Earth from Above

as human wants are limitless, our development and pursue of higher living is at the expense of the earth's resources. through years of exploiting, extracting and continuous consumption of of natural oils, fuels and space, our environment and habitat has been suffering in great deal and one could only wonder how long all these luxury would last.

throughout the whole video what i felt for most is probably the impacts of deforestation and oil exploration. i always felt that one of the most beautiful and amazing thing of our mother nature is her creation of wildlife. walking on this earth with us is a vast variety of other living creature, plants, and insect. be it on land or in the ocean humans are definitely not the only one depending on mother nature for survival. truth is we actually don't need much just to survive on earth. our ancestors had very little to live with as compared to us now. but improvements, education, human evolution and development meant a life not just to survive, but rather to survive comfortably and luxuriously.

just by reflecting on ourselves individually would help us understand how greedy human beings are. we can definitely live in caves, depend on traditional ways of living like hunting chickens for meat and growing our own vegetable for self consumption, ride horses to move around for transportation. but of course who on earth would do that now. if i want meat, i might prefer organic grown chicken from Australia thats probably $50 per kilogram. if i want to go somewhere it has to be some top class airlines offering best services and top class comfort. our ways of living has became so high standards that whatever traditional means of the past became recreational for us now. for our own wants, we take down other species at the earth's expenses.

it is said that in bout 30 year's time the crude oil industry will flop as the resources are being consumed at a freaking high rate. having friends in the crude oil industry, my thought is that it probably wont be that soon and that research and technology has already been starting to look at other ways of getting energy. although it is nice and somewhat cold for some of us to think that scientists are just exaggerating, i personally do feel the need to conserve energy and perhaps time for us to slow down our development. anyway whats the point of moving so fast when not all countries is at the same rate of development?

anyway. conservation starts individually. perhaps its time to change the lightbulbs to those energy saving ones for a start even though i dread that they take quite a while to light up.

Review on Tsunami: The aftermath

Tsunami: The aftermath is basically a fictional film by BBC depicting how people cope and survive after the Tsunami. The film basically showed how families and individuals were affected after the disaster, such as a young couple coping with their lost of their daughter, an English family trying to hold on together with the lost of the father and a very badly injured elder son and many more.

After the tsunami has not only cause great damage to the environment and the economic of the affected area, but as we can see through the movie, families and relationships were destroyed. We are not just talking about families losing family members but also families unable to move on with the lost. Here I'm talking about the couple who lost their daughter as the father was not able to save their daughter. The mother was out sailing when the tsunami came and instead of relishing the fact that she managed to reunite with her husband, she blames her husband for letting their daughter go. Eventually the couple broke up which I personally find it a shame. Not many families were able to even contact their family members and yet this couple failed to see what they have gotten out of such difficult situation. I personally blame the mother more. Even though it is understandable that she's terribly devastated with the loss of her daughter, she shouldn't try to look for replacements by adopting another look-alike of her daughter and disown her husband. She failed to see that by doing so, she chose to lose her whole family than trying to rebuild one with her husband who still loves her very much.

Other than showing various stories of how people coping with their losts, the film also touched on the political aspect of the incident, such as the local government not doing exactly much for those who were affected by the tsunami but rather focused more on the economic aspects of the area. In the film where the bellboy went back to his village he saw his home is still in a rut and instead of having officials coming over the help recovering people and the area, bulldozers and and constructions were set up instead. His home was being seized over to build on for commercial use and it can be very hard to deal with for a person who just survived a disaster. it's times like this that the government should make use of to gain the support of the people by providing help and fundings into rebuilding their lives and show concern. If they do not make use of the opportunity, chances are the people would not be willing to show support and might even move to other countries and migrate.

on the other hand, the english family faced problems such as the mother having a difficult time trying to pull her family back together after her husband has died. i feel that her part of the story is probably much easier to relate to somehow though i'm not sure why. it is very true that foreigners often have problems seeking help from their own countries. Embassies are not exactly the best authority to seek help from in times like this due to slow efficiency and logistics. should i be in her position i'll probably be exasperated like hell and yet at the same time i have to remain calm and sane for my children, and also on the other hand cope with me becoming a widow. thank god chances of me being in this position is kindda low but i must say i thought the make up and fake blood on the husband look really fake and gross.

