Recap of my Semester 7 - the internship semester (Degree journey: 7/8 done)

Finally… After 5 to 6 months of internships, I’ve managed to survive over it, and being able to update my inactive blog…

Hi everyone… I believe every degree in the universities certainly do have 1 semester dedicated for an industrial training. Even if some of the degree programs doesn’t have an internship semester, but they still enough their students respectively to find for 1 or 2 internship placements in between the semester breaks as well. The internship period usually lasted for about 2 months, the shortest one to 5 or 6 months. However, recently as well some universities, even UKM itself certainly does offer an option of choice of making it to 2 semesters worth of duration – which is about a year (12 months). Regardless of the duration, it is definitely industrial training is set to expose the students to the respective industry and real working world. Besides, through the industrial training, the students are said to be somehow directly or indirectly equipped with the relevant skills from that industry, and eventually being prepared for the future job market once graduated from the alma mater. Meanwhile, I, myself have just passed through the internship semester, and I did like to share some of my experiences in being an audit intern, as well as my thoughts after the internship.

Random photo of mine in the workplace

For starters, in the beginning, my internship journey was not that smooth sailing. My internship was supposedly starting by 2^nd of August of 2021, however, the respective audit firm, one of the mid-tier audit firms forced to defer my joining date for 2 months, from August 2021 to October 2022. It is understandable for the audit firm to defer the joining date during that occasion because of there was a guideline set by government to limit inpercentage of number of employees in the office compound to curb the spread ofCOVID-19 as part of the National Recovery Plan (Phase 3 that time*). However, the internship still couldn’t be deferred for a long time because there was an academic semester right after the internship semester. Even in between there was a month worth semester break, but still it was needed to take into account of the time to marking and grading of the internship report, and evaluation forms. This in turn has sparked the anxiousness among the students who got the internship placement there, including me. In the meantime, the authority of UKM – Program of Accounting in Faculty of Economy and Business has contacted and liaised with the HR authority of that mid-tier audit firm. The suggestion was that the UKM authority want to make it start by September, and unfortunately seemingly HR didn’t want to bother to make the starting date of internship as early as possible. Henceforth, we, the students that time had to find for another internship placement with the starting date by September. As for my case, I have managed to get 2 internships offer from 2 different audit firms in Puchong, Selangor. Although 2 of that audit firms were located in Puchong, but I sought to choose for the nearest to home, and being easily accessible to public transport one. Eventually, I have chosen for the nearest one to my home. Thus, my official internship was from 1^st of September 2021 to 31^st of January 2022, with the unchanged ending date of the internship. It is a sign of relief for me after settling this internship crisis, now it is the time to see the real experience of my internship.

Overall, my internship life in the firm which located in Puchong was good. I was able to get exposure of the full cycle audit through some of the small companies or dormant companies’ assignment. Since these companies have inactive trading or dormant status or trading with only their parent company, hence the working papers of the companies were also being easily to understand. Meanwhile, I’d also being assigned to assist some audit staffs, or known as seniors there in doing audit assignment for relatively bigger companies, or helping audit manager in doing audit for potential public listed company, apart from doing audit for those small companies. Assisting the seniors or manager was mainly on like doing some repetitive tasks, such as listing for sample selection, vouching on the selected sample, doing the other tests like cut-off test, and aging test for the receivables, and payables, sending balance confirmation letters, filling up each section of the lead schedules, draft report and eventually do filing. I remembered vividly the importance of double checking in audit working paper, especially in doing listing for sample selection. This is because of once sample selection is wrong, the selected sample for vouching, such as test of details will be wrong too. Meanwhile, it is also equally important for the other parts of audit working paper, as well as finalizing report and filing part too. For example, there is a procedure there to let audit manager check multiple times of draft audit report before sending the draft to client for comment and approval. After the client’s approval, then there is session to let other staffs to do casting and cross-checking before printing copies of audited report out. The audited report will be printed out in numerous copies to the authority such as Company Secretary (for Commission of Companies Malaysia, SSM purpose), Client itself (for loan approval from bank in the near-future), Tax authority, and Auditor authority as well. Apart from that, I did also sometimes get asked to help in doing research relating to accounting standards. One of the accounting standards, I was asked to do brief research was on IFRS 9 Financial Instruments – about the recognition and measurement of the debt instrument and equity instrument, as well as the aspect of Expected Credit Losses (ECL). On top of that, I was also asked to research on Labuan Tax Act 1990, as well as Corporate Governance 2021. Lastly, the manager did assign me to do slides for his presentation on auditor duties in Companies Act 2016, Capital Market Services Act 2007, Financial Reporting act 1997, and Financial Services act 2013, and enhanced IPO framework (Reporting Accountants for IPO). Well, in short, these were my internship tasks throughout 5 months there. The sharing of the tasks of mine during internship were just a tip of an iceberg, and I couldn’t share that much as it was a very long story (if you still want to know more, then can refer from my internship report…). Right after knowing about the basic tasks in the industrial training, then it is the time to know about the office culture.

Firm's badminton time for after Friday's working hours.

