Personal Favourites April 2009 - April 2010

Personal Favourites April 2009 – April 2010

Excerpt 1:

A more savage way you can help to kill this killer of ancestors is by dumping chemicals anywhere you like! Just dump those chemicals. Make sure it is toxic! The rivers usually are the favourite. If you dump the river, you will kill the fish living in there, or probably mutate it. The chemicals would also react with the water itself, forming whatever other horror substances that you can imagine, making the water too toxic to be used. Serves the aquatic life for killing our ancestors! The seas maybe a bt hard though, but if everyone works together, it’ll work.

Up next, nuclear bombs. Oh yeah! These are probably some of the best ways to kill the Earth. Let’s bomb anywhere we like with these hardcore mass killers. They can make a real big crater in the Earth along with making the surrounding air radioactive. You can make tsunamis out of them too. Bomb anywhere you like. The forests, the polar ice caps, the deep blue seas, big cities, up to you! Kill everything living on this Earth! That should show Earth what she’s dealing with!

The Editor-in-Chief says: This is an excerpt from “Let’s Kill the Earth!” (July 09) by Ariffin B Mohd Amir. Ariffin is known among us for his unusual opinions and the unusual way he expresses them. This satirical piece is a good representation of his style. In it he tells the reader to do everything he can to destroy the earth. But this, of course, is not his objective. When the reader gets to the end, he realises that all the things the writer is telling him to do have already been done. This makes the issue at hand rather poignant. Ariffin was a regular OM contributor. In fact, this issue comes with what is perhaps his last contribution (he is graduating soon).

Excerpt 2:

An Arrested Heart.

Nadzirah Yunos

You speak of rhymes
Dance with words,
Mimic poets,
With fingers in my curls.

Paint my heart red,
With a brush of your lips,
A voice that wraps me,
Of rhapsodic rapture.

When eyes turn black,
All is never lost,
Take me with insight,
Blithely within,
Fiery inside.

The Editor-in-Chief says: This is an absolute favourite of mine as it appeared in our pilot issue. The writer, better known to us as GG, was a student of IB3. She had taken English A1 for close to a year and half, and eventually decided to switch to English B. I love this short poem for its very precise and effective choice of diction. “Rhapsodic rapture” is a nice touch, allowing me to “hear” the voice of the lover. I hope GG is still writing poetry!

Excerpt 3:

Today’s world is characterized by speed; we are a people that are truly on the move. From the angered banging of the table when a program fails to load instantaneously, to the hurried cadence of the march which characterizes today’s executive; we are ceaseless in our efforts to speed things up. Today’s world is not satisfied with anything but instant gratification, and the entire service industry has adapted to fit our desire. One has only to look as far as fast food, one of the most defining concepts of our generation to see our desire projected onto food as well. We have let speed become one of the most treasured qualities of today’s marketplace, where speed and its sister ease of use rule an oligarchy of thought.

This epidemic of thought is most visible in the desperately treasured youth of today. Having grown up at the very cusp of the technological revolution, knowing nothing of the before and seeing only before it the boundless open spaces offered by this delightful new medium, this generation has not stopped in its ceaseless journey forward. Technology and its mediums are the train pushing forward, building its rails as it goes, and sitting atop in true pioneer fashion: with the wind in their faces and the excitement ever-present, is this generation. Information technology has managed to accomplish something unique to technology of the past, in that it can self-replicate fast enough to update itself. The train never fears a lack of fuel, for with every day there comes a new sacrifice to the furnace.

The Editor-in-Chief says: An excerpt from “Loneliness: A Utopian Nightmare” (Nov 09) by Lewis Jackson, one of our in-house authors. Lewis is known for having colourful opinions and his expressiveness, all of which are evident in this article about the “dark side” of modern technology. I agree with everything said here: the modern world is all about speed and superficiality. There is very little space for sincerity and retrospection. What a pity that the very tools that are supposed to help us develop are robbing us of our humanity (look around you when you are in a mall and see how many people are completely mesmerised by their I-phones). Incidentally, Lewis also writes interesting poetry.

Excerpt 4:

Our wretched self-absorption and brutal capabilities are surmounted only by our ability to turn a blind eye. Ignorance is anything but bliss for those who bawl for assistance to no avail. How convenient it is to imagine that we are any closer to achieving the oh-so-ambitious Millennium Development Goals. That our glittering sneakers weren’t as a matter of fact made by a little boy in the stuffy confines of a Chinese workshop, desperate to earn a bowl of rice and not a cold-blooded thrashing. That so much of the natural beauty we readily take for granted will shortly cease to exist as a direct result of our consumerism, our hunger for looming glass facades and brimming gas tanks. Convenience is the fog that clouds our compassionate perception, while passivity is the rocket that incinerates a Gazan youngster, the chain link fence that locks in a Sri Lankan refugee. Perhaps the advent of high technology has helped us sink even deeper into the comatose recesses of our comfort zones, where no shock waves can churn the waters of our consciences. Perhaps we consistently, tragically err when choosing between what is right and what is easy.

