For one of my assignments for Communication Theory, we have to choose one phenomena and use one of the theories we learn to explain it.

A few weeks ago, there was this SMS spreading where a group of Malay (Muslims) being baptized. Today I found another interesting article but from a different angle. Where the authorities want to award him/her for his ingenuity. The article is pasted below.

Why I chose this phenomena is it is interesting why people like to spread rumours/news over the SMS. Is this a spawning from emailing.

I may make it for my project paper for my last semester. So far I have not found a good theory to explain it. Maybe one day you will see my name attached to a new communication theory to describe this phenomena. *wink*

Space, the final frontier for our teh tarik

One of the tasks in store for Malaysia’s first astronaut.

THE lucky bloke who is chosen to become Malaysia’s first astronaut will have several daunting tasks ahead of him. He will not just be shooting the non-existent breeze in zero gravity, he will have to make teh tarik and play batu Seremban in space.

Most segments of society have hailed this move as a great advertisement for Malaysian technology, not to mention the beverage and leisure game industries. This is in line with the popular SMS doing the rounds, which says "An American in space is called astronaut, a Russian in space is called cosmonaut, but a Malaysian in space will be called can-or-not?"

The identity of the SMS sender has not yet been detected. The search is on for this person as the authorities want to give an award for coming up with such an ingenious term.

However, one segment of society has failed to be convinced. This segment can be found entirely in the person of veteran commentator G. Pundeet.

"Is this really the image of Malaysia that we want to project to the world?" he muses over a vegetarian set lunch. "After spending so much to buy Russian military aircraft to enable this space mission, do we have nothing better to do than to play children’s games and make drinks in space?"

However, everyone else in the country disagrees with him, "G. Pundeet’s objections are examples of the sort of negative thinking that we can do without. We are a scientific, progressive society and we only believe in things that can be proven empirically," sneered a pensioner while clutching some newly-purchased feng shui crystals. "So there!"