UNDERUSED, OR INDIFFERENT MEDIA?
The Star reports today that during the discussion on global media strategies on HIV/AIDS, the 100-odd delegates who attended the Asia Media Summit 2007 in KL agree that the media is under-utilised when it comes to spreading awareness on the disease, and that coverage on HIV/AIDS is not done on a continuous basis.
A South African media chief concurs that while the media is a powerful tool, it is not doing enough to connect with young people – who are most susceptible -- and educate them.
How apt. How sad. But that’s a fact.
We don’t have to go far. Take a look at our beloved country. For a nation that has more than 81,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS (as per the same Star report), there ought to be more concerted educational efforts done by the authorities, NGOs and the media.
But I feel the media, on their own, ought to take more initiatives to continuously educate their young readers on the issue. Life, after all, does not revolve around AF winners or celebrity scandals alone!
The South African delegate further observes that many young people know about HIV/AIDS, but exactly how much they know or understand is a completely different story.
“The media has the responsibility to connect and speak the language of young people for they are the ones most susceptible,” he said.
Information on HIV/AIDS must, as the delegates say, spread faster than the disease.
A Case of Anak Rintik?
Talk about our young people, The Star also carries this report:
Rakan Muda show fans riled by rowdies throwing bottles and cans
Bottles and cans flew across an outdoor arena when several youths got restless during an open-air show at the Bukit Kiara sports complex here.
The commotion occurred while Akademi Fantasia 5 runner-up Ebi Kornelis was performing at the show, which was being held ahead of a Rakan Muda event.
The rowdiness subsided after Rela members rushed to calm the crowd before Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi arrived to launch the programme.
Ironically, another throwing match occurred during the reading of the Rakan Muda pledge.
More than 20,000 youths attended the event.
It turned ugly when a few overexcited spectators started to throw some bottles and cans to the other side.
Well, you could say that they were inspired by their elders who threw bottles and sticks at each other during the recent Ijok by-elections.
Yup. Kalau bapak borek, anak pun boleh jadi rintik lah.
GLOBAL WARMING: A MEDIA SPIN?
Well, at least one Malaysian Cabinet Minister thinks so.
At a luncheon today during which he was supposed to deliver a talk, among several not-so-focused topics he touched on, the Minister seemed to question the validity of media reports on global warming, wondering whether they were not just some hoo-ha motivated by commercial considerations.
And he is the Information Minister.
I am appalled, to say the least. I could not believe my ears! No wonder Malaysians in general are ill-informed about global warming, and topics related to it are not widely covered or discussed in this country. I guess the Minister wants to wait until the catastrophic consequences of global warming hit us before he wants to seriously think of mitigation?
Wait, he’d be dead by then. How unbelievable!
Anyway, Bernama has this story generated from the same function.
One Earth to Call Home
Did you know that every person in the world consumes about 20 kg of plastics each year?
So, if you were to multiply that by six billion (that’s approximately the current world population), would you be able to visualise the amount of plastics used globally per year?
And because plastics are hardly degradable, can you also imagine the task of managing their disposal?
Nope, I don’t think you can. Yet, we are so in love with plastics we can’t live without them.
Did you know that a plastic milk jug takes one million years to decompose? That nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists today? That if you lined up all polystyrene foam cups made in just one day, they would circle the earth?
It is however encouraging to see that a number of manufacturers have come up with degradable premix resins, including homegrown PETRONAS.
The company has started producing and marketing its first environment-friendly and degradable premix resin since last year. It says more grades are coming.
No to Roti Canai Hike
I guess roti canai lovers everywhere can heave a sigh of relief now that the authorities have said no its price hike recently proposed by a restaurant operators association.
I am relieved, too, as roti canai is my twin godsons’ favourite breakfast. They each can eat two pieces of roti canai, dipped into fish curry gravy, at any one go.
Let’s all see how much longer the price will stay as it is.
HIKES HERE, HIKES EVERYWHERE
As expected, as soon as the 15 sen per kg price hike of flour took effect on Monday, roti canai sellers everywhere now want to increase the price of their ware by 10 sen.
So in the near future, your favourite Mamak restaurant or stall could be charging you 90 sen for a piece of this delicacy.
They say the 10 sen hike is justified, as not only has the price of flour gone up, the prices of other ingredients of roti canai, like cooking oil and margarine, have too, not to mention the rising costs of everything else.
Make sense? I don’t know. What I know is, it doesn’t take one kg of flour to make one piece of roti canai. So, you do the calculations lah.
An immediate random poll by a local tabloid found out that the majority of the public does not mind the hike, like they did not mind the new subscription fees Astro announced a few weeks ago.
