The obvious and the ironic.

Sometimes, it takes more than a smack to the face for some people to realize that they screwed up. Hell, you could smack a brick into some thick person's face and he won't be able to tell if it was a brick or a block of cheese.

In case you do not live in Malaysia and/or have no idea what’s dominating the local newspapers these few days (since last week if I recall correctly), it’s the fact that many people of my generation will be internationally illiterate. As in, they’ll only be able to speak the language that they proudly defend, but is hardly understood by anyone else not of this country.

What’s worse though is that the people, or rather, the person with bollocks for brains who ensured this disaster still had the balls to wonder publicly why is the standard of English among new generation Malaysians so impossibly low. No pun intended by the way.

Some say that the reintroduction of teaching maths and science in English was quite the fiasco. If you ask me, I’d say the re-reverting to teaching said subjects in Malay was a catastrophe, and that is still an understatement. It may as well spell Malaysia’s Armageddon. It’s not that they do not realize the importance of the international language at the time (or at least I hope so), but rather they wanted citizens to be proud of the national language. Another lesson for us that whenever pride is involved, things tend to go, at best, a little too far and at worst, way off target.

Then, on and on people talk about how they should import English teachers and revamp the education system to improve the level of English and all that. And they all keep missing the best method: play more video games.

Seriously. If anyone ever played any of the Final Fantasy games and actually paid attention to the story you can expect them to learn more than reading the entire Lord of the Rings series. And I can say for certain that I owe my competence of the language to the entire Metal Gear Solid storyline; from the Snake Eater/Subsistence prologue to the Guns of the Patriots finale, among other games I play.

That said, one needs to have the right attitude to gaming in order to reap such benefits. Most people I know skip the in-game cut-scenes and jump straight to the gameplay, then complain about the game being too complicated and quit calling it a stupid game, when it is the cut-scenes that tell the story, giving hints on how to play and what to do at any particular stage. These people are the idiots who feed the stereotype of the older generations that playing games make you dumb. The fact however, is this: when people play games, the dumb get dumber and the smart get smarter. Among my closest friends, most of them are gamers who have the correct attitude to gaming; treating it like a movie and actually appreciating the story the directors put behind the gameplay. They are also the ones that I can speak English to comfortably, and is, more often than not, our preferred method of communication.

Teachers all around the world should take this as a serious approach to teaching the language. Parents should also learn to dismiss the stereotypes and pick games with epic storylines (like any Final Fantasy and the whole Metal Gear Solid timeline) for their children to play, instead of letting them surf the net when all they want is to play some pointless Facebook game. In fact, letting them play merely the prologue of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker alone and they will learn more English and Cold War history than they would learn anything from every Facebook game combined, besides how to click real fast at certain parts of the screen and thrash your mouse real fast that is.

With that in mind, I am contemplating on whether or not to take bro Yat’s suggestion of teaching English. Hopefully I will be able to clear the name of games and introduce it as an effective method of teaching the language. Perhaps with this method, we may see the day where every major examination in the country has not just a 100% passing rate, but a 100% A rate for English.

With that, adieu to y’all. Sorry no bombshells today.

Ironic how vast the difference is

Last week, like every other week I spend the weekends over at a very good friend's place. On Saturday night, his brother and a few other people had to bring someone into the house due to said person experiencing some sort of complications. Not wanting to have anything to do with the whole situation or speak our minds aloud to further complicate matters, we went upstairs, away from all the commotion. The area, being predominantly a Malay 'kampung', had their share of such complications before, or so I believe.

Then my friend, Yat, said something epically priceless: "Is it just me, or it is only people who face such problems are those who believe?"

Let me explain.

The 'victim' as I shall refer to as the person facing said complications, was experiencing a period of intense fear/anxiety all of a sudden and, as I believe, for only a very short time. From what I heard, it began abruptly without warning.

Now, there are 2 ways of defining such an explanation. People from the fields of mental health, such as myself, and medical science, know that this is textbook panic attack, or hysteria depending on severity. People from the field of teaching speculation and denying facts, however, believe that this is a sign of a possession, either by malevolent spirits or by demons.

As I mentioned earlier, being a Malay 'kampung', any such occurrences are almost immediately identified as a possession. So, too, was how it was identified when the victim was brought in. Thus I understand how Yat felt when he said that only people who believe in possessions are the only ones who end up ever getting possessed.

This is a problem. When there is a proper medical explanation to such symptoms, there are people who do not seem to be able to have that cross their mind, but instead jump immediately to a pseudo-explanation. The root of it? Simple. Back in the day, when people did not have the means to satisfy their own infinite curiosity, they relied on pseudo-explanations to satisfy, almost to gratify, in fact, their own need to know; the greatest of which is the non-existent dictator called God. It is sad that now, when people are capable of finding true and proper explanations, people still rely on pseudo-explanations to questions in life.

On a side note, it has been a while since the last time anyone ever told me to go to hell. When I was a child, I used to fear the notion. Recently, however, some saint-wannabe prat just told a friend to go to hell because he used strong words in idle chit-chat. And his name was Gabriel. Probably the same kind of Gabriel as the one in Gundam Seed Destiny, that war-mongering prick, I thought. Not very pure yourself, if you condemn another, for whatever the reason. If I were there, I might just tell him how happy I would be to go to hell by being a bit obnoxious and reciting my own poem ‘My Immortal Stand’.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: Long hiatus, I know. But, could be longer.