WHAT ORANG BANDAR LEARNS FROM ORANG ASLI

An article by Nurfairuz binti Shamsul Kamal

The prefect is a general term for everyone. Prefects’ responsibilities are to take care of other students to make sure all of them obey the rules. I bet prefect and me never been far apart as I am part of it since primary school. One of the factors that contribute the most to me in behaving like this is the responsibility of me being a sister in a big family. As I always give advice and show good examples to my brothers and sisters below me, indirectly applying the attitude of a prefect in me. After I went to University for Diploma level, I consistently wanted to improve my leadership skills. Thus, I joined two clubs which is the Islamic club (non-academic club) and another one is Statistics Club (academic club). Both clubs are very active and organize more than five programs in one semester which at the same time gave me more experience to handle in any kind of situations. There are times when I wanted to give up on becoming the committee member for both clubs but whenever that feeling come across I put my faith in Allah that He will lift all the burdens of His slave who help others in worship to Him.  I realized that I became more mature in making a wise decision, being able to develop higher determination and always try to keep myself positive regardless any obstacles.

The best experience I ever have is joining charity work handled by committee members of Masjid Al- Munawwarah. The charity work is to help “Orang Asli” to improve and strengthen their foundation about Islam. These people live in rural areas at Pos Betau, Pahang which is out of modernization life. The purpose of this event is to give them their necessities such as clothes and emphasize the way to practice Islam in their daily life as a Muslim. The target for this event includes all category such as children, adult and older people. Our committee members we were divided into three groups. One group is to teach children, another group of the teenagers and the last group is assigned to teach older people. I have been assigned to teach the older people around 30 to 60 years old.

There are a lot of lessons I have to learn by joining this program which can be applied to the community in Malaysia. If a person wants to gain a new knowledge, the thing they need the most is grit. For example, there is  ‘Orang Asli’ age 70 years old and she really passionate and eager to learn to recite Al-Fatihah. The reality in this world is that even if a person very clever but at the end if she does not have grit, she does not have bright future. This show that the age and accommodations do not become a problem as long you have the grit to learn something new. Besides that, I believe if society applying healthy lifestyle, the chronic diseases in Malaysia can be reduced. We should learn the lifestyle of  ‘Orang Asli’  as they rarely got chronic diseases. Most of the older people also still alive and can do the heavy work. By seeing these people going through hardship every single day without any complain had open my eyes to see the world different perspective. Enjoying everyday live and always support among themselves have been the key for them to continue their live happily eventhough there is none the high technologies stuff.

‘Orang Asli’  able to produce their own handicraft. It is our responsibilities to learn the method to create this handicraft as these are the assets we need to preserve to show Malaysia identity to the tourists and for the sake for future generation. Most of the people live in city often were drive away with all type of gadgets in their hands,  it is not a good thing to neglect ‘Orang Asli’ community as they were also aboriginal people in Malaysia.  Therefore non- government organizations should create more awareness  towards society in order to take care the well being in Malaysia. I strongly believe that we should not simply take everything for granted. We need to provide these community with a better health care because the distance to reach to the city is very far away. They might live longer but they still a human who need empathy from the society to lend a hand to them when they were sick. Indeed changing our thought and reflect towards ourselves more can give a big impact towards our country. This can be proven by saying from Norman Vincent Peale that “ change your thought and you can change the world”.

As a conclusion, I believe we need to become givers, not takers. The reason is because we will able to spread happiness to the community and able to reduce hardship in a person’s life. It is like planting a tree which always gives benefit to the environment like oxygen for a human to continue their life, once we doing a good deed to one person, the takers will not forget. Thus, people doing the good deed continue increasing day by day and naturally it becomes our blood to help each other whenever a person in need. The givers have nothing to lose as they also instil a positive attitude towards themselves while doing other favours. This kind of environment I want to build in the future.

YAYASAN KHAZANAH SCHOLARSHIP GLOBAL 2017

﷽

Peace be upon you and hi everyone.

I would like to apologise for not being able to update this entry on time. Sumimasen! I was extremely busy with assignments (and open houses) for last week. 

Okay anyway, this entry is going to be about how I experienced Yayasan Khazanah Scholarship interviews since early of this year, up until last month. It is kinda similar to the previous year's assessments I think. But for my part, the ending is quite bizarre. Erm 🤔

Let's get started! 

APPLICATION STAGE

WARNING: This is not even the first stage of the interview yet.

Basically in getting any scholarships, we will have to apply for it right? 'Cause if not, nobody will knows about you and all your achievements and everything. So the first thing you should do is to be alert with the opening date for the application. Please note it down and set your reminder or do whatever it takes to not forget about it. If not, you have lost one golden opportunity dude!

