ETP, here we come!

1 month ago, while I was helping my mother at kitchen, my phone rang at sudden. It is a new number, I didn’t recognize it before. I answered the calling with high enthusiasm and tried to guess who actually was calling. The voice I heard was familiar to me. He introduced himself.

“Salam, I am Wong, your ETP group member. Why it is so hard to contact you ha?”

“What! I am doing ETP this semester, Oh my God” I whispered. Wong told me all the members of my group. My group mates consist of me, Wong(Civil), Wani(EE), Hafiz(EE), Sara(Meche) and Dinesh(Chem). I just only knew Sara and Wong at that time. I met Wong since I was foundation. We stayed at the same block when we were at village 1. I knew Sara because she is my course mate but I had never talked with her before although we were always doing lecture together. The only thing that I worried at that time was my commitment and my co-operation towards the project and my group member. I didn’t really know them. At weekend, I always go for out-station (not at UTP). I worried that my appearance at this group will induce unpleasant situation to them when I fail to co-operate.

Since at home, I started to plan. I have never been in such a project that needs my full commitment at whole semester. If I cannot manage my time properly, it will affect my studies and also my non-academic activities. To avoid this circumstance, I plan a strategy for this semester. At this semester I have to take 7 subjects which sum 18 credit hours. If I take the entire subject, it will burden me because I have to concentrate on my studies, project, assignment, test, quiz, ETP, and last but not least my non-academic activities. After discussing with my senior and lecturer, I decided to drop one course which is Engineering Economics. I planned to take this subject after internship. Maybe at that time my understanding toward this subject would increase as I deal with it when I do my practical next semester. Besides, I need to focus on several subjects only for me to boost my CGPA and then I can grade with Deans list.

First meeting.

We conduct our first meeting on Sunday night, a day before this semester start. This meeting is just for ‘ice breaking’. It is very important for an organization to have members that can communicate with each other nicely. At that time, one of the group members was absent. I was impressed with my group mates because they are friendly and are able to come out with brilliant ideas. We planned to meet again the following week after everybody was given task by our group leader which is to find all the related idea towards our project.

For the second meeting, all the group members represented their idea. I come out with an automatic and flexible drilling tools, Dinesh with his Petroleum research, Wani , with her solar rechargeable mobile phone, Wong and his waste water study and Hafiz with his 4 ideas which I can’t remember all of them. However, I remembered one of his ideas which is car cooling system. We were regret because one of our group members can’t attend that meeting because she assembled a function at Batu Gajah. We finally chose Wong idea which entitled ‘Removing water hardness using electromagnetic field’. This idea is interesting but actually we quite blurred with it.

Discussion with lecturer.

Our supervisor was not at Malaysia that time and we needed to find another lecturer to discuss this topic. This condition caused trouble to us because the deadline for proposal submission is just around the corner. Luckily, Wong was quite close with DC Shark, his waste water lecturer. We arranged a meeting with him to ask his opinion regarding our project. He advised us to forget our existing idea and started to think more simple ideas. He said that our existing idea needs a lot of experiment and we actually do not know whether it will work or not.

Start to think

That evening, we did a brainstorming among ourselves. We start to think a simple idea but practical and also have a market value. We came out with 11 ideas and we chose the best three. These ideas of smart helmet and alarm bed got most votes from our group members. However, Alarm Bed won the vote with majority of 2 votes. I accept this decision although I think that my idea of smart helmet was more interesting and can go further. Because that was a decision by the group member, I accepted it with full of my heart.

Thank you Sara for your brilliant idea. Sara's idea is interesting as Alarm Bed is a combination of alarm system, heat transfer, vibration and hydraulic system. When, I told people about this idea, many would laugh because maybe they think that it is a stupid idea. However, in previous EDX, many stupid ideas won the first prize. Just think about it. We will prove to the people that this idea can work nicely and will open many eyes of the world. Just wait and see.

Alhamdulillah, we completed or proposal just now. Thanks to the group member for their co-operation in completing this proposal. I was really impressed with the proposal and hope that our target and mission will be achieved. I will give all my ideas and my full commitment towards this project without neglecting my other responsibility.

ETP group 64, keep on working!

I really appreciate if anybody can check my writing if there are any grammatical error, language problem and others for me to improve my English writing for next time. Thank you