Old Boys Weekend!

Today is The Malay College Old Boys Weekend for the year 2007. Any self respecting old boys would do whatever they could just to attend this 2 and a half day reunion back in our old college, in the sleepy town of Kuala Kangsar. Where was I? Kuala Lumpur.

What the hell am I doing in Kuala Lumpur? Old Boys Weekend is in that other Kuale! Well, it turned out that I have to attend an exam this morning and on Monday I have a lot of papers to submit so yeah, the thought of that really do overweight the feeling I have to go back to sweet ol' Kuala Kangsar. Anyway, it was not all that bad though since Mungay, Alep, Hariri and I decided on an Old Boys Weekend of our own in the big bad capital of Malaysia.

Well, that's a tough talk isn't it? But technically ours too was an old boys weekend since we have both the old boys, and we met on a weekend. Haha.. Nevertheless, I do feel that the guys back in College are having a helluva better time than we did but we settled with what we have, eachother.

So I guess it'll be another year before next year's Old Boys Weekend and I don't really know how fate would intervene then but I really really hope I could be there. To all Budak Koleq, have a nice Old Boys Weekend wherever you are!

Labels: mckk

Of language and dialects

I just came back from my Indonesian friend, Keisha's house since she need some help with her Information Age essay.

Anyway, I always thought she stayed in Cyberia with her friend but it turned out it was her aunt's place. I clicked on her doorbell and her maid opened the door for me. I remembered what Tante Yati said that most Indonesian have maids so it wasn't quite a suprise about it. Most of the Indonesians living here also brought their maid along with them from back home.. I wonder why they don't employ those who are already here. Hurm..

Nevertheless, her aunty and her mom came back a few hours later which I must admit, shocked me since I thought this is just her aunty's place; I didn't expect her to live here along with Keisha's mom! Anyway, I was hungry and her aunties brough back some very thick murtabak and asked me to help prepare the dishes. She must've though that I'm Indonesian too since she speak to me in Bahasa Indonesia throughout the way. Thank God I somewhat understood what she said!

Later I was back at helping Keisha with her work. I spoke to her in English and that must've tipped her aunt because she asked Keisha whether I was Malaysian. Then I overheard her mother and her aunt conversing on the couch behind me. They were whispering so God knows how I overheard them.

Aunt: Eh, itu orang Malaysia iya?
Mum: Iyak, Keisha bilang dia orang Malaysia.
Aunt: Tadi aku ngomong Indonesia sama dia. Dia ngerti kok?
Mum: Pasti, pasti ngerti. Teman-temannya rame orang Indonesia..

I tried my best not to laugh or turn around and smiled at them though I really felt like. I think most Malaysian could possibly grasp some if not all what Indonesian are saying nowadays since we are very much exposed to Indonesian material through our media. Imagine the makciks who spend their evenings watching sinetrons, they could possibly speak perfect Indonesian after the season ends don't you think?

Anyway, after finishing the work with Keisha I told her about what I overheard and she laughed. She agreed that if we really try, slowly but surely we could both understand each other when we speak in our different yet same mother toungue. I remember a friend of mine telling me that for you to learn Indonesian easily is to see it as a dialect, not as another language entirely just like how you percieve Kécék Kelaté and Cakap Utara. Nevertheless, most Malaysians are still being ignorant of these beautiful dialects and dismiss them as being kampung compared to the standard Malay which is actually derived from the dialect of Riau as being more urban. I wonder why..

Sometimes I just feel lucky to be here in Cyberjaya since I am able to be both in Malaysia yet still be able to engage people of different cultures.

Labels: friends, social

Obstacles

I don't know why I can't download torrents here in Cyberjaya. I've heard of the news about torrent being suppressed from a friend last weekend but I dismissed it as untrue since back in Rawang I was torrenting succesfully. Well, maybe Maxis Broadband hasn't jumped on the Streamyx bandwagon yet.. maybe.

