Three months ago, I signed up for a class on EdX. This is an MIT statistics class called 18.6501x: Fundamentals of Statistics. Despite the name, this is not an intro class, but rather intermediate-level.
I have never been a competent stats guy; I knew a bit about the topic from an intro to stats class that I took (at the actual ‘Tute campus) many years ago, and from dealing with Mickey Mouse-level statistics problems in my line of work.
The class is part of the MIT Micromasters Program in Statistics and Data Science, which comprises a sequence of classes in statistics, programming and data analytics, and if you can finish them all, you’ll get a “micromaster” degree, whatever that means. I want to get on the big data bandwagon too!
The class is challenging but well-designed. The prerequisites are linear algebra, basic statistics and general competency with calculus-level mathematics. I’ve forgotten more mathematics than I remember (a function of disuse and aging) but fortunately, I still find the prerequisites familiar ground. I aced the first few sections (parametric models, confidence level, hypothesis testing) until I got to the challenging parts toward the end (Bayesian, linear regression, generalized linear model) which kept me up during late hours on some days.
The workload is quite substantial; I spent about 6 hours a week on the course videos, exercises, and homework problems. The homework problems can be quite tricky.
Alhamdulillah, after a grueling final exam which I took last week, I finally completed the course.
Perhaps the actual MIT kids taking the real-life version of the course would find the final paper really easy, but I am not as sharp as I once was, so I am a bit proud of my achievement. I admit that I don’t care so much about finding the right answers as I do about understanding how to get the answers (the hallmark of non-college-aged students), so any problem that requires a full-page of mathematical calculations, I skipped.
I got my final results today. Either I am not an old dog yet, or you can actually teach this old dog new tricks, I do not know which, but I actually learnt something from the class, and I am happy to kind of aced it in the process!
Please excuse my slight brag — I haven’t taken any college class proper since I graduated 15 years ago and I felt slightly giddy when I got the final results in my email.
Some may ask, how do I keep my motivation to finish the class while working full-time and raising a family? The answer is quite simple. I have weak internal motivation. But, EdX has an option where you can get an online official certificate. This costs US$300 per course, and although I am not poor, that is still a lot of money for me. Once I signed up for the certificate and paid, there is no way for me to not finish.
The Kangaroo Math Competition is an international mathematics competition that was founded by Andre Deledicq in 1991. It is one of the largest academic competitions in the world, with more than 6 million participants annually. Currently, it is organized under the aegis of Association Kangourou sans Frontières (AKSF) which is based in Paris.
Kangourou sans Frontières is an international association founded in France, which is formed by maths lovers from all over the world. Motivated by the importance of mathematics in the modern world, their passion is to spread the joy of mathematics, support mathematical education in school and promote a positive perception of mathematics in society. The main activity of Kangourou sans Frontières is designing the annual Kangaroo Mathematics Competition. Mathematical problems in multiple-choice form are offered to children of all school levels. The questions are not standard textbook problems and come from a large variety of topics. Besides inspiring ideas, perseverance and creativity, they require imagination, basic computational skills, logical thinking and other problem solving strategies. Often there are small stories, surprising questions and results, which encourage discussions with friends and family. The organisation of the competition in the individual countries is up to the members of Kangourou sans Frontières.
Malaysia started joining AKSF in 2012 when I was invited to the AGM that took place in Cyprus. I heard about AKSF for the first time through a good friend, the late Dr. Buras Boljiev, who was already a member. I then applied to the AKSF Board and got promptly approved and invited to attend the AGM (the fact that I’ve been involved in the mathematics competition scene for many years through the IMO seems to help). After the Cyprus meeting, Malaysia was accepted as a provisional member, and 3 years later, after running three successful Kangaroo contests, Malaysia was awarded full membership in the AKSF.
The AKSF logo
Currently, I am the national representative to the AKSF, but I have not been attending the annual meeting since 2017 due to various work and personal commitments. My team members Faiz Ismail and Aidel Salleh attended the two most recent meetings on my behalf.
