Why do I do my postgraduate study?

I can not deny that I am materialistic. I do hope that the master degree can earn me bigger paycheck and better career prospect. This is very obvious for my case and could easily be figured out by my family members and close friends. For those that understand me less, they will most probably be guessing that SW is probably a nerd.

They asked "why not MBA or other management course? Why master in Engineering instead?" since they heard me complaining about my job and my occasional remark that engineering is not my profession of choice to grow old with. Here is my respond, "there were too much MBA grads out there. I just want to be different and wants to do something harder. Besides, this route opens another path to the academic world."

So with these in mind, I pushes myself hard to balance between work, study and leisure as well as other side track activities in GGA. I learn by heart and try my best. Even I am to fail at some point, it is still my effort that counts. I am here to learn, not to zerox other people's effort.

Ujrah Scheme for my PTPTN loan

I have received the contract via email from the PTPTN authority for close to 2 months already. I kept procrastinating on effort to read through the 21 pages document and to decide on whether to revise the agreement or not. Now that the dateline is approaching, I am forced to decide.

The 21 pages document comprised of 1 page of checklist, 5 pages of authorization and payment forms, 9 pages of loan agreement and 6 pages of guarantor agreement.

As I wasn't that familiar with the Islamic scheme, I decided to google for it. This was an interesting article I got from the search.

http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2009/07/06/ptptn-issues-1-interest-rate/

It was interesting not because of some fancy terms or the site that hosted it but it was due to those comments received on the post. I wasn't much aware of the poor language used until I scanned through the comments. I agreed with most on SS's average English(*average considering that I detected some incorrect tenses) but thanked him for spelling out our concerns bravely.

I would consider myself as an active internet user. I read and write a lot here. But I do not see how one can improve their grammar by reading online. Reading online can sometime bring more cons than pros if you are not selective about the pages you browse. Generally people tend to use broken English and abbreviations on the cyber space. Our command of the language are mold over the years in school and in our daily conversation. Things do not happen overnight.

So I would blame this on our education system. Our system has failed us over the years. We, the Generation Y are relatively poorer than our predecessor. Now that we are behind track, we should seriously do something to improve this phenomenon. Let me start off myself by reading more news articles online and cut down those status updates on Facebook. The cyber social network is killing the beauty of the language.

Back on my earlier discussion for this post, my analysis shows that the scheme is a gift but the terms and conditions are rights violator empowerment medium. Agreeing to the 1% charges would means that I grant the agency all rights to access my private details as well as my guarantors (*both my parents) details on all agencies they deemed necessary. Why would the agency need so much details? It would be less harmful if they are only granted access to our financial report through the Bank Negara. Why does the clause say 'mana-mana agensi'? Which agencies do they meant here?

I have concerns and worries but I am just an ordinary Malaysian. I ask myself 'Which is the correct channel for us to raise our concern?, What is the correct procedure?, Would our concern be heard?'. Finally 'Am I flogging a dead horse?'.