I don’t know what income brackets these people interviewed by the tabloid belong to, but obviously their opinion could not possibly be a true representative of public sentiment.
Talk about Astro fees’ hike, I read this interesting commentary, buried deep in today’s NST’s Tech & U section.
Astronomical hike in paid TV
By Lim Yeh Ern
Astronomical hike in paid TV
By Lim Yeh Ern
From unmarked squatter houses to the high-rise condos throughout the nation, it’s not uncommon to find that familiar Astro grey satellite dish pointing up at a cant angle to the heavens. It doesn’t take an economist to figure out that such high ratio of subscribers to the only paid channel service spells monopoly.
With the newly launched satellite, Astro also introduced several new channels, but just when you thought you were getting more value for your hard-earned cash, in comes a letter telling you that there’s going to be a price increase to your existing package next month and that the new channels will only be free until end of August 2007.
Astro’s excuse for the hike has ironically been live telecasts of football matches – isn’t that the biggest money spinner for Astro in the first place? And if that’s so, shouldn’t the price hike only affect the sports package?
With the US dollar pegged lower, shouldn’t we be getting cheaper movie packages instead? What really gets me are the advertisements, be they those corny Astro advertisements or annoying third-party advertisements. It's advertisements galore all the way. Isn’t this already a paid service?
Astro’s tagline should be Making Astro Richer. How is it making our life richer when we pay for the service and then have to watch advertisements which pay Astro again at the same time?
If the paying customer gets a ringgit for watching every advertisement, we would have paid the difference at the end of each month just to watch Astro.
The letter continues, “We remain committed to make significant investments to bring high quality and engaging local and international programmes to you”.
Define high-quality. Image quality is so poor Sony has to come up with an image enhancement technology for their LCD TVs specifically for Astro channels. And what about improved reception with that new frangled satellite? I’m still stuck at home without anything to watch whenever it pours!
Short of unsubscribing, I guess existing subscribers are just going to have to make do with less channels and make it obvious that they don't like being taken for a ride.
Exactly my sentiments...
TEACHERS DAY, SPECIAL DAY
Today is Teachers Day. In schools across the country, thousands of teachers are being honoured, praised and feted for their great contributions and tireless efforts in imparting knowledge and in helping to shape the mind, perception, personality and character of this country’s future citizens and leaders. Indeed, today is not just a meaningful day for teachers alone, but also for their students and their parents.
I was with my twin godsons last night, on the occasion of their 11th birthday. After dinner, after the cake was cut and consumed, our conversation – as always – turned to school and related topics. In excited tones they related to me their parts in the activities planned by the school for Teachers Day. Azrie and his contemporaries would enact a special dedication to all the teachers at their school, while Edrie would perform solo his own version of a current popular tune.
Each of them has also bought a little something for their class teachers and could hardly wait for today to show their appreciation. “Cikgu banyak tolong Along belajar, Uncle, sebab tu Along nak bagi hadiah ni,” said Azrie. “Ha ah la Uncle, cikgu Angah pun sama. Angah suka sangat cikgu Angah,” Edrie chipped in.
I know both boys had put quite a lot of thought in choosing their little gifts for their teachers. The gifts, though quite practical, did not cost much as these had to be paid for by their own money. But the joy they’d feel in giving their little token of appreciation would be priceless. Of course, between their parents and me, we always remind the boys that there are a lot of other ways of appreciating their teachers: by paying attention to what they teach, by showing them respect, by doing the homework, by doing well in school, etc.
Come Teachers Day next year, I wonder whether they or thousands of their contemporaries would still have the opportunity to experience this joy, because some smart people from the Business Ethics Institute of Malaysia are calling for a ban on the culture of giving gifts to teachers by students on Teachers Day. This, they say, is tantamount to corruption and bribery. This culture, they say, is also not in line with the National Integrity Plan. I’d have thought and expected that an institute of such calibre would have much bigger ethics agenda or issue to pursue and champion.
But anyway, to argue their point, these smart people cited a couple of cases where a parent went overboard and gave personalised Teachers Day cards together with expensive pens to his son’s teachers, and another where teachers requested specific gifts from their students. Some schools, they say, sell gifts for students to buy.
So, they are urging the Education Ministry to issue a directive to all schools and learning institutions to stop teachers from accepting gifts from students on Teachers Day.
