Salam and my warmest greeting to all.
Well it was quite for me for more than two weeks. Actually August was and still a busy month for me to catch up with papers and seminars. First I had to rush for the 7th of August Artepolis2 Seminar at Institute of Bandung, Bandung Indonesia. My paper had to be finetuned and powerpoints must be ready before the seminar date. At the same time I was also in the midst of editing my first and second chapter of phd write-ups. Hopefully I can complete all four chapters before September so that I can submit to my sponsor for 'six months breathing time' or in other words study leave extension.
To add colour to my study leave period, I suppossedly joined UiTM planning department students' trip to Ho Chi Minh City for comparative planning tour. However, at the last minute due to the Vietnamese government policy of not accepting group passport, the students and accompanying lecturers withdrew from the trip. So only my husband and myself left to pursue the 'unkown journey'. Rima, a phd candidate at Deakin University told me that was a 'honeymoon trip'. Whatever it was, I determined to explore the unknown city of Vietnam with my husband. So we departed with Airasia at 5.30p.m on the 11th of August and arrived back on 14thAugust at 9.50p.m.
It was a worthwhile trip of learning and experiencing the ugliness and dirtiness of war and invasion. My memorable trip to the war museum would stay in my mind. Untill now the images of pictures that depicted the faces of war horror, scaredness, torture, killings and a host of other things unimaginable to normal human beings that happened during the period of 1962-1975 U.S war and invasion in Vietnam stucked in my mind. I do not believe anymore any justification of bringing justice and democracy in a nation through war. What happened in Vietnam before this did not really pitch my mind. After seeing the effects in Vietnam, it was just ugly..no words could describe that. The story or rather articles wrote by journalists could not match what on the grounds. 3 million people feared dead and hundreds of thousands missing. A notion of democracy promulagated by the invaders through war combats and killing not only land defenders but also defendless people of farmers, women and children could not justify that so called a noble act of bringing democracy to the people.
Later post I would comment on planning and design..For now wassallam
3 comments:
Talking about democracy, a frind from Africa said to me `Western (US)thinking of Democracy will always differ from the Asian and the rest of the world meaning of Democracy'and I read in a journal article written by a Malaysian studying in Australia that Malaysian Democaracy has been described as a sort of `quasi democracy'hmm...need to figure that out..
Just to comment on 'quasi democracy'..I think it is something like 'half democracy' not a total democracy..correct me if I am wrong..
KP
Salam Puan Puziah,
I was really disappointed for not being able to materialise the plan to visit Hoh Chin Minh the other day. What a waste of RM433 (well, it was not so much on the amount of money, but the effort and time that I've put in to organise the trip actually cost more that that!!). Tapi- kita merancang, dan Dia menentukan. Probably some other time.... insyaAllah, ada rezeki.
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