Garden Update and Creepy Crawlies

My roses - the pride of my garden, even though I only have three bushes.



My tomato is getting bigger and bigger but I am afraid that it shows no sign of ripening. Worried that it might be too late as the weather is getting colder and the leaves are showing signs of wither.


And as Halloween is nearby, here are pics of some creepy crawlies in my garden:





And not so creepy: A ladybird - sign of a healthy environment:


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chubskulit

Malaysia Boleh

A funny mail that was forwarded to me today:



After having dug to a depth of 1000 meters last year, Swedish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 1000 years ago.

Not to be outdone by the Swedes, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug to a depth of 2000 meters and shortly after headlines in the UK newspapers read; English archaeologists have found traces of 2000 year old fibber-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the Swedes.

One week later, Malaysian newspapers reported the following:

"After digging as deep as 5000 meters in paddy fields in Kedah, Malaysian scientists have found absolutely nothing. They, therefore, have concluded that 5000 years ago, Malaysian's inhabitants were already using wireless technology."

MALAYSIA CAN!!!!!

Big Thank You for spreading the word

It's sometimes amazing how kind some people can be, going out of their way to help other people.

I am really thankful to have made so great friends through my blog and social networks, most of whom I have never met in person. Many of them helped spread the word about my research survey on their blogs, Facebook and on Twitter.

The most I can do for them is say a huge Thank You! and give back some link love.

My blogger friends who blogged about the survey on their blogs: Elizabeth, Emila, Mariuca and Nana.

Ela and Amrul who helped spread the word on their Facebook profiles.

Last but not the least, are my Tweeps: Angelopoulos, Chen Helen, Ecoexplorer and Lorraine Siew.

I also found out later that a few other guys had blogged about it as well. Made some new friends in the process. Thanks Fida.

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Mariuca

Update to my last post - Prizes and Charity

In my last post "My Research Methodology", I forgot to mention that there is a £100 cash prize as well as Amazon vouchers involved and you can do your bit for charity as well.

I have pledged to donate 50p for every completed questionnaire to the Cancer Research UK.

Please click the link to take part in the survey.

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Julie

My Research Methodology

Just met my second supervisor yesterday and he approved my final research questionnaire with some minor changes. It's now live online at www.surveymk.com//blogs.

With this I am now at the halfway stage of my PhD research work at the Warwick Business School, University of Warwick.

I am actually quite relieved because the first stage is actually the toughest. It took me quite some time to get here because getting the questionnaire right the first time is crucial. A lot of people rush trough their questionnaire development phase of their research and suffer the consequences later.

The first step in starting a research is to have a broad idea of which area you want to research in. For me it was a no-brainer - I wanted to do something related to blogs. However, as I have a marketing background and I am in the business school, I was interested in the marketing aspect of blogs. More specifically on the consumer behaviour related to blog.

Carried out an extensive review of literature and found out that very little research has been carried out on blogs and even less on the marketing aspect of blogs. This was both good and bad news for me. Good because almost anything I do will be new contribution but bad because I had negligible literature to base my research on.

If you are new to research, the first thing you should be aware of is that review of previous literature is absolutely essential. This would allow you to identify the gaps and your potential contribution. You also need previous research to support some of your assumptions and hypotheses.

I had decided from day One that my research should be quantitative in nature and based on a survey questionnaire. Learnt that I fell under the positivist philosophy camp. Most of my friends research here are qualitative in nature. There has been an ongoing battle between the different sides on the best approach to research but I firmly believe that quantitative research is the best. This may be due to my educational background in the biological sciences.

My research looks at the consumer's perception of blogs and as I am looking at consumer attitudes, I rely a lot on several human psychology theories - as are in fact, a lot of marketing studies.

Several conceptual models with various constructs came up and went until we (myself and my supervisor) finally agreed upon one.

This was a really frustrating phase and I did wonder whether it was worth all the mental and financial cost.

These constructs are measured by various statements and are derived from previous studies published in leading marketing and psychology journals. I guess that's why we call it "re-search".

