Ahmadinejad indecent!

Oh so says Hezbollah...

LOL

Poor fella.

Don't curb students' enthusiasm

An article I thought everyone should read. From NST a few months ago.

Zainah Anwar (NST 09 Feb 2007)

Don't curb students' enthusiasm

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OUR students in the UK are, oh, so shy, so unassertive, they keep to themselves, they don’t mix? I am surprised that the Minister of Higher Education is surprised. This is not a new problem.

When I was studying in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, there were "kampung Melayus" sprouting on campuses in several universities in the Midwest. Friends complained of surveillance, peer pressure and anonymous letters slipped under their doors or sent home to the Public Service Department by fellow students if they were seen to be too close to too many Americans.

Even in Indonesia, our students don’t mix. A friend teaching at the Islamic University in Jogjakarta says the Malaysian students on her campus are so totally unassertive and disinterested and pursue the easiest of courses taught by the easiest of lecturers.

They avoid the many discussion groups that flourish on and off campus which bring together students and activists to discuss the latest books, ideas and debate on current issues. They would not take part in the many training sessions on human rights, democracy and women’s rights.

Actually, we the taxpayers are not getting value for the millions of our tax money spent on scholarship for these students who might as well remain in Malaysia if they only want to be "jaguh kampung".

Our young adults are losing out in a competitive world that is hungry for talent. In the end, it is Malaysia that will lose out.

In 1980, I wrote about racial polarisation on our university campuses and how some of the bright and articulate students I interviewed at the University of Malaya called it the Pantai Valley High School.

It was not the exciting, enriching university life they envisaged, but a life restricted and regulated by the Universities and University Colleges Act. In school, they had freedom to write letters to whomever they pleased, be it to make a school visit to a factory or a palace museum.

Imagine their shock when they found out that at university, all letters needed to go through the Dean of Student Affairs. And they were often reminded lest they were hatching rebellions, any unauthorised gathering of more than five constituted an offence. How to be assertive?

And the racial polarisation; everywhere on campus Malay students were with Malays, Chinese with Chinese and Indians with Indians — be it at the canteen, at the library, walking the streets from class to hostel and back.

The students spoke of how they were corralled into racial blocs by their seniors the moment they stepped into campus.

Woe betide those who stepped out of the box. An anonymous letter would be slipped under their door "condemning" them to hellfire and damnation.

My editor was so shocked by my findings that he decided not to publish the story. It does look that after 26 years, nothing much has changed.

When I recently told this story to a professor at the University of Malaya, she said she would be so lucky today to find a student astute enough to even make a remark about a campus life that is more akin to secondary school.

Most days, she says, she feels like pulling up her students by their collars to breathe life into them.

So dear minister, they are, oh, so shy, so unassertive, so not mixing with others on home ground as well. And it’s been going on for over two decades.

There is obvious awareness and concern by the country’s leadership that much has gone wrong with our education system, our socialisation and politicisation that have produced these unassertive, inarticulate, intellectually and socially disengaged, racially segregated and unemployable graduates.

Much hope is placed on the recently launched National Education Blueprint and its many promises, including the promise to produce well rounded students who will think out of the box.

A friend runs a programme that exposes students to literature, music, art, critical thinking and public speaking before they spend more of their parents’ hard-earned money to study abroad.

These are straight A students, whose parents woke up one day to realise that darling Johan and Janine who scored 11 A1s in SPM actually lack the cultural literacy necessary to succeed and get the best out of university education in the West.

My friend and her team of trainers were stunned that these students did not know a single fairy tale. An exercise to rewrite Hansel and Gretel from the witch’s point of view drew a blank; when asked if they knew other fairy tales, they did not. They had not heard of Winston Churchill even though they all got A1 for history.

They had never seen nor met a person in a wheelchair; they had never been to an art gallery or a museum, in spite of living in Kuala Lumpur and enjoying annual holidays abroad. One boy was passionate about studying aviation engineering and wanted to own an airline, but had never heard of Tony Fernandes.

