Happy Holidays?

I don't really enjoy long long holidays lately. I know I did pray for it when I was in school and all that but having the real chance to live through it, man.. it's no fun! Well, yeah some might suggest doing something to make the break worthwhile but looking at my timetables for June, I see no real opening for work or whatever.

Anyway, I can't wait for college to start again! Crazy? Well at least I know I have important things to do instead of having to figure out what to do. So lately I've been checking the calendar and since the new semester is bound to start in July, I was really looking forward to it. Based on my experience with Limkokwing, the semester should begin on the first week of July thus I basically have around 3 weeks left to kill, so I went to Sungei Wang to get myself a new bag for the new semester.. Haha, macam masa budak-budak dulu.. bag Swan. Well, my current bag is way past its prime and it's quite a shame totting that around so what the heck.

Earlier today I was on YM with Lina and she broke the news to me: College ain't gonna open until 26 July. 26 July? What the hell? She told me she got an email from the college so I immediately checked all my mailbox and there it was:

I'm in FCMB, Faculty of Communication, Multimedia and Broadcasting so I ought to register on 26 which should be a Thursday. Damn, one more month to kill.. What am I supposed to do with all that time?

Labels: studies

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

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

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

I've made my choices..

Let's see.. Damn, I really have a lot to write.. but where to start? Well, I just came back to Rawang from Cyberjaya. It turned out my classes won't start till next week so instead of killing myself with boredom there I might as well return home to mum's cooking.

Anyway, yesterday I register myself at the college's Plaza at around 11 o'clock with Mak. I'm now in Year 1 Semester 1 of the Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication program, a course under Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia (not Ostrolia) and before this I was doing the Foundation in Communication course. Well, both courses require a great deal of reading as well as the ability to apply what is thought in the lectures into real life, but you know that already don't you? Haha..

For this semester I had to chose two out of five streams of Mass Communication which is Film & Television, Journalism, Public Relations, Advertising & Marketing and Creative Multimedia. I really don't dig PR, not my cup of tea actually so I had to make a 50/50 decision: which two should I take and which two should I ditch... You want to know what I took? Film & Television and Journalism.

Well, I really want to learn broadcasting and all. Actually my first love in Art is Photography and Desktop Publishing came right after so I guess I would really like to open up my hear to Video which I know very little of.. Damn, I'm curious! On the other hand I really really love to write and this blog you're reading is an example of that passion. At the end of the day, I guess my choice really fits me well; what better way there is if not to mix you curiousity of something with your passion for another right? Well, I guess only time will tell..

Well, I've made my choices. How about you?

Labels: personal, studies