Welcome to my website
Hello ! Welcome, Selamat Datang, Ni hoa Ni Hao, Vanakkam, Sawadeekap, Marhabaan, Mesiere!
My name is Zairil, and thank you for dropping by my website. The aim of this website is to share with you some snapshots of my journey and the milestones I have achieved along the 'colorful' way. With the current trend of (any) news traveling around social media wildly today, this website also attempts to provide, perhaps, a better picture than those sensationalized by the overzealous ones. The website also serves as a source for my students to see a possible clear path ahead when they can't during their quest to get their university degrees and beyond. Here, there should be enough information to illustrate how incredible the journey has/had been to become a genuine aerospace engineer, how it was done, how important it was to choose and be trained by the right professionals, and how important it was to benchmark oneself with a respected international standard uncompromising to lack of integrity. The world can be a nasty place for the unprepared; perhaps this website also serves as a compass to navigate the right path. For me, the website serves as a reminder, too, of how far I have come to become who I wanted to be to try to leave a legacy behind.
From a very young age, I love 'flight'. At maybe 2 or 3 years old, I knew I would be a pilot when I grew up. It was my dream. I had a lot of visions, dreams, and imagination. I can say that all my adult life, I have been blessed to earn the chance to chase my dreams and catch some (but not without a lot of drama! And insanely hard work at times). Today, I enjoy what I think is a balanced life - work, passion, extreme sports, relationships, and gratifying philanthropy work. This website contains some stories about my professional life and beyond. I hope you will find what you are looking for here, and if not, let's chat over a cup of coffee to see if I can help you look for it.
I also created this website to record some of my life's best and defining moments, which usually happened after some of the worst and most disastrous life catastrophes. My goal is to share these moments for as long as eternity and to provide a window of faith and hope to whoever finds these stories useful when they start to doubt life. Life, in case you haven't discovered, has never been fair. My hope is to leave you with an opportunity to go beyond debating about fairness ... to being excellent even when life throws you an impossible curve ball. I also hope that with these stories, you will find that I am not just an engineer, an award-winning scientist and a humble teacher teaching engineering. That will be a disastrous brand to leave behind as there is and should be, more to 'life' than just certificates and careers. To me, being a good human being by serving others regardless of the world's petty imperfections is how I hope I will be remembered. It helps that I am an engineer, as you can see, to fix an imperfect world.
So here's a brief snapshot about ... me. I earned a Bachelor's degree and a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the UK. Through my engineering education and experience, I have been awarded a few titles: International Professional Engineer (IntPE) and Chartered Engineer (CEng) from the Engineering Council, UK, European Engineer (EUR-Ing) from the European Federation of National Engineering Association (FEANI) based in Brussels, Belgium, and Professional Engineer (PEng, Ir) from the Malaysian Board of Engineers (BEM). In 2021, I was honored to be recognized as an ASEAN Chartered Professional Engineer by ACPECC in Jakarta, Indonesia. I am also chasing that childhood dream ... to attain my Private Pilot License (PPL) and maybe upgrade that to a Commercial Pilot License (CPL). I love adventure sports... actually, I love adventure, period. I am a licensed scuba diver and a skydiver. I practice shooting every week using 9mm hand-guns (Glock and CZ) and my all-time favorite NATO-issued tactical shotgun, the Fabarm SAT 8. I love nature, and I hike a lot in Malaysia to get close to it. I have even set up a Cabin in a tropical forest, which I turned into my lab and office to spend more time with nature. I enjoy looking for challenges (trouble?) to grow, especially to contribute, and to discover ... 'life.'
I hope you will enjoy this humble website! Thank you so much for dropping by, and I hope to see you in person some day. Till then, all the best!
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Zairil (Zeq)