1. What is the general content of the article?

Generally, the content of the article talks about the author, Marina Mahathir’s feeling

and thinking when she was on the bumpy flights for her vacation. In the article, it is obvious

that Marina feels uncomfortable and frightened in the flight as the flight was very bumpy

and she does not know the others in the flight. Besides that, since everyone is on the same flight,

Marina and the fellow passengers were tied to the same destiny. For instance, if they are safely

arrive to the destination, it means that they have the same destiny to survive, in contrast, they

shared the same destiny of encountering an accident. This particular issue has triggered her

thoughts on the unity and she also relates it towards her country. Practically, the society of

a country is sharing the same destiny as others. Although some of them might be in a better

environment and some might be in a less desirable environment, however, this does not change

the fate of the society as they are going towards the same goals, which is to improve their

living standards.

Furthermore, Marina also disagreed the meaning of unity defined by some people as

they defined it as all the citizens are exactly the same in their behaviour, but in fact, it is

different than the actual definition of unity. Marina explained the definition of unity in the

perspective of a country, whereas Japan or South Korea is the best example of truly

understanding the actual meaning of unity, as they are united among themselves. They did not

force the citizens to practice the same thinking or actions which helps to improve the country,

but encouraging the society to exercise their own creativity and innovation from the ideas

of other countries. Last but not least, Marina also stated that diversity is an asset for a country

as it encourages the country to improve and pushing creativity and innovations to

contribute for the development of the country.

2. What is the issue being discussed here? Elaborate.

The main concern discussed in the article is the definition of unity as it is mentioned

that some people define both unity and uniformity as the same. In the article, Marina defined

unity as a state of different groups or background of people being gathered for the same

objective, meanwhile there are people who defined uniformity same as unity, which is a state

of same groups or background of people acting and thinking in the same way in order to achieve

their common target.

Besides that, Marina further differentiated the definition of unity and uniformity by

relating it to her flight during her vacation. Since the passengers are taking the same flight, they

are united under the same destination and their fate fall all on the hand of the pilot, however,

there will possibly some differences in the topic of conversation that they are having in the

flight. For examples, the passengers come from different groups of people which they even do

not know each other, hence, they will have a chance to get to know each other during the

journey. This situation has perfectly illustrated the definition of unity.

Furthermore, Marina is also applying the concept of unity to country matters. For

example, developed countries such as Japan or South Korea are having a fast development as

those countries are practicing the concept of unity instead of uniformity. The people in those

countries are very creative and they do not hesitate to borrow the ideas from other countries.

Moreover, they also further improve the ideas and improve it to a better innovation as they

know that they are in the same direction to improve the life quality of the country. Generally,

unity existed because of the diversification of society in a country and Marina mentioned that,

diversity is a great asset for a country as it can encourage innovation and creativity from

people to work together towards the common objective. Last but not least, it is also a fact that
innovation always come from unity instead of uniformity that restricts the behaviour and

thinking of people.

3. What do you know about the writer?

Figure 1: Marina Mahathir

Source: The Nut Graph Official Webpage.

The author, Marina Mahathir, refer to Figure 1, also known as Datin Paduka Marina

Binti Mahathir was born in 9th June 1957, in Alor Setar, Malaysia. She is the first daughter

of the Malaysia 4th and 7th Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad and his wife, Tun

Dr. Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali (Shah, 2011). Marina started her kindergarten to Form 3 at St.

Nicholas’ Convent, in Alor Setar and she studied her Form 4 and Form 5 at Tunku Kurshiah

College in Seremban, located in Negeri Sembilan. In addition, she also continued her study for

A-Levels in United Kingdom, and finally she was graduated from the course of International

Relations in the University of Sussex, England in the year 1979 (Kho, n.d.).

Marina is the leader of many non-governmental organizations, for instance, she was

the head of the Malaysian AIDS Council for 12 years, from the year 1993 until 2005 (Edwards,

2018). Besides that, she also served many international HIV and AIDS bodies such as the

UNAIDS, AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific (ASAP) and Asia Pacific Leadership Forum

(APLF) on HIV and Development. Furthermore, Marina obtained the title of “Chevalier de la
Légion d’Honneur” by the French government for her contributions with Malaysian AIDS

Council and migrant in the year 2016, (Suhaimi, 2018). In addition, Marina is not only the

leader in many non-governmental organizations, but she is also a socio-political activist and

writer and she often wrote article, known as Musings, in The Star newspaper since year 1989.

According to Cheng (2012), some of the Marina’s pieces in The Star newspaper also has been

published in her books such as Liberal Doses (1997), Telling It Straight (2012), and 50 Days:

Rantings by MM (2009).