The office culture and environment were basically amicable. The staffs there were friendly and nice in personality, as well as willing to teach the interns. Sometimes I got chance to join with them for lunch, and had some small talks as well. Besides, for my internship experience there, I usually went back home by 5:30pm or 6pm that timing, except for few occasions where I was rushing to complete some filing tasks which were given nearing the end of the working hours. Meanwhile, the time for me to go back home from work vary in between 6:30pm to 7:30pm, if I went for fieldwork with colleagues and/or manager, as the traffic condition varies from mildly to extremely congested. Although, most of the I was able to back home on time, but I still sometimes would spare time to work from home at night. Not only that I did standby to work anytime during weekend too, for instance, I recalled that I was called to work when I was still outside. Those feeling was absolutely frustrated, and hopeless, nevertheless what to do about it then? I just embraced through it, even though I was swearing deep down in my heart. Perhaps, those are basically part and parcel of working life. Aside of the working hours or working aspect, the company did also have conducted activities, such as in-house training from time to time, annually strategic and operation review workshop, annual dinner, and annual company trip as well. Through these series of activities, it could be said that the company was vying to mingle every employee as a team to excel and achieve the objective of that company. Indeed, throughout my internship there, I can feel the audit firm’s ambition to grow bigger in business, even it is still considering a small audit firm for now. Speaking of the outside work activity as well, I was able to have chance to join appreciation meal with the manager and the other staff and interns before I end my internship. Appreciation meal is known as an appreciation of the contribution of the staffs in doing audit for a company – parent company and subsidiary ones. In short, overall, my internship life in the firm was still interesting, even though the tasks there given, for me, consider to be a lot.

Now, here is the takeaway from my internship. Obviously, the internship semester has exposed me to the practical and real working world especially in the auditing field. Apart from the industrial exposure, I got to learn and improve skills which required for working world, such as time management skill, and communication skill. Indeed, I also got learn that sometimes I got to figure out and solve the problem by myself, as some staffs were too busy on their own tasks. Lastly, I also noticed that the staffs and manager there were totally good in handling with stress of work, and multitasking. Perhaps, what I did during internship is just a tip of an iceberg. In the future, after graduation, I may need to be in that part of the working culture… No… What to do? Accept the fate then…

That’s summary for my Semester 7 – Internship semester. Thanks for sparing out some time to read this blogpost. Thank you.

Recap of my semester 6 (3rd year 2nd sem), 75% done of degree, entering into final year...

Hey everyone, Ah Wong is here again. This time, Ah Wong is going to talk about the experience of mine in the previous semester, which is Sem 6 (3^rd Year, Sem 2). In this blogpost, it is going to be cover on the time frame within that semester and post-semester (emphasized more on what was special in that semester). Honestly, this is considering a kind of hasty blogpost in the last minutes prior of I start to have my internship.

            As usual of online learning medium, my Sem 6 was totally inherited with the same teaching mode as previous 2 semesters (namely Sem 4 and Sem 5). Hence, it is again same old routine to be at home amid this heightening Covid-19 cases in Malaysia until daily counts of 20k cases. However, what made my 3^rd year semester 2 to be slightly outstanding as previous semesters was that we as the penultimate student (now final year student) called to find a mandatory internship placement for our practical semester, 4^th year semester 1. Basically, that had sort of aggravated our burden in that semester mainly due to juggling with 2 aspects, which were finding an internship placement, and, of course academics.

            Speaking of finding for internship placement, many of us, the accounting student (I am citing example of accounting students because I, myself is an accounting student) were tend to seek after internships in the big 4, the highly rated, sought after, and 4 biggest in size Audit and Accounting firms. In many of ours thoughts, working in Big 4 is like winning a lottery strike or like a channel to be glamorous people. However, personally now I had none of that feeling already, so long as you get into any mid-size audit firms or big 10 will be fine too. This is because I think so long as we can get to learn from there and score a decent grade for practical semester will be enough already. Moreover, I feel the main reason for them to ‘die-die’ to want to get into big 4 is mostly of getting exposure and networks in those bigger firms in a bid to secure their future full-time job there. In short, basically this actually also the same concept to be apply on each and every of the firms, but different feeling exists when you are working in a relatively bigger firm than the smaller one.

After being long winded on the topic of big 4, let’s talk about the interview session before getting offer letter, in that semester I had been experiencing 2 types of interviews, such as virtual 1 to 1 interview, and digital interview. Well, the digital interview here is meant that the questions are given to the candidates and the candidates need to open camera and record themselves to answer the questions. Besides, it also required the candidates to write for short essays in that session. Such as tedious and challenging type of interview, I bet you guys will know it was from one of the big 4 firms. Yea, big 4 firms were kind of innovative and creative in selecting the right candidates by conducting this kind of selection and filtration. Some of those big 4 firms, even hosted a game to gauge their skill in the relevant subjects such as English, and Mathematics before the proceed with shortlisting the candidates for interview - in the mode of either virtually or phone call. I did not get any news from the majority of big 4 which I had applied for in that semester, but except for the one firm. That time the big firm had sent shortlisted email to me in order to prepare for the digital interview. However, I was sort of have a contradiction in my mind, since that time I had accepted an offer from a big 10 audit firm. Thus, I reluctantly attend for the digital interview, and as expected, that time I utterly talks incoherently and unprepared at all. Nonetheless, at least I took this as an experience to have an exposure on how the digital interview, or known as recorded video interview be like in the future job application.