The Kangaroo competition takes place simultaneously among all participating countries, on the third Thursday of March every year. As the date usually coincides with the Malaysian mid-term school holidays, we normally schedule the Kangaroo to take place one week after the global Kangaroo dates.
The Kangaroo contest is decentralized, meaning that there is no venue where all the students take it at the same time. Instead, the contests are organized separately at all participating schools in Malaysia, each invigilated by a teacher.
The Kangaroo contest has been growing rapidly in Malaysia; from 10,000 participants in the first edition in 2013 to more than 40,000 participants in 2019, representing more than 1600 schools around the country. All types of schools participate — national / national-type schools, private schools, international schools, matriculation colleges, even tuition centers, and individual candidates.
The philosophy of Kangaroo is to create a fun and engaging way for students to develop their problem-solving abilities in mathematics, as well as popularizing the subject among schoolchildren in Malaysia. The contest is designed to emphasize the fun and educational aspect of mathematical problem solving, not the competitive aspect (though we award medals to the winners). It is not similar to “math olympiad” type contests where the goal is to outperform other students to get to the next level.
There is no “second round” in the global Kangaroo contest — students are supposed to be awarded based on their performance and are to be congratulated for their efforts through mathematical activities and conferences that bring together students and teachers for the sake of their love of mathematics. However, Malaysian students being competitive as they are, there were lots of demands for a further level of competition among the Kangaroo winners. We experimented with the concept for the first time in 2019, to a positive response.
The Kangaroo Malaysia paper is quite special in that it is the only quadrilingual mathematics paper in the country. It is provided in Bahasa Melayu, English, Mandarin, and Tamil (for Tamil primary school students only).
The competition is divided into 6 categories:
Pre-Ecolier (Year 1-2)
Ecolier (Year 3-4)
Benjamin (Year 5-6)
Cadet (Form 1-2)
Junior (Form 3-4)
Student (Form 5-6, or equivalent).
The names of the categories follow the original categories from the French competition. The Malaysian Kangaroo paper doesn’t differ much from the original papers provided by AKSF; only the languages are different. Even the names in the paper (mostly European names, since the problems were proposed by European composers) are left intact and did not get changed into Malaysianized names.
What makes the Kangaroo contest special is that it is part of something bigger, not merely an academic quiz or contest with no overarching objective. Kangaroo is a global grassroots movement to promote mathematics education, with the contest being the flagship program (it attracts close to 7 million participants every year). There are many mathematics programs such as summer camps, conferences, and exchange programs that are organized by member countries, as a follow up to the contest. The main idea of Kangaroo is to make children around the world love mathematics.
The Kangaroo is endorsed by the Ministry of Education, and participants are eligible for PAJSK marks, which are awarded to national school students for co-curricular activities. We are glad that the Ministry has collaborated with Kangaroo Malaysia to bring the Kangaroo objectives closer to being realized.
The next Kangaroo Malaysia contest will take place on 26 March 2020. To get more info, and to participate, visit our official website http://kangaroomath.com.my/
My visit to the French Kangourou HQ in 2015. This is where it all started. At the left side is Andre Deledicq, the founder of Kangaroo Math and to the right is Jean-Philippe Deledicq, Andre’s son and AKSF board member
In Part I, I told the story of how the four of us (the founders of Aidan, our first startup which we founded in 2007), came to venture into the edutech space.
Business Ideas in Edutech
Edutech is a large area. There are various business ideas that one can pursue in edutech, such as:
Innovation in education administration — e.g., solution for school management using a centralized database, which integrates several school functions such as taking attendance, recording grades, accepting payments (cashless system), loaning books in the school library, etc. Some products cater to a specific type of educational institution, such as tuition centers, universities, and kindergartens.
Innovation in education delivery — e.g., online classroom, online tutoring (1 to 1, or 1 to many), multimedia (videos, interactive applets, games), and various types of assessment tools;
Content — products that deliver educational content such as exam prep, learning app, questions bank, or niche education content like e.g., calligraphy or music lessons, that takes place via various platforms (web or mobile);
General technologies that are adapted for used in education — artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, blockchain, augmented reality, virtual reality, adaptive systems, etc.;
Hardware solutions — smartboards, tablets, interactive classroom systems and other devices.
