Week 1-3 In the first of week, our university had invited Chinese lady, Judy Cheng Hopkins from Penang who had been working as secretary at United Nation (UN) for almost 35 years. Ms. Cheng-Hopkins received a Master of Arts degree in Economic Development from Columbia University (1978), USA. She has also received diplomas from Université d’Haute Bretagne in Rennes, France, and Harvard University, USA. She shared her working experiences with the huge organizations around the world. For me, in the beginning of the speech, it about so boring but it suddenly make me very feel interesting when she started to share about her experiences where to create a peace to the country. She also had explained about her position in UN. From my understanding, UN is an organization where it brings all nations of the world together to work for peace and development, based on the principles of justice, human dignity and the well-being of all people. It affords the opportunity for countries to balance global interdependence and national interests when addressing international problems. The United Nations Headquarters is in New York City but the land and buildings are international territory. She was handling a very big position in that organization, and I believed she had been working so hard for the whole 35 years. What can I say is she does a good job because she and her members trying to create a peace between the countries. She also answered some question from the students, and makes me more clearly about the role of the United Nation to the world. After I attended the current affair class, I got more clearly explanation from the lecturer and it’s also change my misunderstanding about some issues.
In the second week, we did not have class because of holiday. And the third week, we had discussed about some articles where it is about Malaysia’s coming election: Beyond Communalism. It is about Malaysia’s thirteenth general election. There is a chance that the opposite parties will run on some issues. National Front (Barisan National) granting preference status for security and economic growth. The ruling party composed the dominant UMNO, and also the small parties such as PAS, MCA, MIC, PKR, DAP and so on. The most “famous” election is between PAS and BARISAN NATIONAL. PAS is parties where the most 90% are Muslim supporter. BARISAN NATIONAL is parties where most of the supporter is from government employees. For me, the article and media are biased because it is one of the tactics from the opposite parties to win the election. They granting promises to community and after won the election, they pretended that they did not promise anything before. If we want live in peaceful life, we should keep and take an action on what we had promises to others, not only gave the promises and pretend nothing happen.