I recalled I was among one of the earliest to settle internship application, in which I had done everything by the first half of that semester. So, I managed to pay more attention on my academic aspect such as in doing assignments. It was no doubt, basically, the process of doing group assignments in that semester were basically the same as previous semesters, which were mostly the same team members as before. However, I would like to highlight there were some subjects’ assignments asked students to present and teach a topic to all of the students in the class, I meant on the Microsoft Teams, as well as making report for that particular topic. The challenging part of doing this kind of group assignment was to find a relevant and trustful sources on the internet and make it into slides and report respectively. Meanwhile, as for the students, the may and may not easily understand the topics of the presenters too, sometimes. Apart from that, it was also challenging as there will more or less, certainly, would have some deviation in the information given across the different sets of class. For example, ones in set 1 class present topic 1 might be little different or missing some part as compared to the ones in set 2 or set 3 class. In that crucial time, fortunately, lecturers had explained in detail of those topics, and asked students to engage in the discussion. However, as usual, very few students really participate in the discussion mainly attributed to most of them were either shy, or lazy and even reluctant to answer the questions threw by lectures. Hence, some of the subjects that I had took in semester 6 were rather quite challenging in grasping gist of the knowledge as some of the lecturers merely acted as facilitators in conveying knowledge to the students through positive learning method.

This is an example of how the mid terms and finals done online... Now, most of the university has standardize the way of conducting the online examination amid the pandemic

Lastly, I am glad that I had passed through 75% of my university life, the remaining 25% is all on my 4^th year, where is consists of internship semester and the final semester. I really did hope my batchmates and I can score flying colours in internship semesters as this semester is free from exams and all we need to do are just working while applying practical knowledge from Accounting and Audit. I couldn’t prospect much anything in the future, but just hope everyone can get what they wished for and wanted for. All the best in this semester (Sem 7). Also, wishing everyone to stay safe and take care of health, be sure to got your vaccination as scheduled in MySejahtera app.

This is considered an end of my random sharing of experience. The end.

The end of Sem 5 (3rd Year Sem 1) Slowly and steadily into internship - 4th year Sem 1 (Sem 7) and working life upon finishing degree...

This blog post is basically what I could sum up from this semester (3^rd year semester 1 aka Sem 5) of university life.

Hi everyone, recently, as you may have come across with news related to the trend of Covid-19 in Malaysia, you will be dismayed. It was fluctuated in between 3000 to 57++, as compared to last year’s (2020) early September’s few hundred cases daily record. The highest record, so far and hopefully the last peak, was at 5728 cases on 30^th of January 2021 and since then, the number of cases is declining steadily. This has proven by the statistics given by our Health Ministry Director General - Dr Noor Hisham, that our country’s infection rate has been reduced from above 1.00 to now 0.91*. Since the infection rate has been in downtrend, then I believe some of the university students especially those who are in Science and Engineering field eager to go back to campus in order to conduct their lab experiment. Recently, our Higher Education Ministry had released a notice to all university students regarding to go back to campus or not to. Anyhow, it only let few selected fields students to backto campus, namely whom they are in Science, Engineering field as I mentionedabove and Postgrad students starting by 1st of March 2021. Therefore, my university life for the next semester will remain the same as current situation. Speaking of university life, without further ado, I will talk more about my life in 3^rd year Sem 1 in the next paragraph.

After going through 2 semesters of online classes, I felt like I am getting used to it, gradually… I am not sure that feeling, but it certainly has the feeling literally like working as “freelancer”. Online classes absolutely making us, the students’ life comparatively hectic as to pre-covid-19 usual physical classes. As you can see, we couldn’t meet each other in this pandemic crisis, and instead everything was done online. Even discussion of group assignment with teammates are also online – through social media such as WhatsApp. That is the part many students are afraid to confront. Imagine that you as a team member and the group keep blasting messages of task distribution for group assignments or someone in your team sometimes asks questions to you. That’s the part if you as a team member, what if you are the team leader. You as a team leader sometimes need to plan a feasible tasks distribution and strategies in order to complete the group assignment the lectures had given to groups. The worse part is when a team member hasn’t even replied your message at all or being idle in a group without or barely contributing to the group assignment. Headache, this is just the tip of the iceberg in the online class method. You may think that individual assignment is good due to no more people bothering you or asking you this and that in assignment, but it’s not actually. Sometimes, some lecture may have zero apathy towards students too, sorry to say that, they will likely either give students tons of individual assignment on weekly basis (luckily not mine lecturers for this semester) and some will give reasonable weigh of assignment but giving it out to late in time (one of my subjects in this semester did like this but it was in group assignment). Handling out late, so late till almost final few weeks, tasks to students will only make them to have a great burden in facing upcoming examinations. In short, time management is rather important skill for us, university students in order to survive in universities, regardless in online or physical classes. This is because once we had practiced a good time management, then we will a productive “freelancer” who able to “handle” many jobs given as possible. This may be useful later in society, perhaps.

Random picture of morning walk. Morning walk is the best way, for me, to alleviate stress from the academics.