So how do we decide what to do with Pandai?
The founders had a vigorous debate about this, but the decision boiled down to these two factors: our advantages, and the market demand.
Looking at our advantages
What are our advantages? Among others,
ArdentEdu had 12 years of experience, organizing more than 500 programs covering every state and territories in Malaysia, so it can be said that we know the education market (at primary and secondary level) in Malaysia quite well;
We have a solid tech background, with experience developing large scale systems for government agencies as well as some mobile development cred;
We have a good working relationship with the Ministry of Education through various projects we have undertaken in the last decade. The public education sector in Malaysia is highly regulated and centralized, so if we want to penetrate this market, being on a first-name basis with the gatekeeper (so to speak) is a plus;
We already had 70,000 annual paying customers for our existing educational offerings under ArdentEdu.
As for the market demands, we found out through our market research that:
The majority of the students in Malaysia are students at public schools (5+ million of them, with a steady growth each year reflecting the general population growth).
Although there is an increasing trend towards middle-class parents sending children to private schools, the number is negligible compared to the huge majority in the public school system. For one, private schools are very expensive and way beyond the ability of the median income household in Malaysia;
Assuming a Gaussian / bell-curve distribution of academic performance, most students belong to the slightly below average, average and slightly above average group (whatever the average and standard deviation might be). So a product catered to the masses cannot take into account only the top students. We have to bear in mind the average ones;
Ditto for household income. We should avoid building a product only rich kids can afford. The size of the market is too small. To reach the mass market, pricing has to be right (or better, undercut all competitors severely, which is the classic start-up game);
Parents, teachers, students are easily spooked by new things introduced in the education system. Whether it be educational initiatives such as 21st century skills, higher order thinking skills, future-ready education, computational thinking, and school-based assessment, no exams for Year 1 to 3, or a new subject / content / format in the curriculum standard, the introduction of any new thing to schools almost always ends up in confusion, misunderstanding, and distrust towards the educational higher-ups who introduced what they deem as highfalutin ideas with little regard to the reality on the ground;
Teachers would like to be left alone to do their teaching jobs, and to complete the never-ending tasks given to them due to previously-introduced educational initiatives (see above). Teachers simply want to teach, and would like less time doing work outside of teaching;
Teachers design their teaching to follow the curriculum standards very closely. In the Malaysian education system, the standards are spelled out in the Dokumen Standard Kurikulum dan Pentaksiran (DSKP). Teachers tend to not veer their classroom engagement too far from the content of the standards. They place high importance on following the schedule closely, so they can complete each chapter on time;
Students are getting more and more confused with the changes taking place in the education system, with the recent revision of the curriculum, with new topics (e.g., financial mathematics in Form 3), with new subjects (e.g., Asas Sains Komputer for Form 1-3), and with various new educational initiatives and buzzwords being thrown around liberally. Every introduction of a new thing seems to make them even more confused. While change by itself can be good and sometimes necessary, a competent change management process seems to be lacking most of the time;
Students are still expected to score well in exams, and yet at the same time be a mini-adult capable to do high-level thinking and have all of these: grit, creativity, flexibility, responsibility, problem-solving skills, 21st century skills, computational thinking, design thinking, IT-savviness, leadership skills, collaborative skills, communication skills, and so on. What happened to let kids be kids? Students feel the pressure to be future-ready graduates in the future in order to work in the future digital economy that is so futuristic that the only way to make themselves future-proof is to subject themselves to impossible standards in school set by those who already left school 25 years ago, back when schools were fun places to learn, play, and generally monkey around with peers.
Such are the expectations toward students nowadays, and given the impossible task ahead, teachers and students normally respond by throwing their hands in the air, saying screw all this, and reverting to what they think as the usual way of how a school should be. This means that teachers teaching the students in the traditional way — chalk and talk (with which there is nothing wrong, in my opinion) — and students just wanting to get their exams over with.
