If you want to become a successful entrepreneur...

Entrepreneurship, or in Malay language keusahawanan could be simply referring to someone who decides to start their own business, rather than being a salaried-paid worker. I personally do encourage everyone to give it a try; being an entrepreneur once in a while.

Now, before you decide on the types of business venture that you are interested with, please do consider the ONE important key question. The WHAT question. WHAT is the main criteria that determines a good business? Your unique business model? Good social networking? Niche product or service that you are offering? Aha! You are only halfway there.

While potential business investors may be looking solely on the profitability of your business model, and of course the easiness of working together with you yourself as the business owner, the key of success that determines the potential of your business lies somewhere further, beyond all these criteria. The most important criteria beyond all that, is the CORRECT TIMING. Your product or services offered may not be of the latest or most advanced technology-based, but it has to be brought to the market at the correct timing.

A clear example will be the recently super-duper hot selling like pancakes, the iPhone (and wow, typing iPhone isn't revealing any red underline beneath the word. Amazing!). There is no doubt that the iPhone engineers and team has done a marvelous job in producing their own software and hardware that changes the whole mobile phone revolutionary direction, its timing is also perfect. With the advancement in communication network, free accessible wi-fi everywhere, and of course the 3G platform, the power of the iPhone is optimized to a higher level. Some inventors may get their patented products piled-up under their bed for decades, before the right time arrives. The inventor of television (TV) waits for a long time, before someone invented broadcasting industry. See? the correct timing.

You can't push the globe. What you can do is to integrate your business with the way that the world is working. So wait for the right timing. We can't change and determine the market

So before you ask yourself "What am I going to offer to the market?", please ask yourself this question first. "Is now the correct timing for me to enter the market with my offer?". Then, you may develop, improve and expand your product or service phase by phase slowly.

I am not an entrepreneur myself, yet. I am saying these based on my personal observations and readings, and haha...most importantly I am a loyal fans of BBC's Dragons Den. I do hope this could be of any help to those of you out there, thinking to start-off your own business.

Multimillionaires investors from Britain in the Dragons Den 

International Journal Publications

Given below are the links to both the journal articles of mine which have been published recently, in two different international journals.

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# Journal Article 1

Tiong, P.L.Y., Adnan, A., Mirasa, A.K., and Rahman, A.B.A., (2011). "Performance of IBS Precast Concrete Beam-Column Connections under Earthquake Effects: A Literature Review." American Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 4(1): 93-101pp. [Citation Indexed Journal]

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# Journal Article 2

Adnan, A., Tiong, P.L.Y., Surnayati, J., Mohd Ghazali, M.Z., and A. Malek, K., (2011). "Seismic Base Isolation of Steel Frame Structure by Hollow Rubber Bearings." Gazi University Journal of Science, 24(4): 841-853pp. [ISI / SCOPUS Indexed Journal]

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11 March 2011 Japan Tsunami caught on camera

Check this out. A latest video in HD recovered by police team and experts in Japan showing clearly how the Tsunami struck on 11 March 2011.

Exclusive video!!!

<Click here for the video page>

What I have done so far

After nearly three years of dashing through my postgraduate study, I am taking a look back at what I have managed to achieve throughout the period. Taking a long stroll along the time-machine...

2008, December: My official registration as a postgraduate student. Resigned from my work, and go back to university again.

2009, February: My supervisor has given me my very first official task for today. And that is "Try to write a conference paper for an international conference that is to be held in August 2011." And so I did.

2009, April: Surprisingly, and happily of course, the paper submitted for the conference proceeding has been accepted, with some minor corrections and modifications required.

2009: May: I am desperately searching, searching and searching for any funding or scholarship available for local post graduate studies. At that time, the government has not revealed the new masterplan and budget for postgraduate students. Unlike now, students are offered with multiple choices of scholarships even before ones completed the bachelor degree. At my time, you knock door-to-door for money to study, not money looking for you.

2009, Jun: Assisting my supervisor in applying for research funds. We submitted few research proposals. Some are rejected, and some are pending for further assessment. Luckily, we managed to secure quite a feasible amount of funding.

2009, August: Flying to Putrajaya for the 1st time in my life to attend an interview session with a scholarship funding body. I get 25 minutes to present my research proposal in front of 3 professionals. They will assess and see whether I am qualified for the award or not. Towards the end, the answer is? "NO". Right after the interview, I fly to Langkawi for the presentation of my paper in an international conference. It is my first experience presenting to international audiences, and most of them are professionals in the field. It is indeed a valuable experience for me.

