Blogs from AIT Friends

Have discovered some of my AIT fellows blogs.



The two first ones are held by Maxime.
He's doing his MBA at the School of Management (just for the record).

One is about his life in thailand. If you want more information on life in thailand, that's definitely a blog you may want to visit. Just click on the link http://www.maxasia.net/




The second one is focused on new technologies, web design as well as some web 2.0 posts.

He's doing quite an amazing job in web design. Well this blog is as interesting as the first one, but don't trust me on word, go and check yourself. The browsing on his blog is somewhat unusual though, to move from a post to the next one, you have to hit the "Next" button which is hardly noticeable at the bottom of the page. Max can you do something about it?



The last one is actually on small article on the differences between IT (Information Technology), ICT (Information and Communication Technology) which is my field of study BTW and ILT (Information Learning Technology).
The explanation is basic to make it easy to understand to anyone. If you are not familiar with these notions, this is a good place to start.

Oh BTW, the author is Phulbari who is a Nepalese ICT student.

Studying in a Real International School

As you may know I'm doing a Msc at AIT.
The really cool thing with AIt is that it's a real multicultural environment.

It's not so common actually to find a school which is so focused on attracting international students.
Until now the overwhelming majority of students come from Asian countries, especially south Asia as well as, of course, Southeast Asia.
I knew very little (I dont want to say nothing) about Asia. So it's pretty exciting to have this opportunity to learn so many things from different countries.



Of course I'm just talking with individuals so the best I can get is a rough idea of theirs cultures and habits. But still it's very interesting. I'm gonna blog about each country I will get a chance to know (even roughly).



When it comes to school matters, well, let's say that compare to France, it's black and white.

I'm taking 3 courses in the School of management, which are actually courses for the MBA program.

Two of them are really great. Many of the students have already some experience. Average is 4/5 years and this makes the classes very interesting.
It's totally different from France, people here are hard-working and motivate.



I think that when you are paying 20000$ (which is also the tuition fees of my Msc) you want to do the best use of your money. Even if some are on a Scholarship, they are really aware of the price of their studies as well as the uniqueness of this opportunity. Some did even take a bank loan to pay for their studies.

I'm really glad to have left behind the French School of Management atmosphere of laziness and I-dont-care-the-class-sucks-anyway.



Add on top of that the variety of culture and mindsets, and you come up with a very fertile mix.

When you have a case study to do, people come with many different ways of looking at problems and it's pretty cool actually to discuss and share these different points of view.



I do have the feeling to actually learn things. I mean useful things that I think would help me in my future jobs. It makes a big difference both in the way I work and in the way I think.



I didn't mention the quality of the professors who are damn good. Again they come from Finland, Germany, India, Nepal etc. They are really into open discussion, interactive class and close interaction with students. It's really awesome.



I don't think I'll be able to go back to a standard Engineering or Management School in France (except maybe for an MBA).



Oh! Also I'm starting to think that having to pay for studies do have some advantages related to the implication and commitment of the students.

Things are starting to get ugly here

I've been quite busy lately. I have a lot of work to do with these 7courses going on.

Meanwhile temperatures are getting crazy here. I ahd a shock on Friday, when I went outside. I was litterally burning.

Temperatures were about 36/38 degrees. If you have never experienced that kind of temperatures, you probably don't know what I'm talking about.

I've been told that it gonna be even hotter in the coming weeks. So if you have no news of me for several weeks, start worrying.



Good mews is that I'm to move to a category 4 dormitory. This simply means that I'm gonna have Aid conditionning (AC) in my future room. I'm so happy. I would have died otherwise if I had to past the next 3months without AC.

You might think it's joke, but when the weather get that hot, you think slower, evry thing is more difficult to do. Even motivation is harder to find. The only thing you want to do is drink something and eventually go to sleep.

However, the timing is pretty bad since the mid-term are in one week. So I need to work. I've been totally inefficient the last 3days.

I have to wait one week before moving in my new dorm. So, next week I think I'm gonna do an extensive use of the library which is on the contrary overcooled. Sometimes it's even a freezing place. They need to adjust that AC. But still I prefer cold than heat.



I'll let you know how things are going on here in the coming day.

Want HD videos? Go and check Zudeo

We all have some good times watching some funny videos on Youtube.


