So as you might know from my “About” page I’m studying for a BTEC First Diploma in IT certificate at SMIIT and I must say that’s one hell of a school ! 10 / 10 !

But since I’m not really under the SMIIT tag I do actually reside to the MCAST tag but completing the course at SMIIT.

Now this particular post is about a specific thing that’s happening during the course, it’s called  the “Civic Competence Seminar” held every month at the MCAST Campus for First Diploma students every month, as I’m concerned this kind of seminar deals with personal stuff like; anger management, relationships and personal development kind of subjects of which we have been obliged to attend. Ok fine. The subject itself is actually very interesting and somewhat intuitive  but I’m seriously concerned about something.

Right so what’s the buzz? …

During the two seminars out of three which I was able to attend this seminar was based on  discussion, power point presentations and working out these particular “worksheets” if one could call them so !

Which you could download them from here (you need Microsoft Office 2007 or later / and or Open Office which is downloadable for free).

1. Evaluating A Relationship
2. Recognising Your Anger
3. The addictive cycle goes like this

The above papers are the only ones which have been sent out to us in an email format.  These worksheets do not include all the papers which we (students) had to fill up during the seminars, as at a seminar one month ago we had two other papers which were distributed and collected during the seminar itself and if not done we would actually not pass the BTEC First Diploma in IT course.

Because they’re considered as some “mini-assignment” or something like that … whatever!

So what’s the big deal?

Filling up such papers isn’t really a big deal, the big deal is  we (the students) had to write up our name and class group on each paper so the lecturer could recognize our “work” if once could call it so!

Now for a couple of months I’ve been studying as part of our Web Development and Networking Essentials about this thing called the “Data Protection Act” which deals with terms of privacy and copyright.

Ok I’m not a lawyer or anything like that, but last time an SMIIT Representative came into our lecture room during a lecture for us to actually fill up this paper to authorise (or not) the school lecturers to disclose personal details with our parents if we won’t attend to a parents day with them. In this paper we had fields for, Name / Surname, ID Card, an option to or not authorise the schools use of our data and a signature line. So the school would comply with the “Data Protection Act” if we’re 18 years and up.

Now in the Civic Competence Seminar papers I’ve uploaded and attached above the personal details and stuff we had to fill and provide our lecturer with that data, we hadn’t any papers to fill about authorising or not the MCAST Lecturer / MCAST staff to read, use or process that personal and sensitive data.

I would consider this thing as an infringement of my own personal “Data Protection” rights, as I (and other students) don’t / didn’t wish to disclose such personal data with the lecturers with our names on the papers.

Who was the right and consent without your written consent to know?

What you get angry about? and your inner thoughts?
What you think on relationships? Family, Friends etc?

According to the law. NO ONE.

If not with your consent / written consent.

As I speak, many students are being affected by this kind of worksheets because they are obliged (let me say FORCED) to fill up such papers during the seminars as Homework, and part of an actual rolling assignment.

Something which I believe is actually ILLEGAL, yet no student has the say as lecturers tend to tell every student that they MUST fill up these kind of papers and write their names on them. Which is pretty sick.

If this has been done before. Now its time to actually take action, and yes I’m writing this on the net so I reach as many people as possible to know what goes in our Maltese colleges and schools and for the lecturers to know, that we students know what is happening and that it is illegal to collect such information without our consent yet because we are the students and we don’t have any student union to report to we don’t have any power like the students at the Junior College and The University of Malta having student unions and groups.

Its time for a change.  I want my right for privacy!

So do all the other students who are silent about this matter.

It’s time for action to be taken.

now for another MCAST story… of which I already informed a couple of politicians about.

We’re now a month and a half away from a so called “Divorce referendum”.

Half a month ago we had a Maltese composition assignment, the second assignment of this subject for the year.

At MCAST according to certain college regulations, it says that we CANNOT discuss anything political in class.

