The
thing about life is, there’s bound to be something that strives us to go
further. Be it past mistakes, will to
overcome the odds, or even at the simplest of improving oneself. Being a student myself, I understood that
sometimes it’s important for us to possess that certain “pizzaz” as a factor that distinguishes ourselves from others. Now am pursuing my Masters in Information
Technology, there’s a lot of experience that I endeavour to reach my current
state. Well, it’s not that awesome
anyway. Love broken, life tragedies,
shun by the crowd, these are what I can say being my guidance to always remind
myself to be one step ahead of others.
If others crawl, I should crawl & dodge. If others read 3 books, I would motivate
myself to read 4. This is not the type
of those competitive states, but rather a self-motivation to do my best.
What
motivated me to have a deep interest in the realm of Information Technology, I
think. It must be from that
incident. A racist incident for me, that
make me think twice to be successful in life.
To tell a story about it. Well,
here I go. It must be during my 3rd
semester in degree days. I remember the
day is a Friday, 8.30 in the morning.
That day I’m having my final exam for 1 of my core IT subjects, Data
Structures. Studied like heck a few days
before. As most of other courses had
already concluded their exam a few days prior, our course is among those that “suffers
the misery” of watching people packing & leave for home. Heading to the bus stop as usual, I saw
almost a still population; almost nobody is in sight. The shuttle bus to the adjacent campus is
still operational however, where the sight of those bus drivers drinking coffee
in nearby shops could be seen. There’s 1
bus that I perceive would lead me to the new campus. However, the bus remained a standstill. Reluctant to move. When I saw the bus driver left his crowd at
the coffee shop, I assumed that he’s the particular driver. So he is.
I left my seat in the bus shed, heading towards his direction. I inquired his next direction, just to be
sure. To my surprise, he ignored me in
front of others. After few attempts of “acknowledging”
a brick wall, I raise my voice to illustrate my discernment. Another surprise occurred. “You go use taxi or something. I had already attended your friends to the
new campus earlier. You should come
before now, it’s my resting time. I’m
not going that far just to send you there alone.” What’s annoyingly, he used the Chinese-to-Malay
slang to refer to me.
As the
schedule shows, buses are supposed to move every 30 minutes. And it’s their duties to attend to us
students. I can’t believe I begged for
the first time in my degree days to him.
After a few minutes of consultation, he eventually agreed to leave. Trouble over? Not quite. This incident affected what would occur afterwards. Along the way, I sat in front with him. Attempts to forge a friendly conversation
just to release the “heat”, all my efforts went unheeded. He even cursed me all the way. Calling me names, comparing his schedules with
students’ timings, these among the rest.
Patience, I think. When I reached
the venue, I thanked him. He replied me
with another cursing. “Don’t let me see you again! You good-for-nothing little Chinese kid!” Whoa. I
swear I never said anything. He must
have thought I’m some sort of Chinese kid to resent me, who he don’t even
recognise. I imagine to him, how much sin
you would accumulate on that morning for hating your own kind. That point had opened my eyes of how insolent
& racist some people can be. I
admit, I’m a mixed race offspring. But I
had never, ever encountered any accounts such as these in my own state, where
Malay population is the minority. I
personally thought that community here haven’t been exposed enough with
cultures other than their own to proudly proclaiming that they’re living in a
multiracial country. I left the bus
without turning back.
Our
examination venue is at the 3rd floor. It is a place where the famous car manufacturer,
Proton’s factory resides. Our university
kind of rented the whole place for academic purposes. Due to the un-circumstantial mishap and curses
that I endured, I was late for 40 minutes.
I rushed like a madmen to the exam hall.
You see, all of that venue had that glass architecture thingy. Made it looked like Power Ranger fortress
when viewed from afar. I ran 3 floors,
ignoring the very existence of elevator.
I guess I kind of screwed up.
With the classroom in front of me, I rushed after the door. Probably there’s a person before me that
swing the glass door, that I ran right into.
God knows what happen afterwards.
Direct shove into a glass door. I
fell, sat on the floor. I see stars, my
knees that came into contact with the door turn numb. It turned blue in an instant. For a couple of minutes I stare blank into
the scenery of that auto city below. Not
before then that I realized my head is bleeding profusely. I ignored it, covering it with a
handkerchief, walking straight into the exam hall oblivious of whatever occurring. The exam already commenced for 30
minutes. I felt, better late than
never. “Luckily”, I was arranged to sit in the very front, face-to-face
with my lecturer. I guess she is the
maternal type. “What happened to your forehead?
Are you sick or something? Is
that…blood?” Oooh, I’m still dumbly
holding a handkerchief over my head. “Nothing Dr, it’s just a burst our
pimple. My bad.” And the rest is history. I failed that very paper. Didn’t finish it on time. Due to the hypocrisy of certain people. After that, I was being paranoid of my own
race & everything that they commit.
Due to this, I had to repeat the same paper in my final semester. I guess my dean might be the only lecturer
that noticed, as she signed the letter of acceptance.
