Firsts

I saw my first movie for this year yesterday, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. It is a lightweight fare, but I’ve always had a soft spot for fantasy adventures. This is a movie that does not take itself too seriously, which is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, Lightning Thief is adapted from a children’s book, the first of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I suppose, given the relative success of the movie, it is a safe bet that there will be at least one sequel made.

The movie begins with Zeus accusing Poseidon that the latter’s estranged half-mortal son stole his lightning bolt. Why are the Greek gods always so petty? I would have thought that the king of gods would have done a better job of securing his most powerful weapon. Anyway, so, young Percy Jackson discovers that he is really a son of Poseidon and has less than two weeks to return the lightning bolt or otherwise prove his innocence to Zeus.

Pierce Brosnan did well as the wise centaur Chiron, but Uma Thurman was remarkably stiff as Medusa. How did she become famous in the first place? Fans of the book are expectedly not too happy with movie. I have not read the book, but the movie was entertaining enough that I was quite surprised that it was almost two hours long at 118 minutes. Look out for Clash of the Titans in April for more Greek mythology.

I also bought my first books for 2010 yesterday. I still have a backlog of books to read but couldn’t help myself. The first was The Walls of the Universe by Paul Melko (RM99.90). The author’s second book, the book is about parallel universes. I was glad that it was a hardbound copy; for whatever reason I like buying newly released books in hardcover. I also saw Boneshaker on the shelf at MPH, but didn’t buy it because it was in trade paperback. Now I know that they don’t release Boneshaker in hardcover so am kicking myself in the head. Next time, then.

The second book was The Centauri Device by M John Harrison (RM39.90). A 1974 work, I consider this one an experiment. I picked it up based on a vague memory of some reference to the book. Hopefully, it’ll work out well. All I know that it has something to do with a spaceship and a bomb of some kind, and ‘Centauri’ refers to Alpha Centauri.

10 Reasons...

... to avoid talking on the phone.

My points exactly! See the whole list and more at The Oatmeal.

Excuse Letter

From time to time a student would come and tell me that they have an excuse letter to miss class to attend some program. Usually I don’t think much about it; extra-curricular activities are important. Besides, university students are supposed to be considered adults who know what they are doing. And I appreciate the courtesy of the heads-up.

“Sir, I have an excuse letter for next class.”
“Wow, you do? Awesome!”
“Huh?”
“What is it for?”
“I am in the committee for the [whatever] program next week.”
“What do you do, in this committee?”
“I’m in the committee, lah.”

However, sometimes a student would come and tell me that they have a forthcoming excuse letter to miss a quiz I just announced. Now, that is *annoying*.

As full-time students, part of their full-time ‘job’ is to attend classes. Even when they are no longer directly held responsible for it, class attendance is still compulsory. There are of course exceptions like family and medical emergencies, court appointments, etc. but having an excuse letter does not automatically and necessarily mean that one is excused.

Often the so-called excuse letter isn’t really an excuse letter at all. They just state that some programs are being organized at some dates, with a list of names attached; nothing at all in the letters about how the listed names are involved and asked to be excused. What am I suppose to do with them, wrap fried bananas? And the students often never even bother to highlight their names. They always assume I know who each and every one of them is.

You want to skip class to visit an orphanage, help organize an event, welcome a big shot VIP, or even watch an elephant dance? Go ahead, go crazy. Excuse letter or no excuse letter doesn’t really matter to me. Just don’t ask me to reschedule a quiz or otherwise bend over backwards to accommodate your personal day off.

“Sir, I cannot sit for the quiz on Monday. I will have an excuse letter.”
“Huh?”
“I will be away for a musical theatre till Wednesday...”
“Huh?”
“... so, can you arrange for me to take the quiz later? I promise I won’t ask the others; I don’t think they’d tell me anyway.”

Questions

It’s always the same. Before a test nobody will ask me any questions. No questions about the materials, that is. They never stop asking me about the format of the test, though, all the way till the eve of the test by emails. It’s extremely annoying receiving the same stupid question again and again: “Sir, what is the format of the test?” I really don’t get the preoccupation with the format. It can be essays, multiple-choice, etc. but much more important than the format of the test is to study the materials.