Over all, although i do find the movie being somewhat a little inaccurate or even exaggerating at some point, or even corny, it does give people a good idea of the aftermath of a natural disaster. this is something which i believe singaporeans will have a hard time understanding since the most we can experience here are little trembles from neighboring countries' earthquakes etc. but would i consider this film to be the best material for understanding and learn how to cope with the aftermath of a natural disaster? probably not. I believe the real deal is way more serious and after all, acting out and trying to deal with serious loss of family members and home is definitely a hell of a difference.

Why study Geography

Many times people tend to wonder what's the point of studying geography when history and social studies seems a bit more ground based. It is a complicated system but geography provides a holistic understanding of our planet and systems. Studying geography is important because it not only helps us to understand our environment, appreciate it and create awareness, but also help ourselves in understanding how we create, evaluate and hopefully be in control of and improve our living conditions. Geography actually affects us not just on the physical note, but also socially, environmentally, politically and culturally.

For example, should we not have taken geography, we wouldn't have learn about the indigenous people, their way of living and the evolution of human beings. We wouldn't have understood how we ourselves came about, how did the human race disperse around through the years, our changes and revolution, and studies of history and anthropology wouldn't have happened.

Another reason to study geography is because the planet that we are living in is changing everyday. For millions of years all the living things walking on this earth has been taking a lot of resources and depending heavily on Earth and in the first place, we wouldn't even have known about it if it wasn't for an in-depth study of our mother nature and hence sprouts geography. And through learning geography and having much better understanding of the way nature works, we are now able to understand and even estimate and predict phenomenons or possible natural disasters so as to be prepared for them.

People are able to have better communications through geography too, but on a stricter term, Political Geography. We understand and learn about different cultures and traditions, open up our minds and knowledge and help make the world a smaller place for everyone. Through the past world wars I personally think that all of those wouldn't have happened, if only people had studied geography and thoroughly understand that there are races and cultures outside of our own ones and accept them. Instead of viewing foreign cultures as territories to be conquered or people who are different, studying geography might actually help us not just understand and accept them, but eventually learn to live in harmony together.

All in all, it is very important to study geography as it helps us to think critically, learn to research and communicate better with each other and enables us to improve and resolve issues and problems in a much better way.

What is Geography?

"Geography is the science of our world, and using and sharing geographic knowledge is the key to our future."

—Jack Dangermond, Esri President

So according to previous lesson notes, classmates has stated that geography is about the interaction between human and environment, understanding different countries, cultures and their issues, natural phenomenon, physical aspects of the world and humanity. To be honest so far my knowledge on geography is very limited. I thought it's all about studying maps, learning about some fishing issues in Ireland and how to grow rice, all thanks to secondary school. However coming into college, it became more and more apparent to me that geography is much more than that.

There's 2 kinds of geography: Human Geography and Physics Geography. Personally I find Human geography way more interesting as it focus more on human activities and sounds definitely much more appealing than the studying of the environment, that is Physical geography. Although there are times when I do find physical geography interesting, such as articles like huge cracks discovered in Antarctic Glacier stuffs like that but I do feel that sometimes they can get too intense or even too mathematical and heavy in text. Human geography just provides that human touch and feels more directly related to well, humans.

I do feel that it is important that we all study geography to understand human dynamics better. As mentioned above, geography does help us understand better about other regions of the world and that will both direct and indirectly affect ourselves, in terms of economy and relations. Without geography, we wouldn't be able to predict or understand what our Earth current situation is or how exactly does Mother nature operates. We also wouldn't be able to understand other cultures and beliefs and hence weaken mutual understanding among humans. And we'll definitely suffer greatly from natural disasters should we not attempt to study it at all.

Although I have to admit that I myself tend to lump social studies and history together with geography all the time, i think it is important that we learn bout geography and understand our living environment more. Anyway really look forward to learning more about geography this term!