Some good Internet connection now

Ah, now most of my exams have been completed already. I'm now left with Moral Studies and Basic Dance and Movement (Theory) papers on Tuesday. With a few days' break, I had decided to come home. So now I'm at home!

For the past few days, blogging was an impossible task because the Internet connection was by far too slow. Now that I'm home, who can resist going online?

Anyway, holidays are about to come. My parents have decided that we would go to Beijing for a tour. However, being summer now in Beijing, travelling there isn't such a compelling idea anymore. I dislike going on a tour sweating all my way around. I'm picturing myself dripping with sweat while climbing the Great Wall of China, having a long walk in the Forbidden City and so on. But, my parents couldn't resist the temptation of going to Beijing, especially as the rates are lower. Although it's during my holidays, yet school holidays are over, so it should be off-peak rates for me.

I've been invited to Johor Bahru by my friends to attend a Piano Festival in Singapore at the end of June. Although I'm very interested to go there, I'm now thinking twice about it. My parents may not very much like the idea of my going to Singapore after travelling in Beijing. Still, I don't see anything wrong though and it's been such a long time since I got in touch with my piano. I've never, in my life, attended any piano festivals except for just a competition. I think that I deserve the freedom to get in touch more with the development of music during my holidays, especially since I missed it so much during my study period in university.

In one of my letters to The Star, I refuted the Deputy Tourism Minister's statement that information is more important than pronunciation when information is conveyed in Mandarin. I wrote that it is better to abolish the use of Mandarin in their announcements if the announcers, who are Malays, can't speak in that language properly. They have been depending on hanyu pinyin, which is the Romanised version of Mandarin to make announcements. Their pronunciation and intonation were totally out and there were no Chinese to make the announcements in Mandarin. Therefore, it is better to abolish the use of Mandarin than to defame the language with inappropriate and improper pronunciation and intonation.

Today, I read the newspapers and a reply was written to The Star regarding this matter. I'm happy to note that they have decided to hire some Chinese nationals to work in KLIA specifically to make announcements in Mandarin and to handle any inquiries in Mandarin. Why must officials in KLIA wait until now to make the amendments? If only they'd known that all the inaccurate Mandarin would mar the image of our country, then they wouldn't have asked the Malays, who themselves have no knowledge whatsoever in Mandarin, to make the announcements in Mandarin. I imagine that the Malay announcers didn't like the idea of making the announcements in Mandarin, too. Imagine their embarassment that they face from tourists who are fluent in Mandarin.

Another issue worth noting is the landslide issue in Taman Zooview: The Star Online - Residents Told To Move Out. The main question that comes into everybody's mind is "Why did it happen? How could this have happened?" I'm not sure about it either, but it is such things that give civil engineers such a bad name (I'm taking a course in Civil Engineering). No doubt the landslide is a disaster spelt by nature, but I dare say that it could have been avoided or at least the damage could be minimised. What happened to the foundation of that area?

It's lunch-time now for me. So, here I go!