Anyway, just to let you know that apart from the massive workload, I'm having a huge writer's block right now. I don't know if any of you noticed but my writing has deteriorated for quite a while now and I haven't been posting as frequently as I used too.. I wonder when this thing will go away. I wanna write!

Hang in there folks!

Go girl power!

What's worse than people who abuses power is those who have power but does not use it. Power can be a lot of things and influence is one of them. So girls, if your significant other is inhaling something worse than cigarette in front of you, please do use the influence you have and stop than man. Sitting there and just looking won't help.

Go girl power!

What I've learnt from Information Age class

Pejam celik-pejam celik, I am now almost at the end of the semester. Wow! How fast time flies and I wasn't even having fun.

Well, I'm not going to bore you with details of my assignments but rest assured that I have a lot of papers to write. Anyway, today is the last lecture for Faizal Nafis' Information Age class where we discussed on convergence, how nowadays a phone is more than a phone, a computer does more things than just compute and how that differs from say, 20 years ago. It's great that he talked about all this since it really helped a lot of us understand more about our assignment.. though as always, some are still clueless.

Anyway, there's one question that Faizal asked us that kept me thinking: what is it that some other media can do that the almighty Internet could not? Naturally the whole class was silent and everyone made that "I am deeply thinking" look. I doubt Faizal himself know the answer but he atleast tried by giving us this answer:

You can use the newspaper to wipe your ass when you run out of toilet paper

Hahaha.. How did he come out with that one? That's what I love about phylosophy class. Though we try hard to think big, the answer could sometimes be very simple.

Talking about newspapers, I have been a longtime The Star fan but I noticed that in the lights of the many buy-elections (yes, buy) that we are now having, The Star is being very biased in rporting compared to happier times. I know elections are important, I can't wait to vote but is it necessary to report every single detail of what Barisan Nasional is doing in Ijok when there are more important things left to be discussed? That is why I buy more NST these days. I just learned that their opinion columns can be very interesting read albeit the whole newspaper is very much thinner than The Star which sell at the came price.

Newspaper is perhaps the most powerful medium of information in Malaysia today. Internet is huge, I know, but how many people actually use the Internet as a medium to acquire information? Most of us just check Friendster and MySpace only right? On top of that, we are being spoonfed everyday by the government who insisted that everything on the Internet is false and silly. I guess people just haven't figured out the true capabilities of the Internet yet.. I remember discussing about the YouTube video about our Parlimen meeting during the 'You tak suka you keluar dari Malaysia' incident with a friend yesterday. That video shows us that hey, that's our politicians, brawling over stupid things and acting like monkeys. But at the end of the day, how many people actually saw that video? 29011 people. Lets say that only 25000 of this people are Malaysian. Then we minus the teenagers like me who can't vote and you minus those people who refuse to vote. We would probably be left with what, 17000? 18000? Let's just say that my figure is right, that means from the 24 million Malaysians, only 0.08% have seen this video and are eligible to vote. Sad isn't it?

I'm not ridiculing anyone but I personally think some papers in Malaysia are just pure rubbish. Honestly. I don't read Harian Metro, I don't read Kosmo and I don't read Utusan. How the heck this newspapers are allowed to be published? The news are mostly substandard with highly featurized stories which makes me wonder which one is the hard news and which one is the soft one. The same goes for magazines like Mastika. Yet, from what I see, this newspapers are the one that is making sales while newspapers with hard hitting news and great columns and articles like The NST are dismissed because the English is 'too hard to understand'. Go and read Tolkien and come back to me with a better answer. At the end of the day, people just love sensational news don't we? I'm sorry if you love this publications but that is what I think of it.

Many people ridicule me for being such an Internet buff, probably the same person who said blogging is silly. I don't give a damn.. I just couldn't care about whatever they say. We live in the Information Age here folks, the Internet is our Woodstock, it is our Vietnam, it is our Berlin Wall. Indulge in it. This is our time, why should we shy away from it? Why don't we make the most of it? I used to look at major historical events and said to myself, "Gee.. I wish I was apart of that", but then I realized that I was not meant for that time. I was meant for now and so are the rest of you my brilliant readers. Let's make full use of this opportunity and I know that we can make a difference, Insyaallah.

