23st July 2009 Peristiwa di Zoo (Second visit)

The visit to the ‘zoo’ on Tuesday was so exciting that we have to revisit it today no matter what! Nah, I am just kidding! The truth is we did not manage to complete the discussion for “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee during the last tutorial sessions which is why we are looking at this piece of play again today. I can see the relevance of the tasks given to us during our tutorial sessions with Miss Dzeelfa. Last week we were required to come out with thesis statements for that ‘gatal’ story- “Sara and the Wedding” and this week our task is to find three supporting details to support the thesis statement “Jerry’s death signifies the birth of his pride and dignity”. I can see that the tasks that we carry out in our tutorial sessions actually give us a clear guidance on how we should work on our position paper. I certainly hope that for the weeks to come, more of such activities will be carried out so that we can have a clear guideline on how our position paper should look like. While we were cracking our heads trying to ‘ribut otak’@brainstorm for the three supporting details to hold the given thesis statement, Miss Dzeelfa popped a highly debatable question “Who thinks that Jerry’s death does not signifies the birth of his pride and dignity?” I was among the few who dare raised up their hands over this question. Maybe it is because of my own faith and belief that forbade me to succumb to Jerry’s suicide. Seriously, does death releases one from the agonies suffered in the reality? So what if Jerry’s death continues to haunt Peter’s life after making as if that poor lad was the one who killed him? Should Jerry take pride over such selfish act? Jerry may have chosen a striking way to end his life but at the same time he also stripped Peter out of his intention to live a simple yet contented life with his family and pets. Besides, Jerry does not even have the guts to slit his own wrist and that he has to manipulate thus devastate one good man’s life in order to die! I mean, can you believe this? If Jerry is ever to take pride in such ‘keji’ act, I think he should burn eternally in the flames of shame in hell! If only Jerry bled to death with the sin in his own hands, I would have agreed to his ‘brave moment but silly act’ instead condemning the sin he placed on the innocent’s hands!

21st July 2009 Peristiwa di Zoo (First visit)

Today’s reading material is “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee, an expert in the Theatre of the Absurd. (Now you know why people who adapted and made this into the Malay version came up with such an eccentric title!) Seriously this piece of work is real hard to understand, and Jerry’s never-seem-to-end utterances do not help much either! It was until the final two pages that the whole play starts to make sense! From this play I can see the ultimate desperation to die; why some people in reality seem so eager to end their lives so quickly! The feeling of not being accepted by the society, the damnation of prejudice, and the evil doings of marginalizing individuals who differ from the norm is the cause of Jerry’s death. If only people around him try to understand him, if only society accepts him for who he is, if only he was given a chance, all these ‘if onlys’ could have saved Jerry from the dagger he longed so much to pierce into his body. The audience/readers were left helpless when Jerry ‘dies’ on stage, but we could save lives if we spare some time to care for the people around us. (Oh, and I really want to know what happened to the black dog in the missing page!)

16th July 2009 Normal tutorial session (eee…cerita gatal!)

I love reading stories. Anything from Lord of the Rings to picture books which gain popularity in the recent years, you name it! I love spending the lazy Sunday afternoons snuggling comfortably in the sofa which a book under my nose. However, of all kinds of genre available, I have this one thing for those luscious and slightly ‘kepochi’-type of texts; chick-lit they call it! Ohhh, how I love the juicy gossips, bitchy cat fights and cute guys swooning me away with their romantic ways! We had a ‘Malaysianised’ chick-lit- “Sara and the Wedding” as our reading material for today’s tutorial session. I guess many from my class enjoyed the text as much as I do as I heard cheeky giggles here and there and saw some innocent individuals blushing like teenagers! ‘Corporate lady desperate to prove herself desirable by screaming rape after enjoying hot, steaming sex with her cousin’, wow, that could make a big-scoop headline if this story happens in reality! “Sara and the Wedding” is indeed a light-hearted story with a great load of values to learn from! (However, I strongly suggest that this text should only be introduced to students who are cognitively and spiritually matured! Do look out for horny individuals like us!) Anyhow, after reading this story I finally start to realize why my mum pesters me to get into a relationship and preferably walk the aisle as soon as possible each time I go back to my hometown! (She can’t wait to marry me off, I guess!) We were given the task after reading the story which is to come out with a stand for “Sara and the Wedding”, and though the task looked like a piece of cake but trust me, it was so hard to put our ideas into words to form a strong thesis statement. This thesis-statement-formation task does give us clear picture on the difference between a good thesis statement and some really bad ones! Thank goodness for the well-picked reading material for today’s tutorials that made the whole session so enjoyable! (Wicked smirk)

14th July 2009 Fancy having theater again, anyone?