Apart from that, as far as I concerned, online classes enable us, university students to be more flexible in adapting to the changes. There are many changes in our life that we may not even get to predict and think of. For example, there is a change in online class time from originally shown in the academic schedule to a random different time slot. The changes like the previous example that I had cited will trigger many voices of opinion for a “suitable” (some may suitable and some may not think so) time slot for that subject’s online class. As for this semester, I have one subject that the lecturer whom he is teaching in two universities in a time (my university, UKM and another public institution), usually facing the time dilemma in handling both classes. Therefore, he asked us the best time to conduct classes. Guess what, lastly majority are agreed with Friday evening class even though, for me personally, Friday seems like no “mood” to attend for class. I still accept the majority’s choice since we can gradually adapt to the changes and be flexible with it. Besides, I will cite here as well on the other lecturer who is quite innovative in lecturing. That lecturer did know himself did not have enough time to conduct classes on weekly basis and he had made a series of lecture video on YouTube few months before (to teach the earlier/previous semester students and by recycling it). YouTube is a good platform for some of the students who aren’t into synchronous way of lecturing and those who are lack of internet access. The reason I include those who are lack of internet access is because YouTube offered a way to save a video offline first while we are still have connection to internet. Since YouTube lecture videos is asynchronous to host the lecture, therefore it may make the learning interaction a bit harder. For example, you may find it hard to interact with lecturer and it is limited through email address only. Although the lecturer had made tons of lecturer videos in advanced but still, he had also made it along with a series of learning path for us to carry on self-assessment by ourselves for the respective chapters. Little side note here also, that lecturer (who make YouTube lecture videos) also gave us the 5 continuous assessments (replacement for final exam) with time limit of 24 hours from 0000hrs-2359hrs, in which we entitled to have an absolute freedom of making any changes or time management in doing those assessments. There are still more examples related to be flexible or to suit with abrupt changes in this semester that had just ended but I didn’t mention here because the rest are more or less are similar with generic semesters. In short, we should adapt and be flexible to the new environment or new aspect in life as usually those who successfully adapt to the new situation are the winner.

On top of that, after undergoing two online classes semester, I perceived that open book is the way more challenging method of examination. Albeit of this examination method is so appealing, but it comes with its price too. This is owing to open book method allows students to refer as many resources as they can during the tests, and hence, the difficulty will be elevated too at the same time. You may think that open book exam is a good time to directly copy all the things available in the resource, but in fact it is the opposite. Sometimes, the questions in the exams are so challenging that require more cognitive and analytical skills to answer. So, in order to be well prepared, we as the university students are require doing revision over and over again, so that we could be able to grasp more the gist of the knowledge of the subject and the technical parts of those chapters. Since most of the online exams of this semester were in essay mode, so it can be absolutely hard to copy words from the sources that you had prepared for. Little did we know, there is a wonderful invention online called as plagiarism checker. It can check the similarity of our works with the source we look for, such as through online sources, textbooks and even course mate’s works. Thus, be careful in copying and paraphrasing the works and the better enhancement of our work is through “goreng” method along with some reference to add on, if the exam is essay mode. Meanwhile, for calculations or mathematical questions, you got to stand on your own feet to accomplish it. Henceforth, it can be said that open book examination or other mode of online examination are challenging, but if preparation were done earlier, it maybe will be fine.

Here are few sentences about wrapping up all the point of views I had given on paragraphs above. This is roughly what the online classes look like, except it is fully in online method as compared to previous semester where we had our physical classes for 3-4 weeks before our beloved country – Malaysia landed into Movement Control Order (MCO) in middle of March 2020. MCO may restrict our movement but it will not restrict our academic lessons from going on (P/S: if deferred again from conducting classes, everyone guaranteed to be affected, such as late graduation *touch wood*). I am glad that with these 2 semesters of online classes which I have good teammates in doing group assignments together. Indeed, with the good teammates, your work can be easily done on time as well, along with high quality of written assignments. I used to be so selfish in sharing knowledge or sources related to that specific subjects to others but ever since I am getting more senior in the university life, I had gradually becoming more willing to share my some of my direct seniors notes to others without many hesitations. Well, time flies, two more semester (4^th year Semester 1) I will be going for an internship before resuming studies in 4^th year Semester 2(the last semester of university life). I know I had been typing in so lengthy for this blog post, I got to stop here already, if not it will totally be like as long winded as thesis project.

Good luck to everyone in future studies and undertakings.

Recap my 2nd year 2nd semester life, halfway to complete of degree program, progress 50%.

Hi everybody, Ah Wong is back, after so long time of being idle from blogging. Apparently, we are now in the midst of battling against the pandemic, which is known as Covid-19 spreading across the globe. This pandemic has caused me and even, I believe, everyone’s lives were going on miserably especially this first half quarter of 2020. Luckily, our country, Malaysia had successfully curbed the pandemic from spreading like wildfire in Malaysia. For example, the no. of cases of people getting infected with covid-19 daily was in declining trend as overall although the trend was fluctuating from time to time, where it sometimes may be high or even low (find out more statistics of COVID-19 in Malaysia). All thanks to people abiding to social distancing method and highly practising hygiene SOP provided by the government when it comes to some industry or business. Certainly, classes of lectures and other higher education activities weren’t spare from the impact of the pandemic. We, as the university student, had to change our lifestyle in order to suit with the online learning trend too. Obviously, it may be seen as a boon for majority of us, the students who have the stable connection around, however, there are some people aren’t that fortunate as we to have a stable connection and there is one even climb up to the tree just to get a stable connection for her study… Well, without further ado, I will talk more about my life in this semester amid this special time being.

