-Tsunami: The Aftermath-

I'm sure many still remember the huge tsunami incident that had happened on the 26th of December 2004 in Phuket, Thailand. Tsunami: The Aftermath, is a television mini-series that was filmed in the year 2006. This movie is actually based on some of the victim's own personal stories, of how they had lost their loved ones and then finding the strength to move on later in life.

In this movie, there were many issues bringing brought up to the viewers and also, some signs to educate the public on the happenings and effects of natural disasters, be it in terms of emotion, mental and or physical. The movie mainly focus on the Carter family where they were separated in the starting of the movie. Susie, the mother, went for a diving activity organised by the hotel they were staying at, the Khao Lak Oasis hotel, was safe from the tsunami hit. However, her husband, Ian and daughter, Martha were not as lucky as she was. Ian and Martha were separated due to the strong currents of the sea. Ian panicked and kept reminding Martha to hold on to the tree before he fell into an unconscious state. When he regained consciousness, he couldn't find his daughter anywhere. Both Ian and Susie found each other soon after in the movie, and they were still searching for their daughter who was believed to be already dead. Susie could not forgive Ian and blamed him for letting go of their daughter in the first place. Towards the end of the movie, Susie took another person's child from a hospital who look like Martha to replace her missing daughter.

Another scenario showed a Thai waiter working in the Khao Lak Oasis Hotel who went back to his village and discovered the dead body of his beloved grandmother. He took her golden bracelet later and was caught by the local police when he was taking food from the deserted place. The police arrested him because they thought that he was stealing from the tourists when they searched him and found the golden bracelets in his pockets. This scene shows us on how chaotic the place was after the tsunami attack and how the people had go against their moral values by stealing from the place for their own personal gains. But then again, who's to blame? It's for the villagers to do all they can to stay alive after losing everything they had such as money, food, etc.

Other than that, the movie also focused on another family called the Peabody family who were also residing in the hotel. The mum and the youngest son were safe because they had also went for the diving activity. They had learnt about the dad's death soon after from Ian Carter and were still staying strong about it. Soon later, they found the eldest son in the hospital where he was badly injured. The mum, took an advice from an Australian aid worker named Kathy, went to the British Council meeting after that to plead for a plane to take her and her sons home so her elder son could sought proper medical treatment back home. This shows the strength the victims of the tsunami had, to go through the challenges in life instead of caving in to their emotions and lost interest in doing anything to stay alive. As the saying goes, life is never smooth.

Kathy, the aid worker from a christian charity group helped out the villagers in Thai and also had been with Tony Whittaker, a British counselor officer. She helped in the releasing of the Thai worker from prison and also voicing out the pains of some victims to Tony. Tony, on the other hand, has a lot to handle as a representative of the British Council. Due to the tsunami attack, there were chaos everywhere. He had to listen to the people complains and also to deal with what he thinks is worth doing because everyone seems to be complaining and being unhappy with what had happened. Due to this, his faith in the system is also torned apart because there is nothing much he could do when everyone seemed to put their only hope of survival on him.

An aspired journalist, Nick Fraser, was sent to Phuket to gather the latest information with a Thai partner and after what he had seen in Phuket, he felt sad to what had happened at that place. He saw how the monks buried the dead bodies without identifying them first because the dead bodies were just too massive and the monks were forced to burned them to avoid diseases from spreading. Also, he and Ian were angry that some tourists were also burned together without notifying their family first. How is it possible for their family to know whether they're dead or alive? Like in Susie's case where her parents never knew whether the daughter is dead or alive. Nick emailed those pictures of the bodies being burned and got into a heated arguement with his Thai partner, because his partner believe that what they are doing are right and that Nick should understand and respect it. Honestly, I don't think the monks should be blame though.. Because they had to get rid of the dead bodies to prevent an epidermic from attacking their village and also, they did chant prayers so that the dead's soul will rest in peace, least that is what they believe in.

At the end of the story, they showed a scene where a Thai meterologist known as Smith Dharmasaroja was being confronted by a Thai official with a proposal he made years ago being handed to him. Apparently, in the year 1998, he predicted that a tsunami is gonna occur and he also advocated tsunami warning systems but was ignored. After the tsunami attack, he was called back from retirement to helped in the development of Thai and regional warning system.

