)

*In aikido, nage is the person who is doing a technique, as oppose to uke who is receiving the technique (the pain?)

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

I'm starting aikido again after...ooo i dunno, 5 years. I feels good to fly again