To My EG1471 Classmates

Well, I bet almost all of us enjoyed the module very much, right? I do enjoyed the time* spent in the class throughout the semester. English learning has never been this fun and interactive before. The class size is just perfect to carry out all kinds of discussions. Yeah. All kinds. Basically, we can group ourselves into three groups based on our nationality. Three is good enough so that we can stay focused in just three countries when comes to discussion. Well... actually is FOUR. I've forgotten our Sensei. Hey, he himself is a one-man group, representing himself as an American, Russian, Japanese, Malaysian, Singaporean... but what, since he is IN our class, so he should be considered as one of our classmates as well.

(*excluding the time spent in doing the pain-in-the-ass text editing)

Indeed, what have made our classes so fun are actually all the discussion topics.

INTERESTING topics + Discussion = lots of talking = fun

As you can see from the equation, the interestingness plays an important role. The class itself is just like a closed door discussion that we can discuss all sorts of topics, including those sensitive ones =X Hope that nobody recorded anything from the class.

Here are some of my feelings from the class. Since Malaysia is so good in practicing discrimination, I am going to DISCRIMINATE you all based on your nationality!

The (one and only) American
"Smoke a cigarette and drink some beer!" Well, I will appreciate that if you practice that in class... Nah, just joking! Thank you for making this class being a so interactive and interesting one. ありがとうございます! Without you, it would not be possible to provide a platform to practice "freedom of speech" in the class. I really appreciate that.

The Chinese (from China)
Frankly speaking, you all have changed some of my (not so positive) thoughts towards students who came from China. You all are more friendlier than I thought. Thank you for sharing your experiences and informations from China. I have learnt a lot from them. To Li Hui, Xue Jie, and Guo Cheng, I had a great time mixing with you all as a group. It is also interesting to mix around with the rest of you.

The 'Locals' (Singaporeans)
Strange but true, the smallest group in class. If any of you ever felt humiliated (the word sounds too serious) because you have failed the QET, think again. Perhaps you are the lucky ones who get the chance to mix with all the classmates and also Sensei. Living 18 years across the Straits of Johor (Malaysians call it Selat Tebrau), I consider myself as a 'half local'. Perhaps my understandings of Singapore might be a little bit better in certain aspects, but you all still, have provided me much insights of Singapore. Nice one!

The Malaysians
I have the most to talk about in this part. Thank you all for making Malaysians proud. We have seen the event, which can change the future of our home, from our neighbor. Channel News Asia does provide better coverage during and after the election than the sum of all mainstream medias in Malaysia. To Uwa: I am glad that the Indians are able to stand up against the discrimination, congratulations. Makkal Sakti! To Saw, don't be afraid of whatsoever Islamic Law to be implemented in the state or the country. PAS had enough of lesson, and it is almost impossible to it without the support of ALL allies. To Johorians, look at the condition in Johor Bahru. It's time to give some chance for opposition in Johor. Recover the balance is the current priority.

The current success in Malaysia's democracy couldn't be achieved without these 'alternative medias'. Here's the list of some important sites:

• Malaysiakini [English] [BM] [中文版] [தமிழ]
• Malaysia Today [The Corridors of Power] [No Holds Barred]
• 独立新闻在线

Okay, enough of politics. Got digressed. Back to EG1471.

So, how about the future of this blog? Actually I haven't decide yet. Maybe I should leave this remained as the EG1471 blog because I really like the "Blogging for EG1471" title and the image. We'll see how it goes!



Finally, I wish that all of us can do our best in our exam!

Time for an End, EG1471!

Again, another semester is coming to an end, so is EG1471. In other words, it's time to make a conclusion for this a-lot-of-work-but-no-MC module! Any future students can try to make this as an advice, but no responsibility will be taken (by me) for any consequences. LOL. As for Sensei, maybe you can consider this as part of my course evaluation.

So...

What are the pros?
You get the chance to start to learn writing all over again. It is something like the case when your physics lecturer asks you to forget about all the classical physics, so you can learn modern physics. Somehow it works, and it is quite efficient. To digress a little bit, this is the point where I doubt more whether the English classes back in Malaysia really works, no offense against the teachers. The education system in Malaysia ... too political oriented I guess. I can talk more about that in pages, but that is not the point here.