Yet in this particular assignment we had 5 options on what to do the 300 word (Yea I know… 300 words is quite ridiculous. But less is better!) composition we had this particular option:

“Id-Divorzju min hu favur u min hu kontra? Iddiskuti.”
(English Translation: Divorce, who’s in favour and who’s against? Discuss.”

Unfortunately I can’t actually get a copy of this assignment.

With this class assignment being two months away from an election and loads of debates about the 2800 youths who aren’t being allowed to vote, with the Church and Government representatives and officials preaching against the introduction of divorce, I deplore who ever has written this assignment and MCAST for approving such a politically motivated subject to try and trap the students into this political trap, trying to capture their probably “free” and “open-minded” ideas on the issue, trying to know on how these students will vote in the divorce referendum.
Of which they have no right to do so, and goes against the college regulations.

Where the democracy in this little island? Are we actually any better than Libya? Iran? Syria? Yemen? …you name that? Maybe Zimbabwe! No crap! They do even have better roads… even if made from 100% pure mud.

As you might already figured out, yes I actually did this title… but knowing what was the intention about this I actually written from an outsider perspective. Not even mentioning politician names or parties.

Now addressing to you, the reader who might be an affected student, who just bumped into this blog on the net my message to you is one thing, WAKE UP, KNOW YOUR FUNDAMENTAL rights and speak up!

And I’ll end this post with one of the most populist songs ever to be made. It’s John Lennon’s Power to the People.

Peace.

Noel Borg.

[EDIT:] A couple of minutes after I’ve posted the above post. I received a reply on Facebook from someone who is concerned about the Maltese composition containing a title assignment saying that this assignment was only issued at SMIIT and that the title was an “argumentative writing” composition rather than a direct speech one.

Therefore this couldn’t in any way be used or compromised from  anyone.

As an opinionist I respect this reply. But would leave it up to you (ie: the reader) to digest the whole post as you might wish.

I find it so funny when it rains a bit… everyone dons new coats and useless stuff… I just don’t know… but I guess I wasn’t much compatible with the Maltese weather system! I also like the December feel, it’s something unique, and even more unique with the Christmas time just around the corner, this month is so special, especially when [ironically] looking out of the bus window getting home from school watching all of those dummy Father Christmas’s hanging out of the Maltese balcony’s …I find it so funny counting how much of these kind of Christmas decorations there are, every day a new Father Christmas is hanging out…. one big… one small and one more chubby than the other !  No wonder I always thought that the Father Christmas or Santa Clause …. was one excessively fat fake dude! But I guess I will leave that for another time…. and will post my thoughts on Christmas when it’s more a proper time to do so!

So enough of the gibberish and back to reality… the next part of this post are my opinions on the past of this country, and it’s roots of what I say “backward mentality”.

Opinion: Malta & It’s roots of backward mentality…

Watching “Bijografiji” last Thursday on TVM was very entertaining ! It was about [the biggest and most ferocious rat in Maltese history] the mighty old Maltese Archbishop Michael Gonzi, I say mighty because he was the biggest most powerful dude in Malta back in his time, this chap had the perception that everyone literally everyone was a Roman Catholic, even if the dude doesn’t believe in anything. He literally imposed his beliefs on everyone in the country.

But this chap, is mostly remembered for causing Malta’s 50′s & 60′s political mayhem, which mayhem is still the cause  for the backward mentality there is on the Mediterranean island.

The dude along with other Catholic priests back in the days, totally went against the Labour government of that time, under their leader Dom Mintoff, who in the mid-50′s wanted Malta’s integration with Britain, but Gonzi didn’t agree with this because he feared that Roman Catholicism would vanish from the country, and most people would convert to Protestants (religious freedom anyone?!).

