Mokou, Patchouli, Yuuka: a narration

Once, I was very much into Fujiwara no Mokou, and that was because of how I viewed myself back then.

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My resolution

Every day should be another day where you learn something.

Each passing day are experiences to your life's story. Each moment is precious.

Let me thus make a resolution: to learn something every day, 'til the day I die

Ahmad Faiz

9/9/13

An overview on Singaporean Touhou fans from a Malaysian perspective

This was not the first time Malaysia and Singapore have events so close together, with C2AGE and Cosfest occuring in such close proximity between each other a few months ago (which I've opted for the latter, seeing as I couldn't make it for the first one).

With Animangaki taking place just the week before Singapore's STGCC, it might be crazy to think of even going to another event, much less one a few hundred kilometres down south. But that's what a few of us did, and it's mainly for one reason:

TAM is a pretty humble person, I like him. And his playing is of course great. Nothing beat seeing the real thing in the flesh, hey!

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The ol' Malay mentality

Hasan Ali: Bahasa Inggeris subjek wajib lulus SPM hancurkan Melayu

Hasan memberi contoh semasa negara suatu masa dahulu mahu melaksanakan Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Inggeris (PPSMI), pelajar Melayulah yang ketinggalan dalam keputusan peperiksaaan terutamanya mereka yang tinggal di kawasan pedalaman.

Beliau menggesa kerajaan mengkaji semula dasar tersebut kerana Bahasa Inggeris bukanlah bahasa pertuturan majoriti kaum Melayu serta dasar tersebut, katanya, akan menghancurkan anak Melayu.

You know, there's this one old mentality among the Malays that I'm ashamed of: that of being in a comfort level. I suspect this stems back from post-Independence, when the government were giving out all those incentive in developing the less fortunate and the ones in the rural areas. But fast forward 50 years later, and we still seem to be in that comfort zone: that we will be left behind other races, that we should continue to be where we are, that we needed help from the government. That if we we to face challenge of the ever-changing world, we will lose out.

They say the Malay will lose out if the requirement to pass English in SPM were to be implemented. And you know why they have this kind of thinking? It's because of two things:

1) The education system quality in teaching the language is terrible

2) The mentality among some Malays that English is difficult, and how they're better off sticking with Bahasa Melayu

There's something terribly wrong here if we still have this kind of mentality. And it's worse when you get people like him who continue to perpetuate this mindset. It's been 50 plus years man; how long do you all plan to stay in your comfort zone?

Product placement - what we need, what we want

I have a moment of epiphany as I'm eating one nutella brand knockoff: that for a much cheaper price I could get something good to put on my bread...

And then I've stumbled upon a relatively unknown guitar brand which had me thinking, 'hey, this is as good as the 'real' thing...'

But then I thought further into it: are branding really all it ought to be?

Is it a matter of want vs need? Do we really want it? Do we really need it? Why do these different brand offer the same deal at different pricing?

On one case it's food, on another one it's on entertainment/art. But the same question arise: is the 'imitation' no better than the 'real' deal?

Does it matter if our wants are ever fleeting?

Are we buying certain brands because they are what we WANT, or is it entirely out of NEED? For some, they might have no choice for either.

So all this complain about branding is just ridiculous for me, especially when it comes to things we can live without.

Tanda Putera

I rarely watched movies in cinemas, and the times that I do I rarely include Malay movies in my to-watch list (the last one that I did was KIL, which I thought was great).

But the recently controversional Tanda Putera had really piqued up my interest. Judging from the review (or rather lack of it) I was curious to see just how bad the movie is, and if I could find any merit out of the whole thing. After all, don't judge something until you see every side of the story is one of my philosophy in judging (the second one is simply: do not judge at all).

And I'm feeling a need to be judgmental with the movie, so I gave it a watching anyway.

To sum up in simple words: the movie was boring.

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Managing your Facebook 'friends': JUST SAY NO

I've recently met someone who took a rather radical step: he removed a huge chunk of people from his Facebook's friends list, as well as removing himself from a few groups.

The action have gotten some pretty angry reaction from the removee ('why does this guy remove me for no reason?' 'I've never liken that guy anyway!' 'what an asshole!'), but that've gotten me thinking: are we putting too much value in Facebook 'friends' that it's easy to fall into the trap of being in an imaginary abusive 'friendship?'.

JUST SAY NO!

I think it's highly deceiving to list your contacts as 'friends': maybe words like 'contacts' or 'acquaintance' are more accurate in designating some of those people. But does that necessarily mean 'friendship' on Facebook is much shallower than, say, a 'real' friendship?

I don't think we have to really be cold turkey and dismiss most of the people in our list as being 'not real' friends. For me essentially the core of Facebook is for you to connect with people - so for some that might include adding a bunch of people in the hope of trying to get to know them better...

But that does seem like a misguided effort. After all, there's only so much people you can truly give away your time to know what they've been up doing with their everyday life (aka people you truly give a shit about) isn't it? Now try and extrapolate that by imagining how much you might mean to the other guy (aka people that give a shit about you).

And that I believe is a good start in managing a seemingly large number of people in your list.

Do I truly want to spend my time listening to what this other person is doing in his/her life?

Do I really want to share what I feel with this other person?

Are they going to notice if I removed them off the list?

And the biggest reason for you to really consider removing them: is this person's online presence really bothers me?

If so, know that you always have a choice:

JUST SAY NO!

Interestingly the person I mentioned earlier have said that the action helped him to stick with the people he truly give a shit about, and vice versa - his reasoning was that if they truly wanted to connect with him and all that, then they'd have no problem in asking again to connect. Those that were angry and harbour a sort of grudge would be the one at loss, rather than him - and that is something I would agree.

So at the end of the day, take your Facebook 'friends' with a large pinches of salts. And remember, you always have choice to pick who are the ones in your list - or having fail that, there's always the option of managing what you see from them. We always have a choice in having less drama and horseshit.

JUST SAY NO!