Back to the pros. This course is mainly focused on rebuilding and fortifying the foundation of students who are not so good in writing. Of course, this requires a lot of hard work, but no pain, no gain, right? Everyone should be glad that the efforts paid off, instead of being turned into dust. To add on, it is quite hard to find courses like this, which comes together with the 'professionalized' tutor(s) you cannot easily get one personally, outside the school, not to mention the cost if you are joining one outside. In some sense, these reason has made me feel lucky to fail my QET last year.

What are the cons?
To be exact, this course is quite fine tuned to suit the exact purpose of the course. There is not much to talk about the cons of this course. Yeah, not much.

The followings are not really related to the course academically. Later on I found out those are not really the 'cons' of the module, but rather some minor technical problems. First, pushing another 4hours/week (but 0MC/hour) into your timetable is not an easy job, especially when you have another 5 more modules to consider while planning for your almost-full timetable. The timing almost drove me mad when all the modules that I wanted clashed with the timing of this module. To make the problem worse, the one and only briefing lecture occupied the time in my CORS timetable, and made me unable to bid for certain module (I think the coordinator has changed the lecture period to Sunday right, Sensei?)

Well... another issue is about the MC (again). Seriously no one can help much about it. To be fair with the school, I tried to think about this. There are really serious consequences if the school allows MC allocation for EG1471. First, students will purposely fail their QET just to get into this course and get some easy points for their CAPS. Second, students might just take this as some kinda FREE English improvement class since the school is not going to put the fees in the bill. These actually vary with individuals, but I believe that there are people thinking about these out there isn't it?

What topic to recommend for the next term?
'2008 Beijing Olympic Games'
Please do feel hatred/grateful to me IF this really turns out to be the topic :p . There are really a lot of issues we can talk about this. The preparations (stadiums, airport, environmental regulations etc.), cultural and economic impact, so on so forth. This is a worldwide event so I think the geography should not be the limiting factor for this topic from being used.

Any last words?
Hope the things I have talk about really helps, either as an evaluation or providing a rough idea as a student.

(... and a devilish grin to all the future students)

:]

(this emoticon looks just too friendly, can't make it more devilish, so imagine it yourself)

The Rising Sea Level – How Kyoto Protocol Addresses the Problem (edited)

Identify an existing problem that is being caused by climate change in the world today and explain how that problem can be addressed.

The rise in sea level has become one of the major environmental concerns since the 20th century. Coastal areas around the world are being threatened by the rising sea level and the entire surface of the Earth will be affected in the long run. According to Church et al (2001), the thermal expansion of sea water and the melting of Earth’s ice caps are found to be the major contributors to the change sea level (Church et al, 2001). Through satellite observations, Juniper (2007) found that the extent of sea ice has an average decrease of 2.7% per decade since 1978 while more than 7% of summer melting has been recorded (Juniper, 2007). These signs of changes are indeed sharing a common factor, which is the climate change resulting from the enhanced greenhouse effect. To address the problem of rising sea level, the Kyoto Protocol, which has become an initiative to counteract the impact of enhanced greenhouse effect, needs full recognition and cooperation by all nations.

The idea of building seawalls to prevent seawater from flooding the coastal areas may sound attractive, but it only offers a short-term solution to the problem. Besides, this idea is impractical to be implemented due to the large coastal area that needs to be protected. In contrast, actions have to be taken straight to the source of global warming, in which what the Kyoto Protocol have done. The Kyoto Protocol, being a notable cross-national effort, has been set up to cut down the emission of greenhouse gases. According to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (1998), the six targeted greenhouse gases are identified to be carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), herfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) (UNFCCC, 1998).

The Kyoto Protocol is a 1997 international treaty based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has the objective of "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (UNFCCC, 1992). As of November 2007, 174 countries had signed and ratified the protocol (“List of Kyoto Protocol signatories”, 2008). Henson (2006) noted that the Kyoto Protocol is a political approach to require the participating nations to cut their emissions of six greenhouse gases stated above to meet the emissions target based on the 1990 values, in the “commitment period” from 2008 to 2012 (Henson, 2006).

In response to the protocol, different mechanisms are being practiced by the participating countries. Henson (2006) and “Emissions trading” (2008) pointed out carbon trading (or emission trading) is one of the mechanisms that work along with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) projects to control greenhouse emissions (Henson, 2006) (“Emissions trading”, 2008). It is implemented actively in the European Union and has become one of the major components in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) that supports Kyoto Protocol (“Emissions trading”, 2008). Under this scheme, all corporations are given a cap or quota for emission of greenhouse gas that will be lowered over time. If a corporation has excess allowance of emission, the allowance can be either sold to other corporations that exceed the emission limit, or donated to nonprofit organizations to gain other benefits, such as tax reduction.