That is our finding. The methodology is confidential, but the research involved many teachers. I only share the qualitative part, but we have numbers too. Others might disagree with these findings but that is the situation on the ground that our data tell us.
Bottom line, teachers just want to be left alone to teach whatever is asked of them to teach, and students just want to do well in exams, which is what is expected of them anyway.
Teachers generally think of educational initiatives, including the introduction of technology in the classroom, as unnecessary extra burdens, despite the best intentions of their purveyors (e.g., the Frog VLE system had less than 8% utilization rate by teachers and it was a nationwide project rolled out by the Ministry themselves).
Most teachers revert to the traditional way of education delivery — chalk and talk, one-way communication, homework, buku latihan, worksheets, mid-semester/final exams, and awarding of letter grades — despite the call for more varied assessment and teaching methods.
(Of course, there are exceptional teachers who are really innovative and revolutionary in their approach, but these are not the majority, and it is not practical to expect most teachers to follow in their footsteps.)
And as for the students, generally, they want what students have been wanting since forever, which are good grades. No amount of techno-futuristic talk in school can convince the average student to change their priority. Students live in the here and now. They do not have the lengthy life experience behind them that they can project ahead to see where they will be in the future. They care about surviving school. At the end of the day, what matters are their academic performance in school, of which the most important indicators are their final grades. These are what their parents and other adults will judge them on. With tertiary placement decisions made through SPM results (can a C-average student apply for an overseas scholarship?), like it or not their future paths ARE determined by letter grades.
It was from these findings and assumptions that we decided on the direction of Pandai.
Even defining what education is seems intractable.
We agree that schools, and people who are in them — students, teachers, and school admins — and the activities that take place in the classroom during the times when the classroom operates are essential parts of “education”. To this, we can include everything that has to do with schools and schooling: co-curricular / extracurricular activities, after-school programs, sports, and physical education, soft skills, sahsiah, discipline, civic-mindedness, and so on.
Beyond that, defining what education is is a bit dicey.
We can sprawl the definition into all directions until “education” covers everything under the sun. But it helps no one to talk in generalities. To avoid the banal, we have to be specific. When I refer to education, what I mean the education process as practiced in schools (the other types, while important, should be discussed separately).
Education is simple: impart knowledge, passion, skills, hopes, dreams, life lessons, and everything you deem good to your students, so they can be complete human beings. Simple, but not easy.
Everything in education should be geared towards achieving this objective. Insofar as anything helps reach this goal, it is useful. Otherwise, it is just a distraction. And that includes technology.
Do watch this video on the past technologies that were supposed to “revolutionize” education:
(Spoiler alert: All of them failed.)
The takeaway from the video is: do not buy the hype.
The current top comment for the video on Youtube:
I have been teaching for 48 years & what past students have always said about me was: Thank you for caring about me, for making me feel important, for making me feel special, getting me excited, motivated & inspired, about what you were teaching. How I was always enthusiastic & excited about what I was teaching, & how I took an INTEREST in them. One student I taught thanked me for giving him a condolence card when his dog got run over it made him want to do the best he could do in my class because I gave him my personal time to buy the card and then to write words that helped ease the pain of his loss. It’s because of all of the above that I believe technology will never take over from teachers. However, technology used in conjunction with the good teacher’s (as outlined above) teaching a big fat YES. At 73 I am continually developing my expertise with technology so I can, where appropriate, incorporate with my teaching. I am so excited about teaching next year in my 74th year & 49th year of teaching in this wonderful and rewarding profession.
Pandai is “clever” in the Malay language. Someone who is pandai is implied to have intelligence, and a bit of cunning (as opposed to being intelligent only, which is normally labeled as pintar instead of pandai).
To be called a budak pandai (clever kid) is perhaps the highest possible praise a child can get, alongside being called a budak baik (good kid).
Pandai is the name of the educational app which has been developed by Aidan Group in 2019, and have since then spun off as its own company.