While applying, you will be required to provide personal details and all those typical things that the sponsor need to keep in record. After that easy pitzy part, then there comes the essay 😈

For my time, we were asked to write 1000 words essay regarding the reason why we choose that particular course, what can we contribute to the nation, why do you think you deserve the scholarship something like that. I suggest you write the essay in Word first and then you click the next button. Because if I'm not mistaken, it will be timed. Do your research and sit back, figure out what makes you choose the course or what makes you valuable to Khazanah or what ever that you need to figure out about yourself. Just think. Okay? And don't forget to jot it down if not, I bet you might forget all those points you just found out. 

Then, submit. And wait for their reply.

............

............

............

This is suffocating I know. But worry not, more suffocating moments are coming! Muahaha.

FIRST STAGE

In this stage, I received an email, that required me to complete two tasks which are Logiks Numerical (Advanced) and Logiks Verbal (Advanced). There are some instructions stated in the email to guide us in undertaking the assessments. For this stage, I referred to this website for practise; LOGIKS .

You guys can go to the website and try those tests from there. At least, it can give you some views about how the real tests are going to look like and how hard and unexpected it can be 😛

This task for the first stage is quite flexible since candidates were given a week to complete it. What you need to do is to choose the best day that you think you are free enough to sit the test qnd the best place that you can get stable wifi and no one is there fighting with his girlfriend on the phone (which happened to me since I took the test in my college's computer lab and there's this one guy so noisy I feel like killing him haha)

In my case, I managed to complete the verbal part within the time limit given for the test but I did left two questions for the numerical one. Rip me. SOS. 

So all of you who will soon take this test SHOULD NOT do like that. Okay? Promise me. Oh and don't forget blank paper and calculator for the calculation part. Unless you are super genius, then you won't need that hohoho.

Then because of that, I thought that I won't go to the next level. Ya la siapa suruh tak siap kan? But alhamdulillah, I passed the first stage.

Second stage here we go ☺️

SECOND STAGE

Here, you will also be notified thru email by YK if you passed the previous one. I got two assessments in this stage and one of them (Cubiks) is divided into another three more tests. 

- Cubiks Team Role Questionnaire
- Khazanah Cultural Reasoning Inventory (CRI)
- PAPI 3 N

And the other one is Graphite test. I am so sorry guys I totally forgot what the tests are about. But if I'm not mistaken, candidates will have to take personality tests. I bet most of us have taken these tests before. The personality test will ask you to rate how accurate is the sentence given with your own style and behaviour. And there will be questions asking you with a case or critical situation and need your response or what do you think you will react to that scenario something like that. For me, I personally believed that they just wanna know your integrity and how do you deal with situation that require unbiased judgement and what not. So the trick here is to be yourself. Don't try to fake your personality. The system can detect if you are pretending to have that personality goals when actually you did not.

Just be you. If your personality doesn't suit the requirements, think positive. Maybe if you try to fake it and get accepted, you won't be able to survive because your personality is not fit enough to stand the environment. Faham ka? 😅

I think that is all. This stage is more towards getting to know your attitude. But still, the same tips applied here. Find a place where you can be calm and ready to sit for the test. And prepare everything before you get started. Eat first if you are hungry and sleep first if you feel tired. Make sure you are in the best version of you when you are planning to do the assessments. Aight? 

From the email, they will guide you on how to register and complete the assignments. Don't worry too much okay? You got this. We got this!

This one is also flexible enough for you to choose when to complete it. But make sure to always aware with the dateline. Pretty sure nobody wanna miss it right? I was given a week for this one. Plan your time well and do not attempt it at the last minute.

Done. Wanna proceed with the third one?

THIRD STAGE

"Dear Candidate,  

Following from the Stage 2 assessment which you have completed recently, we are pleased to inform you that you are successful to proceed to the next stage of assessment (Stage 3) which is the Online Competency Assessment called E-tray. This will be followed by the Competency Based Interview Session (CBI) with a panel of interviewers."

Imagine receiving this when you read the inbox. I feel like jumping off the cliff when I got this. I am legit happy omg.

Hahaha okay focus focus.

So as what you can read from the above statement, stage three is about this E-tray test and one-to-one interview with the panel from Yayasan Khazanah. There we go. 

I

N

T

E

R

V

I

E

W.............

Chill. Inhale. Exhale. Do. Not. Panic. Fuh

Apparently this CBI session is just like a coffee talk with the panel and they'll just ask something about yourself. Why do take this foundation? Why do you choose that country? Why this why that. That's all. Nothing serious. The questions that I got were; "Why UNSW Foundation Studies", "What is your hobby?", "Which country has you been?" etc. See? Don't worry. It won't be as hard as you expected. BUT make sure you did prepare yourself for any unexpected questions and do not be over confident. 