I also conducted some interviews followed by a pilot test. Based on the comments and exploratory factor analysis, I had to drop several statements used to measure the constructs and even drop one completely because I found out that it was actually had wrong measurements and was not reliable. I had taken the scale from a research conducted by some Professors in a top US University. This actually proves that experts do get it wrong sometimes.

Anyway, I am finally here and ready to enter the second stage. If you read blogs regularly, please spend a few minutes to complete my survey.

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Daddy Papersurfer

Discount store lilies

Some months back, I bought some lily bulbs from a discount store in Coventry city centre. I was not even sure whether they would live or what the flowers would look like if they did survive. So I planted them around my garden and today morning I got the first bloom.

It looks lovely and I now regret not buying more.





Have no idea about the name of these lilies. Help anyone?

UPDATE:
A friend of Facebook informed me that it is not (scientifically) a Lily but an Iris.

Did some Googling and found out that it's common name is Blue Flag and belong to the Iridaceae (iris) family. It is also known as Blue Iris, Liver Lily, Wild Iris, Flag, Poison Flag, Snake Lily, Water Flag, Dragon Flower, Dagger Flower and Fleur-de-Lis.


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6th Blogoversary

I totally forgot about it until I saw a comment by Teena today. My oldest blog turned 6 yesterday.

Can't believe that I have been blogging this long. Thanks to all my loyal readers and friends who have motivated me to continue this adventure in the Blogosphere.

BTW, my post 'Blogger and I' even received a mention on Blogger buzz sometime back.

Mango Lassi recipe

Here's the recipe of my home made mango lassi. This drink is very popular in the North Indian states especially Punjab and I developed a love for this drink during my undergraduate days in Himachal Pradesh.

It's really easy to make. Normally it is made using fresh dahi (whole milk yogurt with live culture). Unfortunately as I don't have dahi, I have to make do with yogurt sold in Tesco in packs.

Ingredients (for 4 people)

• 1 mango chopped
• 100ml Mango juice
• 250 g yogurt ( I have used Tesco Light Greek Style Yogurt)
  
• 1 tbsp Sugar

Add all the ingredients together and mix



I added the mango juice as using only yogurt makes the lassi too thick.



Finally we have delicious Mango Lassi ready to be gulped down.

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Babypink

A plant to brighten up the bathroom

Our bathroom was looking a bit dull and as I was cleaning it up this Friday, I decided that maybe I should introduce a plant to the room, just to brighten it up a little.

This is Flaming Katy, a Kalanchoe. This succulent needs little care and is long-flowering. Just ideal for the bathroom and it cost me only 98p from B & Q.



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BMW's new marketing direction

BMW TV is today launching it's expanded IPTV offering online globally following the successful two-year beta-phase at http://bmw-web.tv/. According to a report I received, their German webpage and its international site registered a total of more than 70 million video views.

They plan to roll out thirteen other local-language websites shortly.

In case you were not aware, they also have an official BMW YouTube Channel. This is all part of their move to attract online consumers.

Check out this "teaser" clip of their new concept car featuring what they call BMW EfficientDynamics technology. I put teaser inside quotes because it's kind of funny. You only get to see the tail lights for a few seconds.

Ikea the supermarket

Last week I was leaving the office when I met a friend. He was so surprised when I told him that I was going to the Ikea Coventry store to have lunch with my wife and son. "Are you sure?" he asked.

He is looking forward to visiting the restaurant on his first ever trip soon.


My son fell asleep in the shopping trolley during a recent trip to the Coventry store.


Anyway, most people still see Ikea as a furniture store but strangely we rarely buy furniture though we are regulars at the store. Most of the time, we usually go to eat there but we do end up buying something or the other - a picture frame, candles, rugs or even plants. This may be de to the fact that we don't change furniture that often.

They have also started selling luggage, books, electrical equipment and even soap. In the future we may actually see Ikea transformed into something like Marks and Spencer (another favourite store of ours) selling everything from food and clothes to furniture and electrical equipment.

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Lynne

Visit to the Falkirk Wheel

More pictures from our trip to Edinburgh some time back.

One of our friends recommended that we visit the Falkirk wheel near Edinburgh. Driving, it took us nearly 50 minutes to get there from Edinburgh. It is a great engineering feat connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal and is named after the nearby town.