4 months ago I could not think about most of the stuff I just said and during first day of the class I dread the look of Mr. Faizal who reminds me of some of my high school teachers. The course Information Age itself sounded too ridiculous to me at that time. Oh, how our first impressions are always wrong. I can now say that I love Information Age and Mr. Faizal is perhaps my favourite lecturer. I guess I must than you Mr. Faizal Nafis for opening up my mind to this kind of stuff which I would never be able to understand by myself. You are probably the best Media lecturer a student could ever ask for. Thank you!

Labels: media, studies

0105 Blog now open!

It's done! Yeeha.. Okay, I might be too rash at this but the more I think about it the more excited I am at the Batch Blog idea. It is very new and I'm still playing with the bubble wraps though. There's nothing much to it yet and the template itself is very much spartan. Fret not folks, the best is yet to come!

Aspiring writers from MCKK Class of 2005 are welcomed to register as author. Information on how to do that is available at the blog. Just click at the picture and you'll be there in moments. Please support this effort ya? Thank you very much.

Labels: mckk

0105 Blog

Phewh! I just passed up my storyboard today and now I'm left with 4 assignments to pass up in two weeks time. Sounds easy isn't it? Not really.

Anyway to my fellow batchmates, I noticed the fuss about an uncentralized centers of information for our batch, namely our Yahoo! Group, Friendster Group and of course, the niche Flickr Pool. I was thinking of a way to centralize things but at the end, I end up thinking of yet another website for you all to visit and rub shoulders.

Before you start cursing me and create plans to ruin my life, let me have a chance to explain my latest idea. I noticed that our batch have a lot of great minds and superb writers such as Cepe, Nageb, Amar and what not. I noticed that this people are indeed very busy and finds it hard to manage their own blog and thus, everything lay redundant. Isn't it guys? I also noticed that hey, there's a lot of us all around the world these days, they must've a lot to tell about their life abroad. So there, 3 realizations.. this latest effort folks, is targetted to connect that 3 points and make something out of it and I really am considering a blog for The Class of 2005.

For this effort, I plan to use either Blogger or WordPress as the platform since both allow multiple authors to one blog. What this means is that anyone can basically write whatever they want on this blog as if it is their own blog while sharing it with several other authors. Cool isn't it? Heck, the only thing they need to do is log on and write and I will be doing all the tinkering with the layout and what not. It couldn't be easier! It would most probably be on Blogger since many people have an account for it but I still keep WordPress as a second option. What do you think?

Now at last we can have all the great minds of our batch to speak up in one place just like we used to do not long ago. We can still have those funny laughs and crazy chats at the Friendster Group and collect our photos in the Flickr Pool but this blog would be the place where we get serious. It's a wicked world that we live in, we need to be serious sometimes don't we?

This effort is very much in its infancy and I would really love to get feedbacks from you guys. Please support this effort. Thank you very much.

Labels: mckk

Movies I watched

I was not quite a fan of Chinese movies except for Stephen Chow's. Nevertheless, last week two Chinese movies caught my eyes: I'm Not Stupid Too and Bishonen.

I'm Not Stupid Too is a Singaporean movie, sequel to I'm Not Stupid. This movie really touched my heart because it talks about family deliquencies where children felt neglected by their busy parents. It is sad to say that most of the things portrayed in the movie, though in our neighbour country Singapore, is really happening in today's world. It is basically about 3 boys, Tom & Jerry and Chengcai. Tom & Jerry are brothers who parents are busy businessperson who have no time for their children. Tom have a talent at blogging though his parent dissapprove it as 'a waste of time'. Jerry on the other hand is trying to get his parents to go to his school concert where his playing the lead role. Chengcai's problem pulak is with his single father who always beats him and he grew up a man much like his dad. He got involved with all sort of disciplinary problem and eventually got kicked out of school because he fought with a teacher. The story doesn't stop there and it eventually ended in a happy ending.

