FingerTec Newsletter Vol: 12 Year: 2015 | First FingerTec Scholarship Program Recipient Mr Nicholas Khooi Up Close and Personal

First FingerTec Scholarship Program Recipient
Mr. Nichoas Khooi Up Close and Personal

Khooi Xin Zhe, nicknamed Nicholas, is the first recipient of the minted FingerTec Scholarship Program newly introduced early this year with the objective to provide financial aids to deserving students in achieving their great potentials. Nicholas is a 19 year old student from Sg Siput Perak, currently pursuing his first degree in Bachelor of Computer Science (Computer Systems and Networking) at University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

Beyond Biometrics caught up with him for an exclusive interview.

Take us to your childhood; share with us your best childhood memory if you don’t mind.

I believe my childhood experiences were similar to lots of people, being naughty, getting scolded, having fun with toys and siblings, eating sweets, watching cartoons, and many other stuffs kids do. But I do think that I’m more fortunate than others, as I had the chance of playing with a computer at the age of 3. I could still recall the big CRT screen and system unit running Windows 95 with my first ever Tarzan video game and I believe that this is why I am so attracted towards computers until now.

What about your parents, do they always put focus on education, do they plan for your future or they give you the freedom to decide?

My dad is an online businessman, my mother works as a human resource department executive. I’m the eldest of three, and since young, my parents focused on teaching English to me. I only watched English cartoons and I developed my English skills from there. My parents always let me to do the thinking, by giving hints to solve my own problems. Through that, I was able to be independent on my own in school works and never required any extra tuition classes and attention from them. My parents didn’t plan for my future, I made every decision myself but they have always guided and encouraged me in every decision that I’ve made.

Tell us were you always a hardworking student in class or you found your rhythm after you reached a certain stage?

I received my primary education in SRJK (C) Shing Chung, Sungai Siput(U), Perak. During my early primary school years, I hated school and I always skipped school until I met my standard 3 class teacher who changed my perception towards school. She noticed my problem and approached me. She counseled me and paid extra care towards me. Since then, under her guidance, I changed my perception towards school and began to love it. I’ve always reminded myself to be different from others in class. This is what motivated me to put in extra efforts in various subjects and maintained my ranking within the top 3 and to always be prominent in other co-curricular activities.

Q	Do you always know what you want to be?
A	Yes. I have always wanted to be involved in R&D related job fields. Given the chance, I will further my studies until PhD level in my related field.

Q	What were your favorite subjects in school?
A	STEM-related subjects such as Mathematics and Physics were my favorite subjects. I liked them because they allowed me to do more thinking, understanding and analyzing, as the subject itself is more dynamic compared to others, which require us to memorize a lot of static facts.

Do you recall any anecdotes from your school years that might be worth sharing with us?

During my secondary school days, my military band’s head teacher advisor and senior assistant of co-curricular activities inspired me the most to become a good leader. I was given the chance of being the president and conductor of the military band back in year 2012 to 2013. Looking back at history, our school’s military band was one of the oldest military bands in Perak, which was set up in the 1940s and used to have glorious achievements until the 1990s. I remember every moment working with my committee members and these two caring teachers to bring up the whole military band back to its glorious days after 10+ years of poor achievements. Various reformations that we introduced changed the whole organization and under my reign as the president, we managed to bounce back and get a silver awards in competitions. That was the best achievement that we managed to achieve and until now, the band’s achievement are getting better and better ever since our reformation strategy.

Q	How did you find out about FingerTec’s scholarship and what made you decided to apply?
A	Frankly speaking, I have never heard of FingerTec’s scholarship before this. I was just Googling randomly online for scholarships and then I discovered FingerTec’s scholarship at around page 5 or 6 of the Google search results. As a scholarship hunter, I did not think much, and filled in my details to give it a try and hoping to get an interview chance to improve my interviewing skills.

Q	What does this scholarship mean to you and how do you see TimeTec as a company?
A	Firstly, I am proud to be the recipient for this scholarship. I see TimeTec as a company with great potential to grow big in the near future and I want to be part of this growing company. I see this as a special opportunity to grow together with the company and this made me accept this offer after turning down 2 other scholarship offers earlier this year.

Q	If you have a charity that you support, what would it be and why?
A	I always support charity activities either by volunteering myself or providing monetary aid given that I am capable of. There’s no specific activity that I support. As long as it benefits the society and aligns with my own personal principles, I support it.

What is your take on programming as a career? Do you have any famous programmer that you want to emulate?

I believe that programming is a challenging yet fun career because we get to solve various challenges throughout the career and being able to solve complex problems gives me the greatest personal satisfaction. As for famous programmers, I admire a lot of them, such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page of Google, but, everyone’s style is different, I wish to have my own style. I would not emulate their style but I would try to emulate their achievements, which changed everyone’s life with useful technology.

Q	Last but not least, tell us your favorite sports, favorite movie and favorite band.
A	Well, I watch and football often, and my favorite team is Manchester United. Besides, football, I love table tennis too. As for movies, I don’t have any specific favorite movies, but I’m a big fan of Disney’s animated films and One Republic is my favorite band.

Q	Thank you for your time, such a pleasure having you.
A	You’re welcome.