View of the wheel





We got into the boat which was then moved to the docking-pit. We were then slowly lifted to the union canal on the top.



Celtic inspired design




Inside the boat


The wheel was built by Butterly engineering which have now sadly gone out of business like so many companies in the UK.





It was a short ride on the canal and back down again to the basin and my daughter thought it was boring. She was more excited playing at the small playground near the wheel.

In the auto car wash for the first time

We were getting a bit bored stuck at home and decided to go out for lunch at the city centre today. After a heavy meal at Nando's we were on our way back when my wife noticed that our son was dozing off and asked me to drive around a bit so that he could go to sleep as he usually does. However, after several minutes he was still awake and we decided to get our car washed.

It's been ages since I had it washed and it was filthy looking. We drove to the Tesco car wash at the Arena park. Their cheapest rate is only £1.99 but I decided to go for the £6 package with wax and stuff.

After we got into the wash, we were pleasantly surprised when the car was sprayed with blue and pink foam.




See the look on my son's face.


Both anxious and excited at the same time. Not surprising after all it was his first time in a car wash.



To be honest, it was my first time as well. My wife was shocked when I told her that I have never gone into a car wash. I have personally avoided car washes all this time because I have heard so many horror stories of machines scratching the cars.

In the end, realised that I was scared for nothing and the car is now sparking clean. It's faster and more importantly, much cheaper than my usual car wash.

Will definitely be going back again.

Blogger and I

Recently found out that Blogger turns 10 next month. It made me think about my blogging experiences and how it has changed my life. I had actually forgotten but after checking out my first post, I discovered that I am also going to celebrate six long years of blogging very soon as well.

I had been following various blogs and commenting on them for quite sometime when one fine day in the September of 2003, I started my own blog with Blogger and wrote my very first post . And as they say, the rest is history.

In the beginning it was more of a hobby and I used to post anonymously. I just used my nick name and a profile picture of me snorkelling in Redang.



I made a lot of blogger friends from all around the World, some of whom are still blogging while others have simply disappeared without a trace. Many of my old blogging pals have since then moved onto Wordpress and their own domains, while I stuck with good old Blogger. I have seen a lot of positive changes since Google took over blogger and I guess my decision to stick with Blogger has been the right choice.

Later on, I gradually lost my anonymity and started posting up pictures of myself, friends and family. It also became a place for friends and family to find out what I had been doing all the time.

The year 2006 was a landmark year in my life. I took the very huge decision to quit my comfy lecturing job at a public university in Malaysia and moved to the UK. I was a stay-at-home dad for a year -changing diapers, cooking and hoovering among others while my wife was away at the university. As I was looking after the kids, I couldn't go and get a job outside the house. Was really frustrating, depending on the meagre allowance that my wife received. One of the lowest points in my life.

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, I noticed that other people were making money from their blogs (at least that was what they were saying), I decided to give it a go.

Becoming a full time blogger changed my life entirely - I started several other blogs with focussed themes including my car blog - Auto Lah, Freebies - on free stuff on the net and my technology and gadget blog - Adamok.net. I was also blogging more frequently, sometimes making as many as 7 posts in a day on various blogs.

Being able to contribute to the household expenditure did a great deal for my self-confidence. In the process, I started dabbling with CSS, web site design and search engine optimisation. This later helped me secure a part time job as a web developer in one of the centres in the University of Warwick. Web advertising projects followed. Since then I have worked with various companies including 3 mobilebuzz and bmw-web.tv among others.

Blogging has been a wonderful experience and quite rewarding as well. However, more was yet to come. In 2008, my PhD proposal to the Warwick Business School to study the attitude of consumers towards blogs was accepted and I received a scholarship as well.

I am now about to start the 3rd year of my study and have discovered so many interesting aspects about this wonderful online interactive media. I still have some way to go before I complete my research. One thing is certain though - I will still be involved in this intellectual cyberspace which we call the blogosphere in one way or the other.