Although some countries never ratify the Kyoto Protocol up to today, the protocol, indirectly, has created strong influence about climate issues to these countries. The United States, which contributes about a quarter of greenhouse emissions to the world according to Juniper (2007), has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol until today, despite the strong support from countries around the world. Juniper also discovered that the incentives of carbon trading, as well as the shift of public opinions in climate change have sparked commercial interests that eventually lead the government to adapt practices to control the greenhouse emissions (Juniper, 2007).

From what we have seen, we can draw conclusion that the Kyoto Protocol is in fact a successful treaty that unites the world in order to overcome the problem of rising sea level. Although it is too early for the results of Kyoto Protocool to be evaluated, we should indeed recognize and appreciate this multinational effort for the sake our future generation.

Here's Another One from WWF

"Every second, the planet loses another 2 football fields of its precious rainforests."

The Panda Strikes Back

let's see how bloody the panda can be

Earth Hour 2008

"It started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change?

The answer: Ask the people of Sydney to turn off their lights for one hour.


Created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet has ever faced, Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming.

This simple act has captured the hearts and minds of people all over the world. As a result, at 8pm March 29, 2008 millions of people in some of the world’s major capital cities, including Copenhagen, Toronto, Chicago, Melbourne, Brisbane and Tel Aviv will unite and switch off for Earth Hour."

EarthHour.org

Find out more about Earth Hour:

• Earth Hour's Homepage
• MY Earth Hour page
• Wikipedia
• YouTube
• Flickr
• MySpace
• Facebook

Why 60? FYI that's the number of minutes in an hour. That's all.

One question here. Should Singapore have been on the list?

*Update*
Here's the poster from Boon:

Check out more from earthhoursingapore.blogspot.com

Timed Paragraph Practice

Taking the perspective of a future engineer, propose one thing that your country (people and/or government) can do to solve the waste disposal problem(s) facing your country this century.

Waste disposal is always a big headache for developing countries around the world, and so it is in Malaysia. The government of Malaysia has encouraged its people to recycle, but the recycling system and machinery that are being implemented by the government are far behind from the optimum efficiency. To deal with the problem, nationwide waste recycling system has to be reorganized to optimize the overall performance of the entire recycling process.

The recycling process starts with the collection of recyclable waste. The government has to provide more active recycling stations, especially in the densely populated areas. Furthermore, these recycling stations have to be maintained in good condition as currently some of the stations are in a bad operating condition and hence, abandoned by the people.

Meanwhile, the currently ineffective recycling process is also due to the lack of awareness in the public. Some of the people are not even aware of the recycle bins despite the bins being placed in public areas in the country. Therefore, the government should educate and attain awareness from the public through mass media in different languages used by different ethnic groups in the country. This is essential to trigger the people’s response so that they will be actively involved in the collection of recyclable waste. The involvement by the people is so crucial that it would eventually lead to the significant reduction of total waste.

As a conclusion, the sufficiency of waste handling technology is not the main challenge faced in the waste handling process in Malaysia. It is the effort and cooperation of the government and people that will finally lead to the success in reducing waste through recycling.

The Rising Sea Level – How Kyoto Protocol Addresses the Problem

Identify an existing problem that is being caused by climate change in the world today and explain how that problem can be addressed.

The rise in sea level has become one of the major environmental concerns since the 20th century. Coastal areas around the world are being threatened by the rising sea level and the entire surface of the Earth will be affected in the long run. According to Church et al (2001), the thermal expansion of sea water the melting of Earth’s ice caps are found to be the major contributors of the change sea level (Church et al, 2001). Through satellite observations, Juniper (2007) found that the extent of sea ice has an average decrease of 2.7% per decade since 1978 while more than 7% of summer melting has been recorded (Juniper, 2007). These signs of changes are indeed sharing a common factor, which is the climate change resulted from the enhanced greenhouse effect.

In order to address to problem, we definitely cannot just build seawalls to prevent seawater from flooding the coastal areas. Instead, we have to take action straight to the source of global warming, which is caused by the excessive emission of greenhouse gases. Cross-national efforts, notably the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, have been made to cut down the emission of greenhouse gases. According to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (1998), the six targeted greenhouse gases are identified to be carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), herfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) (UNFCCC, 1998).

