CLASS DISCUSSION 4: SONG SELECTION

We do love songs, but it will take quite some times for our group to analyze them and pick one as our favourite song. For the class with Dr. Jaya, we were shown many songs and most of them are already my favourite songs, for example My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, What About Now by Chris Daughtry and many more. For this class, we received a new assignment. Our task is to choose our favourite song and analyze it. Of course there must be some traits about the song that we can choose. For this reason, we chose the song ‘Written in the Star’ by Tinnie Tempah and Eric Turner. This song has deep meanings that can only be fully understand by watching the video clip. However, through our deep analysis, the song also contains a few issues such as neglected child, poverty and the inequality for the Blacks.

There are a few reasons why we chose this song. First, it is a new song and it is playing in the radio few times a day. The creativity of Tinnie Tempah in creating the song and the rap make us love this song.  I suggest that everyone should listen to this song at least once in their  life. Enjoy the song! =)

CLASS DISCUSSION 3: SPEECH OF HITLER AND CHURCHILL

One of the elements that required in a leadership is the ability to give speech. A good speaker does not make a good leader, but a good leader should be a good speaker. The ability to speak in front thousands of spectators, to influence them and persuade them to follow us, to believe what we say and to do what we want, is not an easy task and everyone can do it. Every leader and speaker should have the power of words, which is the persuasive skill.  Hitler and Churchill has this ability. Hitler speech at the Berlin Sports Palace (1941) and Beaches speech on 1940, show how these two leader of German and Britain respectively, giving speech about the war. The speeches were held during the cold war, just before the World War II happened. 

In their speeches, we can see how confident they were in delivering their opinion, orders and persuading their people to sacrifice for their nations.  The use of “I” in most of the speeches show the superiority they hold upon their people.  It also means dictatorship; they ruling the country and nobody supposed to say “no” to whatever they say.  The use of the word “we”, means they are with their people to defend the country, and to conquer other nations. It also used to gain attention. When the word ‘we’ being used, everyone is united. The leader and civilians become as one, and the civilians and army will be motivated. These two power words also do mean a power to identify mistakes done by others. 

Both leaders also not just speak the empty talk, but they also providing facts in speeches. There were also no question tags like right? Don’t you think so? This is because it will give doubt to the audience and listener whether the speaker is confident or not in what they were talking.  There were also no room for question. It shows how sure the speakers were, and their speeches should be correct in facts, acceptable by all of the audiences, and understandable by everybody.

CLASS DISCUSSION 2 : A QUESTION OF DOWRY & EVERYTHING'S ARRANGE

The position that we choose for our presentation is “Dowry is unfairly treated in both stories”. There are several reasons that we had pointed out in order to strengthen our stand. First of all, dowry is given from the woman’s family to the groom’s family so that they will be able to take good care of the woman in the future of her life with her husband. It is not a compulsory. Yet, when the time progresses, dowry is treated as a compulsory task for the woman’s side of family to prepare as stated in both stories mentioned above. 

We also conclude that the concept of dowry in these stories is being treated as bribery yet not a gift. It is a practice of offering money in order to gain an illicit advantage. This can be found in line, “There would be no final term for Rukumani. It was decided that the increase of $20,000 in dowry was worth the risk of family disgrace.” (Everything’s Arranged). From here, dowry turns into bribery so that the family makes sure the groom’s family will still accept the marriage proposal even the bride does not make ups to a certain requirement that groom’s family expected. It is more like a human trading process rather than a marriage.

Besides that, the levels of education are also an important element of deciding the dowry’s claim. We can notice that Sivasothie in “A Question of Dowry” is married to a doctor and so the dowry is higher than the dowry given by her sister-in-law who is a SPM graduate only. Furthermore, in the story, “Everything’s Arranged”, Rukumani’s dowry for the groom’s family had been increased because she will not finish her Bachelor of Arts and Science in University. Once again, human’s value is treated as goods. In conclusion, dowry is unfairly treated in both of the stories. The original concept of giving the dowry has changed follow by the time advancing.

CLASS DISCUSSION 1: MERRY MAID AND GREAT INJUSTICE

Children born out of wedlock and pregnancies without marriage are growing concern in the country, but one area that is often neglected is the impact of it. Society rules the law and we will shock to see the fact that it just happen around us. We learned a lot from the two short stories,  A Great Injustice by Heah Chwee Sian and The Merry Maid by Jayakaran Mukundan, which portrayed the issue of two women that shared the same problem; pregnancy out of wedlock. Both characters, Ah Nya in The Great Injustice and Lakshmi in The Merry Maid, wanted to get rid of the babies, but in different ways. They were still young when they were having the problem and it was a big responsibility and a burden to rise up the children without the husband. In my point of view, both characters were not become the victims of anybody but their own mistake in taking action.

                Surely when adultery happened, the most tragic thing is getting pregnant. Sex is what they want but they never think of the consequences of their action. So, premarital sex leads to social problem. The first social problem is pregnancy out of wedlock as what happened to both characters of the stories. The second social problem is what they going to do with their pregnancy. For Ah Nya, when a woman tell her about a place where she can abort the baby, it was a dream come true for her.  She is more concern on how the child will go through his life rather than think to give the baby a life. For Lakshmi, she was not abort the baby but disposed her and put her at Johan’s house. What will happen if the baby were eaten by dogs or taken by irresponsible people? Not only that, Sakinah, Lakshmi’s daughter also faced the issue of her status as an adopted child. “ ... For years she asked about her adoption... because she looked different”.

                To err is human, but to make a big mistake in life will make us pay. In my opinion, even though both stories were written quite a time ago, the issues are still relevant and significant today. Men always escape, and the women burden with the later problem. The act is only one, but the consequences are endless, and the cruelty it brings is far from imagination. In a nutshell, premarital sex should be avoided, as it just brings disastrous to our life and ruin the society.

MOVIE REVIEW 4: ANIMAL FARM

Surely when we read a book, visual can help us understand better. As when we read the tick book Harry Potter, we will understand it is better as we watch the movie. The visual element can somehow overcome our misunderstanding and imagination that created by our readings. The same thing happen when I read Animal Farm by George Orwell. I can’t actually imagine the actual scene (never visit any farm before) even though finished reading the book, so by watching Animal Farm the animated, it was an eye opener for me how the story supposed to be.

The story is about animals that got rid of their owner and take control of the farm by themselves. It all started when a boar gave advices to the other animals on his deathbed. This boar gave them hope, will and determination to them so that they will be able to liberate their farm from the stupid owner. After that, the farm is being controlled by the pigs. This happens until the end of the story, only after all the animals have realized the pigs are terrorizing their farms and do things for their advantages only.

I think that the story is quite interesting and easily understood. The story has cute, funny, tough and intelligent characters and the drawings are also funny. Even though the message can only be understood by people who are matured and old, yet the entertainment value can easily be understood by children. 

In my opinion,  this story will be of great material for students, regardless their age. This story has a high probability of making the students understand its content because we also have background knowledge in the stories that almost have the same value, such as ‘sang kancil’ and many more (children usually like story about animal).

In short, I think this story this story could be taught as the basic knowledge in leadership, since there will definitely be some people who eventually will become a leader among the students that we thought.