2009, September: Flying to Taiwan with fellow teammates, representing my university and Malaysia for an international competition in Taipei, Taiwan. The competition is mainly dealing with earthquake building modeling and testing. Although we didn't manage to win any major prizes, we do bring back awards in best presentation and best poster category.

2009, September: Coming back from Taiwan, my supervisor sent the same team of us to an international exhibition competition held in KLCC. We will be displaying and exhibiting our inventions, 2 of our best inventions for the year. We managed to secure a bronze and a sliver medal for both the inventions.

2009, November: Having a paper published in conference proceeding, my next target is to try publishing in international journal. I sit down in front my my laptop, thinking real hard and planning to get a journal article done. I start-off writing, and believe me, it's harder than it sounds. Word by word of typing, and deleting seems so normal. Write, and rewrite, write and rewrite. Do you believe it? It takes almost few hours just to get a paragraph done. I guess that's pretty normal if you plan to get your paper published in an indexed international journal. If you as the author finds your paper not good enough, what would we expect reviewers or outsiders to react? Feeling that I am wasting my effort and time, I stop writing.

2010, April: I am writing for 2 different papers targeting for two different conference. One in Pahang, in which my supervisor will be presenting while I am planing to attend the one in Shah Alam. Both papers got accepted.

2010, July: This time, my supervisor is giving me a bigger challenge, and that is to participate in another exposition solo. The team consists of me, and him. I nod, and join in. Praise the Lord, we manage to get a bronze medal for this product.

November,2010: Having 3 conference papers published, I am thinking to myself. "Hey, aren't you giving it a try to publish in journal?" I opened the half-typed file, which was left behind months ago and continue writing. I decided to submit it to a good journal, an indexed-journal based in Turkey.

...months of waiting, and waiting, and correcting...

Finally by today, I got 2 papers published in international-indexed journals, 2 more currently under review, 2 being accepted by worldwide distributed flagship/professional journals. Around 7 to 8 conference papers published, and another one has just been submitted to a world conference to be held in Portugal this year.

Thanks be to God, I have been appointed as journal reviewer for 3 international journals. Currently I am trying my very best to get more paper published, and hopefully will be able to join and serve as a journal editorial member of my choice.

True meaning of Achievement

Achievement, surely does not sound like a new word to everybody. But how many of us truly understand the meaning of this word? You see, parents will often regards performance of their kids as their own achievements, while a wife will be proud over her husband's great achievement in office. But, again, what is achievement?

As I begin to continue my journey in higher education, I soon found myself surrounded in an academia environment that is totally different from the industry. Outsiders may think that academia is a fun world, less competitive, and the salary is of course, higher. I can assure you, this is the past. It's no longer the same as before, as for now.

Now, academia field is extremely important in order for any knowledge field to continue expanding and improving. Through researches, the knowledge of sciences and physics are continually applied solve current issues. This should, in return be contributing for a better humanity and further development of a nation. Yes, that's the origin of true academia world.

The rules of the game have been changed, as time progresses. Due to convenient of communication platform, and the vast growing numbers of researchers around the world, only those successful academicians are deemed worthy. As for the others, many continue as a less-known researchers. The mostly used tool to measure a success of a particular academician is 'publications'. Getting yourself involved in writing good quality journal papers is now the most vital key that determines his or her success. Numerous indexing introduced by large citation databases such as ISI Impact Factor, Scopus Citation Index, H-Index and etc., are now the commonly used tool to measure the influence capability of one academician.

I believe in the past, a researcher in university should be proud if he or her managed to get a paper published in journal. But the situation is a bit different by now. Even someone manages to publish in a journal, then others will ask "In what journal did you publish? Is it having any IF? What is your H-index?"

The pros of introducing such measuring techniques are that researchers will tend to motivate themselves into conduction proper research, and writing quality papers. The society and industry will then be able to gain continual improvements. Everyone is able to move forward. This is good, no doubt.

The cons? The value of publishing is deviated. It has become a platform for researchers to make themselves known by others. Instead of purely sharing knowledge through publications, strategical in planning the publication is more important that research itself. This causes an imbalance between doing, and writing.

But what can be said and done? Since the rule of game is so, we have to participate in and play by it. So, writing, writing, writing...is the only way for academicians to survive. At least, as for now.

Do you see now? Achievement can be something that is overwhelming such as landing on the moon, climbing Mt Everest, or as tiny as GETTING YOUR PAPER PUBLISHED.