The Reading Culture

a scene in a malaysian komuter.....

Now compare with the one below taken during my visit to Perth, Australia a year ago.....

A scene you rarely see here in Malaysia....rarely is still in my opinion an overstatement

So, tell me...why then is malaysia still considered a third world country...we have basically the same infrastructure, the same tall buildings, in fact we have two of the world famous megastructures, the smart tunnel and the Petronas twin tower....its us peeps..its us...there are many that our community lacks but let me point out one of the many that will be mentioned later...we dont read enough!

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The truth is i was not much of a reader until form 3..yes, believe it or not... My dad is not much of a reader himself but he knows of its importance and have been spending thousands in encouraging us to do so by 'forcing' us into reading programmes and at home reading modules (Hook on Phonic and Learn to Read..just to name a few) but to no avail...sometimes he comes home screaming for we will never do it willingly...we were kids with mind full of the present and never of the future...

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i never really cared about my English, i was among the worst in my primary and was an average in my lower secondary thanks to my tuitions with Puan Christine...i know this post is not about english...just follow me... well, i think its during form 2 that Harry Potter's first movie came out... the book i heard was a hit but well...not being a reader i have no interest in picking up one..not until i watched the movie with my dad and sis and later stumbled upon discounted HP books at MPH... my dad bought all the 4 books(there were only 4 at that time) and i was so engrossed with the book that i finished all 4 in 2 weeks (to me that was an accomplishment)...

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Soon after that Lord of the Rings first movie came out and as always, a person who always fantasies of another magical world was charmed and i bought the complete set of the books plus The Hobbit...its a much harder read but enjoyable all the same... and something unexpected happened...

It was during a meeting with our English teacher on our PMR trial english paper...he opened the meeting with

'i was extremely shocked by the exam result, only one, unexpected student manage to reach 80'

Then he continued reading each essay's author and their marks with no specific order...

'Hielmi Syaiful-Nizam bin Shamsuddin...81!'

I was speechless...well...everyone was...i am the person who was in grade B english class from form 1 till 2 and was promoted to grade A in form 3 after my mom came to school demanding for it because i managed to get an A eventhough its a borderline during my form 2 final exam... to even get pass 70 is a dream for me for an english essay especially marked by En Zahir....

'so Hielmi, where was this writing skills all this while? what's changed? what did you do? ' after passing out all the other papers...

suddenly some of my classmates said together...

'Its the Lord of the Rings...' and one continued 'He's been reading it since it came out'

and En Zahir replied with a big grin... 'Then i guess you all should get one or borrow from him' and left the room...

It might just be a trial exam but that was when i begin to understand the reason for my dad's actions and why 'Iqra!' was chosen to be the first.....