My favourite place in the neighbourhood and how does it relate to my identity

(Left side of fence: condominium

Right side of fence: grass hill)

My favourite part of my neighbourhood is the little grass hill that is located just right beside my house. It is a secluded and secretive spot and rarely would anyone go there. As you could see, it is grown full of long grass now because nobody went there for a long time already, including me.

Beside it, you could see skyscraping condominiums that mercilessly scraped away a part of the hill. When I was still small, the condominiums were not yet built there. However, a few years ago, a group of construction workers began chipping off gradually from the small patch of grass and a massive construction underwent. Initially, the hill was already small, now it was even smaller, leaving only a tiny speck of greenery.

The reason I loved this hill was because I had feelings for every single strand of grass and those senduduk flowers and of course, those colourful birds and fascinating insects. It also left many wonderful memories for my childhood because this spot was one of the most accessible places that I enjoyed the most. It was like one of the playgrounds – No; actually it was better than a playground.

Nature was all around me in my childhood and maybe it was the reason for me to love nature, and also making me aware of nature being destroyed slowly. It is the green grass that I loved, not those rigid, ugly slabs of gray cement.

My thoughts on prejudice and discrimination

Prejudice may appear in many forms and it is similar to discrimination, though there are still differences between them. Prejudice is the looking down on somebody that is of different beliefs or religions, letting one feel that he or she is unacceptable whereas discrimination is also despising others but it involves physical action, unlike prejudice, which is more of just a thought and small little gestures.

Discrimination could cause very severe damage to a person or the whole society, for example racism, which would negatively impact the society. The racists would think that the other race is inferior to themselves, whereas the victims would be enraged and infuriated by the acts and gestures made by the racists, causing both parties relationship to get strained, and if someone provoked one of them, there would be racial riots, that causes chaos and pandemonium in the society and those innocent folks might also be involved, injuring them. Also, if the victim is repeatedly mocked and targeted at, there might be very serious effect, which might include losing faith in their beliefs and religions.

It seemed that discrimination is one of the worst things, however to me, not necessarily so. Being prejudiced against could have the same effect as being discriminated. To me, effect of discrimination is straightforward and fast. However, the result of being prejudiced against is slow and gradual, and rather of mentally hurt than physically hurt. If one goes out on street and received mocking and jeering and perhaps just being pointed at could make the person feel that something is very wrong inside him. For example, like what Mr. Lum showed us on youtube, a fat lady in her mid-50s wearing very simple clothes took part in and contested in the Britain's Got Talent competition. At first, I thought that she would be lousy, just like what the judges expressed through their facial expression. The woman, Susan Boyle, seemed very discouraged, but she still summoned the courage to sing her song. Once she opened her mouth, I noticed that she had a very powerful and touching voice, and she could reach a wide range of keys. Some of the judges and audiences were so touched that they cried. From this video, I learnt that one should not be prejudice against others and not to judge a book by its cover.

Therefore, I shall end my post hoping that we could stop discriminating and being prejudiced against others.

Comic (Home-based learning)

"Smelly Snow":

The setting of this comic is in a classroom. There is a small boy in the comic holding up his hand to catch a single dandruff from his teacher, whereas the teacher is telling the whole class to stop telling him that it is snowing. I am trying to portray the innocence of the child and the stubbornness of the teacher for not explaining and not allowing the children from asking what is all this "snow". Now, being banned from asking questions, the child has a very shock expression on his face mixed with a little bit of confusion, which tells us that the child, not being allowed to clarify his doubts, is confused about his teacher's definition of snow, due to the teacher's lack of explanation. Perhaps the teacher think that the children are just trying to be funny and mock at him and ignore their questions. However, considering that the children are still very young, the teacher should try to understand that the children are asking him out of pure innocence and curiosity. All of this is caused by the lack of understanding between the two parties. The teacher is wearing a suit, a tie and a pair of leather shoes. This characterized him as a very neatly attired teacher and showed that they are in a proper school. However, the child has only a few strands of hair, a pair of big watery eyes and a mouth with only two front tooth, clearly showing his innocence. All in all, I used the school to represent a strict place that do not allow any jokes. However, the children asked questions that is viewed by the teacher to be mocking him and did not allow them to ask anymore, causing the child to be confused. My message behind the comic is to tell teachers to allow some space for children to clarify their doubts and not be too strict with them and try and understand what they are thinking.

1 comments:

Josiah Tan Jia Ern said...