What bothers me though is why can't we Malaysians make a movie like this. It is very much a simple story about the reality with little special effects and a very good storyline. We Malaysian do it the other way around, we have a lot of special effects, but our story is weak. Isn't it? Where did we go wrong here?

Bishonen on the other hand is about a gay love triangle between a cop who is trying to run away from his gay past but in turn found another gay person who fell in love with him. Most people would irk at the thought of gay movies but sometimes we need to open up our mind don't we? The movie talks true love that comes from the heart. True love doesn't necessarilly mean man loves woman. It can also be man love man.. It is what inside that matters isn't it? Apart from that, I really love this movie's cinematography where there are brilliant use of lighting and camera angles.

Well, what I learnt through this two movies is that we should never judge a movie by its genre, or the languagee. Yes, yes.. that sounds a little bit cliché isn't it? But there it is.. we often take those things for granted isn't it?

Labels: media

Good Night

I'm at the living room, writing from Walid's PC. Behind me is Dzul, Kecik and Walid. Dzul is helping me with my storyboard since Eric said that it's okay to get someone to help with the drawing. Thank God.. I wonder how it would've look like if I draw it.

Anyway, tomorrow is FTV class and I need to pass this assignment up by the end of class. I've also heard rumours that we are going to see yet another homoerotic movie this week which is a Hong Kong gay movie. Sweet. Two weeks ago was Boys Don't Cry, a lesbian movie. Last week we saw Mulholland Drive, another lesbian movie.. So I gigure it would be kind of cool to see guys kissing eachother for a change this time around.

Well, I better get to sleep now. Talk to you guys later ya? Good night.

Tubes and Storyboards

During Faizal's class today we discussed about the importance of audience in the media. Well, audience is of course very very important to the media since without audience, the media would fail its purpose isn't it? As I listen to his lecture, the more I understand that it is important for my upcoming assignment where I will be writing about YouTube.

So after class I went to talk with Faizal and to my suprise, the guy said that it is a very good topic and smiled! Wow, what a relief! He also said that it would be good if I write about the effects of YouTube to broadcasters on how they are trying to handle this new media contrary to traditional mediums. One such example which Faizal pointed out was lonelygirl15 which is a sitcom produced by two screenwriters which are aired on YouTube. Cool, now I know the direction I need to steer my assignment! Yeeha!

Nevertheless, as of this moment I am focussing on my Film and Television class' assignment which is a storyboard. Eric gave all of us a three paged article on a story called 'Orang Minyak' and told us to do the storyboard based on it. Well, I can't draw and my last effort at storyboards was during Theater Merdeka when I was in Form Five but alas, we try to try and we live to live isn't it?

Okay folks, hope you guys are happy with your workloads. I sure am happy with mine. No, seriously.

Labels: media, studies

Old Boy's Weekend blues

Bad luck: I have an exam on the 28th April.. a Saturday and more importantly, the Malay College Old Boy's Weekend. Oh shit.

You remember when I wrote about Murphy's Law? Well, I guess I really need to better my ties with Murphy since I've been bombarded by his law again and again and again. I was just about to ask what did I do wrong when my Karma speak to me:

"Have you really been going to Malaysian Studies every week?"

"Well, no actually", I relied. "I did skip some classes, just like every other course".

Oh cool. Now Karma is joining forces with Murphy it seemes.. Anyway, the exam is from 10 A.M till 11.30. I guess if I could just finish the paper early then shoot off straight to Kuala Kangsar I might still have time for the Weekend. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. And oh, Murphy.. please stay out of this ya?

Labels: mckk

Segregation on the LRT?