I’m not quite sure how true or widespread is this “trend”. If it is true or widespread, I’m sure it can be curbed. Instead of calling for a ban, the Business Ethics Institute – since their people are so smart and are so ethical -- may want to help the Ministry/schools come up with a set of guidelines for teachers on what is acceptable and what is not in terms of Teachers Day gifts. Something like what is practiced at certain companies I know, where employees are not allowed to accept certain types of gifts and/or gifts of certain monetary values.
And certainly not a ban directive! Please don’t take away the children’s joy in presenting their little gifts to their teachers, and their teachers’ in receiving them.
TEARS IN LOJING
A lot of people have said a lot of things over the past few weeks about the Lojing issue, which isn’t too surprising, given the so many parties said to be involved in this huge environmental mess.
And a lot more fingers (and toes, too, I bet) have been pointed and wagged. They still are. This is, after all, a country where blame is still very much the game.
If it wasn’t for the seriousness of the issue, it’d have also been quite fun to read, and watch, the verbal ping pong between the Federal and Kelantan State governments and the rest of the other players.
Well, at least eight companies are facing legal action for their part in the fiasco.
However, Lojing’s environmental degradation is not about to stop while the culprits wait for their day in court. The thousands and thousands of hectares of forest and its sensitive ecosystem will not heal by itself. Neither would the bald hills and terrains re-vegetate by themselves overnight.
So, come on people. Stop pointing the fingers. Use them to poke at those fat asses to get moving instead!
I drove by Lojing last week, en route to KL via Cameron Highlands, my most favourite route to take when returning to the city from Kota Bharu.
From the highway, you wouldn’t be able to tell where exactly the location of this particular environmental rape is, but damage was everywhere I looked, all the way to the neigbouring Cameron Highlands. Hills are barren, red earth exposed. It was a sad, sad sight.
And yes, highland vegetable farming is in full swing.
Virtual Malaysia, the official portal of the Ministry of Tourism, says Lojing’s elevated location “makes it ideal for planting fruits like persimmon and honey oranges, as well as fresh vegetables”.
Something that the good people at KADA had long realised, I guess, before they decided to lease out more than 2,000 hectares of Lojing land to farmers from Cameron Highlands.
It would be interesting to see what both the Federal and the State governments’ next course of action is.
GLOBAL WARMING : BE WARNED
Today, the NST front-paged my favourite topic: global warming and its dreary consequences. And as a bonus, it carried two full pages of reports, with a promise of more articles in its Friday edition.
And BBC World also ran its reports.
You'd be alarmed to know that by the year 2025 (that's 18 years from now), global temperatures would have risen by 1 degree Celcius.
What would that mean, you ask? Well, our children would have to endure heatwaves, floods (worse than anything we've ever witnessed), drought, tropical storms, surges in sea levels etc, all more intense, more frequently.
Coastal land could be submerged, arable land would turn into dust bowls, food and water shortage would happen, with malnutrition and diseases in tow.
All this, with only an increase of 1 degree Celcius? What about if the increases were higher? Well, these would happen:
- if the temperature increases by 2.4 degree Celcius, coral reefs will become extinct
- by 3.4 degree Celcius, rainforests turn into deserts
- by 4.4 degree Celcius, ice caps melt and will displace millions of people
- by 5.4 degree Celcius, sea levels rise by 5 metres
- by 6.4 degree Celcius, life as we know it is exterminated
Bleak? Yes. Can we do something? You decide. All of us decide.
Today.
Meanwhile, the past week or so saw the following ...
A Ceiling Over Our Heads
Number One is hopping mad, and rightly so, over a series of ceiling collapses in new and relatively new government buildings. It does reflect very poorly on the maintenance culture, or the lack of it, in this country. What is it again -- first world facilities, third world mentality?
The Circus Left Town
Yup. The circus left Ijok. Everybody upped and left. All parties involved have to be congratulated and commended for putting up an entertaining show for a week or so. Now the circus has left, it’s up to the elected ADUN to pick up the pieces, and make good on his promises.
A Cry Over Spoilt Milk
I was on my way to work last week when a short news update was aired on a radio channel. The case of food poisoning at Sekolah Kebangsaan Kota Kuala Muda on Wednesday, April 25, said the announcer, was because of some “miscommunication” at the school.
I believe the radio announcer quoted Kedah Health Department Director Dr Hasnah Ismail, who was also quoted by The Star the following Friday as saying that the incident would not have happened had the school head followed the directive issued by the Education Ministry on April 18 asking all primary schools in Kedah and in the northern region to stop supplying milk to students pending investigations on two earlier similar cases.
The directive was Swarovski clear. “Do not distribute the milk pending investigations (agaknya)."
So, where did this “miscommunication” come in? Did the school head not read, nor understand?
People, we are moving towards smart schools.
Really.
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