Random captured Sunrise picture around 7:30am

Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah (Source: TheStar Malaysia)

Online lectures, different methods of e-learning.

            As I had said in the earlier on the first paragraph, this semester (2^nd year 2^nd semester, Sem 4) was quite special for me as compared to my previous semester (2^nd year 1^st semester, Sem 3 about my first attempt of vlog), since everything was online now. Obviously, regardless of public or private universities in Malaysia, the lesson too still need to be continue amid the face-2-face teaching method is unfeasible for the time being. For example, UKM let thestudents and teachers to have a month preparation since the MCO was announcedin to be comfortable of using e-learning method before the lesson resumed on 27thof April (in which, the date was set by our university’s Vice Chancellor). 

The video of VC made an announcement the sem will be delayed to 27th April to resume.

Meanwhile, our University - UKM online learning method was different as according to the discretion of lecture. Some prefer to use Microsoft teams as recommended by the management of UKM to conduct the class, while some opt for different online virtual meeting apps like Zoom and Cisco-WEBEX. However, these medium of conducting lectures were too common for me as they are all just the same. These online class, although, couldn’t really make us as focus as before in the physical class, but we can replay the recording of online meeting lectures to understand back what the lecturer was teaching before. Meanwhile, the separate thing, some of the lecturers were unique as they opted to us unsynchronized method of teaching by sending us the podcast and we can listen to it anytime and everywhere. Thus, MCO and social distance makes us to need to be self-discipline and self-learning much when it comes to online lectures since we can play back the recording of the online meetings and podcasts anytime.

Different way of doing assignment and presentation

            Upon reading the title, you will know what I want to convey about right here. Indeed, everything is online even the discussion of assignment and presentation since the physical classes and university life was halted since 18^th of March 2020 till uncertain upcoming date. In fact, some lecturer also making us to be convenient in order to accomplish the assignments given. For instance, there is a lecturer of mine changing the method of doing the assignment into online research from the previously method of interviewing for the acquaintance. This is in line with the social distance practice to avoid interacting with the acquaintances whom they might have the potential to spread the disease in that particular time, especially in the month of March and April. Apart from that, there is also another lecturer who just made a suppose-to-be groupwork assignment into individual ones. That’s a bless for me, in fact since I could do my own assignment without have to wait for the progress of the other member to finish their parts respectively in order to do compilation. Thus, it greatly saved up my time to finishing up these burdens in academic since the main burdens were still the examination (which I will talk later about related continuance method of examination). Meanwhile, there was a mandatory university subject - TITAS (Islamic and Asian Civilization studies), had substituted the final examination into the method of summarizing an article. At the first glance, I am blaming why the lecturers who are teaching this subject need to replace it (the final exam) with an individual assignment. However, looking at the bright side, I maybe can defined my own timing to complete summarization of article in the short time of period instead of have to waiting to get prepare for final exam in which we may not know when will it be given to us. In short, for me, MCO had made our students’ lives, perhaps, to be slightly convenient and time saving when it comes to do assignments.

an example of online version of presentation by using PowerPoint video of group of mine.

Continuous Online Examination Method

There are plenty ways of methods that UKM offered for us to opt. According to one of the academic circulars that had issued by UKM, it said that there are 3 types of examination mode such as the online assessment with time limit, open book method with longer time frame and lastly the conventional approach, if the situation permittable. However, most of the courses stick to the first two modes but not the latter one since the period was still in the transition from MCO to CMCO (Conditional Movement Control Order on 4^th of May before it turned into RMCO, Relief version). Besides, travel ban across the states was only lifted by around 15^th of June 2020, which was about the end of the semester in 2^nd session of semester in 2019/2020. In fact, within the online assessment method, there was even the “subbranch” of the version method. For my course (Accounting course), there were few lecturers opted to use weekly or fortnightly assessment method. Every syllabus was basically subbed out into smaller chunks in each of the weeks. For me, the drawback for this kind of method is making us a little of time to prepare for the exam. Meanwhile, this kind of method also making me to be numb and indifferent to the examination after going through many of it. “Huh, Examination? Tests? I had no feeling already…” However, on the bright side, this method makes us to be study consistently even though the topics for each of the exams were fewer now. Apart from that, I personally felt this kind of method made me to feel ease in the almost end of the semester since I’ve finished multiple miniature version of exam and left and just a little topics to cover for the upcoming topics. Oh yah, lastly, this method did have an open secret (time is constraining but if you could do it in online assessment, you're pro.) – which was enabling us to search online and discuss with course mates or friends through social media platforms. So, in short, this examination mode had been used in this critical time being enabling us the student to be creative and enhancing technological literacy as well as collaborating with course mates to solve any kind of problems in academics. Perhaps, these skills somehow needed in the working field, who knows…

Open book method of exam is challenging too you need to really have a good grasp of knowledge that you require to answer the question.