The Kyoto Protocol is a 1997 international treaty based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has the objective of "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (UNFCCC, 1992). As of November 2007, 174 countries have signed and ratified the protocol (“List of Kyoto Protocol signatories”, 2008). Henson (2006) noted that the Kyoto Protocol is a political approach to require the participating nations to cut their emissions of six greenhouse gases stated above to meet the emissions target based on the 1990 values, in the “commitment period” from 2008 to 2012 (Henson, 2006).

In response to the protocol, different mechanisms are being practiced by the participating countries. Henson (2006) and “Emissions trading” (2008) pointed out carbon trading (or emission trading) is one of the mechanisms that work along with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) projects to control greenhouse emissions (Henson, 2006) (“Emissions trading”, 2008). It is implemented actively in the European Union and has become one of the major components in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) that supports Kyoto Protocol (“Emissions trading”, 2008). Under this scheme, all corporations are given a cap or quota for emission of greenhouse gas that will be lowered over time. If a corporation has excess allowance of emission, the allowance can be either sold to other corporations that exceed the emission limit, or donated to nonprofit organizations to gain other benefits, such as tax reduction.


Although some countries never ratify the Kyoto Protocol up to today, the protocol, indirectly, has created strong influence about climate issues to these countries. The United States, which contributes about a quarter of greenhouse emissions to the world according to Juniper (2007), has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol until today, despite the strong support from countries around the world. Juniper also discovered that the incentives of carbon trading, as well as the shift of public opinions in climate change have sparked commercial interests that eventually lead the government to adapt practices to control the greenhouse emissions (Juniper, 2007).

From what we have seen, we can draw conclusion that the Kyoto Protocol is in fact a successful treaty that unites the world in order to overcome the problem of rising sea level. Although the results of Kyoto Protocol are still too early to be evaluated, we should indeed recognize and appreciate this multinational effort for our future generation.

Saving Nature, Not Only for Man

I have been observing the relationship between human and animals, as well as human with nature for some time. Some issues always bring me into deep thoughts. Why animals are always being be the subject of experiment before human? Why only animals but not human must be killed to prevent the spreading of infectious disease? Why environment must always be sacrifice for the benefit of human? Anyway, the first two questions will lead to some other long stories, but the latter is I want to talk about.

After reading the article 'Saving Nature, But Only for Man', I felt that there are some conflicts between the ideas mentioned in the article with those stored in my mind.

I think that the interaction between human and nature is not critical. The idea of sane environmentalism is so confined that either human or nature has to be sacrificed. This makes me feels that human and nature are in competition, and fighting each other on the limited lands on earth. In contrast, what is in my mind is a totally different idea. The relationship between nature and human, for me, was considered as a mutual symbiosis. However, further thinking made me think that this isn't totally true. In fact, human is part of the nature itself.

From a religious point of view, some (or perhaps all) of the religious founders were 'enlightened' in a totally natural environment. Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism was enlightened under the Bodhi tree. Prophet Muhammad had his first spiritual encounter with (angel) Gabriel when he was meditating in a cave on Mount Hira. These suggests that human and nature are inseparable. Human has to be in harmony, not in antagonism, with nature. In Taoism, the 'Tao' aspect emphasizes the natural order of the universe, which human is part of this natural order, and therefore inseparable.

Apart from the non-religious point of view, I sensed the article has simulated several conditions which only extreme decisions can be made. These cases might happen to be real, but instead of thinking of the extreme ends of the choices, there might be a point where equilibrium can be established to minimize all negative effects to both parties, the human and the environment. Moreover, in some cases, alternate solutions can lead the problem to be solved in a win-win situation. Several issues can be raised from the case of man and caribou. Must there be war at the first place before oil? Must energy always have to depend on oil? Isn't that the wastage of energy by human is a more important concern compared to oil dependency? I personally think that rather than making choices, there are always different ways to solve a problem.

Back to the beginning. The first two questions mentioned are still doubting me. However, when comes to the relationship between nature and human, I have a strong belief that nature and human are one and more important, this idea has to be the core when solving environmental problems we are facing today.

The 'New' Generation of Technology Users

The world is changing so fast. Even the elder 'silver hair' generation don't want to be pushed behind the waves of new technology.

I wonder what kinda music this uncle will store in the player if he owns it. Is it 白光, the Beatles or Britney Spears? I guess I'll leave that question for himself.

Bravo, uncle!