Showing posts with label Immersion Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Immersion Project. Show all posts

Immersion Project 4 : Visiting Batu Caves Temple::

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Goals:
  1. To know about Batu Caves temple
  2.  To know the activities held in the temple


Activities :
  1.        Observation
  2.        Interview

On, 2nd May 2012 our group have visited Batu Caves Temple. Firstly, Farah, Farihah, Ina and Saidah gather at Hafsa’s bus stop waiting for Nik to pick us. After that we go to the temple.  All this while we just past the temple but today we are visiting it.

All of us are very curious about the temple. This is because when we past the road we just see the big statue of Lord Murugan. Today we have discovered there are a lot of statues located at the Batu Caves Temple.

Farihah, Ina and I (Farah) take the challenge to climb up 272 steps high to the cave. While we are climbing, the monkeys also climb. Hehe. Although it is 10 o’clock we saw a lot of tourists there. We climb up until we reach the cave. We actually try to communicate with the Sami; however he refuses to give the cooperation (he seems did not fluent in Malay or English).  He asks us to go in the cave to see the officer. While we were there, the officer thinks that we want to give donation to the temple. Actually we ask for information about the temple.  Now we understand that, although we live in the same country but still there a lot of people that cannot speak Malay. After that we climb down.

While we are climbing, actually Saidah and Nik not just waiting for us but they are interviewing the tourist and also some of the visitors. They have interview one couple. From the conversation we identify the purpose of them coming to the temple.  

Firstly, they said that this is the first step for them before opening their business. Therefore they pray to be blessed from their Lord (main purpose). In addition, they go to the sacred place because they felt strong vibration between them and the temple. Besides, it is also located near to their house.

Form our observation (before we interview them), we saw that they burn candles. So, we ask the purpose of burning the candles. The interviewee said that as they are requesting blessing and etc. from their God, so they burn the candles as symbol of giving something to their God.  

In addition, they also bring flowers to the father (sami) so that the father will pray on their behalf. After that they also will get different flower from the father. The flower they get will be place in their prayer room (at their house). Significant of choosing flowers because flower is something that is soft, have good smell and also beautiful.  

Besides that, we also have interviewed a woman. We ask her about the occasion that usually held in Batu Caves Temple. She said The Thaipusam Festival is celebrated at this temple. Thaipusam Festival is a Hindu’s Festival which is celebrated every January /February. This festival is celebrated when the Hindus commemorate Parvati, a Hindu Goddess who gave Murugan a spear to conquer Soorapadam, the evil spirit.

Our feelings during the visit:
                At first, we feel awkward because just the five of us who wear hijab. In addition, other tourists also give a long glance to us. Maybe they are wondering why are we at the temple. However, we take this as a challenge. This is because our purpose of going there is to learn and get to know other religion house of worship and their activities.

For your information this is our first experience of visiting Batu Caves Temple after 4 years of studying in Kuala Lumpur. This assignment makes us go there.hehe.  We feel glad to have the opportunity o visit this sacred place for Hindu. In addition, we are happy because we are able to climb up the stairs and also get some information from the people there. 

In conclusion, as a counselor –to-be we should prepare ourselves with knowledge about other religion, races, ethnic and etc. This is to help us well-prepared whenever we have client from different background then ours. We recommended to all of you out there to grab this kind of opportunity. It is great to know more about others. 

Lets enjoy the pictures !!

p/s: This slide show is best view when the internet is 'running fastly'.  please be patience. ^_^




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Immersion Project 3 :: Journey to Herbal Shop ::

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Good evening to everyone. Today I want to share with you about our immersion project entitled Journey to Herbal Shop. That place is located at Batu Caves as we want to get the nearest place to our Mahalah. Moreover we noticed that Batu Caves in most suitable place to conduct this project because of its diversity and different races that we know it is crucial and will make easy our project.

The objectives that we want to achieve in this project is

  1. To gain knowledge about chinese herbs in detail
  2. To know the importance of the herbs that they used in traditional medical setting
  3. To get information about the culture of Chinese at that place


At first  we searched for the suitable place, we got some difficulties in getting the parking lot because of it is the centre of food stall, bank and supermarket. After half an hour, finally we found the vacant car parking (in front of a supermarket) and we need to walk away for 5 minutes to reach at the herbal shop.



Our first destination is Kedai Ubat Fu Sing. Firstly, we greet the worker. The worker is a lady. We tell her the purpose of our visit. But the lady said that she not really fluent in Malay. Furthermore, she said that we should get the information  of Chinese Herb from her boss. Then we tries to convince her but she still give the same answer to us.She also did not look so friendly stances. Besides, she said that her employers was having lunch at that time and she did not know when her boss will come back. We feel very disappointed because we saw her boss at the back of the shop. However, we can't force others to cooperate if they refuse right? Maybe they have their own reason.

After waiting for several time, we decided to find another place.We move to the next shop with a new hope that they will cooperate with us.



Since Chinese population is the majority race in this place, we did not get so much difficulties in finding another shop that offering the traditional chinese herbs. When move to the next place, after introducing ourselves as IIUM students, the taukeh refused to share with us about this information. He gave excuses that he cannot speak Malay fluently and if among us can speak Mandarin, he will deal with us. We tried to persuade him and told him that this is our important project that we need to finish but he still reluctant. Again, we could not get this information.

Cooperation is not there, so it's hard for us to continue with our purpose. We can understand that it is difficult for us if we interrupt their business. Even though there is no customers at that time, yet nobody wants to entertain us...pity us!



We might  feel dissapointed, but we're can still smile  :)

What  experiences that we got  today?