I thought I was living in Malaysia today.. until I turn on the radio and heard the news about there is a proposal in Parliament that calls for segregation of gender in the LRT. My thought of Malaysia fades and a vision of Taliban Afghanistan appeared. What are these politicians thinking?

I googled on the topic and though it is still new, there are a few alert bloggers who have already written about it. Among other reasons, the most likely one is that there are reports that Muslim couples are 'rubbing' against eachother in the crowded commuter. I was like, what? Just because a few kids are holding on to eachother you want to segregate the whole service? Oh, come on!

The LRT is where you get to see how Malaysians are really is. I've went through a lot of days seeing old ladies being denied of their seat by an irrate businessman who doesn't want to put his bag on the floor or his lap. I've seen a man standing up to give their seat to a senior citizen who refused to take the seat. I've seen people pura-pura tak nampak when a man on crutches embarked the train. It's not all bad though. Last week when I was on the KTM, we helped an elderly couple which the husband is blind and was carrying a bag get into the train. A young lady was even kind enough to give her seat to the couples. Do you plan to segregate these couple as well? There's always a good and bad side of everything. Why don't we think of the positive?

I hate people who talk a lot about something they don't have experience with. How many politicians who frequently use the LRT as a mode of transportation? How many? Do you guys know how is it like to ride it during rush hour where people cramped themselves just to get home in time for dinner? Korang naik Perdana ada driver, ada polis escort cakap senang la. Segregate konon.

Segregation will only make matter worst. Do you think we teenagers are so addicted to sex that we need to do the touchy feely even on the trains? Do you think we are that stupid Mr. Politician sir? If we really need to cuddle eachother, we have a lot of other venues where we could do it. Are you sure your son have never brought a girl back home while you were away Mr. Politician? Are you really really sure? Why do you care too much that boys and girls are holding hands on the train? You suppress them, and the only thing that would happen is them being more curious on why they are being suppressed. Sheesh.. Holding on to eachother on the train is nothing to be worry of Mr. Politician sir. Sometimes, it is a must. Have you heard of inertia? Oh yeah, you ride a Perdana with police escort. Of course you don't know about that.

Malaysia is always trying to do a lot of crazy implementations to better the society. Nevertheless, we still fail to admit that the core of most of our social problems is at school. Our education system sucks. Our classrooms are poorly equipt. Our SmartSchool project is a joke. You want to cure social ills? Implement Sex Education, reintroduce Civic and better the Moral and Islamic courses. Then you can dump that sorry excuse for national integrity you call the National Service and we all can focus on more important issues in the Parliament.

Segregation on the LRT? You can do better than that Mr. Politician.

Labels: Malaysia, politics, social

This is me.. I think

I was reading Layla's blog where I stubled upon this website.



Well, of course it's a Web 2.0 site aimed at social networking just like Friendster and MySpace but Imagini did it with a twist. Well, first you are given questions where you have to pick an answer from the photos given. As you might suspect, each photo tells a different perspective of a personality and at the end of it all, you'll get a 'book' describing yourself

So now you have your personality sorted out, Imagini'll try to connect you to other people who might have the same interest as you. I suspect this thing hasn't really flourished yet since 46% is the most anyone else is exactly the same as me. Talk about being unique.. Haha.

Well, what are you waiting for? I know you're bored. Click it and figure out who you are..

Labels: internet, social

Hectic Hectic Hectic

Wow.. If I have to some this week with only one word, I believe it would be hectic. I'm back in Rawang now, but later tonight I'll be back in Cyberjaya again.. C'est la vie.

On Monday I didn't go to Hanna's class since I lost respect for her since she doesn't know what the acronym CEO stands for. Yes folks, really. She said that it stands for Chief Engineering Officer. So if a thing as silly as that pun dia boleh tak tahu, I figure that there's no worth is going for her lecture. Well, nevermind I guess since we did already do the evaluation of our lecturers last week. I wonder if she'll still be here next semester.

