In the zone

His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam, UBD Chancellor, braving the crowd and taking photos with the graduates and parents at the UBD 27th convocation last week

Taken from The Brunei Times youtube channel

A total of 1,125 students from Universiti Brunei Darussalam’s third batch of its GenNext programme received their certificates at the varsity’s 27th convocation last Wednesday.

This year’s graduates included 20 PhD students, surpassing last year’s record of 12, UBD said.

The total number of graduating students comprised 379 Masters holders, 664 Bachelor graduates and 62 Diploma recipients. These also include 73 international students at UBD.

During the morning session of the convocation held at UBD’s Chancellor Hall, His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam, UBD Chancellor, presented certificates to PhD, Masters and Bachelor programme graduates.

The monarch also attended the afternoon session, where he presented certificates to graduates of Education Masters, Postgraduate Diploma, Advanced Diploma and Diploma programmes.

This year’s convocation also saw the first cohort of 15 graduates for the Master of Public Policy and Management (MPPM), consisting of graduates from East Asian Summit (EAS) participating countries – the Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Russia and Brunei.
The MPPM is a joint programme with leading public policy schools in the United States.

According to UBD, the unique interdisciplinary programme focuses on policy areas that are distinctive to Brunei, namely Islamic Governance, Energy Policy and Management and Environmental Policy and Management.

“It is hoped this interdisciplinary-based programme will be able to contribute to the development of future leaders of high calibre, apart from providing a network for them to interact and directly or indirectly raise the competitiveness of the sultanate internationally,’’ said UBD Vice-Chancellor Dato Paduka Dr Hj Zulkarnain Hj Hanafi. Text courtesy of Rachel Thien of The Brunei Times.

His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah presented a certificate to my friend, Pranika Lama

His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah presented a certificate to Alison

Hello Pranika 😀

Congratulations Gerald Goh

Maryam Rosli, Business Development & Marketing, Hj Mas Zuraime Hj Abdul Hamid, Head of BruCERT, Muhd Shahrul Fadillah Umar, IT Security Analyst. Shamsul Bahri, CEO of ITPSS and Caroline Ho, Business Development & Marketing during the briefing of the Cyber Battle: Capture The Flag recently

In the cyber sense, it’s a nicer way of saying penetrate the system or in our casual term, hacking.. I attended a press briefing on an upcoming Cyber Battle: Capture The Flag and it will be the first of its kind in Brunei. This is something very new and it will be interesting to see who participate in this competition. Of course, those who are showing interest would have prior knowledge of computing and programming as this is not those kind of console video games you will be playing.

The registration is already open and 10 tens will compete on the 11th October and their missions will be to exploit vulnerabilities on game servers, fix security holes, and defending their flags. The rules and regulations are already posted on their website and you can view them for any clarification.

So why this competition for the first time? Well, the main aim is to identify the winner from Brunei and represent for the ASEAN-Japan Cyber SEA Game which will be held in Jakarta this November. Only the top two teams will represent Brunei in Indonesia. This was announced by Shamsul Bahri, CEO of ITPSS.

The registration is open to Brunei citizens and also to permanent residents aged 30 years and below. You must enter as a team of 2 or 3 members. The closing date for the registration is 2nd October 2015. You can click here to register for the competition. You can also follow their IG for updates @brucert

The event is organised by IT Protective Security Services Sdn Bhd (ITPSS) in their role as Brunei Computer Emergency Response Team (BruCERT). This competition is also supported by Authority for Info-Communication Technology of Brunei (AITI).

Shamsul Bahri, CEO of ITPSS briefing the media on the competition

Caroline Ho revealed the prizes for the top 3 teams. Love the prizes too.

Check out the prizes for the top 3 teams

Muhd Shahrul Fadillah Umar explaining the flow of the competition

Representing Brunei – Lim Ao, Bridgette Ang, D-1 and What?!

They were happy to be on the international stage

They may have not won the finals but they stole the hearts of the audience. Last week, our local musicians belted it out at the ‘Be our Rock & Pop Soul’ Music Competition held at Ho Chin Minh City, Vietnam. Two representatives from Brunei made it to the finals – Lim Ao and What?! band. All in all, there were eleven musicians that flew off led by Lily Chiam and also accompanied by their music instructors.

This was the first time that Brunei participated in the competition and they managed to impressed the judges. Tyler Smith, the Senior Vice President of Trinity College in London, also had praised Bruneian performers. “They rocked the house right there,” he said, amid loud cheers from the audience. “The drums were in my face. I liked it.”

It’s good to see that Bruneians are able to perform on the international stage at a very young age. Keep the great work and also credit to the mentors. Images courtesy of Arthur John.

D-1 wooing the crowd with their rendition of “Crazy in love”

The grand winner from Thailand

Evan Chiam rocking the stage

Lim Ao electrifying the crowd with his solo performance