My
relationship with the lecturer that taught the subject is what I’d say, as if
mother and son. Her name is Dr Mashitah
Hashim. As some junior proclaimed, she
might be among the lecturer that is very proficient in programming for our
Computing Department. I don’t know quite
well what happened, but she claimed when we have private chats that in the huge
lecture hall she noticed my timid nature among the rest. It reminded her of her own child. I mean, how possible can it be right? After that incident, I went to her office to
inquire to retake the exam. I told her
of the whole incident. Know what she
told me? “I noticed something amiss with your answers when I read your
paper. It’s brief and short. Not your way of life, I think. And you didn’t answer most of the
questions. I didn’t think you’d be lazy
enough, to left out your opportunity of passing with flying colours. When you came and told me your own stories, I
know my doubt is true.” That’s how I
remember she’s quoted. She asked me to
retake the entire subject, having high expectation and gave me a speech that
emphasized I should become a good programmer who doesn’t only understand the
fundamentals of programming by memorizing a few notes, but rather the logic
behind its implementation. Before this,
she’s the only lecturer that I dare to share about my family’s conflicts, how
Chinese and Malay nature clashed in my household. She would reply my letters in the wee hours
of morning, sharing her perspective which I doubt someone who’s still in a sleepy
state would be able to relay.
After that,
I really vowed to succeed in the field of programming. The reference book is what I preferred from
romance novels, online tutors being my subscribed list in Youtube. I managed to score a solid A when I took
Object-Oriented Programming during the 6th semester, something that
I heard from my lecturers is a feat succeeded by only 10 people from hundreds
taking that exam. I started to have
interest towards field other than C++, such as Actionscript in animation, cloud
computing development, even up to the extent of Java programming. Due to this, I took the challenge of
selecting mobile application development as my Final Year Project. I spent about 1 year researching on Java
Enterprise and Eclipse. Although my app
doesn’t end like as it should be, I managed to gain an insight of field deeper
than fundamental programming. Our
faculty even hold a competition of Final Year Project exhibition, where I illustrated
my failed attempt at app building.
Although that attempt is proven futile, something raised my spirit
afterwards. As mentioned earlier, I had
re-take the subject in our final year.
Unfortunately, some new-seeded lecturer took Dr Mashitah’s place, which
I think really suck at teaching. Mind
the language. I didn’t manage to be in
her class. Something occurred
afterwards. There’s 1 final coursework
for Data Structures, where I’m partnered with a girl. We’re mixed with foreign students from
Namibia. So you could expect how
ambience the environment is. I thought
Dr Mashitah doesn’t acknowledge me anymore, since I lost contact with her for 2
years. Right after we presented our
coursework, she called me. “I want to see your mobile application. Let’s see why you failed to win. Maybe we can
fix it. I think you deserved it!” How did she know I developed that? I didn’t tell anyone, only my
supervisors. She smirked. People who know her would understand that she
doesn’t smirk easily at her students, unless she’s really close with them. That incident really made me build my
interest in programming. Even up until
now, we still have an okay relationship, meet-and-greet besides messaging each
other. Even close friends don’t do that.
People
say, one’s courtesy might be meaningless to some however meaningful to
one. I believe, that’s the predicament
that I’m in. I didn’t really trust those
that excel in exams, but fail to care less about one single programming
development. I mean, that’s the reality
of the population right. I think that the
best compliment that you could hear from a programming lecturer is not “Congrats on getting A!”, but rather “I think you’re no doubt suitable to work in
the industry with your skills.” I’ve
heard stories from my old teachers & teaching practice that how the
theories emphasized in university is trash in the real world practice. It depends on how you expand your
comprehension on the matter. No doubt,
there might be people who prefer on leaving all those knowledge behind & pursue
new less complicated practice. But for
people like me, we rather learn new applications & update our existing
knowledge than trash those valuable basics behind.
From
this will after I graduated, I decided to pursue what I think is
essential. There’s 1 member in my
household who go doctorate. There’s no
mistake for me to do that too, right. So
while I see my course mates whine about the lack of opportunity to look for
jobs openly on social media, I decided to do anything related to my
studies. Fortunately, right after the
night that I graduated I got messaged by my vice dean to become her research assistant
in developing a web crawler for text tokenization. I admit, I didn’t manage to reach her
expectation in that 5-month project due to my lacking. However, right after that while I’m searching
for financial boost for my Masters degree, I received an offer to pursue the
field of Artificial Intelligence & Natural Language Processing with another
lecturer. My study fee was waived, I got
monthly salaries, got offered job as university tutor, and manage to hold on to
what I want to do. Currently I’m continuing
a project of Named Entity Recognition.
So yeah, I was being thankful.
After a racist incident, my morale had reached this point.
So
after blabbering so long in this article, I just want to stress out that there’s
no need to be ashamed with what we choose in life. People might get odd jobs and access to
credit cards while we’re still dragging our lives to research a programming
language & preparing to attend conferences, but it’s important that we do
what we believed in. They might have the
privileges of boasting about their lives, where we live in seclusion from the
crowd due to our duties. What matters is
what happens afterwards. Few years ago,
I was actually planning to become a civil engineer in a public institution that
I rejected after. My life would be
drastically different if I choose that path.
Road that diverges to a selection to life journey, we need to choose it wisely. Predicament, it’s what matters the most.