But at one point, for me at least, I'm kind of tired to have these low-quality videos. It's the other side of the coin of these user generated content.


So when it comes to movies or series, I, like almost everyone who is not insanely rich, use my favorite P2P networks.


Ok, the post is not on how to download new movies or the latest desperate housewives episode.





Some of you might be interested on staying on the legal side. In France you have some Video On Demand websites, but their offers are all limited. Very few allow you to actually download the movie and watch it without any kind of restrictions. Stupid DRM.





That's why Zudeo is great. Zudeo is the legal alternative brought up by the founders of Azureus (a Java-based BitTorrent client which I used to use. It was pretty cool and the interface was nice).





In order to differentiate themselves from their less-legal counterparts, they came out with a unique selling point: HD (high definition) Videos.





Of course the company has a lot of coverage. Here is the coverage of Techcrunch(en).

I've visited the website, there are some pretty cool content. The content is made of a lot of trailers and animated short films. There are also many music clips.


Because of the poor internet connection I have here I couldn’t do any download test. But based on the performance of the Torrent network, it should be quite fast.




The service apparently has some success, as you can see here. For the French version click here (I gave a hand to Ouriel for the translation).



For those of you, who have already tested the service, feel free to let a comment to share your opinion.

Happy chinese New Year

Yesterday was the chinese new year.

So happy chinese new year.

We do have a lot of new year here. So it's a lot of fun.

The thai new year is on April. So you gonna hear "Happy new Year" again.

It's really fun, because they celebrate their new year exactly like we, western people do. Except that I've already celebrate it, so it was a little bit strange.

It's really hard to describe how I was feeling. I was celebrating but in the main time it was hard to totally get in the spirit I mean for real.


Anyway I'll let you know for the Thai New Year.

More to come soon.

Web Album for Food and Drinks

I have put all the food-and-drink related pictures on a web album.

I think it's more simple to gather them all in the same place.

So to discover Thai food, just click on the picture below.

By the way, this picture is a picture of a very special food. It's a stick made of something vaguely related to banana.

Food and Drinks

Some of french friends love it. But I couldn't eat more than just half of the stick.

The consistency is quite special too. Hard to describe. The easiest way for you to know what it tastes like is to come in Thailand.


Oh BTW, the paper in my hand, it's a 100 bahts note
More to come soon

Fried Rice with Pineapple Chicken

 

So this dish is quite common. It's fried rice with chicken cooked in a pineapple and cashewnuts.

As you may have noticed Thai food often mix sugar and salt. It is quite good most of the time.

Especially for people like me who like cashewnuts.

Asian way of drinking beer

I don't really care since I don't drink beer.
But most of asian people do put ice in the beers.

 

I already can hear some of friends screaming "Sacrilege".

But that just the way things are going on here.

Few things on Vietnamese lifestyle and culture

As you know I participate to the vietnamese New Year celebration.


It was a good opportunity to talk with Viet people about their culture. I'll try to list them here:

1. They are very welcoming. This is just an impression, and it can be biased because it was New Year celebration and that at that time people are happy and more opened. But that was my first impression. According to one guy I chatted with, it's in their culture to be cool people. I guess that once you get rid of this "tourist" banner on your forehead, they are probably charming people.
   


2. Vietnamese elections seem to be kind of funny. Apparently there are no official candidates. When people go to vote, they wrote the name of the person they want to see as the president. I still cannot believe it. There must be a trick somewhere. Apparently, in order to prevent people to run a campaign, election date are not fixed. So at anytime, elections can be called. I guess there is probably a short delay before the call and the elction day. I'm gonna ask again because this sounds so wierd that I'm afraid I didn't get it right


3. There are many religious in Vietnam (buddhism, catolicism, etc.) But no matter what is one's religion everyone pray the god of the house. One different for each house. In every kitchen, there is a small statue placed just below the roof. And everyone pray that god. Moreover, one time per year, there is a big ceremony which takes place in each house. People gathered in the kitchen to pray and after celebrate.


4. Vietnamese people drink. And when I say they drink, I mean they DRINK. They drink beer like I drink water. and I can tell you, because of the heat I drink a LOT of water.

 

These are just a small fraction of the empty bottles. In 2 hours, I've seen myself being granted with 4 bottles of beer. And it would have been even more if I had actually drink them.


