TO STAY OR TO LEAVE?

The idea of leaving had never came into my mind until the day I had a chat and discussion with my former teacher from my masters days. There are many reasons people leave the government and join the private sector. It can be due to the money, working condition, colleagues or children's health. You cannot prevent people leaving, it is your destiny.

My teacher told me about his daughter who had just recently finished her study in Pharmacy from Indonesia. He had to spend about RM160k in school fees alone. This doesn't include other expenses such as rental, foods and traveling. Studying medicine in private is much more costly. Recently my uncle send his son to study Medicine in Eqypt at a cost of RM250k in school fees alone. I am sure he can afford that, since he is a financial consultant with PNB (Permodalan Nasional Berhad), who pays him a lot.

I have four daughters, in which the eldest is in Standard 4. That would give me 7 full years of time to find some amount of money to prepare myself to finance her tertiary education. What if she told me that she wanted to do medicine, but she doesn't get any place in any of the public university. That is what happened to my uncle. His son didn't perform very well in the matriculation, but at the end of the day, he told his father that he wanted to do medicine. You can never say no to your child. You can say no when she ask to buy expensive things. But you would have the guts to say no, when she wanted to study. If you say no, the guilty feeling will haunt you for the rest of your life.

The cost of doing Medicine at that point of time may reach RM500k. I can never afford that. Having said that, I can never afford the RM250k now, with the salary that I am currently obtaining. That would be the cost for one daughter. What if all four of them wanted to do medicine? For that, I may need about RM2 million.

Lets do some basic calculation. Since my youngest daughter is only 2, and by the time she reach 17, which is about 15 years from now, in which I will be 54, if god allows me to live until then. So, I only have 15 years of my life to get RM2 million. For this you need to save about RM130,000 per year, which is about RM10,000 per month. That is an awful lot of money!!!! If I save RM10,000 per month for the next 7 years, that would give me about RM840,000, which is enough for me to send both my eldest and second daughter to study medicine. I can still save some more money for the next two years, to supplement for the second daughter since she is younger by 2 years from her sister.

Studying medicine is the most expensive option. But studying dentistry, pharmacy, engineering or law are also expensive. What I am calculating might be the most expensive option. But the moral of the story is that, you need money for your children and you can't wait for the money to come to you.

So, the amount of money that you need will rise proportionately with the number of children that you have. If you have only one child, you only need about RM500,000 which you need to save about RM2500 per month for the next 15 years.

So, having more than 2 child, gives you a big reason to leave! Is this true? But can anyone tell me of any other way to get RM10,000 per month for the next 15 years, without leaving?

WINDOWS MOBILE 6.5: A NEW LEASE OF LIFE FOR OLD WM SMARTPHONES.

Dopod D810 was at its prime when it was launched about 3 years ago. If I can remember, the selling price is about RM2700 when it was launched. It was launched with WM5.0, with non functioning GPS. An official update for WM6.0 was launched about 1 year later, activating its GPS function.

However, due to the availability of new crops of WM smartphones, Dopod D810 was passed and not updated to WM 6.1 or WM6.5. This doesn’t prevent hackers especially from xdadevelopers forum to make their own updates, unofficially.

I bought this smartphone due to its GPS function, about 2 years after its launching, for about a half price of its official price. Quite a good price for a GPS unit, since the price of Garmin Nuvi at that time is around RM1k. You get a 3.5G phone besides the GPS, for another few hundred, quite a good bargain. I immediately updated the ROM to WM6.0 after buying it, since it came with WM5.0 ROM. It served perfectly as a GPS unit for my car. But it can never fight the newer A GPS units such as Nokia E71, in terms of GPS satellite locking time. WM6.0 is quite good and stable, better than WM5.0. However for WM devices, it is usually slow and lagging even though the processor is already 400MHz.

I did a search in the xdadevelopers forums and found a few stable WM6.5 ROMS for Dopod D810. Also did a search for WM 6.5 Treo 750v stable ROMS, but couldn’t find any. After downloading and reading the forums, I did a ROM upgrade for my Dopod D810. The procedure took less than 20 minutes.

First impression, WM6.5 seems to be much faster than WM6.0. The interface is also better than WM6.0. Most of the programmes seems to run faster on WM6.5 compared to WM6.0. Since using this new ROM for about 1 week, I haven’t got any autoreset or hanging on the smartphone.

SPB MobileShell was also updated to version 3.5 probably last year. The last version of SPB MobileShell, that I have used is version 2.0. Much has changed since then. The new version 3.5 has a much better interface as compared to the old version.

So, with the new WM6.5 ROM and SPB MobileShell 3.5, I have upgraded my old Dopod D810 as my secondary phone, replacing the old Treo 750v, which will kept lock in my drawer until the day the hackers from xdadeveloper can develop a stable WM6.5 ROM.

