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!!!!

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 :)

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? :)

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

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.

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

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?)

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