MMU and colouring contests.

I walked out of the lecture hall today and there it was. A bunch of little kids sprawled all over the floor of the CLC, colouring their Merdeka pictures on exercise mats. It was a depressing sight.

Are we so desperate to organize events in this university that we need to resort to organizing colouring contests for primary school kids? Its not the first time it has happened. Last year's convocation pulled the same stunt, the only difference being that the children didn't represent their schools then. I think you can still check the article in neXus.

The question that I really must ask is, why? We are a university, not a kindergarden. Sure, you could look at it as some way of giving back to society, but really, a colouring contest? An essay writing contest would make more sense. Heck, even getting them to outdo one another by reciting corny merdeka poems would have made more sense.

And they had to make the event visible. Which is why it was held in the middle of the bloody CLC. The floor of the CLC is rough, so its impossible to work on that surface. Their solution? Exercise mats. Padded pieces of plastic that cannot possibly support the pressure that a sharpened pencil would apply onto paper. I really pity the kids. Not only do they have to colour on the floor, sitting cross-legged, they also have to take care so as to not poke a hole in their masterpiece. And some were using crayons. Which requires even more applied pressure to work.

And the turnout was horrible. There were less than 10 kids. From maybe 6 or so different schools. Admittedly, its really hard to come up with activities for national day. I personally can't think of anything that I wouldn't immediately write off as corny. But however desperate I am to do something to show everyone how patriotic I am, I wouldn't resort to taking kids out of school and making them colour pictures of Malays, Chinese and Indians dancing happily under a rainbow.

The kids probably enjoyed getting out of school for those few hours, but I'm not sure how much of a consolation that is.

Dr. L!m... Respek wei...

And no, I didn't spell his name wrongly. Technically, its wrong (his real name is Lim.. duh) , but if he himself signs off that way in MMLS, then I don't suppose he would mind putting his name that way.

So, who is this Dr. Lim dude? He's my new dynamics lecturer. And he's brilliant. So far. The one hour class I had with him today was by far the most fun I've had in a lecture since I entered the faculty. He's about the most relaxed lecturer I've ever had, and he tells stories. Stories that actually relate to dynamics. Apparently, the British army got screwed at the Falkland islands because they got all their math wrong. In his words, they studied their projectile motion properly, but forgot all about some other force that causes all their bombs to miss. Its got something to do with being on different hemispheres, apparently. I'll have to go look it up.

Then he rubbised the urban legend that water spirials down in different directions on different hemispheres. The mass of the water involved just isn't large enough to be affected by the force, do it has more to do with sinkhole design than anything.

When he started teaching, he told us that he didn't believe in using powerpoint slides to teach beginners like us. I wanted to hug the man there and then. The other FET lecturers should learn a thing or two from him. Teaching math based subjects requires a form af dynamism that cannot be provided by using powerpoint. Concepts need to be related, and you can't do that on a computer. The whiteboard really is the best way to teach this kind of thing.

Another thing, he also has the instinct that tells him what exactly you do not understand. The lecture was concise and to the point. No dilly dallying about the same idea forever. But I suppose the thing that I liked most about his was the casualness that he conducted his lecture. It felt like he was a pal, some dude you can actually ask questions and not get a frown for doing that. He said shit in class, which was a first for any of my lectures.

Sure, he has his quirks, but I can live with them. Its not very often you meet a doctor of philosophy that can still relate to an undergraduate in laymans' terms.

A bit of a drought.

I don't mean in a literal sense, of course. Malacca has been soaked in the past few days. Relentless rain every night. I'm not complaining, really. Makes for brilliant sleeping weather.

Its just that I can't find anything that I really want to blog about. Not the war in Lebanon. Not the foiled terrorist attempts in the UK. Actually, I think its largely due to the fact that I really do want to blog about something, but I can't. Everything else pales in comparison, really, to the thing I do want to write about. Which begs the question, what could be more interesting than the next installment to WW3?

A lot actually. In the micorenvironment we live in, the middle east is just so insignificant. At least a lot less significant than the best place to get nasi lemak. We're insulated from the worst. All we get are pictures and clips of people suffering. Unless we actually feel what it is like to be a Lebanese reading Isreali warning phamplets telling you to get out of your house before it is blown up, we will never really know what it is like. Sure, we see outraged Muslims swearing to take revenge. But I really cannot relate to the sense of loss that drove the man to devote his life to the destruction of Israel.

We never appreiciate what we have until it is taken away from us. That line is so cliched, but really, I think thats what it takes to get people to lose their apathy. At least its true for me. I really can't show more than a passing interest to the conflict there or anywhere in the world for that matter. Largely because I've had a really good life so far. No violence, no real suffering, pretty much everything provided for. My responsibilities are minimal, and if i screw up, the only one who is really affected is me.

At this point, I almost wish I could feel it. Not just understand the sense of loss that comes from losing someone, but actually feel it. Then maybe when someone starts asking 'How many more body bags need come out of Beirut before we do something?' , I'd actually see genuine concern instead of an elaborate use of debating rethoric to win a round. Then maybe I'd be able to see just who really wants the conflict to end and who is just hitching a ride to political success. All I have now is a cynical perspective that anyone in this part of the world who gets riled up over the issue is only putting on a show. I know that there are people around who have known suffering enough to genuinely cry out for action. I just have trouble believing that I have found one when I see one.

The MMU Melaka IV.

Yep. Thats what I was doing over the weekend. Although most of you already know that. It was a tournament I was kind of forced to join, but in the spirit of me, decided that I cannot screw the org comm over by debating like a noob. So I did what I normally do. And it turned out perfectly. 9th place out of 40 teams. 19th best speaker out of 80. Speaker ranking doesn't matter. What does matter is the fact that we placed 9th after 4 rounds. The best of the non-breaking teams. Prime position for a person like me. I don't think anyone had ever been happier at being so close to breaking, but not actually doing it. Everyone was bewildered at the fact that I was happy. Heh. When I told them that I placed 9th, they had this pained "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about that" expression on their face. I didn't bother correcting them.

Why not? Because I had a really long discussion about it earlier on with some cyber dudette. I ended up being called weird, a coward, and a myriad of other unpleasant but politically correct stuff. Whatever.

The motions were weird to say the least. (For the unaquainted, THW stands for this house would) Started off fairly tame with "THW ban internet gambling". Then Kevin Massie started messing around with it, and we got "THW place NATO troops in southern Lebanon" followed by "THW make financial aid conditional on democratization". Right. Then I was told that the last topic would blow us away. Heh. Turned out to be a debate about supporting the teaching of gay friendly literiture in schools.

But nothing compared to the semis and finals motions.

THW assasinate abortion clinic doctors.

THW blow up the Temple Mount.

And I thought McCarthyism was bad. All in all, great tournament. Made me do a fair bit of thinking. Mostly on a personal level. Asking myself the hard questions. What questions? Never mind.