Black White

I have always had a special interest in Ayu’s songs. I bought her Best 2: Black album a while back but have been tirelessly hunting down the Best 2: White album. Today, I finally found it at a local store during our lunch break. So, I immediately put down the money to buy the album. The thing about this particular album is that it actually comes with two DVDs, one of which, contains an entire concert. Nice!

That’s the thing about these Japanese albums. They tend to be far pricier than the rest of the albums available in Malaysia, but they also come with more value for money. While most music albums would only contain a single music CD, these Japanese albums will usually contain at least a music CD and another video DVD. Now, I wish that there was a wider selection of Japanese and Korean artistes in Malaysia. Our choices here are severely limited to only the major artistes. It makes sense from a business stand-point as this is a rather niche market and the stores cannot be carrying an assortment of random artistes.

Watching the concert is kind of depressing because I am reminded of the fact that such shows would never be allowed in Malaysia. Our so-called ‘conservative’ factions of society would probably protest the entry of liberal acts – all in the name of protecting values and culture. There is nothing wrong with protecting ones values and culture as long as one does not deem to impose those same values and culture on others based on the misconception that those are universal values and cultures. It is this misconception that leads to a lot of misunderstanding between the different factions of our society.

Which brings me to the issue that our government and our people has always hidden behind – the facade that there is anything remotely resembling a universal value system. Instead of understanding, we settled for tolerance. As a result, everyone presumes that each others values are ‘similar’ to their own when in fact, each individual has their own value system. As an example, I can still remember when it was a buzz-phrase to claim that all religions taught one to do good. What everyone left out was that the meaning of ‘good’ is subjective and was different between one religion to another.

Good and evil are not black and white – neither is Ayu!