How to feel when you about to graduate?

Have you ever got a sense that you wanted something so bad you cannot think of anything else? That is my daily problem because if I got something on my mind then it won't let go untill I get it. That happened three years ago when I enrolled in undergrauate studies in KIMEP University. Actually it was very interesting, the whole process of studying gets you under and you just enjoy yourself. but then idea of spening four years of my life in strike for achieving cum laude scared me to death. I did everything to graduate as soon as possible - the minimum time is three years. ANd now when I am at the end of my trip (graduation is just three months away from me) I feel somehow lost and feel that everything is empty inside of me. It is weird to feel nothing, not even wanting something. That is what I hate about achieving a goal - you do everything for it but result never brings satisfactio. NOw I don't have satisfaction, no mood and actually nothing except knowledge, great memories and friends all over the place. But memories is the best. You know what kind of feeling you get after visiting places you abandoned two three years ago? Tears, urge for returning it all back and stuff. I visited the old newsroom of our Students newspaper the other day. There I started writing my first articles in this University, there I understood that I am a real journaist, I have so many memories of my first articles. ANd it is even more exiting that designing almost the whole paper by yourself. Now when I am at the end there is only one thing I desire - return it all back and live it again.

What to do with Borat?

Borat Sagdiyev – a Kazakhstan journalist traveling in US and meeting with real people to introduce Kazakhstan and see US. Everybody knows Borat – my friends, schoolchildren and even my Dad who watches only hard Euronews, everything concerning news and Discovery channel. So I am not going to talk about Borat and explain who he is. My main concern or question is why famous and totally funny show man Sasha Cohen, a Cambridge graduate with a professional project on Jews (as he is a Jew himself) transforms into dump journalist from Central Asian country who hates Jews and has a whole whore family? And why Sasha Cohen took Kazakhstan that is not well known in US and in the world as a whole, why not Russia? US people love to make fun of Russia asking whether they have lions walking on the streets and whether they drink milk straight out of the cow. Hmmm, many countries of former Soviet Union went through revolutions for democracy – Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan that are interesting to US but Borat comes from Kazakhstan. Approximately 90 % of all things that Borat says about Kazakhstan are not true at all as well as the words he puts on his show in Russian that is just a randomly chosen Russian letters that don’t have any meaning. I know that only bad things are usually funny and it is cool to talk bad about other country that you have never been to but why choose Kazakhstan? One of the guesses about Borat’s choice is that probably some rich opposition leader or interest groups who oppose to the current regime in Kazakhstan are supporting Borat and creating the black PR for Kazakhstan. But Borat doesn’t talk directly about some democratic problems going on in Kazakhstan except for the right to vote: First God, then man, then horse, dog, woman and rat. But that talks only about the suffrage not the total ability of population to vote. And also as Borat looks like any other Central Asian man but his name doesn’t fit the Kazakh language. What more to say if people love this strange man who makes fun of his own country and is funny himself? And all and all Borat creates interest around Kazakhstan and drives more attention to the country and boost the tourism to this amazing area. And maybe Kazakhstan doesn’t need anything to do with Borat except smiling at him because smiles, laugh and other good emotions make your life longer.

Who is right and who is wrong?
The Kazakhstan Security Council and President of RK – Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev initiated some vital changes in economic and social life of middle class in Kazakhstan by banning the right wheeled Japanese cars. This news caused a lot of negative fuss among the owners of the highly popular, easy in use, comparatively cheap right wheeled Japanese cars. The main concern of the government is that right-wheeled cars cause danger by being the main factor for the car crashes in Kazakhstan where the system of left wheeled driving is accepted.
The problem is that Kazakhstan population likes to drive Japanese cars – it is profitable for businessmen who bring Japanese cars to the country and sell them here, it is cheap and easy for customers who seek for quality and good pricing and can find it in Japanese cars, and even it is fashionable – after release of Japanese Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift movie more and more young people buy right-wheeled fast cars. The average price for popular Japanese cars is around 6-7 thousand dollars depending on the age of the car. The average price for fast and furious sport Subaru or Nissan, Mitsubishi cars is varied around 10 thousand dollars and higher. That is why so many people are against the banning of their cars. Government suggests changing the location of the wheel mechanically but mechanical service providers say that it will be a difficult process that will take them dozens of years and some cars won’t be changeable.
Japanese producers also say that the problem isn’t just in Japanese cars – the Kazakhstan government didn’t say anything about that during the last meetings with producers. Car holders say that they won’t stop the war against new decision and try to find roots of the problems in different places. ‘Stop selling the driving licenses and maybe then you won’t have problems on the road’ – is a claim of one of the car owners. Or ‘try to find an alternative for such cars – with good quality, nice appearance, good price and easiness’ say others.
All and all the decision is made and most probably that by the year of 2008 Kazakhstan will become a totally left handed and left wheeled country.