“What difference does it make?” I asked recently.
“It helps us prepare better,” they said. Prepare better how? Nobody asks me to explain or re-explain a concept, theory, whatever. All they want to know is the format.

During the test, everybody will be all serious, as they should be, and I’ll be sitting in front of the class, bored, looking out for anybody who might want to ask me anything. You guessed it, rarely anybody ever does. Sometimes, somebody will ask me to explain a word. I might as well not be in the room and go have lunch or something.

Now, after the test, it’s something else. After I return all the scripts, after I go through all the questions and the solutions and highlight the common mistakes, after the initial shock of realizing how terrible they did, finally come the questions.

“Sir, will there be another test?”
“Sir, can you give us some assignments for extra credits?”
“Sir, can you help us?”

Yeah, now they’re talking.

Halal/Haram

I think it is fair to say that Muslims are very sensitive about matters of halal (permissible) and haram (forbidden). At least that’s how it is in Malaysia; I don’t know about other places. There was this guy I first met at the Muslim prayer room at the George Sherman Union at BU. The next time I saw him was at a Burger King outlet ordering a burger that had bacon in it. I assure you, it was not the turkey variety. He sat down, put the bacon away with his fingers, and went on to eat the burger while having a lively conversation with a friend about the existence of God. No, I am definitely not making this all up!

Here in Malaysia, however, I would even dare say that we are so obsessed over the legal aspects of the religion, such that our understanding and practice of Islam has been pretty much reduced just to looking out for what is halal and what is haram. So we respond quickly to slightest rumor that a particular product is not halal, even when it has been previously certified as halal by the authorities. Take the recent example about a certain popular brand of sardines. People were quick to boycott the product based on some rumor spread over the internet that it contained haram frog parts.

On the other hand, we have cigarettes declared as haram by fatwa councils at the federal level and several states, as well as many eminent international scholars, we choose to ignore. I was going for ironic, but I haven’t quite fully understood the meaning of the word, so I’m going with funny. Funny that we are so quick to believe and act upon some anonymous, baseless rumor but casually ignore authoritative legal opinions of recognized experts.

And we wonder why everything’s all screwed up...

Flying 101

Budget airlines have some of the coolest liveries, but this one by South African airline Kulula may well be the coolest (and quite educational too).

Watch for the mile-high club initiation chamber. ;-)

[See more at Onelargeprawn via Chris Rawlinson via Boing Boing]

6th Avenue Heartache

Somehow, sometime last semester while on the topic of bonds I went from Bowie bonds to David Bowie to Nirvana and the faces in the classroom went blank. Most of them had never even heard of Nirvana! Come on, am I that old or did I just make the wrong choice of music reference? Perhaps they all listen only to Rabbani and Inteam.

:P

But this is The Wallflowers, of course.

Twenty!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) celebrates its twentieth year this year. Not that it’s all that special but they do have a cool poster I would love to have hanging on my office wall.

Seriously?

If you haven’t known already, over the weekend Amazon decided to take down all titles by major publisher MacMillan over a commercial dispute over e-book pricing. John Scalzi summed out how very juvenile the move is in All The Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed the Weekend. Among those affected is Tor, a MacMillan division that is a leading publisher of science fiction and fantasy titles. While we wait for Amazon to grow up, good thing I am not buying a book anytime soon or I will be very, very annoyed to say the least.

Totally unrelated, I received a promotional email from Amazon today I found so funny I could cry.

How does one go from one of the most recognizable science fiction series of all time to a book on conspiracy theories? Sure, it is a serious book (the US version cover design certainly does not help) – reviewed by The Guardian, among others – but I cannot help wondering if it is anywhere implied that science fiction readers are also conspiracy nuts.

:P

During the drive home from work today I heard a news report on Radio24 that AirAsia X is suspending its flights to Dubai beginning late February. Customers who have already bought tickets can either get their money back or fly to a different destination.

Then, not five minutes later right after the news program, an AirAsia ad came on air promoting that very flight – Dubai for as little as RM199!

LOL.