Moreover, Marina is also an active campaigner to fight for women’s rights. For

instance, Marina clarified that the identity of Muslim women in Malaysia is similar to the Black

South Africans under apartheid (Suhaimi, 2018). In year 2010, Marina was awarded the UN

Person of the Year by the United Nations in Malaysia and she was also listed as Top 100

Most Inspiring Persons Working for Women and Girls in the year 2011 (Suhaimi, 2018).

In year 2016, Marina has stated that Malaysia culture, especially the Muslim culture is going

to step into destruction as she pointed out that the Malay women today, whom is below 50

years old, are generally have no idea on how to tie the “baju kurung” skirt for walking

convenience (Su-Lyn, 2015). Other than that, Marina also criticizes on the incident of a Muslim

woman slapped by a Muslim man for not wearing a hijab, which was happening in the year

2018. She warned Malaysian that Islamization will lead to another form of colonization, which

involve violence (Today Online Official Webpage, 2018).

4. What do you think of the viewpoints given by the writer?

After a deep reading and thinking of the article by Marina, I totally agree with her

viewpoints as all her opinion were actually true and it also perfectly related to the issues of

countries. First of all, Marina in her article does mention that the destiny of the passengers

who are taking the same flight with her is bound together. This is true as all the passengers

on the flight will generally have two different destinies, either safely arrive to the destination

or encounter an accident, regardless of the class of seat, race, or even religion. This is

because given the maintenance and good weather, only the pilot can decide their destiny. For

example, if the pilot is unskilled, they might face an accident, however, if the pilot is proficient,

they will arrive to their destination safely.

Furthermore, Marina also stated that the concept of unity and uniformity are

misunderstood by some people who think that both unity and uniformity carry the same

meaning, which means a state that people act and think in the same pattern or exactly behave

similar to each other. I agreed with Marina as both words carry the different meaning. One

example of unity is different groups of student are required to complete a common task, but

each group used their own solution for the task given. On the other hand, uniformity can

illustrate in a scenario where a company gives uniforms to the employees in order to improve

the orderliness of the company.

In addition, I am also agree with Marina’s viewpoints in her real life application. She

mentioned that first world countries such as Japan and South Korea are one step further from

third world countries such as Africa, India, and Philippines as Japan and South Korea have a

better understanding of the meaning of unity. This is understandable as they are clear that

their common goal is to make the economy and life quality to become better. Thus, they used

to practice the concept of unity instead of uniformity in order to maximize their potential to
create a better living for the society. This is because unity provides more freedom and it also

encourages creativity and innovations from people instead of uniformity which has

characteristics of rigidity and limited freedom.

Finally, I also agreed with Marina that unity exists from diversity and it is an asset

for a country as it will foster out the potential of a country. This is absolutely true as more

people from different religion, race, or background are participating themselves, there will

be more ideas on innovations, and eventually it will form a unity as all of them are pursuing

their mutual goals, which is to improve the particular country.

5. In your own words, what have you learnt from this article and from the issue?

One of the lessons that I have learnt from the article and the issue is the importance of

the meaning of words, especially the words that are quite similar. This is an important lesson

as misunderstanding of a certain word may lead to a mess and eventually leads to a bigger

problem. The problems that might arise from the issue are such as the low quality of

conversation, performance from employees will also being affected and others. One of the

obvious examples in the article that Marina mentioned is, those first world countries are one

step further from other countries because they understood the differences between unity and

uniformity. In the real life application, if an employee does not truly understand or

misunderstand about the instruction given by the top management, there will be a low quality

conversation. Hence, the employee might fail to achieve the task given by the management.

Generally, these situations have direct relation to the understanding of words and we should

always look for confirmation before we start to take actions towards a matter or misleading the

others.

Last but not least, I also learnt that we should feel grateful as diversity actually

happens in our country, Malaysia. As per mentioned in the article, diversity is an opportunity
for a country and it can bring future economic benefit to a country if the country is fully

utilized it. For instance, developed countries such as Switzerland, China and Singapore are

listed as the world top countries which can easily attract billions of investments to their

country due to their research and development which helps to promote innovations. This is

a fact, as these countries does not only united among the people, but they also always take other

countries’ innovation and undergoing a lot of research and development process to make it

become their own ideas which contribute the development of the country. For instance,

Switzerland has put their concern more towards the medical innovations, and they are

collaborating with Sweden, United States, Netherlands and United Kingdom in order to create

the Artificial Intelligence (AI), mobile health applications and Genomics for the future

healthcare development (Branigan, 2019).

(2001 words)
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