Chee Weng: Yerr you're like a normal girlfriend now!
Sam: Normal girlfriend?! Why?! What's a normal girlfriend?!
Chee Weng: You're taking food pictures!!!!

I just wanted to show off the ham and egg ramekin sandwich... :(

I really enjoy some of my assignments this semester, although the workload is tedious and the deadlines tight. I'm learning a lot through my own researches. Partly because this sem we have subjects like Global Societies and Media Literacies. Although the lecturer is a little long winded in the latter subject, the former one is breezing through the topics a little too lightly for my liking. We cover things like migration, justice, human rights - somewhat similar to what we did in World Issues, but the lecturer just touched the subjects on the surface and we never delve into anything in a more in-depth level!!!! We could have learned so much more. It isn't that she's uninformed - she definitely knows what she's teaching - it's just the way she teach. I wish she'd teach us more.

Today someone presented on terrorism in Afghanistan, and when she showed a picture of a person being lynched while there were people watching on, and this:


Source

And she laughed. She found the pictures to be very funny. And then the class laughed with her. At the end of the presentation the lecturer said she seemed very happy to be presenting, and she said so herself that she found the pictures funny.

Honestly, I was horrified. I wonder what the lecturers in ICPU would have done if they were there. Ms Christie told us off for the first time when someone made fun of a picture of a malnutritioned child. Mr Colin told the class off when they laughed at homosexuals. From the stories I've heard, Mr Moaz, Mr Hannah and Mr Wise will definitely have not tolerated the laughter.

Today my lecturer stayed silent.

Last weekend I attended my first leadership camp - first camp of any sorts, actually. It was fun, I really enjoyed it. Except for the sleeping part, that is. The beds were filthy and I kept waking up in the middle of the night cos I was FREEZING - can you imagine? There were only fans and I was freezing. Wtf. I came back with really bad muscle pains, I can't even walk up the stairs. It was a fun experience (although it ate up 2 days worth of assignment work) and if there's another one, I think I won't mind going :)

Also, I was really proud of myself!! We had an obstacle course and I actually jumped off walls and did another round of flying fox *o* This coming from the girl who want to cry every time she walk in the Taylor's main campus' narrow hallways!!

During our de-brief we had to come up some activities for our club (the camp was for a scholars' club) and I suggested helping the disaster victims of the recent earthquake and typhoon. It had a generally good response until someone pointed out that to be able to commit to a cause we'd had to be able to relate and sympathise with the cause, and she doesn't "feel" the cause in this case.

For the most part, I agree. Most people look at awareness posters and don't feel anything, or help out at a cause because they have to and not because they want to. It's a valid point. But when she said "feel" - It sort of put me off. I understand about relating. I can't relate to cancer patients. I can't relate to disabled patients. But there's always empathy - and that's the reason I want to help them. It doesn't matter what the cause is, the point is I am the more fortunate one in this case, and if I am able to help, I want to help.

How can you not 'feel' for the disaster victims and refuse to help just because of that? Especially when the victims are our neighbours.

It could have been us.

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

---

Do you have any idea how much I love American Dreams!!! And how much I love the leather jacket on Roxanne in season 2, that is the sole reason why I'm lusting over leather jackets - because it looked cool on her pfft.

I was reading a book on the events leading up to the 13th May riots, and I realised that that was a very scary time to live in. I wonder what was my parents or grandparents doing at the time?

The 1940s was the time of Hitler, of Churchill, of Roosevelt, of Stalin, of Mussolini... What would be the word to describe this? Powerful? Charismatic? Great, even?

When I tell my friends that I chose 1Malaysia as a topic for an essay, they give me a "are you for real?" look and shake their heads while laughing. "Do you think it'll work?" they'll ask. "No," I'll answer. And then they'll laugh even harder. When I told Jowee, she answered something along the lines of, "you doing on 1Malaysia already says cynicism". Oh how I miss you Jowee! :(

I'm actually giving 1Malaysia a chance. It seems like nothing more than a slogan to me, and probably something that makes the Prime Minister seems like he'd achieved something by the end of his reign here. "Ex-PM Najib was the mastermind behind the beautiful concept of multiculturalism called 1Malaysia...". But I don't go around harping "is this 1Malaysia?" every time something negative appears in the news, as if every single disaster that happens is Najib's fault and is related to 1Malaysia (although the 1Malaysia F1 thing is a bit silly). 1Malaysia is something that we all know we want to achieve in Malaysia, even before Najib gave it a formal name and made it into a propaganda. Najib did not give birth to multiculturalism as a reality. 1Malaysia means to cultivate this culture of unity further, as a more obvious emphasis now, so that we'd put in effort to live in unity.

In an ideal world, that's the idea.

I understand that in reality it really is easier said than done. So why don't the critics give it some time try things out before lashing out on the idea the moment that it was announced? Of course, first of all our own government will have to practise what they preach - this is the reason why I said I don't believe 1Malaysia will work.

Upon doing research, I realise a lot of people would bring up Mahathir, his choice for his successor and then his successor's choice of successor. This reminded me of my second year in secondary school. During my first year, it was the last year for the headmistress who had been serving the school for many years before I came. She had a way about her, a staunch and strict woman but reasonable sounding. A lot of us liked her a lot. When she announced her plans to work for the government, she promised that she would personally choose a responsible candidate for us, and that she was a close friend of hers and has complete trust in her.

We were very disappointed in her choice. The new headmistress implemented a lot of changes that made her very unpopular (is there such word) among us students, some of us liked to blame it back on our previous headmistress - she promised to select someone competent! Even my class teacher told my mum that the former headmistress would listen to our complaint and do something about it, and if we were to go to this headmistress there would be no outcome, just a waste of time.

By the end of my time as a student of Seri Bintang Utara, I had no attachment to the school at all. I was so jaded by the system, by the "education" I was receiving, by the teachers. And probably by the students too, but that's another story...

I'm far from done with my research, but I'm still not getting the cynicism. But then I realise that it's because the people are jaded. It's as if the people have been receiving indoctrination of spite towards the government for years - distrust the government, losing hope, in a such a way that everything that spouts of the government's mouth is just empty words. The sad thing is, the people's negativity are always being proved right, again and again and again. If we say something is just empty words, it almost always is. If we say something is a waste of money, it almost always is. I say "we", not the extremists, or the ignorant people who only know how to critisise without looking into the issue deeper - but the average person who had been keeping up with the news and has been disappointed repeatedly.