Life for these kids revolved around school, tuition, shopping malls and computer games. What they did not know, they felt they didn’t need to know.

And yet, they wanted to go to Cambridge or Stanford and wanted to do well in their interviews and essays; but they had nothing much to say about themselves and their interests beyond the string of A1s for which they were rewarded and their parents applauded. Eleven A1s and not an ounce of zest to spare does not a successful life make.

At the other end of the scale, I do meet students and young people who are far from shy and disengaged. They have friends from different races and different countries, they read voraciously, they go to museums, concerts, plays, they backpack to the islands off Malaysia and Thailand and through God-forsaken countries of the world, they listen to world music, they speak their minds.

I meet young university students who dare to organise events outside the campuses, campaigning against the UUCA and dirty student elections, giving free tuition to squatter kids, cooking free food for the homeless, hanging out with non-governmental organisation activists and theatre practitioners.

These young people live their lives to the full, ever teetering on a fine balance between family, friends, fun and studies or a budding career of their choice.

What makes them different? For some, it might be class, but for most others, it is exposure.

Whether growing up in a family that eats, reads and talks together, or getting exposed to the works of Alice Walker and Maya Angelou in English class, or having a lecturer who loves the theatre and drags his students to all the plays in KL, or meeting an inspiring aging ex-student leader who wanted to join the university social club but ended up in the socialist club.

By design or by accident, it is exposure to adults who opened up their minds to other possibilities in life that made a difference to the lives of these effervescent young people.

A friend’s 15-year-old daughter complained how the teachers at school (a premier school, mind you) say no to everything suggested by the students — be it to organise a talentime (what would parents say if you kids wear sexy clothes), a Halloween party with the neighbourhood children (oh no, it’s Western culture), dance and music classes (cannot, must "jaga diri"), regular field trips to museums, orphanages, school for the blind (too many permissions to ask, forms to fill and transport to organise).

That many of the shy, unassertive students and young graduates have potential is without doubt.

The tragedy is we adults have failed them as we pour cold water over their ideas or just remain indifferent to their natural instinct to explore, discover, innovate, take risks, be different. It is our fault because we shut the doors and windows on them.

Note to self

Everyone is a potential ass.

Deal with it.



I'm incredibly sensitive. Ha-ha.

Colors (yes I have converted to American spellings)

Whether you're red, blue, green or purple it does not matter. We may have different parents and different values but in the end, all the colors of the rainbow will always turn to white. So stop prescribing and assuming that if one is green, one can only do green things. To think that red is red and that's why they can "do" the things they "do" but at the same time balk in disgust when green do the same thing just says "I'm bigoted and ignorant!". You may think it's your duty to save all your greens from the gates of helldom but hey! aren't the reds just like any other color too? Don't we all come from the same place? We never chose to be red, blue, green or purple. To say green is supreme and all green is right (provided they behave) and the others are to be condemned if they do not "become" green just does not make sense to me.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple. Doesn't that look nice together?


Got worked up after reading a blog post. I hope I made sense.

Piercing pending

I shall have a piercing on my upper left ear within these two weeks! My dad has technically given me the liberty to choose about a month ago.

Pa hypothetically, can I have a piercing kat sini? *points at the upper ear*
*little sarcastic snigger* If you ask me, of course tak boleh...but I can't force you out of it. Iya decide sendiri.
Ohhh...okayyy...*starts plotting*

Haha he is so going to be shocked.

Mika I Like

You people probably

• already love him!
  
• have only seen his Grace Kelly video
  
• have only an inkling of who he is
  
• have no clue who he is!
  

Well he's a Lebanese musician who is half American and based in the UK. Basically he's a musical genius whose music have been compared to Queen, Elton John and even Rufus Wainwright! Ok I'm currently in love with him. Yes he may be gay but hell he is good. His songs are probably the most original in the 21st century pop music. Yes he's that original and good, I'm actually listening to pop music. Well at least, his pop music.

