Just to prove a point to myself, and since my last proper international conference presentation was like 5-6 years back, i went to the above conference last month and presented three empirical research papers. For two of them i collaborated with Puan Nurulhayati, my ex-TESL student academic-in-training.

Pada pendapat ikhlas saya, Universiti Teknologi Petronas perlu lebih banyak pendedahan dan perlu belajar lebih tentang cara-cara untuk mengendalikan sebuah persidangan, lebih-lebih lagi persidangan serantau seperti ini. Dari apa yang saya dengar dari beberapa orang pembentang lain, itulah kali pertama dan terakhir mereka akan datang ke negeri Perak yang pernah banyak timah ini.

Anywho, our small scale national conference is still on this July. And not forgetting, www.uforia.edu.my that will be up and running with our two international journals Episteme SEA and Logos SEA. Come on Desktop Systems, we are waiting! Our papers for RCH '09 are as follows, not that (1) it's that hard to present an academic paper, (2) conference papers carry much academic weight, (3) conferences mean anything really, save for us to get our certs and 'prove' that we've done something academic!

One (featured paper)

Regional collaboration and industrial linkage by academics in Malaysian institutions of higher learning: Myth or reality?
Airil Haimi Mohd Adnan and Nurulhayati Ilias

Two

Spoken language choice and use in the education industry in Malaysia: between English and the mother tongues.
Airil Haimi Mohd Adnan and Nurulhayati Ilias

Three

‘Reflections’: a behind-the-scene study on how a Malaysian television program popularizes contemporary Islam through program concept, content and medium.
Airil Haimi Mohd Adnan

Last week has been quite hectic, even though it was a holiday period. Editing a doctoral proposal is not easy what more with July coming... soon. I was fully awake most nights, writing and updating all my blogs, The New Teech Times in particular. Slept at around 5 am or 6 am, on one day i was up till about 9.30 am - reminds me of the 'good old days' at university with my assignments and all.

For my English for Academic Purposes group, I set a few fairly easy tasks that forced them to go online, to focus on grammar and to closely follow conventions for academic writing. Suffice to say, nearly all of them failed in one area or more. Some did not even finish the set work!

Are we lazy because more than 400 years ago, that was the opinion of the Europeans? In 2009, my students might prove the bloody Europeans right. Are we really lazy? Don't we care about our own work? Don't we take pride in our own initiatives? Don't we know that our work is really a reflection of ourselves, really?

As a teacher, after all's said and done... i pray my students will not prove the Europeans right. Amen.