Ermm,  actually  even  though  they are  not  give full  cooperation  with us, here we understand  that people  have different values and  belief  that they  may  hold  since  long time ago. We know  that  perhaps there are concrete  reasons  why they are reluctant to share with us about the information.
In our opinion,  language barrier is the primary factor of this issue.Maybe the owner of Chinese Herb refuse to give the cooperation because the language barrier. They may feel difficult if they have to translate the Chinese term to Malay or English. In addition, people from different place might have different perception of each other.

But never mind. Our journey will not stop here. It is still  long that we must walk until the end.

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Immersion Project 2- Ummatic week festival

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On  12th March  2012, IUM Rector Prof. Dato' Sri Dr. Zaleha Kamaruddin launched the Ummatic Week 2012 at Cultural Activity Centre, IIUM. A week long programme displayed the diversity and uniqueness of cultures at the University. The programme highlighted the cultures of various countries represented in IIUM such as those from Africa .such as Morocco , the Middle East and Asia including Malaysia. 


Our mission  to visit this festival is 

  1. To get  know  each others  by acknowledging  various  Islamic culture throughout  the  world. 
  2. To  go deeper   the history of each country and  understand their  norms  and  values.
  3. To gain  experiences  through the interaction  with  the students representatives for each  country  (booth)
Here,  we took some  photos   with them.






We went  from  one booth to another  booth just to  gather  as  many  info  as  we  can. Each representative that  we  met  proudly  told us  about their  country including their cultures and norms  as well. They did not hesitate to give  us their traditional  clothes  to be wore as to capture it as personal memory. 

You know, if  there is  no  such  event  like this, until now we will never get this useful info that is vital for us as a future counselor. Sometimes when we listened to their explanation regarding their views and perception towards their own country, our mind would be comprehend further about this opinion. For instances, when we visit Maldives booth, we discover that all people from that country are 100 percent muslim. And the representative from the country told us that their capital city is as big as UIA only. What a surprise! It is such as a interesting fact that we knew about this!

After visiting almost all the booth, finally we discover that in this world, actually there are so so so many races that have their own unique values like Malaysia, and perhaps more than that. Exciting, happy and thankful are our recent feeling that we got on that day. We knew that through this experience we will get many information that we think are useful for our career as counselors as we will deal with so many races instead of Malay.



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Immersion Project 1- Friend from Thailand

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In this project, we interviewed one of our friend, Sofiyah Tayongpakor from Thailand and we would like to know further about her regarding her culture and belief in her own country. Through this we can acknowledge every culture in Thailand as mentioned by her. Even though we may not explore it deeper, but at least we are sure through this we can get so many information about our neighbour country, Thailand,  which is strongly influenced by traditional beliefs regarding ancestral and natural spirits.

The goals that we want to achieve in this activity is:

  1. to understand deeper the culture of Thailand, a country of Buddhism
  2. to make comparison between the uniqueness of the culture in Thailand and our own country, Malaysia
  3. to apply our knowledge and understanding when we deal with Thailand people
Here,  our exploration begin here.

Our  roomate, Sofiyah Tayongpakor is from Thailand and she is solely our roomate that is international student. According to her who is from Narathuwat, her culture is not totally different with ours but since her official religion in her country is Buddhism, she told us that sometimes her culture will a little bit influenced by Buddhism culture.


 



According to her, during Ramadhan, Muslim people will normally break their fast at mosques. They will collect money from the villagers for the iftar. After celebrating Eid Fitri, they will do fasting for six days and at 8th day, they will celebrate 6th Raya. It seems like this kind of culture is not quite different with our Malay culture.So do with Raya hajj at her place where at that time the parents will do circumcision to their sons and the daughters will wear earring and be given the beautiful dress.

Thai earring that mostly woman wear in their occasion

When there are people who die at that place, the neighbor will make some festivity to the family's person who die and normally the festivity will occur on 7th day, 20th day and 100th day.

Generally, people in Thailand will worship the idols that they made to show their humbleness to their God.  Buddhists believe that life does not begin with birth and end with death, but rather that every person has several lives based upon the lessons of life not yet learned and acts committed (karma) in previous lives. On 13-15th April, there will be Buddha Festival and they will celebrate together happily with their neighborhood. One of their norms that they have is when they meet with other people, they will greet them, 'sawadee khab/sawadee krab''. Every November 11th there will be a festival where people will release 'krathong' in the air as a symbolic to cleanse their sin to God.

  *“Krathong” is a lotus-shaped vessel made of banana leaves. The Krathong usually contains a candle, three joss-sticks, some flowers and coins.

Every 12th August, according to Sofiyah, people in her country will celebrate Mother day, based on their princess birthday and on 5th December, Father day will be celebrated by them as a symbolic of prince birthday. 



The main language in Thailand is Thai language. Other languages spoken in Thailand are Chinese, Lao, Malay and Mon-Khmer, while English use is becoming more prevalent in government and commerce. The wai  is the traditional form of greeting, given by the person of lower status to the person of higher status. Raising both hands, palms joined with the fingers pointing upwards as if in prayer, lightly touching the body somewhere between the chest and the forehead, is the standard form. 

After interviewing her, we finally got several information that we think are useful for us to understand Thailand people. Although it is just a brief explanation that Sofiyah told us, we found that all of the information are quite enough for us to comprehend their culture. At first when she talked about her culture, we are quite shock because it looks similar with ours but after going deeper, we realize that her culture is mostly influenced by Buddhism .

Our feeling regarding this? Of course we feel glad and excited. Previously we only have little information about this but after this interview, we know that as counselors we need to know everything about culture around us. This is because not all our clients are from same country and religion with us. So we need to prepare ourselves about this and learn better to provide better solution in resolving some issues that occur currently.

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