Fazz – Page 27 – TheFazz.com

23 September 20074 September 2011

Cultural gaps in our society

I am in a cultural analysis mood today.

One other cultural phenomenon often cited is the moral degradation of our youngsters. The topic that brought me to think about this was a facebook discussion thread titled “Lelaki Melayu Bermasaalah” by a girl called Akmal Fairuz who complained that young malay boys are uncouth and describes them as “tidak bertamadun”.

whilst the misbehaviours described by akmal fairuz is not confined to one race, i think the root causes are similar.

personally, i think there is a huge cultural / mindset gap between the “elders” and the “youngsters” today.

forgive me for generalising, but i believe that elder malays (and malaysians) tend to be very conservative, and constantly espouse “traditional values” etc.

youngsters, on the other hand are far more open to the global influences (internet or not).

elders constantly talk about censorship of movies, websites, music etc. whilst to me this seems impossible and is a regressive step backwards in denying the changes that is happening in the world today.

because of this, there is a sense of rebellion… an anti-establishment attitude, “i’ll do my own thing, i don’t care” type of feeling amongst youngsters.

i remember my days as a teenager… the teachers, the rule makers are those people who you would dare and defy. why? because we no longer liked being told what to do (like primary school kids & babies).

i think this is a natural reaction when we are growing up and trying to break away from being a baby/kid to being a grown up. at that point we think that because grown ups set the rules, so if we were to be grown up, then we would have to break existing rules and set rules of our own.

for a conservative society in a global village – these current norms are topics that will be seriously challenged & tested. but being conservatives, the elders feel that youngsters have no right to challenge their authority. thus creating this huge cultural / mindset gap.

as elders, do we listen, engage, and properly advocate our views with the youngsters?

i think not. we live in a society where the elders tell the youngsters what to do. the gap is quickly growing to become a gulf. the sooner we have open and honest debates about this issue, the better.

23 September 20074 September 2011

The problems in present day society

The recent tragedy of Nurin Jazlin Jazimin, 8 years old (al-fatihah) gave me cause to think about the society we are becoming today.

Being a self-analyst deep down, i pondered long about the tragedy: how can somebody commit such a heinous crime on such innocent children? what motivates them? what are the external factors? has the police profiled such crimesters? why do they become the monsters today?

I would like to live in a place where my children are safe to go play in the playground or ride their bicycles around our neighbourhood. but cases such as these would only cause the undesired reaction of more people locking themselves out in the home and minimise exposures outside… which only leads to a more insular and silo society: it is a vicious cycle which needs to be broken. getting people to fight a common cause is going to be more difficult which the ever increasing “every man for themselves” attitude of our society.

So why do these crimes happen? seriously i do not know, nor pretend to be an expert. but being a self analyst, i believe that we all have to look deep down within ourselves. no, i do not blame nurin’s parents… i would like all of us to see the faults we have and how it manifests itself in our society.

Why do people want to inflict pain on others? i believe that every person fundamentally is compelled to do this. We scold others, because we have been scolded. We put pressure on others, because we are being pressured ourselves. And we hurt others, because we are hurt. The difference between us is the level of pain.

Make no mistake, i hope and desire to see nurin’s murderer and others like them to be severely punished and with pain here in the hereafter. Yes, i want them to suffer, because i share some fraction of the pain felt by nurin’s parents… as i am a parent myself.

It is a vicious cycle. But sometimes i feel that we have ourselves to blame. The first thing we should do is to stop hurting others. Except for very few circumstances, it (hurting others) is not warranted.

22 September 200724 April 2017

BMW: most improved environmental performance

With the launch of the BMW Hydrogen 7, the exciting X6 Efficient Dynamics Active Hybrid and the brace of clean diesels and efficient dynamics technology in the regular BMW model line up, BMW is fast becoming the example for the right combination of performance, efficiency, practicality and environmental responsibility.

In terms of performance, the current BMW diesels are matching their petrol drinking siblings. But in terms of efficiency & environmental responsibility they far outperform the petrol set, and even some hybrids. And diesels are much more practical compared to the hybrids.

20 September 20074 September 2011

Photoshop tutorials

Over the years, I have been doodling with website designing, both from the coding (HTML, perl, PHP etc) as well as design (CSS, photoshop etc). In all instances i am pretty much a complete amateur despite the years of doodling.

Perhaps this is because i am rubbish at such things, or don’t have a creative bone in my body, or perhaps simply i have not practiced enough in depth… because i am too superficial.

Either way, all this matters little as I just like to try these things and experiment with various forms of expression.

So during that time i visited a number of tutorial sites. And i must say that one great photoshop tutorial site is psdtuts.com – Spoon fed photoshop tutorials. I like the step by step approach (spoon feeding) which helps useless people like me, and the free stuff they give away like the PSD files used in the tutorials (helping lazy people like me).

I found the following tutorials helpful:

Of course there are more tutorials… but i have yet to explore them. Try them out.

18 September 200724 April 2017

Philip K Dick and The Blade Runner

I remember Blade Runner when it was launch. I was in Tokyo and at the same was E.T.

Like everybody’s memory of Blade Runner, the film was basically pummeled by E.T. (the other science fiction film at the time). Although I would not watch the film until about 4 years later, I did know that a lot was expected of it.

It had Harrison Ford (hot from Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark). Also starring were Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer. The film was directed by Ridley Scott (hot from the ground breaking sci-fi horror Alien, and soon to make many other films and even the Apple Computer 1984 advert). It was launched at a time when sci-fi was cool.

Sadly, due to a variety of reasons the film bombed – only to be resurrected and become one of, if not THE, landmark sci-fi film of all time. The film will soon be relaunched as the “Final Cut” – ie the preferred cut as intended by Ridley Scott.

The film also followed (or paved) a similar fate for the author (Philip K Dick) on whose book (“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”) the film was based. Philip K Dick died before the film launch… but his digital age / cyber punk books became material for many other sci-fi films such as Total Recall, Paycheck, Minority Report, Next and a few others.

Now his children are getting more involved in the future films of Philip K Dick in order to ensure the quality of his work to be properly brought to life on the silver screen.