With all this happening he continued to even more dived the country in two, in 1961 he declared the infamous “Interdiction” on the Labour supporters, and the Labour party in general,  during which time anyone who read, written on the party’s newspapers, and/or voted for the Labour party would have been interdicted from the Catholic church. This resulted in a State vs Church fight, which ended in 1964 and in 1969 Gonzi declared peace with the Labour party.

During this religious “Interdiction” this Gonzi chap, has escalated the political tension on the island nation, during these years there had been some serious “fighting” and even politically related murders, between the Nationalist party supporters, and the Labour ones, as the Nationalist party was the only party approved by the church as the party that comply’s with it’s interests.

It’s a very sad party of the history I say. During this interdiction time anyone who was interdicted was even buried in unconsecrated parts of cemeteries called “Il-Mizbla” notable people include Labour politician Guze Ellul Mercer who was buried in this part of the cemetery although he was a devote Catholic.

Apart from this religious-political struggle that the back-then Archbishop Gonzi caused there was also morale “abuse” on the Maltese people, like if one danced to the back-then popular music genre, Rock’N'Roll and a priest saw the person dancing it, the priest would report him to the police, and the dude get’s arrested. So basically the Church back in the days literally abused the human right of “Freedom”.

Will he ever be accused of  this “abuse”? Will he ever be accused of causing “national harm”?  NO because this dude was so powerful that even the politicians feared him.

Those were the roots of today’s socially problematic “backward mentality”, these past years under the governance of Fenech Adami and most recently Lawrence Gonzi (who is a nephew of Archbishop Gonzi) this country is still debating “condoms”, and now “divorce”, subjects of which I personally deem as very important things. The Catholic Church is still doing pressure on the government, to avoid suggesting the use of condoms, to not put condom machines in public places such as the University… even when recent surveys showed that most of the Maltese people can’t even identify 3 kinds of STD’s some don’t even know what AIDS and HIV are!  Also Malta is still debating whether legislating divorce or not? ….without going deep into this issue, I would say that this backward mentality trails back to the roots of this article, that the church has got too much power on this little island and that all the religious guys still manage to govern the country.

Will the guys who are doing this ever be charged with breaching human rights for freedom of choice? Answer is sadly but an obvious NO cos’ they govern everything. Malta and Iran are on par on these issues.

The End.

Until the next post I’ll leave you with these two music tracks by Bikini an indie pop/rock band:

Band: Bikini Title: American Mourning

Band: Bikini Title: Remember Being Young

I will also hopefully be conducting a couple of exclusive interviews with some distinctive people in the coming weeks, which will also be posted on this blog. So stay tuned!

Noel Borg.

One Big U-Turn!

Let’s begin with the  U-Turn…. Ok so the Pope FINALLY realised that Condoms do protect from HIV/AIDS and such STD’s….. yet that comes after one of his biggest ever gaffes/flops saying that using contraceptives doesn’t help in the elimination of the global STD problem… YES he said the ABOVE  O N E year ago…. so I’ll have to classify this as an epic U-Turn and a sigh of relief.

You can read more about this Papal u-turn on here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11804398

Mid-week Assignment madness, confusion… I guess I wasn’t born to be an accountant!

=PMT… =SUM multiplication ?!?!?!…………………………………………. these are the two equations that confused a whole class… just two days before submitting the assignment… we will know the result when it’s out…… some say my calculations weren’t worked out right… someone else say they’re fine………….   and I’m doomed in a limbo of which I realised that in life you really cannot trust anyone ….not even yourself! oh well alls now written as history… so let’s move on!

Facebook & Cartoons

There’s nothing new in saying that Facebook is now part of everyday life! On Facebook we share our best moments, upload pictures… share what we’re doing with our friends and the world…. Yet Facebook has developed multiple “cults” like the Farmville generation… (ok I call that a dumb generation!) ….. NOW Facebook is also REVIVING our PAST…. YES… by creating the fashion of changing our display pictures, remove our faces and show the world the cartoons we love!