Can’t wait for WM7.0 to be launched early 2010, which for sure will be better than WM6.5..

UPGRADING YOUR DELL D420

I have given up on using my Dell D420, courtesy of the university. It is because of the slow hard disk, which is a 1.8 inch 4200rpm model. But I am sure, most of you are still using it as your primary computer. I have been opening up the compartments in the D420 since I found a SIM card slot under the battery. After reading and searching a few forums, I found out that the available WWAN slot in Dell D420 is actually active and you can just put a mini PCI WWAN card in it and then put a 3G SIM card in the SIM card slot under the battery to make it work. Dell has also provided two antennaes within it.

With this knowledge, I proceed to look for a cheap 3G WWAN card in ebay. You couldn't find any in lelong. The cheapest 3G WWAN card I could find is the Sierra MC8775 model. Most sellers are from Hong Kong, with a price of less than RM150. Much cheaper than a USB 3G modem sold by Celcom sellers, which are usually priced at RM199. A seller is selling at around RM130 in ebay malaysia.


I bought from another seller. The card is just another mini PCI type card. To install, you can read or follow the manual from Dell.


Just unscrew the three screws under the laptop. But before that, make sure you remove the battery first. Then plug in the antennae into the WWAN card. There are two antennae available. One is grey/white and the other is black/white. Plug in the grey/white antennae into the available port in the card marked as MAIN. Leave the black/white antennae alone. Then plug in the Sierra MC8775 card into the available WWAN PCI slot next to the PCI WLAN card. Then put in your unlimited package 3G SIM card in the slot under the battery. Put in the battery back in the slot.


Switch on the laptop. For sure, your laptop won't be recognising the WWAN card due to the nonavailabilty of drivers. Just download the driver and installer from sierrawireless. Install the software and wait for the laptop to recognise the WWAN card. Then start the Sierra Watcher program. I am getting a full bar Celcom 3G signal with HSDPA in my room at 3rd floor JHC. The software supports SMS. I also found a dialer, which supposed to enable voice call from your laptop. But I have yet to try it now. This blog is typed from the Dell D420 running Windows 7 Ultimate RC, with an internal Sierra MC8785 3G WWAN on Celcom HSDPA.

Even though I am doing this on a Dell D420, I am sure it will also work perfectly with a Dell D430, which most of you are using too. This is because of a similar internal architecture and motherboard of these two Latitude laptops. There is another newer Sierra card available which is the MC8781 model. This model do support GPS, in which it support 3G and GPS in one PCI card. The added advantage of using this card, is that you can use your laptop as a GPS machine with without having to have another bluetooth or USB GPS unit. However you still need to have a GPS software installed, which I would recommend Garmin Mobile PC. This card is slightly more expensive, and since I already have a bluetooth GPS available, I don't find the need to buy a more expensive card.

This modification is so easy since you don't have to do any soldering to the motherboard. But since my primary laptop is a nearly perfect MSI McWindtosh running Leopard OSX 10.5.8, I need to find a way to have an internal 3G in it, which for sure will need a soldering of SIM slot into the motherboard.

Enjoy...

GETTING PROMOTION: THE FAST TRACK

Being in the eduction line, has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let's not talk or discuss on that, it would be too boring. Getting a promotion in any job or service is a dream of everyone. Being in the education line, your promotion heavily depends on your research and publications. The teaching part comes along with it, since you must teach to get paid. So, how do you get a fast track on your promotion? The key is to get along the correct colleague or people. Teamwork is the key to success.

Is it quite easy. You only need to have another two colleague in the same profession, be it in a different specialty or a different institution. However all three of you must work hard, or extra hard to do research and publish. If all three work very hard, it would be very simple. You only need to do two research per year and publish three papers per year. In all the research and publications, all three of the members of the team will contribute in ideas and have their names in all the research and publications. The key person will always be the principal researcher or authors. Within a year, each of the members will have 6 researches completed and 9 papers published. In 3 years time, each of the members will have 18 researches completed and 27 papers published either locally or internationally. With all these in your resume, you can get promoted anytime and anywhere...

Now, where can I get that two person..........

WHY YOU NEED TO DO LOCUM (PART 3).

As you know doing locum forced you to work fast and finishes all the reporting urgently, or at the latest 1 hour after the examination is completed. This is a very good practise to your alertness and diagnostic sharpness. You must or forced to make a diagnosis within minutes. If you don't know, you have to find the answer in a very short period either via the internet or books. By doing frequent locums, your sharpness in making a diagnosis and rapidity in producing report increases. Getting back your current practise in government hospital, with this behavioural change, you tend to finish your report as urgently as possible. This would be good for the patients in your current hospital.

So by doing frequent locums, you don't only get more money, you will have behavioural change, control your anger, talk more courteously to patients and other doctors and also increase the productivity of your current hospital. Go ahead, do more locums..... Hehe!!