Islamic Civilization mandatory course final assignment - 6 pages article that need me to write and paraphrase and summaries to 10-15 pages.

Leisure activities

Well, my leisure activities were divided into three sections. Firstly, when the Malaysia was still in the phase of MCO (18^th March till 3rd of May), I was stuck at home and doing nothing. Basically, that time frame I was totally indulged in inactive mode. Literally eat, sleep, browse memes and read newspaper with little or no movement. I gained much weight at that time. However, I started again my workout and morning walk at the park since the class started by the late MCO phase and the starting of CMCO phase from 4^th of May. This is mainly because stuck at home for a long time made me to feel uncomfortable, and I finally got found some excuse to do some exercise and breathing fresh air as that time some light recreational activities like walking and jogging in the public were allowed by the government. Then, the subsequent phase, RMCO commenced on 15^th of June till 31^st August, enable us to “hit” the gym by practising the tight SOP. Therefore, I go for the gym whenever I had no tests or no lesson on that day. I remembered once I quickly ran to gym right after finishing my exam an hour earlier from the time given. This is because of the timing of the test was not a good timing (11am – 1pm) and it was disrupting my workout timing with my friends, in which we usually ‘hit’ the gym at 11am till 1pm. Fortunately, I managed to score well for that mini test. On the separate issue, I’ve found my strength was stagnant was the same level as before MCO’s workout session after recovering my muscle memory for the heavy lifting and trying to push for personal record. Therefore, as the movement control order was getting relaxed, I am going to do much of the physical activities in which consider as leisure activities to fill up my boring time.
A series of the photos taken by me when I went for jogging...

Autumn season?

As overall, MCO has disrupted our lives as all. However, some even took this opportunity to learn something new or spend more quality time with family, especially in the critical time of MCO. I am glad that those frontliners and society as well in contributing to curb the pandemic from spreading wildly. This is owing to with these efforts as all, we can gradually being free to conduct any activity outdoor and indirectly each of the economy sector with gradually recovering back to the normal level. However, right now pandemic has hit hard on many economy sectors and leaving some companies had to enforce a series of entrenchment. Hence, in this critical time being, some were forced to make some changes in life in order to suit with the flow, such as tighten the month expenditure budget or pathing out the new creative road by selling some homemade delicacies or even consigning some other products. For all of us who still manage to live on as usual, be grateful with whatever we are having right know, and embrace to some changes in life as well. For example, being creative in using resource on internet and adapting to the new norm – everything online. The difficult time will vanish by its own, it take time, so once again be prepared.

Life of first half Semester 4 (2nd year, 2nd Semester) under coronavirus outbreak RMO thoughts

Hello everybody! Ah Wong is back again… Today I am going to share about these few days of mine under Movement Control 14 days amid of Coronavirus outbreak getting worsening (My outstanding semester 4 in university experience). Coronavirus has landed us to live with fear, as more and more people are getting infected with the virus recently… Besides, although it was originated from China, but its spreading speed is as fast you couldn’t conceive, just in less than 2 months it had spread across almost every corner in the globe. According to the data provided by World o meter, thenumbers of people who are infected with COVID-19 (alternative name ofCoronavirus) was at 382,814 cases and the death toll was at 16,578 and Numberof patients recovered from virus was at 102,522 by 23rd March 2020. Meanwhile, as we can trace from the countries’ record on the virus at that website, Italy has the second highest number of people infected with COVID-19 after China as the people didn’t realise about the social distancing concept once the COVID-19 landed in the nation. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, the situation is getting out of control when those who had infected with virus while travelling abroad still going for the mass praying conducted as mosques. This obviously would make the virus spread faster and leading to our government to quickly find some measure to curb this virus from outgrowing. Thus, there we go with this Movement restriction period from 18/3/2020 till 31/3/2020. (P/S: due to this lockdown, my Uni has been bring forward a week of mid semester break from 30/3-5/4 to 23/3-29/3.)

This movement restriction called by government had a primary intention to minimize the interaction of the people in which indirectly will make this virus outspread even worse. We should be grateful already, as there are the other countries practising social distancing longer period than us in Malaysia. For instances, China, Italy, Spain and South Korea had been practising this social distancing method to curb outspread of virus earlier than us as these countries are having the highest number of diagnosed on virus. However, in these 14 days, we are still able to buy groceries and foods outside although most of the sectors are closed in these days. Meanwhile, the government had also asked all, regardless, private or public universities to stop all activities related to teaching and curriculum in these 14 days. So, it is quite strange for me to be at home in these couple of days, as everyone is at home and having a “strong holiday” mood even though they (my parents and my elder sister) still have to work from home. For me, it is quite bored to stay at home to do nothing aside from eating, sleeping and showering. Therefore, here go the few things I am doing in these movement restriction days amid of COVID-19 outbreak.