But what if, what if the night is darkest just before the dawn? I do believe that the forces of light are capable of penetrating even the most consuming darkness. In every age, a handful of individuals have always managed to break free of the suffocating bonds of ignorance, selfishness and violence to inspire and uplift the rest of us. Think Oprah Winfrey, Bono and Mohamed Yunus, Mahatma Gandhi, Desmond Tutu and Oskar Schindler: to follow in their illustrious footsteps, to move towards realizing the Utopian vision, we need to look inwards and confront that which truly frightens us. We have to awaken our consciences and open our hearts. We must embrace the fact that we are not enemies, but friends, that while passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. We need, now more than ever, to become the change that we want to see in the world.

The Editor-in-Chief says: The title of this piece is “The Illusion – At Present” (Feb 10), written by Pratik Raghu – our very own humanitarian. Pratik is someone with a voice of his own, and he often expresses himself beautifully. This piece demonstrates his exceptional command of the language and also his thoughts on weighty humanitarian issues. Extreme individualism (which I feel is a product of materialism) is an epidemic that is threatening the well-being of the human race. In our age, it seems impossible to imagine another Gandhi or Oskar Schindler.

Excerpt 5:

A couple of years ago, while walking the streets of West End trying to decide which play to see, I saw a poster in Piccadilly theatre for Guys and Dolls featuring none other than Patrick Swayze! The decision made, I marched straight in to get a ticket. That night, I walked into the auditorium with butterflies in my stomach. I was finally going to see Sam/Johnny! As the curtain came up, an announcement was made over the PA stating that an understudy would be playing Patrick Swayze’s role of Nathan Detroit as Mr. Swayze was ill. I was crushed that my crush would not be appearing that night. I stillmanaged to enjoy the show though.

Patrick Swayze has cemented his place in my heart and mind. To me, he portrays characters who display the best qualities of a man. His ability to portray them so convincingly on screen must mean that it comes naturally from within. That makes him a beautiful man inside and out. Ever since Ghost, Patrick Swayze has held a piece of my heart. With his passing, he takes that piece with him.

The Editor-in-Chief says: “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” (Oct 09) by Ms Geraldine Phillips reminded me of my own teenage years in the 1980s, when Patrick Swayze charmed the socks off everyone by playing a sympathetic ghost. Swayze succumbed to cancer at the age of 57. Along with the death of Michael Jackson, Swayze’s passing was another wake-up call for me: Everything changes. Going from day to day, you may operate under the illusion that you are immortal; but the brutal truth is no-one and nothing is to remain for ever.

Excerpt 6:

Apart from freedom, not having a good relationship with parents keeps teenagers from being happy. I know I’m not happy when I’m not on good terms with mum or dad. I would either be really pissed off, annoyed or you’ll see me ranting to my friends about it. I get annoyed by them really easily as they would always have something bad to say about everything especially when it comes to my education. I can say that I do not have a good relationship with my parents. Yes, I admit it. It’s true. And because of that, I hate talking to my parents about anything important especially when it comes to education. I can tell you that if I do go talk to them about it, I would end up crying even before I can say anything. I just feel that it is a sensitive issue to me to be talking to them about it. I think it is because of how they respond to it and what they say to me about it. I tried talking to them about education a lot of times before this; when changing my course from SAM in Taylor’s College to IB in Sri KDU. It was hell for me to go through all the conversations. I remember crying about it when talking to them about it or at least I felt like crying. I would hold back my tears most of the time when I’m strong enough. I usually breakdown after talking to them anyway.

The Editor-in-Chief says: The Nov o9 discussion topic “Teen Angst” caused some writers to pour their hearts out. Our ever-dependable advertiser/publicist/Facebook-manager Yati Ishak handed in a piece which is both personal and revealing. It reveals to us why teenagers are often unhappy during what is in fact the best time of their lives. Pressure from parents to perform well academically, pressure from friends, pressure from society – all these different forms of pressure make it sound as if adolescence were some kind of pressure-cooker. She writes, “I hate talking to my parents about anything important…” This is something I can relate to. Even to this day, at the tender age of 37, I still don’t tell my parents half the things I do.