The Pandai app will be in the market in January 2020.
The History of Pandai: The Aidan Years
In 2007, I and four other friends, who have known each other since our school years, founded Aidan Group. At the time, we were 25 years old. I was a junior analyst in Khazanah Nasional, the investment arm of the Malaysian government. I worked at Khazanah in the mornings and laid down the groundwork for what would be Aidan in the evenings. In April 2007, when Aidan was ready for business, I resigned from Khazanah and promptly started work in Aidan the very next day.
The other co-founders are Akmal, Alif, Iznan, and Khairul. They are still with Aidan, except for Alif, who left 2015 to pursue other vocations.
Since 2007, the Aidan Group and the companies under it (AidanTech and ArdentEdu) have been growing steadily but slowly. From no staff at all — just the 5 founders in one small room — we have grown to be a company with 80 people on the payroll as of the end of 2019.
The founders of Aidan and our staff earlier this year. Front row, 4th from left: Akmal, myself, and Khairul (Iznan was not in the picture).
About Aidan
There are two major operating companies under the Aidan Group: AidanTech and ArdentEdu.
AidanTech is a major player in the government IT industry. They provide IT services to a large number of ministries, agencies, institutions, commissions, and all types of organizations in the Malaysian government bureaucracy. AidanTech also serves a sizable number of clients in the private sector, but they operate mainly in the public sector. Some of the technologies developed by AidanTech have spun off as separate SaaS (software as a service) companies, which continue to grow on their own.
Among the flagship programs of AidanTech is the ConFIG annual conference, which brings together a huge number of IT officers from government organizations, for several days of networking and technology updates. Akmal and Khairul run AidanTech, until recently.
ArdentEdu is an educational program provider. When I tell people I run an educational company, people assumed that I run tuition centers, or go around to schools giving motivational talks. For many years, those are the only two types of educational business prominent in the market. We did neither. ArdentEdu focuses on STEM — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — with a strong emphasis on the M, to reflect my background in mathematics.
ArdentEdu started off by developing modules on science and mathematics, and conducting STEM programs at schools. Over the years, the offerings of ArdentEdu have diversified, and we now rake in revenues of several million RM a year. I am proud to say that Iznan and I, with support from our team members which have been changing throughout the years, have built ArdentEdu from scratch, from “jual air liur”, to the respectable education company it now is.
Although ArdentEdu might not be well-known as a brand (a decision which is intentional), some of our programs have become quite popular. For example, our Kangaroo Math Competition, started in 2013, now has an enrollment of more than 40,000 students, which covers 15% of schools in Malaysia. The Kangaroo has become somewhat of a beloved brand with devoted enthusiasts among Malaysian students and teachers.
The “STEM boom” that started at around 2012 was quite beneficial to ArdentEdu; since then many companies have set up shop to sell STEM materials (toys, robots, mini-computers, coding classes, etc.) and the public is now familiar with these types of STEM-oriented education business and so we don’t have to explain ourselves at length anymore when people ask us what is our business; people do not automatically assume we do motivational talks or tuition classes anymore.
In short, in the first 10 years, the Aidan founders have grown a company organically from scratch, through the startup bootstrap model and no external funding, and we have since placed Aidan as a respectable, mid-sized player in the govtech (AidanTech) and education (ArdentEdu) industries in Malaysia.
However, like any entrepreneur, things are never enough.
The Pain of Growth
We wanted to grow more.
For more than two years, we (the four of us Aidan founders) debated where to bring our companies next. Should we spend capital and start a new company outside the industries we are in? Just because? There were talks on starting a trading firm, a manufacturing company, even buying factories with dwindling outputs, just to turn them around. We entertained ideas on entering the food business, the travel business, even trading commodities. Though most ideas we floated were silly, it was a good exercise in perspective, to examine our strengths and limitations.
We talked to numerous people in various industries, just to get an idea on which industry is ripe for entry, and where we should venture into next. We had several day-long retreats to discuss these issues, and had countless discussions over lunch, coffee, or anytime we happen to meet. Since 2017, we were restless, wanting to make a move, but not knowing what to do.