Things I do in these few days:

Reading book

Reading is the best way to act as pastime for me. Usually, I read books related to financial management and world history. Through reading these genres of books, I can get to explore more knowledge which I may and may not know. For example, I’ve recently been reading Robert T. Kiyosaki’s books titled with “Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing” in which this book is disseminating us some knowledge on how to be a sophisticated and inside investor. These investors are required with the a few of investment control among them such as control over income/expense ratios and asset/liability ratios, control over taxes and control when to buy and sell the shares. The exception of the difference is that insider investor is investing through inside of a business, while the sophisticated investor inside from outside the business. Inside investor have exact control power on a business, while outside investor doesn’t have. However, these investors still need these 3 E’s in order to successful which are Education, Excess cash and Experiences. That’s the brief middle part of the book, while the early part was talking on the investor lessons that the writer got from his rich uncle (Rich Dad). 

I could remember a few lessons such as knowing which sides of the quadrant that you wish to be at, and the sophisticated investors will dare to make mistakes and learn from it while the average investors avert from making mistakes. In early and middle part of the book, Robert Kiyosaki often comparing rich dad and his own biological dad - poor dad on how their life looks like, how their perceived on the financial statements and their financial literacy. For instance, in that book, the writer said rich dad were understanding financial statements and knowing how to relate from one to another and knowing how to change a liability into an asset. The asset term in the book is those things that could be used to generate income instead of giving us liability. If you bought a property and you rented it out, that is an asset; if you lived on it instead, you have no income to cover up your expenses on utilities and other taxes on it, so that is a liability. These are just minor part of gist of the book, read more to find it out further. Therefore, from that book, you can refine financial literacy and be financially smart in one day.

Read history related wiki articles

            Undeniably, I’m a fan of history. Prior entering university, I used to read some history articles as my pastime. History is somewhat a best genre of reading material for me as I can get to know more about our ancestors’ did in the long time ago, its cause and effect on this society and what are the lessons that we can obtain from these incidents or stories. My focus on the history is mainly of China and Malay Archipelago histories. From these two different geographic regions, we can slowly relate these places into each other and the nearby regions such as the Sino-centric region (Japan, Korea and Vietnam), Malay Archipelago, South Asia and to Arabian Peninsula as well as Europe. Therefore, I found it was really interesting to understand history from this perceptive of viewing the history.

Entertainment

The entertainment of mine is mainly from YouTube and the memes on Facebook. Since this Restricted Movement Order (RMO) started last few days, I’ve been so bored at home. Thus, apart from reading, I also spared out my time to scroll for the recent memes regarding of COVID-19 that had posted on social media. Memes are the best source of mine to destress too even before the RMO started. It’s a fact of express for the younger generation regarding of the current issues and general news and trend. Meanwhile, I also watch some YouTube videos, and again it’s mostly about the history and minorly about games and science. In fact, I had been eager to find for Plants vs Zombies PC game free full version download link, but I’ve couldn’t find it anyway… So, I gave up on it as playing games will make you to be addicted and wasting time in the end. In short, my entertainment is from memes and YouTube videos in this period of time being apart from reading.

Last but not least, revision.

I did also do a little of revision for my study too. The reason of doing revision in this time being is to refrain me from gradually forgetting what I had learnt before in class. For me, it is not necessarily to overdo the revision, but in fact do it in a little day by day consistently will make you to grasp the knowledge learnt before.

Alright, that’s all about my today blogpost sharing on my Restricted Movement Order 14 days life. Today is just the day 7 of it, it is only half of the restricted movement order days to be home. Obviously, it is quite weird to be at home for 24/7, however, for the public’s health and normal social’s order sakes, it is totally important to do so. As less people gather in the public area will reduce one’s probability to be affected with the virus. So, stay home and work from home or doing some beneficial things at home.

Recap my 2nd year 1st sem's degree life in UKM

“Time flies, a semester had just ended in a flash…”

Hello everybody, Ah Wong the noob blogger is here again to update blog post. It has been a long time for me not updating my blog as last few months, I was busying with my hectic 2^nd year 1^st semester Accounting studies. Well, today’s topic is regarding of recap of my previous semester (2^nd Year 1^st Semester of Accounting degree).

This blogpost will be divided into 3 main topics of my 2^nd year 1^st semester life, which are my general life and academic life of that semester as well as what I had done as my pastime activities during that semester. Without further ado, let’s begin with these topics.

My general life in (Semester 3) 2^nd year 1^st semester

To begin with, I could say that my previous semester life is too dull and boring as I didn’t join any activity or event in the campus (UKM). This is owing to I had very heavy academic subjects to be coped with in that semester as compared to my 1^st year's studies, which in turns making me reluctant to spare time to participate any university event. For an instance, I did have 8 subjects to prepared for examinations as well as 8 assignments or group assignments to be accomplish in that semester. This is totally “absurd” of me to survive in that semester as the workload was about 2 times than previous semester (previous semesters I only had about 3-4 subjects’ assignments to be done) and 4 major accounting subjects to cope with some more. Nonetheless, I am glad that I survive through this hectic and dull semester after looking back at how I managed to cope with all these subjects in the semester.