In this movie, some of the westerners were also wondering about the existence of the tsunami alarm. Questions like "Shouldn't there be a form of warning to alert the people?", etc, were being brought up. This shows that Thailand could have prevented the tsunami from killing so many of the villagers if they had listened to Smith in the first place. On the other hand, it could be also probably due to the low advancement of both technology and the country's economy which made the Thai government think that it is not worth the money to be invested into it yet because after all, it was just a prediction.

There were also some "signs" from nature where the behaviours of the animal were a little bit out of the norm. For example, fishes were at shore, jumping about wildly and birds were all flocking together in the sky, making lots of noises. Certain safety measurements were also being shown to educate the public when the Thai worker kept reminding Ian to move to a higher ground in case of another second attack.

In this movie, the medical facilities provided were not many and a lot of the victims died trying to find a hospital. For example, James Peabody who died during the travel. He could have been saved if there was a hospital nearby in the first place. There were also a very chaotic scene when people were looking around for their family members, not knowing whether their loved ones are safe or not. Emotions were also being brought out when some victims had already found out that their loved ones had already died or when Ian and Nick saw the monks burning the dead bodies, etc. Safety measurements should be taken into count to avoid situations like this from happening. After all, prevention is better than cure.

Review of The Cove

Just like my previous post on "The Review on South Park: Whale Wars", this too, brings up controversies on the killing of dolphins and whales by the Japanese.

This documentary stars the famous Ric O' Barry who is known as the first guy to capture and train five dolphins for the movie Flipper. After his favourite dolphin, Kathy, who was the main star in Flipper died, he decided that he would make it his life long objective to set as many dolphins as possible free. He said that Kathy died out of her own will, meaning that it was suicide. He described being down at the pool with Kathy that day when she came up to him with a look in her eyes, closed her blowhole, and went back down. He blames himself for starting this trend of capturing and training dolphins and in the end, unintentionally leading them to their own death out of loneliness and lack of freedom in captivity.

The documentary takes place in Taiji, Japan a town where dolphins and whales swim off its coast. However the activity of catching and slaughtering dolphins and whales took place in an isolated cove nearby with signs "Keep Out" erected everywhere in order to hide it from the eyes of the public. Not even the locals knew about the activity.  Dolphins that were caught were sold to marine parks, and those not sold were made into dolphin meat to be sold in supermarkets. Worst of all, they were also sold in school lunches even when dolphin meat contained high level of mercury of abut 2000 ppm(parts per million)! The crew underwent a lot of challenges trying to get this documentary done as well as to collect solid evidence of their activity. They even used underwater microphones and cameras disguised as rocks.



The dolphins were killed cruelly by stabbing them and leaving them to die slowly. Instant death would probably be a less cruel way to kill them. Why torture them and let them feel the pain over and over again until they couldn't take the pain and die from it?

Throughout the whole movie, it is to be said that dolphin hunting is labelled as a cruel activity of pure evil. When the Japanese fisherman were asked as to why they were doing this, they replied that it's because marine life is their primary food source and that dolphins and whales are consuming too much of it which upsets the balance and supply. In short, pest control. Some said that it is a tradition to the people of Taiji, but were however proved wrong when the crew interviewed the locals about it. All of the villagers didn't have the slightest clue about the killings. So a question was raised, how is it even a tradition if the locals do not know about it? Or is it just down to reality where money making is of the most importance factor of them all?  (a dolphin can be sold to marine parks for $150 000 USD and its meat for $600 USD)

After the release of the film, there were a lot of controversies behind it. Some of the Japanese being filmed in the documentary such as the professor from the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido who revealed the staggering levels of mercury content in the dolphin meat, sued the local media for misleading edits in the comments which had damaged his reputations. It is somewhat true however, that this film is mostly a one-sided story only. But nevertheless, allowing the sale of dolphin meat in the market when it is known to contain a high level of mercury is wrong. Despite several legal lawsuits and much criticism, the documentary had also won the hearts of millions and clinched several awards as well as raising public awareness on the slaughter of dolphins all over the world.

Review on South Park - Whale Wars

Whale Wars, also known as Whale Whores, is one of the most famous episode made by an American animated television series named South Park. South Park is famous for its usage of crude languages on random stuffs with a little bit of humor in it.