Nevertheless, I did went to the tutorial for that course where I was supposed to pass up an assignment called 'The Data Bank' where we need to find resources on our topic (I choose censorship). I believe the whole idea of it is to see if we are capable of finding resources for assignments.. which is ironic since we have been passing up countless papers for 2 semester slready. Nevertheless, I asked for an extension and finished the whole 50 pages assignment on Friday.

Monday is also Journalism day where I met Razlan after 2 weeks of being absent (the hospital thing). I passed up my news writing exercises to him and he told me to fix some of the parts which he deemed inappropriate. Nothing major actually. Nevertheless he then told us of the next big thing, another news article but one that will cost us 20% of the total course points. In this news article, we are supposed to write on an issue that is in our area so I was thinking of the problem with the Rawang main road or as Abah suggested, the abandonned school in front of my house. In this one, we have to interview 3 people as sources, 2 ordinary citizen and 1 person of authority and we need to give the lecturer their phone numbers. How cool is that?

Then on Wednesday I came to Faizal Nafis' class where we discussed on George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-four and its influence on the society. We also delved into the 1984 Apple Superbowl advertisement which is considered the best ad ever, which is also insiped by Orwell. I actually have the ad on my Mac but fate intervined and I didn't brought my laptop along for the class.. Shoot. Nevertheless, Faizal reminded all that we should all be starting on our second essay on an Information Technology that have a huge impact on the world. We only have two assignments for this class but both are highly technical and intense.. Well, I think so since he did mentioned we are supposed to cite at least 20 sources to get an A. Hurm.. I guess I might be doing on blogging or YouTube as my topic.

Then came Friday with the piéce de résistance: Film and Television class. Last week we were given assignments to do a storyboard and this week we are supposed to see a movie and write a 3000 word article about it. Fairly simple I said to myself. The movie is called 'Mulholland Drive' and it is anything but simple. Have you ever seen a movie that you need to watch it twice with a few visit to the Internet to understand it? Well, that's what happen to me. I went to class on Saturday just to understand the movie. Why is it so hard? Well, mostly because of the weird style of narative David Lynch applied to that movie that it doesn't flow linearly. Instead, the timeline jumps around so you really have to keep an eye on the clues to fully understand it. My lecturer then suggested us to study a lil bit on Carl Jung and Freud's psychological analysis to understand it better. How ironic. Great, now I just need to write 3000 words on a movie I barely understood and I need to learn psychology and understand it first before I could really understand the movie. Cool.

So yup, that's about it. The hectic life of one Mass Comm student in Cyberjaya. Who ever said that it's a lepak-lepak course?

Labels: media, studies

Poco-Poco

Man I got a serious headache.. I know I shouldn't have slept too long last night but then again, I didn't slept the night before that. This is weak..

Anyway, Hariri came here yesterday evening. He just came back for his 3rd semester at MCIIUM and since class won't commence till Thursday, he decided to visit me. Thanks dude. And oh, thanks too for the Poco-poco song.. man, I'm hooked!



Poco what? Well, Poco-poco is an Indonesian dance song which became famous 6 years ago.. something like Asareje, which got the whole republic dancing to the 12 steps of the Poco-poco dance. The whole song is sang in the Manado creole where Poco-poco means voluptuos. Me, I first heard it last year in Jakarta during Boy and Intan's wedding at Tante Yati's house. Indonesians and Malays though we have a lot of similarities, do also have a lot of differences as it turn out. Malay wedding usually revolve aroud the bride and groom while Indonesian as I see it, a wedding is a celebration for all those who come to the wedding.

They would celebrate throughout the whole day with bapak-bapak dan ibu-ibu of all ages joining in with the young ones, dancing to songs and some of them sang as well. It was quite a culture shock for me actually since back in Malaysia, you would never and I mean never see old people dance to dangdut and pop song. Never. But there in Indonesia, it was normal.

