"The heights of great men reached and kept/Were not obtained by sudden flight/But they,while their companions slept/Were toiling upward in the night."

Quote attributed to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I think the first poems I ever read as a child were his. :) He was my first favourite poet - and, come to think of it, still is

It's Thursday afternoon, classes are over for the week, and "The Weekend" has arrived!

So, what's new with you?

I think the "hot news" these past few days is probably the Beijing Olympics lip-synching scandal. I think it's just an example of Western media blowing it totally out of proportion, trying to antagonise the Chinese. Especially CNN and BBC, which is only understandable, as they probably want to make this Olympics look as flawed as they can - to make it easier for London 2012's Olympics to top this one. For more, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7556058.stm.

[Left: Lin Miaoke - Right: Yang Peiyi]

The other headliner is the Russian attack on Georgia - which is definitely far more important, but hasn't been sensationalised as much as the Yang Peiyi vs. Lin Miaoke fiasco.

Far removed from world news, however, my lectures and tutorials have seen a downward spike in attendance this past week. And nobody needs to ask why - because there are 3 assignment deadlines this week (Wednesday - Intro to Communication, Thursday - Contemporary Worlds 2, Friday - Contemporary Television Studies).

My journalism tutorial this week was as "blogworthy" as usual. Hahaha. Today, we pitched our detailed ideas and rough outlines for our second assignment: writing a feature story. It was a pretty interesting class - an opportunity to discuss your own idea with the tutor (Chin Huat) and tutorial classmates, and a chance to listen to other people's ideas. One of my friends even cried today in the middle of her story pitch - she's planning to write about cancer (and cancer survivors), and the matter is a little close to heart. And Chin Huat was really, really nice about it to her - he knelt down and talked to her for a few minutes until she stopped crying. :) That was kind, wasn't it?

In Communication tutorial today, the most interesting part was where we compared how Malaysian teenagers use cellphones compared to Canadian teenagers (the article by Letizia Caronia was about Canadian teens' use of cellphone). Here's a question for you to ponder: would you say that a person who receives a lot of calls and smses on his/her cellphone is more "popular" than his friend who only receives, say, 1 call a day? Would you say that someone without a cellphone would be labelled "outdated" and an "outcast"? Would you say that how frequently you use your cellphone defines how important you are to your network of family and friends?

In Contemporary Television Studies tutorial this week, we were divided into groups to answer one question per group (like last week). This week, we learnt about "Quality" TV. We watched one episode of The Sopranos and one of Hill Street Blues. Although my friends and I were some of the few remaining students who survived the 2-hour screening of both shows (that means we didn't grab our bag and leave the lecture theatre), I didn't enjoy this week's shows as much as previous weeks'. They were much too long, the storylines were too dark and disturbing, and I guess I'm just not cut out for appreciation of so-called "Quality" television. When the two cops got shot in Hill Street Blues (in the pilot episode somemore), I nearly cried! So ... outside academic hours, I'll stick to my sitcoms, thank you very much. :D

And in Contemporary Worlds 2 tutorial this week, we got our topics for the 20%-weightage group presentation. My group is doing "Migration" in Week 8, which means our presentation is on the 4th of September. It's about how globalisation is turning this world into a "mobile world" - we'll examine issues of immigration, refugees, and domestic politics. And after a brief group presentation briefing, Ujval (our tutor who is also an actor! COOL eh?) went on to lead our tutorial discussion on Global Governance. The topic is like a vacuum-packet compression of everything I learned in International Law, but with a very different emphasis. In International Law, the emphasis was on, well, the law (haha) but in International Studies, the emphasis is on the great big picture, the problems, the solutions. But it draws on the same terms: UN and the failure of a predecessor that was the League of Nations, ICC, ICJ, AU, Darfur, reciprocity, collective action, sovereignty (oh SO MUCH on sovereignty), territory ...

Only, there was no Article 38(1) of VCLT or Montevideo Convention on something something. No Shaw, Oppenheim, Brownlie or Dixon. Not much - if anything - on whether international law is in fact law, which is a fundamental question underpinning much of International Law as a subject.

But there was a lot on America, a lot on how they're trying to dine on "international law a la carte" - picking and choosing which bits they like, drawing up bilateral agreements with signatories of the Rome Statute so that American citizens (especially soldiers) don't get prosecuted in the International Criminal Court. A lot on America as "New Sovereigntists", arguing they shouldn't be subject to all this "international legal order" stuff because they gotta protect their own sovereignty.

While I've forgotten nearly everything I learnt in International Law classes, I guess I'm still pretty lucky because a lot of these terms aren't completely alien to me - it would be a lot worse if I hadn't taken the subject and had never heard of those things before! ;)

Allright, that's all for now.

Have a good weekend, everyone! :)

PS: I don't trust Monash lifts anymore. A few weeks ago, two of my friends and I got trapped in an elevator for the longest two minutes of my life! 0_0 Well, actually, it gave a nice story - so okay, I forgive Monash for its faulty facilities. :D