The Star:  Computer firm experts do charity in JB

Utusan Malaysia:  Petugas antarabangsa IBM lawat Johor (this article is in Malayan but I have provided a link that uses Google Translate here)

A few weeks ago, Charles Howell approached me asking some questions regarding IT tools for the Handicapped and Mentally Disabled Children’s Association of Johor (or ‘HOME’).  Specifically, the HOME was looking for a new website and some internal tools to track and consolidate financial and customer information.  I decided to come to the HOME for a few days to teach and assist in delivering an IT system, primarily because web design has been a hobby of mine for the last 14 years.

When I arrived on-site, I found that they were tackling web design using the SME Toolkit (smetoolkit.org).  I quickly sat down and started to wrap my head around what they know about their website, how it is used, and what purposes it serves.  After about 10-15 minutes, it was clear to me what they needed, but what they weren’t aware of.  I spent most of the day teaching them about “web design from a business and marketing perspective”.  By the end of the day, they understood how to leverage the internet and several popular social networks for their cause, and they had constructed a site map for their new website.  For example, we leveraged Facebook by creating a group for marketing and awareness generation here http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=153748641995.  We also are leveraging Paypal, Flickr, and YouTube.  It was clear that another face-to-face meeting later in the week was required where we could focus exclusively on the new website’s content; and we did just that.  In addition, we looked at utilizing open source tools and technologies to make management and monitoring of their external IT systems, such as the website, and their internal IT systems.  Much of this is work in progress, however, I believe we have opened the HOME to a whole new world of possibilities that were perceived to be difficult and complex.

I will have one more meeting with them this week where I will train the HOME to use these tools to manage and maintain their IT systems. In the coming weeks, the HOME’s existing website will be updated so take a look here http://www.handicapjb.org.my .

I feel that my participation at the HOME has not only been rewarding for them, but it was “fun work” for myself as this sort of work is a past-time hobby and the people at the HOME are a treat to work with! A win all-around!

As many of my team members have discovered over the last few weeks, I am having an extraordinary experience with the Malaysian food culture.  Simply put, I am a lacto-vegetarian and I do not eat seafood, chicken, beef, and pork.  I have been a vegetarian all my life.  I will occasionally have eggs if it’s hard to find protein.  I often get asked a lot of questions about my diet, “what do you eat for protein?” “why don’t you eat meat” “why are you vegetarian”.  The bottom line for me is eat what you wish as long as you are healthy by some medical standards – and I am very health!  Growing up in an East Indian household in Canada, I find that Indian food itself covers most of what is needed for me to remain healthy.  But I enjoy variety, and as my friends know I love Italian, Mexican, Thai, and Japanese food!

The first week in Malaysia was difficult; my diet was mostly based on rice or noodles with eggs.  I actually would have preferred if there was variety, for instance, I like tofu and soy but it was difficult to find dishes with these as substitutes for chicken based dishes. The constant servings of rice and noodles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was especially difficult.

Most of the true Malayan food includes seafood, as well.  I really experienced this when we were invited to the convocation at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia to have a VIP lunch with the Sultana.  Every dish contained meat, and so my lunch was plain rice, oranges, and grapes.  There were only a few times where I had difficult options, such as this instance.  In these situations I have typically found myself bargaining with the waiter to alter their dishes to be vegetarian, which was an experience in itself – sometimes successful and sometimes not!

We resided in Johor Bahru’s city center for two weeks and in the remote areas of Selang for the latter two weeks, both of which have been good areas to find true Malaysian food.  In Johor Bahru’s city center it was easy to find Western, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean at the city center mall.  However, food that touched my heart has to be the Indian food served on a banana leaf.  I have never eaten so much food with such fresh and homemade taste for what is equivalent to $1.25 USD.  There are full vegetarian meals for Indian food so it’s not difficult to order.  Our team has made several trips to banana leaf and we will miss it dearly.

All in all, it’s been a wonderful food experience for me and now in our last few weeks I am now finding a perfect balance between the food available here and my vegetarian diet.

Our client is the Spastic Childrens Association of Johor, which focuses on providing education services to children and adults with Cerebral Palsy. The client is located in Johor Bahru and was founded in 1967. The association is mainly funded by royalty, but also from grants and donations. The education programs provided range from early childhood to various elementary and junior education levels including vocational, language, mathematics, music, and sport studies. The association enrolls 72 students and about 40 teachers and aides. Gabriella Kokas and I are leading this project.

Today is the start of our second week here in Johor, so I thought it would be a good idea to recap last week and provide some insight into our activities for this week.
During the week of March 15th, our first week of this project, we were given a tour of the client’s estate. Two very interesting experiences impressed me. First, the fact that the sports education program has produced several Paralympics Athletes, a few of who have competed and won nationally and internationally! Second, the sensory room (sponsored by Ronald McDonald Charity) was an experience of its own. The room is equipped with several tools in the form of games that children can use to simulate their visual and auditory senses to create sensations.

The rest of the first week was spent understanding the association, speaking with the teachers, touring the premise, and studying the scope of the project. Our project will focus on providing recommendations to the education and learning methodology at the association and applying assistive computer technologies for the computer education program for the children.

Our goal for this week is to understand the Malaysia Education Ministry’s special education programs and begin analyzing and developing recommendations for teaching process and assistive computer technology at the association. This week is a crucial week to the success of our 4 week assignment. Back to work!