Well, I sort of regret actually not joining in the whole celebration with my Indonesian hosts and merely sat on a chair and became a spectator.. What can I do, I guess I was too shy and so are the rest of mine and Boy's family. Culture shocked I guess.

Culture shock consist of 4 stages. First is the honeymoon period where we enjoy the foreign culture as new and interesting. Then came in the shock where we begin to compare the culture against our own thus revealing to us things that we feel wrong and in this case, old people dancing and singing which is foreign to us Malays. We would then withdrew ourselves from this culture though after some time we would go in to the acceptance stage where wo would accept the foreign culture... I guess I never got to the 4th one. Shoot.

Anyway folks, enjoy the video up there. I promise I'll dance next time I went to an Indonesain wedding.. but when would that happen?

Balenggang pata-pata
Ngana pe goyang pica-pica
Ngana pe bodi poco-poco
Cuma ngana yang kita cinta
Cuma ngana yang kita sayang
Cuma ngana suka biking pusing

Not in China

I am doing an assignment on censorship when I stumbled upon a link on digg.com. Apparently there is a site that lets you check wether your URL is blocked in China or not. Interesting isn't it? Well, being very curious I key in my blog's URL and bang, I got the result above. What have I done to get banned by the Chinese?

Well, I guess it's not amerhadiazmi they're blocking but the blogspot thing back there. Or so I guess. China is among some of the countries that do extensive censorship of the Internet and there are cases where bloggers were arrested. Pakistan even blocked everything from Blogger as well as other blog provides so I think to find a Pakistani blogger is quite an impossible feat.

God, I sure hope Malaysia wouldn't be like that.. by the way, check your website by clicking on the picture.

Labels: media

Broadband, broad mind

Broadband Internet really opened up my mind to the world. Well, yes.. dial-up Internet also did that thing but broadband took the whole experience a little bit further. I came in late into various technological advancements. When people were starting to use dial-up, I frequent the cybercafés. When people moved to Windows XP, I was still using Windows 98 for 2 more years (I still haven't touched Windows Vista). When people were crazy about Streamyx, I was happilly chugging away with my 56K Jaring account. Most people wouldn't believe all this stuff but that is what it really is.

As you might know, my Cyberjaya home was just fitted with Streamyx connection 2 weeks ago and I admit that I'm still am very much excited over it, trying all these technologies I missed out like torrents and what not but there's one particular thing that really amaze me: Youtube.

I used to loathe video websites, firstly because with dial-up, a 5 minute video took half and hour to load and the other reason is most of it are rubbish; videos of people dancing to Gaban, a video of a kid making a fool out of himself and well.. you know what I mean. Nevertheless, the more I delve into YouTube, the more I discovered that instead of just fun and entertainment, some people are utilizing it as a method of critical forum.. which is becoming rarer these days even in newspapers.

So what does that mean, critical forum? Well, it is where a certain media is used as a forum to debate, discuss and argue a certain issue or point of view. This thing thrive on YouTube! Uncensored! How cool can that be? For example I love this series by Baba Ali called UmmahFilms which basically talks about Islam and reminding Muslims in a interesting kind of way. As Islam is a hot topic these days, many people would give their comment on the video and the best part is that we get other people doing their own videos to argue with Baba Ali. The same also happen to William Sledd, the guy behind Ask A Gay Man fashion videos and various other videos. I don't know about you but to me, that is really cool! You get all this interesting ideas from all sorts of people and it really broadens the mind.

Admitedly however, some of the comments are silly. Some people are just ignorant. They give out stupid comments just because they hate gay people or because they see on TV that Muslims are terrorist. Heck, I think most of them don't even see the videos before commenting. But try loooking at the video replies in the Related area, those are the gems I love about YouTube. There's always a good and bad side of every media, let's be optimistic about it.

So folks, I urge you to go serious sometimes. It's okay to watch those silly silly videos, I do too but let's not forget about other great stuff the Information Age have to offer. Afterall, YouTube is the Woodstock of our generation right?

Labels: media