I'm not going to make anyone listen to him but I just had to let it out. But hey if you love him too, yay! If you think he sucks, it's your loss!















Picture from mikasounds.com


Check out his live video on my YouTube Favorites sidebar!

Einstein & Faith

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.

I'm not an atheist. I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.

From the TIME Magazine's article: Einstein & Faith

Words of wisdom

Well I only have three.

If you're tired of watching paint dry, try watching cheese mold

random internet user's opinion on a 24-hour live telecast of cheese, well, becoming cheese

An idle mind is the devil's workshop

reason a lecturer gave to stop me from constantly shaking my legs

And my favorite,

I don't want moss growing on my ass

good friend on toilet hygiene

In my own universe

The fact that I'll be leaving in mere months have made myself a little bit out of touch, distant or whatever you call it. My thinking mode has gone over drive and I feel lazier. Its like whatever I do here won't really result in anything permanent. The thought of having to come back to college for a "special" semester in April just suck really. Why oh why do I have to come back when it really doesn't matter anymore? Past scholars here who went to the US didn't have to come back for two months of class. Ok now I'm just complaining. But I do feel like floating around and just live for the moment. Even at college sometimes I can't be bothered to socialize properly when hey I won't probably see you ever again in four years! (Don't take this to heart people, I've made good friends and you know who you are but I don't know if you people realize that I can be asocial at times, lol) Seriously though!


Illini update
Well this past week has been dominated by talk about housing, meal plans, visa and the Monday trip. I guess the Tiga Sekawan trio (Me-Aidil-Faruq) will be a reality! Haha I'm glad we'll be spending our "golden years" together in Illinois. LOL. Not to mention another 10 years after that. Hahah. We'll be true soulmates. We even have a business plan to promote Malaysia's fine gourmet. Faruq will be the comedian teh tarik maker, Aidil the model-cashier-dhal maker and me the roti canai and cendol quasi-chef. Cendol only available during winter. USD 1 for teh tarik, USD 3 for roti canai (this is gourmet baby). Cendol price TBC. That's to be confirmed. Lol. Now that is lame. (Just the last part. The plan is flawless.) Love you guys!

Nanti kite tebuk lubang kat lantai! Boleh nampak Mar!
For what? Nak buat phone line?
Boleh jugak.
Oit local calls are free lah.

Sorry for any misquote. That's how I remembered it. Hehehe.

Last days of semester 2

Guess what its the finals. I've got a calculus test tomorrow afternoon and here I am blogging happily. I realized that time do fly really fast and the end of semester two is approaching. It was just a few months ago I was in utter misery with 50 hour weeks (correct me if I'm wrong), piano lessons and uncertainty over if I was even going to fly!

But as I will be 17.3 years old in a matter of days, things are certainly a lot better with a lighter class load and of course the end of semester two.

I shall be looking forward to guiltless me time during the 3 week holiday even though I'll be studying for the AP tests that will be held in the beginning of special semester. I'll try to follow Amanda's plan that includes becoming a slave to the AP book whilst maintaining me time. Haha. And of course I'll have to start polishing on my piano if I'm going to ace (i mean pass) the ABRSM's grade 8. Not to mention I should also (finally) start on my driving so that I can drive the Nissan or maybe even the Honda. Haha its plausible though. The last but not the least of my holiday plans is to get fit. Lol but seriously though. I'll make myself jog every morning or something.

Four months and one week.

Four months and one week then bye bye to tropical weather and great cheap food and hello to seasonal wardrobes and central heaters!


Additional crapping - Looking forward to study in Obama's state (LOL). It might not be a fancy private university, but hell its number one for civil engineering. Plus my parents went to the same state to study when they were younger. My dad is even planning to get his college buddy to get me a good deal with a second hand car (yay! if he's serious lah). Even my dad is starting to dream.