These are just the first glance I had at vietnamese lifestyle. I can't wait to go to vietnam. I hope I'll have the opportunity to do so. If I do, of course I'll blog about that.
So stay tuned, more to come soon.

Happy Vietnamese New Year

So today is the vietnamese New year. I didn't know that. but thanks to my friend Sherif I had the chance to attend to the celebration which was taking place on the campus. There are about 200 vietnamese students on the campus, but almost 2/3 have left to celebrate at home.




Nevertheless the celebration was great. They were so welcoming! It's amazing. I mean even for a New Year party. We came after the dinner so I didn't had the chance to eat with them. But I sure did experience their warmful welcome which started with a glass of beer. 2 min later another guy came with one bottle of beer for everyone. 3mins later, same thing. It's amazing the number of toast we had.



I don't drink beer but I didn't want to say NO, it could have been misinterprated. So I faked drinking a little bit and then discretly put the glass under my seat.




I took some pictures. You can see the whole album here. Or just click on the picture.

Vietnamese New Year 2007

Thai Music is not so great

I'm not I have had the chance to listen traditional thai music. Most of the thai music I've heard was mainly music for young people. Understand music that has been influenced by western culture. I don't know whether this might the reason or not but one thing is for sure. Thai music is awful!


I do think that one has to be careful when judging a culture he barely knows. But here many of these songs were actually thai version of american songs. And even when it wasn't, it sounds similar.

I'm very eclectic when it comes to music, I mean really. I listen to every kind except the hard-whatever genre (even though there are exceptions). So I don't think it comes from me.


It is seriously painful to hear and when we go outside AIT to have dinner, the only thing that bothers me is music.

I would like to have a chance to listen to real thai music, I feel like I'm gonna enjoy it. Because these thai western-like songs are insanely bad.


As soon as I get a good thai song, I'll post it here. Until that time I let you listen this very good song. From Ben Harper again : Power of Gospel.






Oh BTW, feel free to let comments on any post about anything you like. Especially what do you think of the food pictures below?

Fried Noodles with Chicken

 

Here is another thai dish. Fried noodles with chicken and leaves. Noodles are sometimes fried with an egg or two.


I'm not sure everyone will like this dish. Even for me it depends of the mood of the day. The first two times I liked it, the third I ended up finding it a little bit sickening. And you don't want to eat the stems of the leaves, trust me.


Of course, more food pictures to come soon...

Thai Food : Chicken with cashewnuts

 

You can't visit a country without testing the local food. And since I'm here for 18 months, It was mandatory to get used to the food.


Food turned out to be pretty good. I had no problem to get used to it even during the first days.

But for those of you you haven't yet the chance to visit Thailand I'm gonna post some pictures of Thai food.

The first one is this one. A classic dish: Chicken with cashewnuts and leaves. 35bahts +7 bahts for the rice (42 bahts for all).
For less than 1 euro, this is what you get in a decent restaurant.


So want to visit thailand now?

United Colors of AIT

Want to know what I mean by multi cultural environment in AIT?

So have a look at the Web albums of pictures I took during the "Caribean Party"

I've selected the most interesting pictures.

Caribean soiree

Click on the pictures to see the whole album.

Thai dinner

Yesterday was a good day. Yesterday I had my first dinner with Thai people exclusively. It's a major step. But to understand why it's such a big deal I have to explain a little bit more how things are going down here.


There is a truly multi cultural international environment here, with mainly people from South and Southeast asia. Thai people represent probably less than half of the students. Many people arrive here without marks. So, as a natural human trend, a newcomer will hang out with his fellow citizens when he arrives. The problem is that it becomes a habit. This results in that most students spend 95% of their free time with their fellow citizens.

During the classes you have an pretty impressive cultural mixing, but outside, putting aside group works, very little mix.


Have been there for 3 weeks and until now (actually Yesterday) spent all my free time with French speaking people. I started getting acquainted with some Thai people though.

So yesterday after a 2 hours long chatting, I ended up being invited to dinner by my 3 new friends. We went outside AIT campus, to Thamassat (5 min away by car).

We went to a restaurant where I would never go with French people. You know these little nice restaurants that you have to know to go to. The menus were written only in Thai anyway so you have to come with some Thai people.


The food was very good, we ate a little bit of everything, a grilled fish, steamed seafood, grilled vegetables, a seafood soup, an omelete with something-i-dont-remember and of course rice. I had the chance to see how thai people eat, and it's quite different from the occidental way. They eat a little bit of everything in the same time. The only thing that is left apart is the dessert.


