Engineers are not KAYU!

IEM Forum on "Engineers are not Kayu"

A forum entitled “Engineers are not kayu” was held at Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus on 11 May 2013, specially dedicated for the September issue of IEM Bulletin.  The forum was jointly organized by ChemicalEngineering Technical Division (CETD), Young Engineers Section (YES) of IEM, as well as Taylor’s University, and added by some practiting engineers and engineering students.  Seven panel speakers were invited too share about their professional work duties along with their side interests and talents.  

CETD chairman Ir. Prof. Dr. Dominic Foo Chwan Yee welcomed the participants by giving a simple overview of the forum. 

The forum started at 11.15 am, where two academic members of CETD, Engr. Dr. Chong Chien Hwa (Taylor’s University) and Engr. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Denny Ng Kok Sum (University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus) shared about their professional works being lecturers and researchers.  Apart from performing their academic duties, both Engr. Assoc. Prof. Dr Denny Ng and have another identity that are less known by their students and academic colleagues.  Engr. Dr. Chong Chien Hwa is a dedicated cook during his free time and has some very nice recipes with him in cooking fishes and seafood

Engr. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Denny Ng, on the other hand, is a traveler as well as a badminton player.  He shared quite some photos for his badminton competitions, as well as his travelling to various Asian and European cities.  He also share some tips on how to travel with low budget. 

Next, Engr. Rafil Elyas who is a consultant (East 101 Sdn Bhd) shared about his professional work in the oil and gas business.  In his spare time, he enjoyed writing fiction and short stories, playing and composing music, as well as music recording.  

 Apparently, music is also a common interest that he shares with Ir. Prof. Dr. Dominic Foo, who is a chemical engineering professor (his regular work duties include being a researcher, author, editor, teacher and “social worker” – his service with IEM).  

They next performed together with their guitars on a new song composed by Engr. Rafil specially for the forum – “I Want to be an Engineer”. The forum participants were also given a copy of the song lyrics (see the song lyrics at the end of this post) so that they can sing along together.  

Engr. Lim Mei Ling is the next panel of the forum, who shared about her professional work being a mechanical engineer at Technip, a project management, engineering and construction company. To the surprise of all forum participants, this young lady is actually a tough sport woman who enjoys a lot of outdoor activities, such as mountain hiking, marathon and mountain cycling!  She hikes many mountains in Malaysia (e.g. Gunung Batu Putih, Gunung Irau, Gunung Nuang, etc.), apart from completing 42 km marathon for 3 times, and also cycled up to Bukit Fraser, Cameron Highland, Bukit Tinggi, among others.

The next panel of the forum – Engr. Mohd Khairul Kamaruddin is also another sport man.  Apart from working as a piping engineer at Technip, Engr. Mohd Khairul spent his spare time with paragliding and rock climbing.  He worked as a rock climbing instructor before, and now is a member with the Malaysian national paragliding team.  His past achievements include a silver and two bronze medals in Southeast Asia (SEA) Games 2011 that was held at Indonesia.  He will soon represent Malaysia again in the coming 2013 SEA Games in Myanmar.  He also shared how he can appreciate the knowledge in fluid mechanics through paragliding activities.  

Ir. Razmawata Mohd Razalli, who is the last panel of the forum, is also an oil and gas consultant for his profession (Synergy Oil & Gas Engineering).  However, to this 2012/13 Session Chairman of the Oil and Gas Technical Division (OGTD) who owns a professional license of scuba diving, not all his offshore trips is meant for his oil and gas business, but rather to fulfill his desire to observe the many micro-organism and sea life in the deep sea.  Ir. Razmawata showed many pictures that he took for the unique creatures under the deep blue sea, which amazed the forum participants very much. 

The forum ended at 1 pm, with the 2nd performance of the song "I Want to be an Engineer", followed by group photo and lunch sessions.   Many participants felt that life of an engineer can be very interesting provided that we know how to enjoy our life.  The forum left some good memories especially to those undergraduate students in engineering who attended the forum.

I WANT TO BE AN ENGINEER Composer: Engr. Rafil Elyas I want to build a rocket ship, I want to grow a giant turnip I want to break covalent bonds, maybe find a Higgs boson I want to make some gasoline, put it in my speedy machine Drive it over to your house, build a giant robot mouse (Chorus) I wanna be an engineer, you wanna be an engineer! I don’t wanna be no doctor, I don’t want to be no lawyer I want a hard hat, safety boots, don’t want no designer shoes One ton beam falls on my toes, dance around in my coveralls I like chemistry and physics, diff EQs and stochastics I really dig fluid mechanics, gotta have my thermodynamics Willard Gibbs is the Taikor! Bernoulli, Maxwell and Euler! Now we can make anti freeze, build space stations, refineries! I wanna be an engineer, you wanna be an engineer! I don’t wanna be no doctor, I don’t want to be no lawyer I want a hard hat, safety boots, don’t want nice designer shoes One ton beam falls on my toes, dance around in my coveralls I wanna make my car go faster, I wanna make my bridge span longer I wanna make my sub go deeper, I wanna make my plane fly higher I wanna end all world hunger, make sure everyone’s got clean water Everyone’s healthy there and here! So everyone can be engineer! I wanna be an engineer, you wanna be an engineer! I don’t wanna be no doctor, I don’t want to be no lawyer I want a hard hat., safety boots, don’t want nice designer shoes One ton beam falls on my toes, dance around in my coveralls You want to be an engineer, you momma wants to be an engineer Your papa wants to be an engineer, you brother wants to be an engineer Your kid wants to be an engineer, your neighbour wants to be an engineer Everyone can be engineer! Everyone can be  engineer!       ENGINEER!