I Think I'm Busy

It has been awhile since my last post. Expect more post rarity, because it is now towards the last three weeks of study, and my schedule will be full of reports, presentations, tests and what not. Mostly reports. Plant Design Project I, Final Year Project I, Malaysian Studies project, Engineers in Society project. Uh, what else?

Football is football. It has been a turbulent ride of emotions these past few weeks, but lately I have not been writing them. My football posts looks more like from a gay bandwagon hopper than a real football fan.

Anyone of you have watched The Pursuit of Happyness? It is a damn good inspiring movie. It made me want to work hard. Those who think the movie sucks sucks. No, I'm just kidding. But really, those who think the movie sucks have very bad taste in movies. Seriously.

Thing is, everything we like is at our disposal. Yet, we complaint too much. "There's not enough parking spaces, this food sucks, this thing is too expensive." There are people in this world who are not as fortunate as us. There are poor people, like in the movie I mentioned above. And there are inmates.

Haha, why inmates? I've downloaded National Geographic's America's Hardest Prisons documentary series some few months ago, but never watched it. Now that I've got the time (paradoxical, isn't it? Didn't I just mention I am busy?), I watched some just now. There are people who are confined in their small cells for 23 hours a day for 50 years for armed robbery and crimes like that. These people lost their lives, and yet they are still alive. For a small mistake (well, usually, for a 50-year sentence, it is not a small mistake) they committed while their young testosterones are high, they paid a super heavy hefty price. You can never imagine the mental state they're in. Even in your average room, if you don't have network or internet connection, boredom already sucks your life out, making you go out and find some entertainment. These people face their walls for more than half of the day, everyday. Such is desperation of entertainment, pooing on the floor and mutilating themselves can get them out of boredom. These people are mentally unstable, and become increasingly violent because of the lockdown itself. But what can they do? They made the wrong choice in their early lives, and this is the living they had to go on.

And there are less strict prisons. Prisons where you can go out and interact with other inmates without handcuffs. Much like The Shawshank Redemption. This is another movie you have to watch. The Shawshank Redemption is 2nd in imdb.com (yea, I've mentioned it before) and since I've never watched The Godfather, that makes it the highest ranked movie I've ever watched. I've never watched Prison Break series, but this National Geographic series is real. The reality is gripping. These people would pay up to seven dollars for a lousy piece of 'cigarette' (it is not even a cigarette, it is tobacco badly wrapped in toilet paper) and they can get an addition of six months behind bars if found in possession of cigarette. These are the people who are seriously deprived of things that are available to us easily. The extreme security makes them more creative in creating weapons and the way they communicate, but the mental is dragged towards self-defense and skepticism and suspicion towards others. Learning things and cooking in the kitchen can be a leisure to them, and they work for forty cents an hour. That money is used to buy those cigarettes. So you can imagine how precious some things are in there. Some of them are serving thirty, forty years sentences, and some even life sentences with hopes of parole, when they go out to the real life, they'll find life much different than the way we do. The movie I mentioned depicts that scenario very well. It is unfortunate for them, but that is the price they have to pay.

There are people who are not as fortunate as us. Be grateful. Be very grateful. And work hard.

I got to go. I need to be busy.

But before that, one movie.