We discussed of our different cultures. It was quite an interesting conversation. I'm gathering enough material to make a first post on the Thai culture. I want it to be consistent and avoid all the cliché. I'm gonna blog about it soon.


The minor detail you might want to know is that the only place you find a knife is a kitchen. And this is an assumption since I have not seen a single knife until now. And while everything is made taking into account that fact, sometimes you find yourself briefly looking for a knife.


Next time I'll take pictures of the food so that you, dear reader, get an idea of what does Thai food look like?

Ben Harper's song

This is a song I love. No matter what kind of music you like, you gonna enjoy listening this one. The title is "Morning Yearning" from the album "Both Sides Of the gun"





Just click on the play button to listen to the song.

More to come soon ...

WTF am I doing in Thailand anyway?

Some of you still don't know what I am doing here. So this small post will try to answer this
question.

So basically I'm doing a Master of Science in Information and Communications Technologies (in short Msc in ICT)
This is part of my Engineering studies at Telecom INT. What's interesting is that at the end I will obtain
two diplomas , the Msc from AIT and the Diploma of Engineer from INT.
that means that if I have to look for a job outside France I won't have to go through the painful process of
explaining the French system.

So I have 6 courses. I was supposed to take 4 like every body, but I asked for 5 and due to some
confusing administrative process, I end up with 6 courses.
Just for fun here is the list of the 6 courses:

1. ICT Project Design : We learn how to manage a "real" project with all its important aspects
2. Telecommunications Networks. The title is explicit. The only reason why I registered for this course is that it was required
3. Advanced Topics on Internet : Basically everything about protocols on Internet
4. Management of Innovation : really an interesting course with a lot of interaction. Very instructive one also.
5. Technology Strategy: Where I see the interaction between Technology and the elaboration of a company strategy
6. Management of Information Systems: The course is interesting. It really closed to what a IT consultant do in real life.

    Sadly, the teacher isn't so good. I guess I need to get used to his accent
And last but not least, I attend to the Financial Management class. This course is just fantastic, partially because
I'm interested by the topic and partially because the professor is simply great. Smart, dynamic, funny and still demanding.

All together I have 23 hours of class (instead of 14). I wanted to make sure that I won't get bored.
With that schedule, this is not likely to be the case.

That's all folks!

The red Fanta

 

I told you it was coming. Here it is, the red Fanta.

For those of you who wonder what does it taste like I would say that it's not so far from the "diabolo grenadine". A more accurate comparison would be "TOP Grenadine" but you have to know what's "TOP grenadine" which is quite a popular beverage in Cameroon.



I will try to look for a Yellow Fanta. If I do, I guess I'll take a picture with the Green, Red and Yellow Fanta and will put the Cameroonian Flag right in front of it. (If you have no clue of what I'm talking about, click here).


More on Food and Drink to come soon.

Some Widgets on my blog

I've just added some widget to my blog just below the list of labels.

I've added a counter so that everyone can know how many visits have had (starting now).

I have also add a LinkedIn link so that you can access my LinkedIn profile in just one click.

I'm gonna make a little post on LinkedIn soon.

I'm also tryin a new service named plugoo that is supposed to let you guys talk with me on messenger just by typing your text in the little window below.

Lets see if it works.

Skype vs Jajah

Everyone knows Skype. It's the most popular VoIP (Voice over IP) software for making calls all around the world.



Skype was not the first software of VoIP, actually it's quite young regarding the history of VoIP. I remember trying to place my first call in 1999 using a soft I don't even remember the name (was it Soft2phone). Back then, I was in Douala using a now obsolete 56K connection, the one with the regular phone line+ modem. The quality was awful. That's probably why the concept didn't take off.



Skype was a huge success because it brings normal phone quality at incredible low prices. And comunications between two PCs were free. But PC to PC calls need some kind of synchronisation because the two people have to be in front of a computer with headphones and stay there as long as the communcation last.





But when I arrived here, I found that Skype doesn't fit to my need. Mainly because Skype is prohibited on the campus network. It's mainly because of the bandwith usage. You might not be aware of thaht but Skype use quite a lot of your bandwith even you are not placing any call. If you want to know more on how it works and what are the principles strengths and weaknesses click on this link to Wikipedia (french version here)





So I looked for an alternative, and decided to give a try to Jajah, a service I discovered several weeks ago thanks to fellows at techcrunch
(french version available here).