Internet
Yesterday Internet had its anniversary. It is interesting that such phenomena as worldwide network as Internet was created firstly as an idea for military purposes. Some sources say that the idea was formed during the period of two world wars. Then Internet went to the stage of network just for exchanging information from one source to another. And after a while people understood that Internet might be fun and bring entertaining which in turn could bring good money. Since that time search engines appeared as long with the phenomena of selling on-line which is pretty much popular in the west but is not that popular in Kazakhstan yet. I remember the time when I was a kid and we used to think that it is impossible to buy a pizza on-line and we though that it was an American joke. But the times came when this is real even in our country and although not a lot of us order pizza on-line, many people use Internet to check their money balance on credit cards or pay bills on-line. People meet, chat, date on-line and do other many things. Internet is basically an open area for everybody to have fun, here is the place where a loser can be a prince and a fat unattractive woman becomes a 90-60-90 model.

Raise of popularity
By the CNN report the number of Internet blog users increased to 15 million users in 2006 comparing to those 10 thousands in 1995. The experts say that main reasons for such popularity are easiness of forming personal blogs and high interest to share the information on-line. During last years it was very difficult to make web sites and only skillful people could do something. But now in new era of global customization – high level of consumer approach in business and everyday life, blogs are brilliant idea for those who like to have a little piece of Internet for themselves and become famous among some group of people. It is interesting how only three years ago when I first heard about the blogs it was presented as professional journalists or freelancers form blogs for making money by sitting in front of their computers at home and analyzing news, posting them in blogs and charging for reading news. But nowadays blogs are used for many purposes – it is not totally about journalism and way not about professional journalism. As everybody who has access to Internet may have a web blog and may share an opinion or information it is probably the brightest example of the era of mass-mass communication. But the question is where it will lead the whole communication process and what impact it will have on people's lives in the future?

A change

The journalism world is affected by the changes in the world as well as it affects the world and drives it to changes. Sometimes this game is played on one side. The development of the technology from one side helped enhance journalistic flow and helped the news reach all the audiences at ones – through newspapers, magazines, then radio, television and finally the Internet. But even if the picture of technological journalism development may look perfect it has some disadvantages. Through years the advanced technology showed that for example, TV has some mistakes – it cannot show the full picture even if it is showing it live – you hardly can see what is happening from the back side of the operator, newspapers may have some typing mistakes but the most dangerous is Internet. Nowadays blogging is a widespread phenomenon as majority of world population has access to the Internet and has an opportunity to create blogs. The problem is whether this blogs are professional, ethical works and what kind of impact it would have on the audience.
The first question that author wants to rise is whether blogs are professional enough. Anybody can get into the system, register and have his or her own blog without major problems. But what percent of these people are professional journalists? Maybe we will never find out the answer because it is too hard to get deeper on-line and dig into the truth especially when only minority likes to open their real names instead of stupid nicknames. The authors doesn’t want to discredit those people who are not journalists but who wanted to be ones. The problem is that good journalist is not the one who writes pretty well but the one who writes up to the point and thinks twice what’s going to be the impact on audience after his or her writings and postings. In many cases the real and professional journalism may be threatened by the fake on-line one – people simply can be misleaded by the unprofessional blog and then blame the whole journalism.
Ethical issue is another problem concerning web blogging and its bad influence on whole journalism concept. The information that is posted on-line in the blogs usually is not checked on strict control and users in most cases don’t even know the basic ethical principles. According to reporters without boarders - http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15003 people who form blogs usually don’t know the basics of some ethic codes especially as some of them are longer than the US Constitution.
The citizenship journalism that is not even widely researched and known in US -http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=83126. Some of the aspects that may be posted in blogs by citizens due to their unprofessionalism and low awareness about basic ethical codes may harm the opinions and perceptions of those who read it – case of church blogging for Mr. Bush as candidate for Presidency. Many people wouldn’t vote for Mr. Bush probably if they didn’t read the blogs of their religious leaders who persuaded them to do so. The results don’t make happy the whole population not only of United States but also many countries that exist in the world.
All and all, even though the technological progress helps journalism to survive in new century and reach its audience, the Internet blogging may not be called pure journalism because it is a source for unprofessionals who usually don’t know basic ethical norms in journalism and by their entries may harm the perceptions of the audience.

References:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15003

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=83126.

www.wikipedia.com

Shiraz Paracha's speech on US Presidential elections of 2002

My favorite sites

As we need to show some links to sites that we liked I decided to do so. But I must say that I am not a hard user of Internet - all I do on-line is check my e-mail at www.ok.kz, then look at some news of our University on www.kimep.kz/sgforum and also I like our newspaper NP - http://www.np.kz/2006/39/index39.html, here it talks about visit of President Nazabayev to USA. And as any girl I like Cosmo - www.cosmopolitan.com or www.cosmopolitan.kz or www.glamour.ru


Have fun with it!

Other Diana's blog

In Diana Kalyieva's blog I found some interesting information about the Kazakhstani situation with on-line journalism.
Sometimes me and my friends and family members face such problem that some newspapers are sold out or we missed the TV program and have a need for seeing/reading it. For many developing countries this is not a problem because they can go and find it on-line - on newspaper's or TV channel's web site. Will it ever happen in Almaty for 100 % sureness???

Is Pre-marital sex right or wrong?

Pretty soon you'll see new edition of KIMEP Times where I present new section In FOCUS where best journalists (in my opinion) can share their ideas about contravercial topics. For the first time we decided to raise the issue of pre-marital sex. I think that this is a very important thing for our society. We don't have times of Soviet Union anymore where as we knew there was 'no sex' but our upbringing still doesn't allow some of us to have sex before marriage. Please take new edition of KIMEP Times with fresh ideas, a bit heavier, with new chief-editors - me and Noor Alkhamees and new managing editor - Nikita Turchanin and some new reporters as Diana Kuandykova and Ainel Duissenova and Timour Morzhikov (who featured for the In Focus section) that are in our class. So my personal advice is to read the new edition of KIMEP Times!!!!!!!

In one post I found some interesting information considering my post, so I decided to reply:
dear PalmerEldritchKz!

In my post Threat of on-line journalism I was trying to present the fact clearly about blogging on-line. My point was that as everything in the world, the web blogs have some pluses as well as minuses. Good thing is that people can communicate and it is a step for development. But as you concentrated more on the negative sides my point is that nobody checks the blogs except for some totalitarian governments such as North Korea that probably doesn't allow some information to find its readers and this is a problem. The problem is that no one can state what is good and what is bad in any area of our lives as well as in blogging because there are millions of opinions and what is ok for one is bad for the other. Such situation allows some interesting things to happen - we have pressumbly freedom of the press and speech and variety of opinions. My question to you is whether it is good/bad or ethical/immoral to create a blog where you present your own opinion about some country where you never been to and talk bad or funny things about it like well-known Borat Sagadiev did? Is it ethical to brainwash one's head and apply your own viewings as Hitler did? And the problem with all kind of media (TV, newspaper, blog, etc.) is that it is a big power that may bring benefits or threat of disaster - it just depends in who's hands it is,

I looked at some blogs and I found some interesting information on the blog http://danna-journalism.blogspot.com/, where Danna talks about the ethics of journalists here in Almaty. I also think that this is a very important topic because the journalism market in our city isn't pretty fair. Our journalists have lower payments for their work but still they have to perform at the best level so some newspapers, TV channels and other media ourlets make articles for payment. And I think that such practice doesn't make our journalism area look good so we need to do something with it.

The importance of the Internet

I remember when I heard lectures about Pony Express and how hard it was for people to receive needed information - news in different parts of the world. People and horses, birds and planes were sent with the news that arrived not on time and weren't news anymore. But nowadays we have pretty good situation with the invention of Internet that occupied our minds, computers and free time.

Over the years we find that Internet has many advantages as long as disadvantages. First of all, we have access to needed information any time and in any place if we have computer that is accessed to Internet - we can find any news site and read about the things that happened 20-15 minutes ago in the place that is thousands miles far from us. That is a good part of Internet but there are also some disadvantages like the availability of the old news - archives are not usually things that are easy to access to because some of them are hidden and are not shown by search engines who otherwise bring you different information that you don't need. Some archives are not for free and it takes time to pay for it by credit card while in some cases information is needed right at the time.

But all and all, Internet probably is more helper to journalists than enemy but I can say that each time is different and it is a dependant variable.