MH17: Tragedy Again

Today I (and many others) woke up to terrible news. A Malaysian Airlines flight (MH17) went down in Ukraine. News reports claim that it was likely to have been shot down by surface-to-air missiles but it is currently unknown who fired them.

This is the second time in 6 months a Malaysian Airlines flight has been involved in an aviation catastrophe, the first being the MH370 incident (which still remains a mystery). I cannot help but feel sad for those who were affected by this tragic event. I read a post on Facebook about someone's sister being on the ill-fated MH17. I cannot imagine what he is going through and I really do feel bad for him even though I do not know him personally. To lose a loved one like this is just heartbreaking.

I have been scouring the Internet for the latest news on MH17 even though I have probably read all that there is about it so far. To be honest, I still cannot wrap my head around this tragedy. To shoot down a commercial airliner in this day and age? It is unthinkable. Yes, the aircraft was flying through troubled airspace but it was flying at 33000 feet in the air. Serious weaponry would be needed to take down an aircraft at that altitude. Previous incidents only involved low-flying aircraft and helicopters. That was why the airspace MH17 was flying through was declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. In fact, there are reports claiming that there were other commercial airliners in nearby areas when MH17 was allegedly shot down.

While nothing has been confirmed yet, fingers are being pointed and people are placing blame on others. This is perfectly understandable considering the sudden nature of the event. A knee-jerk reaction. Many are pointing their finger at pro-Russian militants due to several deleted posts on social media and an intercepted message. If it was truly a missile attack which caused this incident (many news websites seem to believe it and report it as fact), then it was an act of ill intent whether or not MH17 was the target.

Human acts of terrorism isn't new. One only needs to look as far as the Gaza strip. The fact that people humans are voluntarily choosing to commit these acts of terrorism is terrifying. I constantly question whether they have a conscience. They willingly choose to commit an act which results in the death of many innocent people. How can somebody sleep peacefully at night knowing that they are responsible for the death of a person? Is there a justification to them that dehumanises their victims? I may never know.

It is a truly tragic day. My condolences go out to all those who are affected by this incident. No one should have to go through this. No one.

Deliberation

I have been home for about 3 weeks now and I'm still waiting for replies to my internship application, so I've been doing nothing important so far. My day usually consists of reading books, eating, sleeping and watching TV shows or movies on my laptop.

Of course, with all this free time, comes the inevitable thinking-about-the-bleak-future sessions. A couple days ago, I had a conversation with my friends about possibly switching courses. They were pretty supportive of it but I'm actually not too sure myself.

Currently, I'm doing a degree in Accounting and Finance. While that may not sound like a terribly interesting thing to study, what I've studied so far has actually been pretty interesting although I would welcome a bit more maths in the course. Even so, the course has opened my eyes in some aspects, though not always in terms of academics.

If I actually do switch courses, I would very likely do PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics). It's a course which I probably would have enrolled for had I known of it's existence before I applied for university. Anyway, the course has a nice amount of practical knowledge to impress future employers with combined with interesting brain-exercising stuff. It would certainly satisfy my desire to actually get to study philosophy and the need for me to have a practical degree which wouldn't look out of place in Malaysia.

After lots of thinking (courtesy of loads of free time), I decided that sticking with my current choice seems to be the best and most viable option. Why did I choose this course in the first place? Let's be honest, I'm not exactly doing this course for myself. I'm doing it mainly to appease my parents and assure them that I will graduate with a degree that will help me get a job after I graduate. Also, to a lesser extent is, I'm doing this as a backup plan in case what I really want to do can't support me in the long term. Taking that into consideration, I don't think that it is fair for me to waste more money on me getting a degree that I may not do very well in and one that will only serve the same purpose as the one that I am studying for now.

Signing off,
YiJiun