Things came to head during Ramadan (about May, if I remember correctly) of 2019, when we have had enough discussions and debates and proposals and ideas. We had to decide how to move. We forced ourselves to decide.
And the solution couldn’t have been more simple. In fact, it had been right in front of us since the beginning.
Pandai as Aidan 2.0
We decided to scale our original businesses. (Yawn.)
By scaling, we do not mean making it bigger or with more reach. We meant scaling in a slightly different way. Let me explain.
AidanTech has worked long enough in the govtech industry with a track record that established their credibility in this sector. This was achieved by sheer grit and hard work; no hanky-panky, no coffee with puan pengarah, and no cable-fication needed. And we had a large team behind us. From serving a large number of government clients, we had developed our own technological asset and knowledge base aligned to the latest developments in govtech.
This is factor X.
ArdentEdu, on the other hand, has been at the forefront of education trends since its founding in 2007. Before STEM became the media buzzword, we had organized more than 60 math and science camps annually, and have introduced problem-solving modules way before HOTS is introduced in the national education standards. When the ministry wanted to introduce Computational Thinking in schools, ArdentEdu was appointed to study the best practices in 7 countries (US, UK, Australia, Singapore, Denmark, Estonia, and Finland) to report to the government. This we did with much alacrity and in 2015 we visited all countries and later in the year Iznan presented our findings to the DG of Education. The findings became a basis for the Asas Sains Komputer and Sains Komputer subjects that were introduced in 2017. After countless committees and panel meetings later, ArdentEdu has become more than a program organizer or a STEM toyseller; we are now involved directly in educational policy.
This is factor Y.
The two factors add up well: X + Y, our competence in building a technological system (mainly for the government) through AidanTech, paired with our experience and deep knowledge in the education sector through ArdentEdu, suggests that the way forward is in education technology.
Into Edutech
Edutech (some called it edtech) is the way Aidan will move forward.
So we settled on the industry. Still, edutech can mean a hundred different things to a hundred different people. Kahoot is edutech. Byju’s in India is an edutech company valued at 5.5 billion USD. EdX and Coursera are edutech. The highly hyped but ultimately meh AR and VR technologies are edutech. Heck, our own dead Frog VLE was edutech.
So what is the way to go?
The only right answer is — whatever the market wants.
Not what the smart kids want. Not what the rich parents want. Not what tech speakers want. Not what VCs and investors talk about. It should be what the majority of educational users and customers in Malaysia wants. The market, as we define it, is the majority.
In Malaysia, the majority of educational users are teachers and students. However, the actual customers are the parents, since they are the ones forking the money.
The majority are students who go to government schools. There are 5 million of them. Although the elites and the middle class make the most noise in the educational discourse in Malaysia, the fact remains that most Malaysian kids still attend government schools. (This, despite whatever complaints they have about the education system. In a sense, this is not our problem. Our problem is to provide the users and customers with what they need. Fixing the education system is the job for the higher authorities.)
First Things First
So, our first step is market research.
Learn what the market wants, converge to an idea, develop several permutations of that idea, bounce off the idea (and all its possible permutations) with potential customers, and validate them with real data.
We found that there is no shortage of people who are willing to give their opinion on education. Everybody and their grandaunts want to talk about education and the shortcomings of the education system. We learned to filter out those who are simply ranting about the education system, and focus on listening to teachers and students (the younger the better — young kids are clear in their preferences), about what they want, and what they need and what they are willing to pay.
And once we have identified the idea we set forth to validate them.
The Malaysian team won one Silver Medal and five Bronze Medals at the International Junior Science Olympiad 2019 (IJSO 2019) that took place in Doha, Qatar from 3rd to 12th December 2019.
Congratulations to all team members, as well as the team leaders Mrs. Anis Shahira and Ms. Nur Fadhilah. Both of them are team members at ArdentEdu, the organizer of the Malaysian IJSO program.
Thank you to all coaches, family members, teachers and supporters who have contributed towards the Malaysian IJSO success.