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Daddypapersurfer

MCS BBQ 2009

The Malaysian Coventry Society (MCS) recently held their annual barbecue party at Cryfield Pavillion, University of Warwick on the 4th of July. The weather was great and though the clouds looked threatening at times, it didn't pour down until much later in the evening.

There were games for the whole family and of course loads of great food.

Here are some pics:

























The BBQ party was a great success.

What the hell is Twitter?

It comes as no surprise that so many people are curious about Twitter. After all, it's constantly in the news but I have had so many queries about it, I realised that most people have actually no idea what Twitter is all about.



For those who didn't know, Twitter is a social networking/ micro-blogging service. It's called micro-blogging because you are allowed only to post up to 140 characters which is displayed on your twitter profile and also sent out to your subscribers who are known as "followers".

If you have already set up your Twitter profile but don't seem to have many followers you might want to read "Why people don't follow you on Twitter".

This new phenomena has resulted in whole new set of words, which I guess will soon be included in the Oxford dictionary. These include among others:

• Tweet: A post/ update on Twitter
• Tweeting: To post a tweet on Twitter
• Twitterer: Someone who tweets.
• Tweeps: Friends on Twitter, which I guess is derived from "Peeps".

The reason why it is tweet not twit and tweeting not twitting on Twitter is quite obvious.

One warning though - it's really addictive and sometime back I was tweeting like crazy everyday. In fact, I was the top twitterer in Coventry for quite sometime but I slowed down a bit now and have fallen to the 4th rank according to Twittergrader.

Anyway, follow me on Twitter @admutum

Not a bed of roses all the time

A lot of people reading my blog seems to think we are having a lot of fun here in the UK. In fact, several people back in Malaysia seem to think that doing a PhD in the UK is a big long vacation and we are all having fun here.

I guess it's kind of easy to get that impression looking at the big second hand Mercedes Benz car the students bring back, all the happy photographs posted on Facebook and blogs - of going to Paris, Rome and La Rochelle.

Despite the fact that I blog and twitter constantly, I am actually quite private. I prefer to keep some things to myself. Apart from my wife, I guess no body will ever know the problems we went through and the tears we cried.

Doing a PhD is not easy. We knew that but we still decided to go ahead and enroll for the PhD programmes here at the University of Warwick - both of us, with small kids. My son was just 3 months old when we moved here to the UK. Furthermore I took a huge gamble, resigned from my comfy job and decided to pay for my studies on my own. I didn't know how but we just went ahead. As they say, when there's a will, there is a way.



With God's blessings I received a scholarship for my first year at the Warwick Business School. That was the honeymoon period and the first year passed without any problems. Then the second year came and we found out that I would have to pay for the 2nd year of my studies on my own. Right now the fees is £10,900 for overseas full time students. That does not include other living expenses - food, petrol, insurance, etc.

That was hard - I had to take up several jobs. At one time I was actually working at 4 different places and doing different things including developing web sites and teaching at the University of Warwick. We even had to dig into the little savings we had back in Malaysia. And I had to study, do research and write papers at the same time. That was really hard.

Recently I was informed that I got the studentships for the next year. Praise be to God. I realise that most of our problems were related to money. However, there are other things as well that money can't solve.

I am sure we are not the only ones with a problem. Probably, many others doing a PhD here have it worse. I know of several PhD students whose relationships broke down, spouses passing away, having miscarriages and even mental breakdowns. I sometimes wonder how some of the Malaysian doctoral students managed to get on.

We are nearing the end now but still have a long way to go. We have survived and we will continue to fight as I am sure others have. We are really happy when our older colleagues finally pass out and we learn that they passed their viva without any or minor corrections. Gives some kind of hope to us still trying to find our way through the literature and various theories.

When we were totally stressed out, we took time out, going on family vacations - to rejuvenate our batteries. I guess that kept up sane. We also supported each other and pushed each other when we had to. All the time trying to be optimistic and smile. Having religion does help and though I have always been spiritual, I am more so now. I don't want to get into arguments with Atheists but I know God exists even though I can't explain how.

I am going off on a tangent here and I don't want to put people off from doing a PhD. Just want to say that it's definitely not a bed of roses but it's not something impossible.

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Chics