Pseudo Urbanisation
Immediately after the short-course final session was over, and it was a saturday late afternoon, we - Aniah, Ehsan, Zura and Ismie - hurriedly dispersed and went off in no seconds. Instead of heading home, I drove - at my own sweet time, running at 60-70 km/h from the PJ Hilton, to BSC (Bangsar Shopping Complex). Roy was already there; I wasn't late however, since the meeting was scheduled to take place at quarter-to-six (no apology needed!).
Roy is a journalist-cum-editor for a bulletin/magazine or something. When he called me up the other day, I think it was three weeks ago, I was told that we were supposed to talk about little petty things like the changing political ideologies of political parties in Malaysian mainstream politics (if ever), as well as looking very briefly at some selected current issues like the proposed New Economic Model, the ministeries KPIs, local authorities, and governance. Issues pertaining to development and governance are indeed overwhelmed by a couple of shadowing variables in the forms of government's ideology; and the Penang's attempt to re-institute election in local government is perhaps one good example of that variables. Whether it is politically-driven or simply an altruistic side of the Chief Minister in doing so is not a pressing issue; politics is basically about determining choices when you have a certain degree of power to influence people. This is what happened in a number of constituents or even in some states - Perak, Selangor, Penang, Kelantan, and Kedah.
A Step Away from the University
The response was unexpectedly miracle compared to the previous ones which was held at the Stadium Malawati. The event - Selangkah ke UiTM - is an annual event. It is held days after the school examination results are out. Im not very sure why the turn-up rate was a bit higher than the last year's similar event. I'll just have to wait until Monday and see if the survey (questionnaires should be administered, I believe) could deduce something out of it.
As usual, the Faculty of Accountancy's booth was the centre of attraction this morning. God! There wasnt enough space for an average physical body like mine to even squeeze-in right before the counter's information centre. I have to use the 'back-door' and observed the whole processes from behind. The Faculty of Communication and Media Studies was also overwhelmed with prospect-candidates. The strategy was indeed very simple and straight-forward, and so very effective: prepare a studio-like setting, put a newsreader-wannabe there, and run a mock tv-news, and you are right in the business.
People come and go while a university stays. Ideologies and philosophies embraced, an individual grows. Universities come in many facets. Intelectual growth is perhaps one of the main components, often disguised in the forms of humility, down-to-earth character, hunger for information-then-transformed-into-knowledge, altruism, so on and so forth.
A person comes and stays in a university for a couple of reasons. Nobody knows exactly the motives behind a man's decision of staying or joining. What he or she is expecting is never explicitly made-known to the university; of course people will generally say that paper-qualification must be the main factor behind the decision (of joining an institution of higher learning). In the mean time, a university is called 'a university' for nothing. It is about the acquisition and mastering of information so that it will soon ("soon" is never a definite period of time), if God permits, be transformed into meaningful knowledge. It is therefore, an exploration of the universe, the cosmolgy of knowledge which is sacred/divine in nature. The challenge is now rests with the lecturers: there are no bad learners..
"...Smile, and the world will smile with you"