The Malaysian IJSO program consists of several events throughout the year:
Kancil Science Competition (Kancil) — the preliminary round for the IJSO program, held annually in May. Kancil is open to all primary and secondary students, but only winners from the lower secondary category are invited to the IJSO program, as the IJSO is only open to students 15 years old and younger. The Kancil contest is run remotely at students own school, and is endorsed by the Ministry of Education;
Malaysian Junior Science Olympiad (MyJSO) — the final selection round for IJSO. MyJSO is organized at a centralized venue for one day. The participation is by invitation only, among the winners of Kancil. The MyJSO format includes an MCQ paper, a Theory paper, and an Experiment paper, as per the IJSO format;
IJSO Training Camps — the top winners from MyJSO are invited to a series of training camps that are held for about one week each. Students are given lectures on scientific topics, as well as tutorials and lab experiments, in the topics of physics, chemistry, and biology. Bear in mind that IJSO candidates are in Form 3 or younger, yet students in the Malaysian national school system do not encounter the three subjects as standalone subjects (but rather as a single Science subject) until they are in Form 4, which makes the training program even more demanding.
For those interested to learn more about the program, or to participate in Kancil 2020, do visit the official site of Kancil at https://kancilscience.my/
Kancil 2020 will take place on 5 May 2020. Mark your calendar!
The International Junior Science Olympiad (IJSO) is an annual individual and team competition in the Natural Sciences for students who are under sixteen years old on 31st December of the competition year. IJSO has been established in recognition of the significance of the Natural Sciences in the general education of young people and in all aspects of their lives. It is a purely educational event.
Our Aims
To promote and reward the pursuit of excellence in scientific endeavor.
To challenge, stimulate and encourage gifted students to further develop their talents in Natural Sciences.
To create friendship and relationships among students around the world from an early age.
Our Objectives
To stimulate the active interest of students in the Natural Sciences.
To promote their careers as scientists.
To enhance and develop international contacts in the Natural Sciences.
To promote future scientific collaboration.
To encourage the formation of friendships within the scientific community.
To offer the opportunity to compare the syllabi and educational trends in science education within the participating countries.
My wife Shazni is part of Operation Star Light, a mission of the Malaysian Armed Forces to set up a field hospital in the Rohingya refugee camp situated at the resort town of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
The camp housed several million displaced Rohingyas fleeing prosecution from nearby Myanmar.
The Malaysian Field Hospital (MFH) was set up by the Malaysian Government under the purview of the Ministry of Defense. It is funded jointly by Malaysia and other national governments, with help from the host country Bangladesh.
It is a full-service hospital complete with a clinic, an operation theater, wards, and an ICU.
My wife runs the MFH obstetrics & gynaecology department for the past 3 months (she’s an O&G specialist). This is a video of her team in action:
The MFH was set up two years ago and will continue to operate until 2021. The hospital officers and staff are members of the Kor Kesihatan Diraja (Royal Medical Corps), sent in batches on a rotating basis: my wife is part of the 4th batch, which started service at the end of August 2019.
She has completed her tour of duty and will be back in KL in a few hours. I am leaving home shortly to pick her up from the airport.
Welcome back!
It has been fun being a “single” parent with a toddler for the past 3 months during her deployment, and as a result, I grew very close to my son. Although before her departure, we dreaded her being away for months, Alhamdulillah everything worked out pretty well for our family.
Well done to our men and women in green, who not only serve our country honorably abroad, but also putting forth selfless service towards the sick, the oppressed and the needy, regardless of where they are, and where they came from.
This is my newest personal website, the third after the defunct BAL website (bal.mit.edu) and the previous WordPress site, which I have cleaned out and restarted.
I plan to write serious opinion pieces as well as less-serious takes on various issues, and occasionally updates on my various projects.
Stay tuned!
PS: Congratulations to Khairul Anwar (Bird), CEO of Pandai.org, the company we co-founded, for winning the 2019 SUPERB grant worth RM500,000.
Suhaimi Ramly 