I like how you describe your characters. You have done a great job to bring out the feelings of the characters. I feel that this is a very funny comic as the children does not seem to understand what snow flakes are, such as to mistake the teacher's dandruff for snow flakes. The boy in the picture showed a very funny expression which will make people who see this laugh. I could easily tell that the kid was confused. Although the teacher looks neat, the fact that dandruff was falling from his hair made him look disgusting.

February 21, 2011 2:21 AM

Black Eyed Peas - Where is the love song analysis

I think that the main message behind the song is about the causes and effects of prejudices and discriminations. In the song, I can see that prejudices and discriminations cause a very huge destruction in the society from “People killing people dying / Children hurtin you hear them crying / Can practice what you preach / Would you turn the other cheek? / Father father father help us / Send some guidance from above / Cause people got me got me questioning / Where is the love?” This showed that even the children, being the purest stage of mankind, were even hurt and upset about what is going on. They are doubt the adults and questioned them if they could live up to what they say, furthermore, they are feeling so hopeless that they are calling upon the god to send some guidance from above as they cannot feel the love among people.

“Overseas yeah we tryin to stop terrorism / But we still got terrorists here livin”, this phrase suggests that USA fear of the extremists in the Muslims, or in other words, the terrorists, because they discriminate them. Therefore, rather than making peace with the Muslims, they actually try to stop them “overseas”, for example having war with Iraq. However, they seemed to be the one who is helping to maintain peace in the world, whereas actually, they did not even maintain peace in their own country.

For example, like what the lyrics revealed, in USA, there are organizations that caused the citizens in USA to live in constant fear and paranoia. The “KKK”, which is also known as the Ku Klux Klan, instills terror in the citizens because they are white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigration and anti-communist, and expressed their believes, or maybe discriminations, through terrorism. The “Crips” are notoriously known to be one of the largest and most violent associations that are involved in murders, robberies and drug dealing and they are rivalry between them and the other street gangs known as “Bloods”.

The song also conveyed a message that it was cinemas that changed our values of humanity, fairness and equality: “Infecting their young minds faster than bacteria / Kids wanna act like what the see in the cinema / Whatever happened to the values of humanity / Whatever happened to the fairness and equality”, this also showed that if we want the world to change, we must start with ourselves, and not let our next generation carry on the mistakes we made.

I have the strongest feeling for the lyrics:

“As I'm getting older y'all people get colder
Most of us only care about money makin
Selfishness got us followin the wrong direction
… …

Instead of spreading love, we're spreading animosity
Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity”

I think that this part of the song reflects very well and very precise on how the society is going on now. Just take me as an example. When I am small, I feel that the friendship between my friends is all very genuine and real. However, now that I am in secondary school, I feel that people might seem very close to you and understanding, whereas actually they are just taking advantage of you if you are very good in academic grades. For example, when real problems come, they might just leave you to face the problem alone. Therefore, I agree that “people get colder” when we get older as we would be starting to think who are the better friends to go with. In the past, friends are just playmates and we could talk to them from the bottommost of our heart, now it is a lot different. Hence, I totally agree with the sentence “Most of us only care about money makin / Selfishness got us followin the wrong direction”, though it might not be earning money, I agree that as we grow older, we would be more and more selfish, and we would never be able to lead a simple and straightforward life. Therefore, we are getting more and more hostile to each other and start to lack understanding for one another, because we rarely treat each other truthfully and do not pour our hearts out to them. Now, I still find my primary school friends more frank. Just why can’t we be united and have our hearts linked together nowadays?

How did a song have an impact on me?

This song has impacted me because it reflects what is happening to the society and gives me a better understanding of how people communicate nowadays. It got me thinking of how and why people are not speaking so frequently nowadays and also made me wary to not to be like the type of people reflected in this song. I think that the main cause of people not talking to each other so often nowadays is because technology is improving and in most people’s eyes, everything to them is just work and businesses.

I particularly like the phrase: “People talking without speaking / People hearing without listening / People writing songs that voices never share”. The irony in these three sentences clearly shows the inability of people communicating with one another and people unable to love each other. In this song, this person said that “silence like a cancer grows”. I agree to this statement totally because as time goes on and people are not communicating with each other, they would be hostile and feels awkward if they want to communicate again, as they would already lose trust in each other. Therefore, in my opinion, I think that we need to start talking to each other more often lest one day, people would really be doubtful to each other.

I think that this song is a really meaningful one and I would recommend it to my friends and I also hope that more people could appreciate it. You could listen to the song by clicking on the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhdGkZ6Fngw .The lyrics are as follows:

Song Title: Sound of Silence

By: Simon and Garfunkel

“Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence”