Thursday, November 12, 2009

Thanks for Everything....

This module has been a fun and wonderful module. Having to meet people from different courses is itself a cross-cultural experience. All the students in this class have been really nice and I have definitely enjoyed attending the lessons. Not forgetting Prof. Deng who has been friendly, patient, understanding and motivating.

As for the content of this module, it has been interesting and eye opening. I am able to learn and laugh through the class which is a totally new experience for me. How I hope all the modules is as joyful as this.

As for blogging, it is a good channel for us to articulate ourselves as Singaporeans tend to be shy. Although it cost us some time, the eradication of every tests and exams was simply wonderful.

The research project might be tough initially but definitely is a fruitful experience for me. I hope everyone enjoyed it as I did and hope all of us had a wonderful semester.

All the best and have a wonderful life ahead.

Once again, thank you Prof. Deng for everything!!!

Monday, October 26, 2009

PanGu: The Creator of the Eternal Battle of Sexes

Humans are “doing” creatures, for when we are not doing something, we are actually thinking about doing something which in a way can be discerned as doing something. So, we are designed to “do” something in a way or the other and tend to swing our emotion from happy to sad in the process of doing so. Life is all about movement, thinking and connecting with others and the changing world. It is how humans lead their life that created the two classes of creatures, which we call them the “controlling” creatures and the “emotional” creatures.

The “controlling” creature, whose life is all about control, seems to blend well with the man-kind. The “emotional” creature on the other hand, reflects the woman-kind quite well but not fully. They exhibit traits of the “controlling” creature too as their wish is to dominate the man-kind (or at least one of them).

With the advances of mankind and centuries of evolution, some things do change for the men while not for the women. For instance, men are changing from retrosexual to metrosexual while women have been maintaining their usual way of makeup for centuries. Does this means that men need more time to learn or are women less willing to accept changes?

Now, let’s look at some jokes that describe the differences between Mars and Venus. Hope everyone enjoys this and good luck for the upcoming exam. Nice knowing all of you. Enjoyed the classes conducted by Prof. Deng as well.

NICKNAMES

If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.
If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla and Four-eyes.

EATING OUT

When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in $20, even though it's only for $32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY

A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.

BATHROOMS

A man has seven items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, deodorant and a towel .
The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.

ARGUMENTS

A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

FUTURE

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does.

DRESSING UP

A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL

Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING

Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

A married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use for two people remembering the same thing!

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Singapore Codeword

Teenagers like us these days tend to use Singlish frequently that is highly discouraged in the academic settings. It may come in the form of spoken or written in our day to day conversation. Reasons for such phenomenon is unknown to me but is an unique trait of all Singaporeans. Due to such ubiquitous use, dictionaries that explain these terms are available. One such dictionary is called “The CoxFord Singlish Dictionary” and can be found at here. It may sound ridiculous but it actually exists.

Apart from Singlish, the extensive use of abbreviations is very common. In particular, conversations over the MSN. Such practice might cause the Turing test to fail almost immediately. In case you are wondering what Turing test is, below gives a brief description extracted from Wikipedia:

“Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence. It proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test.”

Not only will it cause earlier work to become obsolete, it also hinders communication with people from different background and age group. Sometimes, I myself do not understand some terms as well… Maybe I’m getting old le… Haha…

Lastly, like to touch a bit on the underlying meanings of some words used by gals. Below are some of the interesting words I have found online. Maybe our female classmates can enlighten us on its reliability.

Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. (This is true, unless she says 'Thanks a lot' - that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say 'you're welcome'. that will bring on a 'whatever').

Whatever: Is a woman's way of saying F- - - YOU!

Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response, it would be nothing (refer above).


Below a funny video on Singapore development story... Enjoy...



Monday, October 12, 2009

e-Politeness

E-learning week has always been another recess week for me. It is a time when tons of assignments can be done. A time when I can have my beauty sleep. A time when the home is the school. A time when lectures tend to be non-examinable. A time when I’m the most polite (since I’m away from the stressful school). But once school commence as usual, what you get is what you see below. :)

Politeness can come in many forms, from thoughts to words and from words to actions. Politeness can project the cultivation and charisma of a person. It can also show how close (in terms of relationship) two persons are. Let’s try to identify some of the relationships among people and their likely linguistic politeness.

Between Close Friends
Tact maxim tends to be prominent as we start to take things for granted. Haha...

Between Subordinates/Students and Supervisor/Professors
Generosity Maxim sits in this relationship as the former tends to give their utmost respect to the later.

Between New Friends
Approbation Maxim dovetails with this relationship as one would like to establish good rapport with the others in hope to extend their friendship.

Between Guests and Hosts
Modesty Maxim dominates this relationship as most hosts would like their guests to feel superior and homely.

During Meetings
Agreement Maxim is common in meetings when its close to 6pm. It is also the best strategy to adopt when one does not have a better option to agree upon.


To conclude, politeness can be used to one’s advantage but can also be a pain in the a*s when used inappropriately as shown in the video below. Enjoy…



Monday, October 5, 2009

Beauty and the Culture

Culture may be used as a tool to uniquely identify a group. Collectively, it can be considered as the DNA of a group. For instance, the statement “people in the service line should possess service DNA”. This does not mean that they came from the same factory. But instead, it means that they should possess the common traits of being polite, patient and friendliness when attending to customers.

Different cultures may bring about innovation. This is when the cultural genes interact and evolve into stronger forms, ameliorating the strength of the activity in a global and holistic fashion. Additionally, it may incite surprises. Watch the video posted below for the hilarious graduation commencement speech by Ellen DeGeneres. How I hope we could adopt such culture in our graduation ceremony…







Monday, September 21, 2009

The Ink that Talks

Written essays are nothing more than ink on a piece of paper. However, such simple act brought lives to this world that would otherwise be dull.

Pens are like magical wands that could siphon the threads of thought from a person; like the hand of the mother earth that touches everyone, pouring tons of emotion into the lonely heart.

Hundreds of different language that tells the same story, story that lives for thousand centuries.

Ideas titivated by rhetorical discourse, shines brighter than the webby formulae.

The color of the ink is like the culture of a person, it’s nothing more than what you see. What’s important is the underlying message that is conveyed.

Understanding the written traits of foreign learners is to broaden our minds, to free us from the cultural ring that would otherwise engulfed us.

Poetries are like reflections of essays on a funhouse mirror, where their look changes with others remain.

As an epilogue:
"Whether the ink is white or black, it is a good ink as long as it catches attention".

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Evolution of Spoken Discourse

It occurs to me that people tend to convey their message differently when communicating over different mediums. When speaking over the phone, most would say “hello” as their opening statement. When it comes to msn, most would type “hi” or “there?” rather than “hello” when poking for conversation. As for short messages (SMS), they would go straight into the topic without any opening statements.

What’s more is that the tone people used over different communication channels is very different as well. Below cite some of them describing the tone, language and how the conversation is ended among friends over different mediums.

Emails
Tone: Quite Formal
Language: Decent & Structured
Closing Method: Signing off

Facebook
Tone: Causal
Language: Quite Decent & Readable
Closing Method: Change of topic

SMS
Tone: Causal
Language: Quite Decent & Readable
Closing Method: No Reply

MSN
Tone: Extremely Causal
Language: Not so Decent and Readable if I know the terms being used
Closing Method: “Bye” or “Good night” or “Talk to you again”

So with modern technologies, people have different style of opening, addressing issues and closing their conversation.