You know when we where small we used to watch a lot of cartoons… Cartoon Network… Nickelodeon channels… and much more… the Maltese back then used to watch the GREAT cartoons screened on Italia Uno‘s “BimBumBam“… and yet when I was a younger kid I used to watch Rai‘s stuff before school every morning…  kid shows that today I might sound funny to name them… but back then Rai shows like L’Albero Azzurro, Topo Gigo… Disney cartoons like Goofy, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and stuff like that used to make up my day…. than when I grew older cartoons like Inspector Gadget, Sampei, Top Cat, Tom & Jerry (I still love them… and who doesn’t?!!), Bugs Bunny…. Scooby Doo…. The Smurfs… Woody Woodpecker, Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner, the cute Snoopy, Uomo Tigre (Tiger man), Yogi Bear and what about Dexter’s Laboratory the cartoon that made many kids dream about being scientist geeks that will own the world! OR Johnny Bravo who was the biggest ever cartoon gigolo, The Flintstones and their pre-historic world, and The Jetsons the futuristic 80′s cartoon depicting contemporary American culture, I loved their dog!… and so many other cartoons which today are labelled as classics, and unfortunately not much screened on today’s cartoon channels….. Although I must acknowledge that Sponge Bob is quite funny to watch!

Oh anyone remembers the Martian from the Loony Toons cartoons! …….I think when I was a smaller kid I was living in the right TV animation era, something that at least I can say that I remember cartoons that were damn right funny and sci-fi ….not today’s damn right boring stuff!

I wish I could list many other cartoons…. but the list is endless!

Why being born in 1989 is damn cool!

I consider myself to be very lucky that I was born in a new world, post-cold war, a new world that embraces freedom and peace!

Yet apart from that cool ideology of the 80′s and late 80′s….. I was also lucky that I was also born in the year that the Personal Computer had began it’s booming years, the year that Microsoft’s Windows had begun to do the computer revolution… and take it to what we know it  today!

The 80′s produced some of the greatest movies ever made… such as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” a cult movie from 1982 a teen comedy movie featuring Sean Penn and Phoebe Cates (that was one hell of an actess! I stress you should check out her movies!!) who I’m a huge fan of! I’d totally recommend you to watch this movie if you’ve never seen it before… I know it’s old… but it’s WORTH IT…. I watched this movie a thousand times and never get fed up of it!

Here’s what you can expect in the movie…. Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) and Mr Hand (Ray Walston)…apart from the scenes featuring the totally awesome Phoebe Cates!

The 80′s also gave us one of the coolest TV series which recently had a cinema movie released under it’s name, The A-Team, which originally ran on NBC from 1983 till 1987, one damn great series which I love!

Oh and to bring an end to this great post… here’s a track from a band that was around in the 80′s, The Flying Lizards, a British band which were one-hit wonders with an eccentric cover of a track called “Money” by Barret Strong, in 1979…

Band: The Flying Lizards Title: Money Year: 1979

Thanks for reading this post! … Would love you to post some other cartoon names below in the comments section!

………until the next post later in the week …… Adiós!

Noel Borg.

Haven’t posted in about two weeks or so since I launched my new site and blog! I have been busy… that might sound good actually but being busy might get boring too… there’s busy and there’s busy! There’s busy that means doing assignments and stuff and busy that means to have fun with friends etc….. unfortunately it was the other way around for me…. assignments and school stuff and other crap… and tomorrow i’ll be back doing the same old sh-t again! damn! weekend goes by so fast… and all the rest of the week seems to go sooo slow! The goverments should pro-long the weekends and add an extra two days to it…. you know… we got Sunday, they should add MoonDay (hey don’t confuse it with Monday!) and JupitDay! How’s that? Two extra days for the weekend! …oh please write your comments below!

