Goodbye 2016, welcome 2017.
What’s your resolution for this new year?
As for me, I have so many things in my mind that I would like to achieve, career-wise or in my personal life.
Let me list them down here as a reminder for myself to work smart and hard to fulfill my target.

Career-wise
1. Publish more journals – This is of course, would be number one resolution, not only for me, but I think for most of the academicians and researchers. Anyway, I hope that I can publish something meaningful from my research that can really gives impact to the research world, regardless of the quartile or impact factor of the journals.
2. Involve in community service – This has been my dream, that I can give something/serve the people using my expertise. I really need to think and come out with a great idea on how to help more people using my knowledge and expertise. Come to think of it, this should be my number one target since I think by helping people will give me more satisfaction in terms of career. Need to instill in mind that I could go this far (obtained until PhD degree) because of scholarship from the government (Read: tax payer’s money), hence I need to give back something to the community.
3. Strengthen collaboration – This year, I aim to strengthen my collaboration with international researchers as well as local academicians. Since currently I do not have any active postgraduate students, I need to do the research on my own with the help of undergraduate students. I aim to produce more conference and journal papers with the help of my collaborators. Hopefully, this is a realistic target.
4. Teaching using blended learning – This is something new and exciting that I have to learn. I have already applied this type of learning, partly, during my teaching this semester. However, there are so much rooms for improvement, especially when using so many features in E-Learning. I also aim to use more interactive and multimedia in my teaching.
5. Intellectual property – File for copyright for many algorithms and source codes that I have since I have finally learn how to apply for IP online.
6. Apply for Senior IEEE Member – This was my last year target, bring forward to this year. Hopefully I can achieve this target before March 2017.
7. Collecting CPD hours – Now, this is a new target. I seldom go to any of university event such as Senamrobik Perdana, etc. Well, this is actually the simplest way to collect CPD hours since I love exercise. The thing is, this event usually start at 730 pm (I know! so early right?), so I need to go out from the house as early as 645am! I also aim to attend more courses that are related to my work as well as go to VC’s monthly talk. This, I reckon is not that hard to achieve.
8. Update myself with state-of-the-art technologies in my research area. In other words, read and read more IEEE and IET magazines, besides latest journals and conference papers. Do not be lazy! (reminder to myself).
9. Writing research proposal – Since my research grant will end early this year, I have to prepare a new proposal to apply for research grant. Last year, I did not write any research proposal and apply for any grants. Hence this year I should write as many research proposals as I can. Applying for research proposal, even though the proposal could be rejected, will also grant me some bonus marks for my LPPT. So, there’s nothing to lose.
10. Updating UTM staff blog – Finally, my last target would be to publish as many entries as I can via this blog. Bonus marks await for me if I manage to write as many as 1000 entries (fuh, that’s a lot!).

Lets pray together that we can achieve our target for this year. Ameen.