Bukan Budaya Kita

What is our Malaysian culture? As Malaysia is a multi-racial country, we can see many different cultures in our country. For example, the Malays will be fasting for a period of time for a month before Hari Raya Aidilfitri, the Chinese use chopstick to eat and the Indians paint henna for special occasions like holidays, birthdays and weddings. In fact, although we (Malaysians) are of different races and religion, we do not just practise our own culture only. In this modern era, I see Chinese girls painting henna on their hands too! 

Henna

If we don't talk about cultural and religious practice, we Malaysians have our own Malaysian culture too. For example, regardless what race and religion we are, we speak "Bahasa Rojak" in our daily casual conversation. In Malaysia nowadays, in just one sentence, we will have a mixture of languages sometimes such as Bahasa Melayu, English, Mandarin, Tamil, Cantonese and Hokkien. This is our unique Malaysian culture that cannot be found in any other country. This also shows that we can live and mix well with our friends who are of different races from us. 



However, based on the National Cultural Policy (NCP) that was formed in 1971, there are 3 principles as the guidelines for national culture:

1. The national culture must be based on the indigenous culture (Malay).
2. Other cultures which have suitable elements may be accepted as the part of the national culture.
3. Islam is an important component and also the model of the national culture.

In my opinion, I think it is very unfair for the Malaysians. As I mentioned earlier, Malaysia is a multi-racial country. We should not just focus on only one race or religion. If we only focus on one race or religion, riot among races will happen again. Why would we want wars and riots in our country? Can't we just live peacefully as MALAYSIANS in our country? Isn't it good if all races practise the same MALAYSIAN CULTURES in our own country? Therefore in conclusion, I wish that no matter what race we are, we are MALAYSIANS. Everyone has the equal rights as a MALAYSIAN. Isn't it wonderful and heart-warming to see us Malaysians (including all races) being friends together sincerely and helping each other in our daily life? :D

Malaysia Boleh!

Colours

We have conducted a group activity yesterday during our tutorial class. Dr. Carmen divided us into groups and we were given a colour respectively. Each group of people must think as many things related to the colour that we got in a short period of time. Different groups got different colour. After drawing lots, my group got the colour GREEN.

When we think of the colour green, the first thing that comes to our mind is definitely grass or trees. The colour green is actually the colour of balance, it represents harmony and growth. Also, it is a positive colour! 

We've thought of many things besides trees and grass related to green, such as ketupat, ninja turtle, Milo brand, PAS logo, whatsapp and many more.

Through this small activity, I learned that different colour represents different meaning, thus affecting the mindset of a person. For example, if we think of the colour black, most of the answers are more towards to negativity. 

And what is more interesting about colour is that sometimes the colour you like the most somewhat shows your attitude and personality in real life.

Here's the link to know more about colours and its meanings! :D

Immigrants in Malaysia

The number of immigrants moving to our country is getting greater and greater every year. As a Malaysian, should we accept or reject them?

In my opinion, I would say to send them back after they have done with their work.

In fact, not to be stereotyping, Malaysia's crime rate has been increasing and one of the factors is because of the immigrants especially those illegal immigrants. I would like to share my experience that makes me think that accepting immigrants will increase the crime rate in our country:

My friends and I met a flasher outside our university. We reported to the security guard at our university and in the end the flasher was caught by the security guard. We filed a police report and the flasher was successfully arrested by the police. One or two days later, the police officer wanted us (the victims) to go to the detention centre to recognize and to officially point out the flasher among 10 suspects (including the flasher). In the detention centre, there was a white board recording the amount of suspects in the "jail". They categorized it based on the ethnicity of the suspects. What I noticed was the number of immigrants was the largest compared to the Malay, Chinese, Indian and Others categories.

Moreover, the job opportunity for the Malaysians will decrease if we keep on accepting immigrants. Employers nowadays would prefer to hire foreign workers rather than local workers as majority of the local workers have high payment expectation. When they hire foreign workers, the employers can save more money. Therefore, in the future, we Malaysians will end up "fighting" with the immigrants for job opportunities. 

