The Rejection, The Drama, and The Offer

I'm not going to Novice Cup. I've been wanting to go for quite sometime but the university admin says that I'm not eligible. Well, they're right, I'm not a UiTM Sarawak student anymore. I am no longer a student wearing the tag "Diploma in Quantity Surveying" anymore. Well, speaking about Novice Cup, I was supposed to find juniors to join through hosting a mini tournament but the whole thing got pulled off cause lack of participation. So with the remnants of people who were actually hyped about it, I took them onto a different course instead. You see, the period where I was supposed to be handling the mini tournament, I was also supposed to be the MC of UiTM's Drama Night. Then my debate unit president gave the craziest of craziest ideas to join the drama competition in just less than 2 days and boy was it crazy, those 2 days. Just writing and getting ideas after brainstorming in 2 hours, we managed to pull it off and got 2nd.

The team who did it. Jeff was a last minute addition as the dude controlling the lighting and sound effects.

Me playing the bartender and Hamaz & Moon playing a "Bonnie & Clyde" influenced character. Moon's blog: http://fos92.blogspot.com/

Tina as the "soundtrack" and Mirul who became the narrator/mob enforcer. Mirul's blog: http://syedamierulasyraf.blogspot.com/

The people who made it happen. Couldn't do it w/o them. (Oh yah, Ben played a mob boss who I owed money to in the story)

Picture credit to Black (Raymond @ Rahman Sallehin, see his blog here)

Here's a short synopsis of the story:

BAD INTENTIONS: Jericho owns an unregistered eatery/bar at the Sarawak/Kalimantan border. Being the turbulent border it is, gangs ask for protection money from people like Jericho. This has made Jericho extremely pressured, after fed up being harassed by the gangsters. This made him kill a drunk lady named Fiona after listening to Jericho's deal with the mobsters. His fate falls in the delicate balance when a mysterious lady named Mellisa who is trying to find her sister and 2 fugitives who are trying to run away from the cops enters his bar. 

It was a loose adaptation of an old "western" I wrote 2 years back, 11:35 in El Paso. I was surprised the judges actually understood the story cause while the other dramas went for the musical route, our team instead took different approach and did a non-linear crime story instead. I was channeling Quentin Tarantino in myself. Haha. Some of my gun props broke into pieces but it was worth it. Gun props could be bought but sweet memories with friends like this could not be bought.

All that happened on the 3rd March if memory serve right and in the spirit of non-linear story telling, on the 2nd also my degree application result came out. It was the 1st time we were training on stage and I just realized I did not get any degree offer. Depressed was the right adjective to describe me at that time and I had to handle that drama thing (which we only had 2 days, well practically 2 and a half day to practice and come up with one.) So I did my "rayuan" by writing a letter to my Rector and did an online "rayuan." Then what do you know, voila! On the 21st I got an offer to do Law in UiTM Shah Alam. I felt as if I was dreaming. I got something I wanted and I really need to this right. I have spent the pass 3 years learning about QS  during diploma but now I'm entering Law! It's just surreal. Just hope I don't mess up this time (Which I promise myself I won't).

Just so bloody surreal. So glad this happened. See you in Law-Fac.

Nuclear Plant Security

Disclaimer: I'm merely judging the situation from the news I read. If there is something that I may have mistaken, please inform me.

Last month, around 11 Greenpeace activist tried to break in a French nuclear station, to proof that their nuclear stations are not reliable in "non-violent" methods. 2 managed to get in, all 11 later got detained under grounds of trespassing. The scenario sounds scary, reminding us that the threat of terrorist gaining nuclear materials is very real. Imagine if those two were actually trained terrorist, who have specific and technical know how to get away with these kind of things. What this proofs is to Western powers is that their nuclear security is low but they keep a close eye and scrutinize Russia for their Cold War era Nuclear Weapons.

To be clear, I am not advocating what the activist were doing. While I'm all for going green to "save"the planet, I'm against all this law breaking stuff. It will only reduce their cause and get them to be branded as eco-terrorist. This is not the first eco-terrorist styled act done by Greenpeace. There has been cases of them blowing up cars during riots, them handing out pamphlets to people on how to sabotage factories (and at times doing it). I love the Earth and all but their anarcho-green ideology seems to be too far. There are some Greenpeace activist are fine, pushing legislations in good ways but those anarchist are putting the others as the same category as them. Same case as those so called whale protectors in the coast of Japan we see in the series "Whale Wars" on TV. All you do is just causing violence, people get hurt and all you cause is trouble, making the message useless. They get painted as vigilantes and criminals, so what's the point. There are many other ways to proof your point rather than putting yourself or others in harms way.

Now the Interior Minister of France is upgrading the security of these power plants, I hope that people take their security seriously and no idiot tries to break in with violent methods because judging from the pictures below of the upgraded security, things could get pretty messy.

French riot gendarmes pose for the media in front of the Chinon Nuclear Power Plant in Chinon, central France, January 6, 2012. France will take new measures to tighten security around its 58 nuclear power plants, Interior Minister Claude Gueant told daily Le Parisien on Friday, after Greenpeace activists succeeded in entering two of them last month.

French Interior Minister Claude Gueant (R) and President and CEO of French energy group EDF, Henri Proglio (C) look at weapons used by the nuclear plants special security squadrons on January 6, 2012, during a visit at the Avoine nuclear plant, prior to the presentation of a project to secure French nuclear power plants. Recommendations by France's nuclear watchdog agency to beef up safety at plants will cost EDF up to 10 billion euros (13 billion USD), an EDF senior executive told recently.

Now folks, you see that, beefing up security up to 10 billion Euros. At least security is something to invest on, rather than feeding it to the black hole called Greece. (No, I'm not being sarcastic.)