My academic life in (Semester 3) 2^nd year 1^st semester

Moving on to my academic life, I could again say it was hectic life in previous semester. This is because of many of the assignments were related to accounting majors in greater depth than previous one semester. Taking Accounting Information System (AIS) subject’s group assignment as an example, I could remember vividly how tough was the to be done in the last semester. It demanded us to seek for 3 months financial reports and transaction from any sector of the business in order to use an accounting software to analyse the business performances. Indeed, it was a tough time for us to obtain any info from the companies as they did also reluctant to give up so many info. Perhaps, from what we conceived was that most of the company not willing to share out most of the info of transaction as they scared the students or anyone to abuse this company’s secret info to the rival companies. Luckily, my groupmates and I managed to have some financial transaction and statement from my Puchong friend’s family shop to do our group project. I was very thankful of the shop owner as he believed us of not simply abusing the info given from him. In short, I was very fortunate to be able to obtain info for my group assignment in a short time and most importantly I appreciate that I had cooperative teammates in doing group assignments in ease.

This is my AIS group assignment's video presentation which is uploaded on YouTube. It may seemingly a bit crappy, by the way XDD...

My pastime activity in that semester

Basically, my pastime activity is mainly about leisure activity. I usually walking around in the campus since the day I had entered the campus. For example, last semester I did the same routine by waking up in the early morning to go for a jog too. In fact, jogging in the morning enabled us to breathe in fresh air and giving us some morning vibes in order to carry on a day tasks with positivity. That is why I usually go for morning walk as it could stimulate more positive thoughts in our mind and indirectly increasing the ability to absorb more knowledge from the books. However, last semester I managed to find a junior morning walk member who occasionally joined with me to go for morning walk in the campus. I glad that there were still someone who was also like to morning walk as very few or none of the people in the campus did so (most of them just study 24/7 for the whole day, from what I had assumed). Therefore, although my life in the previous semester consider too dull and boring, but there was still a favourite pastime activity done by me to boost my motivation in study.

View more morning walk pictures taken by me down here…

A series of random photo of sceneries taken by me when I had morning walk with morning walk "kaki" (member)

As a random anonymous saying goes: "Everything in life is temporary. So, if things are going well, enjoy it because it won't last forever. And if things are going bad, don't worry. It can't last forever either." The tough times will soon be gone when you are keep focusing on doing your job without over thinking about it. Everything just goes with the flow… Once again, I managed to survive through this hectic semester. The end.

In the end of this blog post, let me show you all my first ever vlog on YouTube. It is regarding of my morning walk journey from UKM Bangi main campus to Bangi Lama (which is also known as Old Bangi). Enjoy watching it...

The end of my 1st year study life in University.

In a flash, the time flies very fast (read finish this whole blog post, I have something to express in the end of this blog post).

Hello everybody, Ah Wong is back again...

Year 1 Sem 2, for me, was officially ended by 19th June. That kind of feeling was good as we had managed to pass through tons of assignments and then the final exam of 2nd semester...

My coursemates and I

Upon finishing final exam, my coursemates and I went for "celebration", which was deemed as a tradition for each and every of university students once they had done their final exam. One of the reason I had decided to join them is to act as a "reward" for me after finishing my semester 2 study in first year study. The activities we had done were having lunch at Korean BBQ restaurant, singing in Karaoke room as well as window shopping. However, I've feel that the leisure time to spend with them was passing so fast...

We had our Korean BBQ lunch at somewhere in Ampang, Selangor. This idea was suggested by one of our coursemates who is living nearby there. For me, I am not a fan of Korean cuisine, I could not give so many comment on the foods lah... Basically, it is all about tons of meats and vegetables lah... The meat itself was needed to cook manually by the customers themselves. This is what the Korean cuisine about - meats and vegetables.

After that, we departed to Mytown Shopping Centre at Cochrane, Kuala Lumpur to enjoy our time at Karaoke room. That was a perfect timing for me to show-off my high pitched voice. I had selected a few of songs which require very high pitched voice such as Bee Gees songs of "Staying Alive" and "How Deep Is Your Love". Usually, I could make my voice to be extremely high pitched on par with Barry Gibb, the leading singer of Bee Gees. However, after a long time of practice in my University's dormitory, I've managed to intimate his high pitched voice. ~Ha ha ha ha, staying alive, staying alive, ha ha ha ha, staying aliveeeee ahhhhhhhh~. 

However, I did also got sing the other kind of songs which selected by my other coursemates at that time... Singing in the halfway, some people decided to celebrate birthday for those whom their birthdays were on either June, July or August. My birthday is on 17 July, so me also "kena celebrated" by them. Their intend to bring the birthday celebration earlier to that timing because upon finishing Year 1 Semester 2, we will have a rather long 2 months semester break.

After finish karaoke-ing, then we moved to Sunway Velocity shopping mall to go for window shopping. Nevertheless, I felt that window shopping was kind of boring for me... So, I just found a place and sitting down there waiting them to finish window shopping. Then, we had our brief dinner there and the "celebration" was called the end.

Indeed, the time is passing too fast, we need to cherish every moment of enjoy and leisure in life, once it is over then we couldn't go back in time to find the joy. Hanging out with a gang of peers in University is fun and limited, once you skipped it, you may be regretted many years later.

The end of Year 1 Chapter, this chapter has so many stories in it. Hopefully the next chapter in the university life will be always in positive side.