Yesterday Miss Dzeelfa assigned us with a reading task based on two diluted versions of Ovid’s works- “Pyramus and Thisbe” and “Daedalus and Icarus”. “Pyramus and Thisbe” was easy to understand and I could almost immediately recognize the similarity of this story to William Shakespeare’s most famous wretched lovers of all time- “Romeo and Juliet”. However the Ovid’s latter work was quite challenging for me to make sense of thanks to the micro-small fonts, missing words probably a result of printing error and the English language that sounded Greek to me. However after reading the story for a few times, I roughly get a gist of what “Daedalus and Icarus” was all about, say 70% out of the overall text. During the lecture today, my group was assigned to summarize “Daedalus and Icarus” in not less than 200 words while some other groups did dialogues for “Pyramus and Thisbe”. It was quite a huge let down for me when my group was assigned to such boring task. Summarize? Oh, for heaven’s sake summary is so out-of-date and I already had a splendid blueprint in mind specially designed for the dialogue between the two tragic lovers! As the five of us were struggling hard to understand the story suddenly the idea of making the summary task fun and applicable for Malaysian schools hit my mind. “Why not we localize the story. Make it funnier with the Ah Beng-style of talking. Let’s do something that deviates from the boring and old-fashioned summary task that haunts us until now!” I told my group members and we were thrilled and shared many laughter during the construction of this one-of-a-kind ‘summary’ (if I am allowed to call it so J) As the five of us pour wacky into sentence on the piece of paper, the brainstorming session allowed me to fully understand the story which lead me to realize the importance of peer-tutoring in class. When it came to the presentation session, those groups who did the dialogue between Pyramus and Thisbe easily won giggles and laughter from the class. Many of them added humor and also songs to make the dialogue interesting which I believe it is crucial especially if we are to catch the attention of our students during the lesson. Iskandar’s rendition of “Pyramus and Thisbe” ala “Brokeback Mountain” style opened our eyes. Iskandar as Thisbe and Khai as Pyramus. Now that is something worth mentioning! Seriously it was dead hilarious and queer to see two men lovingly chasing each other in the jungle like those scenes in Bollywood movies! Situation became quite different when it came to the turn of those who did the summary task for “Daedalus and Icarus”. Sorry to say, but some groups were still stuck and bounded by mentality that summary task is boring and nothing can be done to make this task appealing to themselves (what more their students in the future). Please do not get me wrong, I am not condemning the traditional style of summarizing text, in fact I think Rachel’s group did a wonderfully-detailed summary for this hard-to-understand text! They x-rayed the whole “Daedalus and Icarus” text and had not missed a single detail! (I admit that we over-looked many small but significant elements scattered here and there in the story.) But my advice to the other groups (this includes mine), take a good look at Priya’s group! They almost made a play out of the story, adding monologues, dialogues and also the narrator’s voice. The whole story became alive with actors reciting the line extracted from the text with full of expression and emotion. I mean, wow! They were great and would that certainly win the audience if today’s lecture was replaced with a drama competition! Though my group did quite well in this presentation, my group still needs a lot of brush ups in terms of idea formation and also speech synchronization. Miss Dzeelfa suggested that it would be out of the ordinary if we were able to compose our rendition of “Daedalus and Icarus” into a choral speaking-like presentation. Today’s lecture was definitely fun-tastic, I do not know about the others but I indeed had enjoyed the lesson though some unbearable noises were produced but I know it was for the good since so many of us were able to open up and better express ourselves and this element of fun and excitement is definitely going to work in Malaysian classrooms where these elements better enhance the teaching and learning of English Literature lessons.

9th July 2009 Is this a writing class or what?

This is the second lecture with Miss Dzeelfa and finally, FINALLY we are doing something that clears a little of the mist of confusion that I had towards this course in the previous lecture. Today’s lesson is dedicated solely to the learning of writing good thesis statements! It gives me flashbacks on the academic writing classes I have attended quite sometime ago in FBMK but the difference is that previously we just learn what a thesis statement is while today we look in depth into the features of a well-constructed thesis statement. I would conclude that the fruit of today’s lesson is- a good thesis statement need to be specific, minus the vagueness and ambiguity. Hopefully the project paper that I will be working on in the near future will kick start with an impressive thesis statement that would guide and ease the whole process of completing my project work.

8th July 2009 First day (In a confusion state!!!)

A new semester, a brand new start. Seriously I am still not into the mood of attending mind-grueling lectures and completing endless assignments that pour down like the heavy monsoon rain. And what is the name of this course you say? Project Work? Wow! Surely it sounds important and means serious matters to me! All these while I’ve been doing assignments, but project work? What on earth is that? I thought only architectures and contractors do project work! Confused, is all I can say during our first lecture with Miss Dzeelfa. I have absolutely no idea what it is going to be like for this course in the next 14 weeks, but it is certainly assuring to know that I will be dealing with a ‘project work’ revolving literature. The first lecture takes off with a brief introduction on the background of fables and tales, which catches my attention since I was and still a big fan of talking animals and magical kingdoms! It is indeed a light-hearted lecture. Though I still fail to figure out what this course has to offer, I know that I am going to enjoy it and make the best out of it!