Jajah is almost perfect for me. First I don't have a micro and I don't want to buy one. This is how it works:

1. You sign-in and enter your phone numbers (mobile, home, work)
   
2. You enter the phone number you wanna call
3.  You wait. 5 second later, your phone ring, you pick up and get connected with your friend.

Can't be simpler. You see the main advantages : no need for a headset, no need for your correspondant to be a user of the service and most important YOU BOTH USE YOUR REGULAR PHONE. That means that once the call has been initiated you don't need to stay in front of your PC.


You gonna laugh when I tell you that Jajah is cheaper than Skype. But it's simply true. And when I say cheaper, I mean it. Call between France and USA/Canada are for example free (if you dont use mobiles; folks don't ask too much)whereas skype charges you 1.7 cts/min.

French people are gonna say that they've already have free calls for europe and north america with Free/Neuf etc. But don't forget that this also works at Work since there's no software to download. It also works with mobile but it's more expensive (nothing to do with what you will be chaged by your regular mobile service provider though).


For me here in Thailand, things are even better. Calls between my cell and home lines in france have a ridiculous 3,5cents/min toll. Compare to the 30cts AIS ( my mobile service provider MSP in short) charges me for every single SMS sent to France and you see what I mean.

But the best part is almost unbelievable. I've discovered that if my correspondant is also a registered Jajah user calls are simply FREE between our home lines. Yeah, you read well it's FREE.

Thailande for some strange reasons is one of the countries in Group A, France is group B so calls between Jajah users is free on home/work lines. It works with basicly every european and north america countries


So if you wanna call me just sigh me, add me to your contact. My user name is tntresor [at] yahoo.fr and leave a comment anywhere on my blog to get my phone numbers.

Funny Fanta

 

It,s somehow hard to believe but what you are looking at is a fanta, a green fanta.

These guys are funny. Tomorrow I'll introduce the red fanta.


I know I'm supposed to write a post on food&drink. I'll try to find the time.

as always, more to come soon

Social Network : Quick overview

As you may be aware, there are a lot of social network opening everyday. The most popular worldwide are MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook. Back in France, Skyblog and Hi5 are also quite successfull.

But they are many others, actually a new Web 2.0 site pop up almost every day. I'm starting to wonder why there are so many existing social network and why new ones keep heaping.

If you want to keep up to date on Web 2.0 news, you may wanna check www.techcrunch.com  which is one of the most famous blog worldwide ( actually the 5th most popular) and is held by Michael Arrington . There is a French version, equally popular  (3rd french blog to be precise) www.techcrunch.fr held by Ouriel Ohayon. 
From time to time I'm doing english to french translations for them.



I'll post as well about the companies I find the more interesting for me and for people both France and in thailand. To be honest, Thailand isn't even close to see a silicon-like valley blooming anytime soon. But still there might be some good news for us who live here.



There are some social networks I think you should definitively be in.

MySpace is very popular in US and UK. If you have a lot of friends there, you definitly have to sign in.

If you are opened to others cultures you can try Hi5, it's full of people coming from very every countries. BTW my hi5 profile is available at tntresor.hi5.com.


You also have LinkedIn. It's clearly a Work/business-oriented social network. I think it's a powerful tool though it's not the magic wand that is gonna get you 
a job or an internship. I actually opened an account more than 1 year ago, but I didn't really keep it up to date.  But I'm currently working on it.  I'll soon blog about that.




Many others sites provide a social networking feature in top of other features, like Flickr where you can store your photos, or YouTube (no need to present).oriented
More on this topic to come soon.



One more thing, have you ever notice the orange icon on the right of the address bar. It's the RSS icon (those who use Internet Explorer 6.0 aka IE 6 and older wont see this icon, in this case I suggest that you update to IE 7). Just click on the icon to add my blog to your RSS feeds.


If you don't know what is a RSS feed click here or here for the french version.
For those of you who don't want the details, let's just say that you
will receive any update of 
the blog without having to come over. It's very useful, especially since who can keep on tracking many other websites and blogs.



If you have any troubles or questions, just leave a comment and I'll answer ASAP.