Aung San Suu Kyi:

There are two great news items this week! First Aung San Suu Kyi got finally I MEAN FINALLY released …it’s about time indeed but better than never… hell that military junta sucks -ss! She’s been suffering this discrimination because of these military dictators for the past 21 years! That’s almost my age! I admire the courage she’s got to publicly speak in favour of democracy and non-violence… when her country (Burma) is so restricted! To live inside a house because your under house arrest for 15 of the last 20 years is surely a thing!!

I found this video on youtube of her during an interview in 2007 she’s speaking about being non-violent… her words are so striking, real and shows her love to her country!  Only if every politician around the world was like her…! No wonder she’s a Nobel Prize laureate!

[hide-this-part]From Malta: Austin Gatt not contesting the next election in 2013:

Another news this one from Malta, is that minister Austin Gatt will not contest the next general election in 2013! Ah Bliss!

I think it’s a sigh of relief for me! I don’t hate the guy…. and he actually done many great things especially investing heavily in the IT sector… but arrogance just isn’t the key! Charisma is the way of doing politics! So yeah farewell dude![/hide-this-part]

Remembrance Day and memoirs of my granddad:

One last thing before the music treat to finish your weekend with, today was Remembrance Day, the day many nations celebrate and commemorate the lives of the fallen soldiers who died for their country to make our world safe and free like it is (or somewhat is) today, the fallen who died in WW1 and WW2 (in which many Maltese died while struggling to save our country from the Nazi’s, hence the Battle of Malta).

I think we all should be proud what our forefathers did, and this day is to show them respect.

I remember when on this day, back then when I was like 7-8 years old or so my grandfather, Nannu Salvu (who was a war veteran, who fought hard during WW2 with the British army) used to go to the War Memorial on this day, and he used to get me with him, and pin some medals on my shirt, I remember one specific medal, which had it’s draped part in three colours, left was yellow, middle was dark green and the right part was yellow, and on the medal there was some weird bald guy on it, while my nannu had a long stack of medals, of which he was very proud of! Indeed he and all the veterans should all have been so proud that they saved this country and the west from the evil German Nazi empire of that time. Now my Nannu Salvu has past away since 1997! RIP … I have great memoirs of him and deep respect! I find it emotional speaking about him, I cry out loud…. grandfathers and grandma’s are always special!

Here’s a a tribute track for the fallen soldiers to all those who died fighting for their country, called Hym To The Fallen:

Sorry guys! But I get emotional when talking about this part of history, I repeat these people fought for what today’s world is now.

FREEDOM FOR ALL… OR ALMOST ALL I SAY!

PEACE AND LOVE!

End for today’s post:

I think that’s all from my commentary for today, I hope you have found this long blog post interesting, and I hope to have more time this week to post even more stuff!

One very last thing! If you talking Noel…. there’s music around that name… and here’s the music treat to finish a special Sunday with!

I’ve uploaded these two tracks on my youtube channel, from Jet’s Overhead, basically it’s a Canadian band, which plays Indie Rock / Ambient Rock and signed on Warner Music Canada, I seriously think this band has got what it takes. I’ve picked these two tracks from their album called “Bridges” released in 2006…. that might sound a bit old…. but it’s definitely not!

Check it out!

Track No: 11  Track Name: White Out Artist: Jets Overhead Album: Bridges Date: 2006

Track No: 01  Track Name: This Way  Artist: Jets Overhead Album: Bridges Date: 2006

This band consists of five people, Adrianne Verhoeven (The Anniversary), Dan McCarthy (McCarthy Trenching), Steve Bartolomei (Mal Madrigal), Ryan Fox (The Good Life), Corey Broman (Dance Me Pregnant), and Stefanie Drootin (The Good Life) led by a former member of Azure Ray, Orenda Fink which currently forms also part of O+S …a new project which I still have to discover!

and here’s the midweek music treat…. it’s Art In Manila – Golden Dawn from their album called “Set the Woods on Fire” released on the Saddle Records record label… oh what a great track!

enjoy!

finally NoelBorg.com is on a steady start… so let’s get rollin’…