The Advantages and Disadvantages of Living In Megacities

According to Wikipedia a megacities is usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population excess of 10 million people. Mega cities can be distinguished from global cities by their rapid growth, new form of spatial population density, and both formal and informal economies, as well as poverty, crime, and high levels of social fragmentation. Since 2001, there are 18 megacities such as Tokyo, New York City, Mexico City, Mumbai, Seoul and others that had population in excess of 10 million of population. Although the emergence of megacities increase the economic growth and social lifestyles there are, still have the advantages and disadvantages for living in megacities.

The advantages for the people who lives in megacities is that they offer far more options in terms of culture, nightlife, restaurants, recreation, entertainment and jobs opportunity than the smaller cities do. Besides that, the modern technology makes the lifestyle of the people more comfortable and safer. Moreover, for the entrepreneur or businessperson, they can invest and find customers in the area and have no need to use multiple locations to find it. People, moving to a megacity is like giving them an opportunity to achieve their dream such as at Los Angeles (Hollywood). Mostly, the megacities are the place for the people to find the fame. For example, the American Idol, the Apprentice for the business and popularity. Because of this thing, many people start to move to megacities for supporting their life.

While, the disadvantages of living in the megacities is that quality of life can be lower than smaller cities in terms of living spaces, higher cost of living, lower quality of public services and infrastructures. All of these are causes by the lack of mentality on certain people about pros and cons to live in the megacities. To them, livings in the megacities are all about the luxury without thinking the side effect towards them. Next, they tend to have a large gap between the rich and the poor. The reason for these, the rich people are always conquering the lower class society for their own benefits. Furthermore, not all megacities offer the safety surroundings due to the high population of citizens that make some of them unemployed which leads them to commit crimes such as robbing, kidnapped the rich people, killing and social problems keep increasing. In addition, the climate quality also getting lower which cause the citizens to suffer from many type of unidentified diseases. For example, the spread of Swine Flu a.k.a  H1N1 which is started to spread from the Mexico City.

In a conclusion, the words of “megacities” sounds fascinating and sophisticated that make people want to experience to live in it. However, it not really, as what we imagine it really are. The megacities can provide anything we want but it depend on us how to control it. The reason is if we too fascinated with the life of becoming a megacities citizen it can cause us to stumble onto ourselves. That is why many people that move to megacities have to find their own way to keep surviving in the metropolitan area.

BRUNO MANSER AND SARAWAK

Bruno Manser was an environmental activist. He was born on 25 August 1954 in Basel, Switzerland. He was well-known in Switzerland for his public activism for rainforest's preservation and the protection of indigenous people. He also famous for supporting indigenous rainforest's tribe in Borneo that is Penan people, which are a nomadic aboriginal people living in Sarawak, Malaysia and the Penan people are living in the jungle where they believe the jungle spirits will protect them from any disaster. Manser came to Sarawak to fighting the timber operators that Penan people claim are destroying their forest home. Besides that, Manser wants to help to preserve the forest in Borneo which is more than 70% of Sarawak’s rainforest has been cut during the past 20 years.

Bruno Manser has lived in the jungle of Eastern Malaysia state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo for 6 years that is from 1984-1990. He had lived with the nomadic band known as the Along Sega who became the figurehead for their struggle. He had been labeled as a fugitive and a provocateur by the Malaysian officials and being called an “enemy of the state number one.” On 17 July, 1991 Manser had made a protest internationally in Sarawak. He had chained himself at a lamp post and with a banner during the G7 summit until cut loose by the police. Then, he left Sarawak before coming back again in 1999. This time he coming back and paragliding onto the front lawn of Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud. He had made a deal with the government by offering a truce in exchange to create a biosphere reserve for the Penan. However, he was being deported. To make Manser satisfied with the reason of it, the Sarawak government officials note that 95% of the state’s economic mostly goes to the federal coffers. Due to this, it lead Sarawak has no choice but to earn money from the natural products which is timber.

Bruno Manser's action to help the Penan people is wrong. We can change people into the modern world's lifestyle but we cannot change somebody mentality or belief on certain things that can be said sensitive. In the case of Manser, he has a great intention to help the Penan people and to preserves the forest from cutting by irresponsible people and companies.

NEWS DILEMMA

A journalist is a person who practices journalism; they create report as a profession for broadcasting or publication in mass media such as newspaper, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, and the Internet. Reporters are one type of journalist. They find the sources for their work; the report can be either spoken or written but they are generally expected to report in the most objective and unbiased way to serve the public good. This profession also contributes to the country’s economy income.

We strongly agree that journalist’s responsibility is to tell the truth. This is because what people want to know is the truth stories, news and information. Besides that, they need to make sure the society get the latest or update news. Moreover, it helps to create a sensitive or knowledgeable society or citizen to the surrounding environment and to the world wide events. At the same time, student especially needs variety type of information as the source of reference for them to do their studies, homework or assignment.

In addition, journalist also holds a significance responsibility to transfer the news and fulfill the society’s mind with an abundance of knowledge in order to create a society or citizens that have wide thinking, so that our people can compete with the upcoming nations and on the way to upcoming nations like Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, Chile and many others country. Furthermore, by telling the truth, it would help the people to not get wrong interpretation on certain news or information that the journalist delivers.

Other than that, we are disagree with the view which state that journalist should help their newspaper or TV station make a profit by making the news sound more dramatic than it really is. It is good for theirs newspaper and TV station’s income but how far they can lie to the society? Besides that, telling a lie can cause people get wrong information and cause rumors. In some country, rumor can cause big issue which lead to war, racial conflict, many types of discrimination and many more. Likewise, people also would get wrong interpretation and makes the society confuse on news and information that reported by journalist.

In a nutshell, we all need journalist to telling us about the updates news, so that we can make any early preparation if there were emergency cases or situation. There is some philosophy fact state that ‘a good journalist will produce a good products’ and that so journalist should put in much effort to produce a great qualities of news.

Gender Discrimination In Russia

Gender discrimination or normally known as sexual discrimination is a practice of discriminating a person's sex unfairly which become a factor that affect the life of a person. When deciding who should receives a job, promotion and other employment benefit the gender discrimination will appear especially when it comes between a man and a woman that is interviewing for the post. Mostly the post will go to the man because to them, the man is more hardworking and more easy to do a job without trouble. Nowadays, around the world, there are also some countries that is still practicing the gender discrimination such as the countries in Asia,Africa,Europe and Latin America.

In Russia, the gender discrimination still existed at the workplace. The women often being discriminate from the men because the women constitute the most expensive part of the workplace. Further more, the employers also need to pay for the childcare and to let them to take off when their children are sick. For the employers, this will make them to make more expenses and is hard for the women workers to focusing on their job. Besides, in Russia there are no infrastructure for care of the elderly compare to other developing country. So, to them the woman should stay at home and taking care of the house chores and looking after the children which they say is the obligation of the women. At this point, it tell that the women cannot compete with the men in an equal basis.

In addition, during the Soviet times the women only get 75% from the total salary of the men. Nowadays, on average they get about 60% only. But the statistics cannot be reliable because of the way it is being calculated. Other than salary, the mobility of the women are also being compare. The women had horizontal mobility while the men had vertical mobility in the workplace. At that time, it is not the ability that you have that is being judge but is how long you have been working at the workplace. But by follow the tradition then the men is the one who should appoint the higher positions than women and it is still the same at this time.

In a nutshell, the women has been taught how to set up their own businesses so that they can make money by them own. Next, they are also being encouraged to work in the mass media so that they can use their power to change the stereotypes. The movies also can be use as the encourager for the women by showing the elegant, professional of a women in positions of power.