Rock on!

Whilst everybody is arguing about the political correctness of spreading the spirit of the festivities and whether Winterval should replace Christmas, and on the other spectrum, whether X’mas is a religious celebration at all, people forget the message behind any celebration. It does not matter if it is a pagan festival. The spirit of any get-together is the fellowship, the fun, the laughter and the strengthening of bonds of camaraderie, of family and the temporary amnesia of the accumulating thoughts of uncertainties of the future. 

As the arms of our family tentacles spread wide to explore greener pastures and in the advancement of careers, the number of remaining members slowly dwindles. If previously, greetings were expressed with bear hugs, exchange of presents and boisterous meetings packed with roars of laughter and trays of food, now we have to content ourselves with digital cards, heart signs and virtual kiss emojis. Messages after messages impressing and outdoing each others’ longing of the other regularly clog the family Whatsapp groups.

These are the gruelling needs of the time and an existential need to propel the family DNA up a notch from where the previous generation left it. If one were too sentimental and fail to be a realist but stay forever romanticising the so-perceived glorious past, he would be stuck in a dream only to awaken to realise that the next revolutionary bus had left us by. 

So forward we shall march with the fond memories of the yesteryears to spur us and the dream of a better future to engine us. The mistakes of yesterday will be the lessons to build a better tomorrow as we sail through the vast Ocean of Life on our minuscule and wayward vessels. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

In the spirit of the Yuletide. 2009, Kajang.

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Taking political correctness to the limit!

Dear White People (2014)

Living in the post-modern world has proven to be quite challenging. If keeping up with fleeting of information and the changing of fashions is hard enough, try being politically correct. It would drain out the last ounce of strength in you. It seems that people these days are all so fragile and can easily cringe like mimosa pudica the moment we hear something remotely unsavoury. 

If you use a word that feels benign enough not to offend anyone, the same people would turn around and tell you that by skirting around the issue, you are actually promoting discrimination. For example by using a sex-neutral pronoun, one may allege that we are accentuating the divide!

This film is a satire on the above subject. It is a bold attempt to put in the open, the dilemmas that the Ameican blacks that go through in their day to day interactions with the other. It portrays identity issues surrounding black students amongst themselves, with white students and with authority in a fictitious Ivy-League type of University.

There are many youtube clips of a Canadian Professor in Psychology, Jordan Peterson, who has been creating such a stir in the net. Netizens are saying that he is a zealot and male chauvinist pig. What he is essentially saying is "don't whine or demand pity on your helplessness but do something on your situation!" In many of his presentations, he had created such a furore in highlighting the ludicrous nature of the modern society in wanting to use the right things and the need not to offend.

Watch how Prof Peterson keeps his cool and his words well crafted in this BBC Channel 4 high-strung interview with Cathy Newmann who battles it out on gender pay gap and gender equality. 

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.