With these 2 major reasons, I think that it is better to send the immigrants back to their own country after their permit expired.

Image VS Word

7/6/2016 ; Tuesday

Today our class had a debate and discussion on Fahmi Reza's case. One question that makes me wonder why, has been asked by our lecturer. The question was why do we often heard of those cartoonists or artists who criticize our political issues through their artworks got caught more easily than those journalist who criticize our political issues through writings? Is an artwork or a image really more powerful than words? My answer is YES.

People say "a picture speaks a thousand words". A picture is able to capture the attention of the audience rather than words sometimes. Moreover, instead of expressing some messages or information through writings, an image, an artwork or a picture can replace the writings more effectively in terms of expressing the content of the message or information. An image, an artwork or a picture makes people understand faster and better compared to words. For example:

Image to express happiness

Image to express the feeling of heart-broken

Images really do create a greater impact rather than words. For example, advertisement especially the Public Service Announcement (PSA) often uses image to convey the important message to the audience as majority of the people nowadays prefer to see images instead of words.

PSA of anti-smoking in words

PSA of anti-smoking in image and a short sentence

Obviously people would notice the content of an image first as compared to a content that is filled with text. Therefore, in my opinion, an image is more powerful than words. That is why when an artist or a cartoonist criticizes our Prime Minister, he or she will be caught or arrested so easily because their work or image catches people's attention more easily.

First Field Trip To Publika!

4/6/2016 ; Saturday ; 

Today, our class had a field trip to the Art for Grabs festival in Publika. Due to some personal reasons, my friends and I did not follow UTAR bus to Publika and we went there ourselves later than our other classmates.  

 The event place was swarmed by people as we reached there. There were many booths related to art, craft, designs, and books. Some arts and crafts were really nice but I did not purchase them all as the prices of some of them were quite high. 

                                                

                                     

                                     

Fortunately, my friends and I saw notebooks which we, as a university students, need, were being sold at a booth named "Unique Art 'n' Craft" at a very affordable price. The notebook was quite thick and it was only for RM5. Therefore my friends and I purchased all the notebooks that they had in the booth (they only had the last 6 unit in stock). 

Notebook to raise awareness of animal freedom

From left to right: Bernd Pickert, R. Nadeswaran, Sharaad Kuttan

At 2.30pm, my friends and I registered ourselves to a talk entitled "It Isn't a Crime: Re-imagining Investigative Journalism". The panelist of the talk was Bernd Pickert and R. Nadeswaran and the moderator was Sharaad Kuttan. They shared their opinion and experience as a journalist when writing a story. They said that a journalist has to try their best to find out all the facts and also to know what the readers want to read. To be honest I could not really understand some parts of this talk as the content was something very new and unfamiliar to me and I find it quite hard to get what they said.

From left to right: Harith Iskander, Lau Chak Onn, Ezra Zaid.

At 4pm, we continued to attend another talk entitled "Funning the News". The panelists of this talk was Harith Iskander and Lau Chak Onn and the moderator was Ezra Zaid. It is about making the news interesting. In the talk, they discussed about the credibility of the news when humor is added in the content of the news. Chak Onn stated that humor does not affect the credibility of the news and sometimes interesting news does not need humor to be interesting. Besides, they also discussed how to joke about a news. Honestly, I really enjoyed listening to this talk and I think it was very interesting as compared to the previous talk that I attended. 

Same design as my friends' but with black string

After the talk, one of my friends and I decided to follow UTAR bus to go back to UTAR at 6pm. Before we left, we bought bracelets of the same design but different colour strings for ourselves as our "friendship matching items". 

In my opinion, all the booth at the Art for Grabs festival in Publika were really attractive but one of the booth that really caught my attention was the booth set up by Fahmi Reza. To be honest I did not know who he was until he got caught by the police that day. His booth is one of my favourite because I think that he is very brave to stand up and "voice out" for most of the Malaysians through his art works as an artist. I did not purchase anything from him but he did really earned my respect as a Malaysian. Hmm that's the end of our first field trip! I hope we will have more field trip like this as we can gain more extra knowledge! Hehe.

A selfie before we left! *missing Anne & Sze Jia*