And for the graphite test, you will be assigned with this one task whereby there is a simulator that requires you to be a manager or any other position in that company and ask you to reply emails, choose an intern based on their resume and plan a proposal for the launching of product more less like that. So from here, your competency and time management skills will be measured. How you prioritise whom you should reply first. Client or your boss? Friend from other department or junior from your department? Something like that. And for the proposal, we need to propose the best place for the phone launch event and we have to state why we choose that place based on the  list of options provided. For the E-tray test, you can try and practise it here. And here is the link for some tips.

There were about 20+ people when I went to the third stage. These are some of those great friends I met.

NEXT!!! 😱

FORTH STAGE

After the CBI stage, I thought that I'm not gonna make it. Everyone who came are super duper incredible. With their achievements, university admission and what not. There's this one girl, she's one year younger than me and she got an unconditional offer letter from Harvard like what?! Are you serious 😭 So freaking extra. Anyway, back to it, I feel like there's no way I can pass this stage. They are all so advanced and they really deserve this scholarship. I went back after that and told my parents about it. Rasa down dia tu macam kucing kesayangan baru mati. Serious. 

Weeks passed and still no email from Khazanah. More weeks passed. Tsk tsk

I was informed that they already called the candidates for the next stage. They said it in this one online forum (lowyat, idk if you know about this but here there are a lot of discussions going on about the scholarships status. Try and google it). 

I feel blank. 

Legit. Blank.

T___________________T

But......................

Thanks to Allah for everything that He planned, I received an email from Khazanah  a week before I fly to Melbourne. And the interview date is two days before the departure date. Alhamdulillah :')

So I went back to Mercu UEM for the second round of interview. Dengan muka penuh pengharapan dan sinar cahaya kegembiraan. Fighting!

At this stage, there were only five candidates including me. Compared to the previous one, this one is more hype. Hahaha. 

For this session, it is a two-to-one interview with the panels. I had Miss Intan and Encik Kamarul whom assessing me during that time. This is more like CBI, they just asked me about myself, what is my career plan, and they also asked about my dad's dodol business lol. There's nothing much to prepare for this, just try to be as professional as you can and answer the questions with manner and smile. That is important. Both interviews lasted for about 20 minutes. Then after that you can breathe normally already 😜

I'm pretty sure you gonna enjoy this interview since both of them are so nice and very supportive. Remember, the way you answer their questions lead where the interview is going to. If you start talking abt your co-curriculum activity, they will diverge to that side. If you talk more about your passion like travelling, they can ask something about that. You choose what to tell them. Got it?

Okay end of the 4th stage.

Shall we go to the final one?

Ready?

Set

Go!

FIFTH STAGE

I can still feel the goosebumps this stage gave me. Gosh.

After three weeks in Melbourne, started my class and coping with the studies, there's this one day, I was so sleepy in the calculus class. So taknak bagi mengantuk, I chose to check on my phone. Coincidentally, the time I unlocked my phone, I received an email. From Khazanah. What is this!!!!!!!! Terus hilang mengantuk hahaha. I nearly scream in the lecture hall. Sumpah happy gila masa tu even tak dapat lagipun scholarship. Got to know that you manage to go to the final stage, it is such an honour. 

Okay so the interview was the week after and I can't make it there since I have classes that time. Thus I emailed them to request for a Skype interview. 

And the day came. They did informed that I need to be ready 15 minutes before. The staff will then contact me and check if everything is okay or not. So the staff called me. 

"Hi" 

.......

"I can't hear you" (HE SAID THIS)

And I was like wait no no. I can hear you encik. Crystal clear. Gelabah gila masa tu ya Allah. Luckily, he was so calm and tried to get me through that problem. 30 minutes after that, he still can't hear me idk why. End up, we had the interview through phone call at the same time, we were Skyping. Hahaha so cute. 

For this session, it is with the Board of Directors of Khazanah Nasional. But again, worry not. They won't eat you. I promise. 

The questions asked are almost similar with the previous two but this time, they did asked me, "What makes you think you will come back to work in Malaysia?" Ha masa jawab tu rasa patriotik habis la 😂 Apa apa pun, this session is shorter than the previous stages. Lega. Hehe.

The End. Fuh.

Extra:

What I find in common between these three interviews is that the panels did asked about my;

- Participation in community work or any volunteering activities.

- What will I do if I didn't get the scholarship

- "Do you have questions you want to ask us?" or "Do you have anything to say?"

Maybe you can try to prepare the answers for these kind of questions. Hope it helps and for the rest, you can try to get to know yourself better in order to answer them. 

You guys okay so far?

I hope this can give you some clearer view about the flow of the process. And do not hesitate to contact me for any enquiries. I am beyond happy to help. 

Good luck everyone! You can do this. Cheers.

Still goose-bumping,

Aini Syahirah.