                

This episode, Whale Wars, is about a little boy named Stan, trying to save dolphins and whales from being killed by the Japanese. The story started of with the scene of the Japanese entering a dolphinarium where he was celebrating his 9th birthday, and thus, he witnessed the murdering of the poor little dolphins. At home, there were news on the Japanese not only killing dolphins, but whales as well. He was very much disturbed by it and was determined to make a change - to stop the Japanese from killing any more dolphins and whales.

He then invited his friends along but his friends replied by saying "That's just the way they are. You can't change the way an entire country thinks." and that they couldn't care less about dolphins and whales being murdered. Thus, he began his own adventure by participating in a activity to stop the killing hosted by Paul Watson and his crew in the Sea Shephard. However, he was quite upset with the way they use to deal with the problems - by throwing stinky butter at the Japanese. One of the Japanese responded by shooting a harpoon into Paul Watson's head and he died instantly. Stan took this chance and threw flare guns at the Japanese fuel barrels. The rest of the crew saw this and joined him too. With that, Stan became the new captain of the ship. His friends joined him later, this time by saying that they do care about dolphins and whales and it is not about joining him to gain a little bit of fame. Stan also received lots of criticism from some medias who claimed that he is just doing this to gain attention from the public. At the later part of the movie, Stan was arrested by the Japanese and was then brought to the Emperor Akihito where the emperor explained the motive behind the killing - The Americans handed them a doctored photograph of a killer whale and dolphin in a plane, bombing Hiroshima. So then, Stan handed over a new doctored photograph of a chicken and a cow instead in the plane. The movie ended with Randy congratulating Stan in making the Japanese "normal" by now making them killing chicken and cows instead.

So, what IS normal? Killing chicken and cows are normal because we consumed them as food instead of dolphins and whales? How is it that killing dolphins and whales abnormal? Are they not animals too? Or is it because dolphins and whales are relatively quite close to the nature of a human? There is a significance in the last scene where it suggests some kind of imposition of culture. It seems that it is "right" to kill chickens and cows because they are seen as food.

Another thing that we can see from this movie is that fame can buy you fake friends. Stan's friends didn't want to help him out initially and they were more interested in their games rather than be bothered to save whales and dolphins that are being killed. They even told Stan that he couldn't do much because he, alone, couldn't change the way the whole world thinks. However, after Stan became famous for succeeding in bringing down the Japanese and preventing them from killing anymore whales and dolphins, his friends came to join him and they claimed that they wanna help because they too, feel pity for the whales and dolphins. It is obvious that they are just helping Stan because they too want to be famous.

It is amazing how this movie portray that a simple, innocent little kid manage to raised public awareness out of pure love towards the whales and dolphins. Although many media critics are blaming him for doing it out of fame, he just stick to his same old answer, that is, doing it to save the whales and dolphins.

 This movie also has a subtle meaning behind it. It is shown when the Japanese quickly believed that it was a dolphin and a killer whale that is behind the bombing of Hiroshima and quickly declared peace with America after America had shown them the doctored photograph. However, despite several controversies and critics, Whale Whores was nominated for a Genesis Award in the television comedy as it raises public awareness and understanding regarding animal rights.

What is Geography?

When the term "geography" is being brought up, many would picture maps, trees, volcanoes, cultures, longitudes, latitudes, etc. Geography can be defined in many ways. There are several other definitions of the term when searched on the net. Some say that it's a relation between the physical features of the Earth and of human activities whereas according to Wikipedia, it is referred to as the "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical science". In my definition of geography, I defined it as an interaction between nature and humans where the happenings that occured all around the world has an impact on us, as well as how our activities impact the world in return.

                     

  

So the next question is, why do we study geography for? In my opinion, it is for us to understand the way the world is and the importance of it so that we can protect and conserve our Mother Earth. Nature has served its purposes as a provider of food, shelter and life. Human activities such as logging, disrupts the balance of nature where both flora and fauna will lose their habitat and us, losing our foods. The interaction between nature and humans must always be on a balanced scale to maintain the cycle of life on our planet Earth. Thus, it is important that we have to conserve it the way it is.