WHY YOU NEED TO DO LOCUM (PART 2)

Patient population in both private and government hospitals are slightly different. In private hospitals, they are more demanding and sometimes complaint a lot. Most of the private physicians tends to be more accepting to the behaviour of their patients. By doing locums, you will learn to change your approach to these patients. You also tend to control your anger even when your are in a tense position. You also tend to talk more or explain more to the patients about the procedures and findings of an examination. Even though, sometimes these behavioural changes may be a false change, it can be beneficial to you. By doing frequent locums, these behavioural changes can be a second nature to you. Going back to your service in the government hospital, these behavioural changes ie controlling your anger to patient's behaviour and explaining in detail about procedures and findings to patient, will be good to the patients in the hospital that you are currently practising.

Besides that, in receiving request for examinations in the department, in private hospital you tend to accept any request from the physician without any question. By doing frequent locums, the behaviour to reject a request for an examination can be diluted because of this. Going back to your service in the government hospital, the behavioural changes of not wanting to reject an examination would be good to the patients there. You will try not to reject requests for examination from housemans by using petty reasons.

So, doing frequent locums is actually good especially in changing your behaviour to patients and also housemans/physician. So, please do more locums. For those who have never done any locum, please do it. It is good for your health. Haha!!

WHY YOU NEED TO DO LOCUM?

A simple answer is for the money of course. But apart from that, there is another reason. After all the hardwork to become a subspecialist, you tend to do or see more cases in your subspecialty field. You tend to neglect other work or modalities. As for me, I don't see any mammography images anymores, since I practically hate it. However, you need to keep abreast in all the advances in all the modalities. You also need to update and maintain your expertise in all the modalities. You can say that you will never resign from the government service, but time will tell. For this you have the need to maintain your knowledge and expertise in all modalities, besides improving your expertise in your subspecialty field.

To get all this, you need to do locum. During locum as you all know, you will see all types of cases in all modalities. To further maintain this, you need to do locum frequently, or at least once in two months. Would be better if you can get a daily part time locum after office hours or during weekends in your local private hospital...... This would be a better justification apart from the money..

PAPERS AND ENDNOTE X2

Writing and publishing is part and parcel of a life as an academician. Thinking and doing a research is already a major hurdle. However writing and publishing is a bigger hurdle to climb compared to doing a research. The most difficult part in writing is organizing your references and also citing your references in your paper or article. This is where this 2 programmes for Macintosh gives you a great help. Here I want to introduce Papers for Mac and Endnote X2 for Mac (Endnote is also available for Windows, Papers is not available for Windows, if you want to use it get a Mac).


Papers function as a reference organizer for your references. You have thousands of PDF articles lying around in your computer cluttered and unorganized. It is very difficult to know what is in the files without opening it. If you are using a Mac, Quicklook will allow you to look into the PDF file. However using Papers, this will solve all your problems. Just import all your PDF files into Papers and it will do the rest. Papers can organize your PDF files according to authors, date, names and etc. You can quicklook into the PDF file, read it in full screen or just browse into it. Using the power of Safari tabbed browsing, it can have multiple tabs within Papers. If you have a PDF paper without any citated info within it, you can search the info from within Papers and match it into your article. The best thing is that, Papers is linked with most of the scholar search engine named Pubmed, Google Scholar and etc. The best thing about Papers, is that you can import or export the files that you have saved in Papers to EndNote.


Since papers only organize the PDF files, you need another software to help you to write. It is important that you can cite while you write. This is where EndNote comes in. EndNote is also a Reference Manager. Unlike Papers, it allows you to cite while you write. But why you need to use Papers since EndNote is also a Reference Manager? Papers has a function where you can open the PDF file within the programme, unlike EndNote. For EndNote, to view the PDF file, you still need to open the file using either Adobe Reader or Preview. However the new EndNote version X1 and X2 allows you to search while in the EndNote itself. Pubmed is usually the default search engine. It also allows you to search full text article if it is available free to you. However for subscribed journals, it also allows you to key in your username and password. Most of the common libraries are listed in the EndNote. EndNote also has EndNote Web which allows you to have your reference to be online in the EndNote server. For those who have never heard about EndNote, this is what EndNote do. It helps you to organize your references while you write. Different journals have different styles especially when you want to cite an article. Some journals want it to be superscript, some want it next to the reference. For references, some journals want the whole list of authors listed while some only want the first three, with the rest et al. This is where EndNote help you in doing all these. You can choose which journal you want to send the article to, and EndNote will do the rest. Lets say, 6 months on the road, your paper is rejected by the first journal. You just open EndNote and change the name of the journal and EndNote will change the paper style exactly according to the second journal requirements. Easy......

Now, there is no reason for you not to write........