COM125 video entry

Here's a photo montage of how my CNY was like. So let me introduce who's who in the video in order of appearance:

1. Dad, deciding where to go for lunch

2. Uncles and Aunts at my granny's house

3. cousins Gerard and Celeste

4. Mum

5. Aunt and cousin Magdalene (John's mum)

6. nephew John

7. cousin Leonard

8. Granny

Before I get 'sued' (Janson, don't say I don't give you credit), these photos are courtesy of my kind cousin Janson who was the unofficial photographer since he got a brand new SLR.

Thanks for watching, I hope you had a great CNY too!

runway bandits

something is not right with me, whenever i turn on my notebook im automatically glued onto the pages of facebook, livejournals, gossip blogs and other stuff that just help me procrastinate. work loses its meaning and all my priorities are screwed up. is it just me or is this a global phenomenon? the internet is seriously taking over our lives in more than one way! so what is it that gets us so addicted to it like some serial weed smoker and his pot of smoke. firstly, let me confess that i am a almost hard core facebook addict. yes, there is it, ive let is off my chest. i love playing the games on it, twirl, jetman, crazy taxi, poker etc. the list goes on and on. gossip blogs, the name explains itself. who doesnt love a bit of gossip every now and then, especially when it concerns your favourite celeb? finally, the livejournals! all hail the livejournals! well i wont consider myself as a lj addict as much as im a fb addict, cos i know of a few people who are hooked onto lj more than i am. but anyways, recently ive been purchasing stuff online and ive been loving it. and here's the main purpose of the post...
Runway Bandits X'mas Giveaways at http://runwaybandits.livejournal.com is pretty awesome (: im getting the artyflare for meself (love the quirky-ness)

oh and early happy christmas!!

i know that the deadline is over but this post doesnt have anything to do with comms. i desperately needed to vent and despite my original complaints about doing this blog, i find myself stumbling back here. oh well. so here goes, 3 roaches in 2 days is totally not reasonable! roaches as in c-o-c-k-r-o-a-c-h-e-s. the most ultimately disgusting thing that keeps invading my home. it seriously ruins the morning for you. it also scares the shit out of my and my mum. ok so we stay in a hdb but i swear that our house is squeeky clean, my mum clears the garbage bin every night. we have a part timr cleaner who helps clean our house once every week. and in between my mum uses the magic clean dry mop thingy to sweep the floor. so why do they still insist on coming??? call me unreligious/disrespectful but i blame all the burning. i know its the 7th month and i know they have the burn all that paper money. however, i think that all that smell is driving those roaches into people's homes. even roaches can't stand the smell. what other reason could there be? within the first 6 months of living in this new home of ours, we hadn't had a visit from mr yucky roach. until now. and 3 roaches in 2 days has gotta break the guiness world record. so please mr roach, stop invading us!

influence - good or bad?

What comes to mind when I mention the word media? Celebrities? Not quite, I actually mean newspapers, magazines, television, radio etc. Even the Internet is a media form. But what I want to focus on are tv programs. Does it brainwash the people? Does it create desires, or does it merely gives us what we want? Does it instill values, or simply reflect what is already existing?

I believe that people nowadays (when I say people, I really mean teens who are so easily manipulated) let the tv programs influence their lives way too much. They incorporate the character's personality traits, eating habits, dressing into their own lives. Well this may be a good thing, but not when the characters on tv are always blown out of proportion. With the producers tendency to showcase the 'bad' side of people, teens get the perception that it is somehow the 'right' thing. That it is ok to make the tiniest matter the world's business. That it is ok if someone's day gets ruined because of a scandalous rumour spreading. That it is ok to have sex at sixteen. Let's be honest with ourselves for a while, life is often boring and monotonous, seldom does drama come into our everyday routines. So how on earth can it be 'right'?

Maybe I am going at it too harshly. Perhaps the media does some good. After all, without the media exposure given to us on a daily dosage, we wouldn't be so informed about the culture of other countries. As Singapore often imports foreign tv productions, we get a glimpse of life there through our tv sets. And being informed is a good thing, it helps in conversations, our perception of things etc. Even if we don't get to see them on tv, the Internet is another useful source to rely on for entertainment. Sex and the City, Desperate Housewifes, Cashmere Mafia, Gossip Girl, Ugly Betty, Dirt. These are just some of the tv programs that cause such a phenomenon. Both in a good and bad way.

People crave drama in their monotonous life, thus the success to such shows. The characters are always so extreme. The beautiful, rich girl always takes your breath away. The poor, ugly girl always bring disgust. Well I guess that whenever we watch tv, we just have to remind oursleves every now and then that what we see on tv is fake. Everything is fake, exaggerated to some extent to make the show more interesting.

So go on and watch your favourite tv show, just bear the above pointers in mind and don't let the media brainwash you!

i couldn't resist documenting

its the F1 BABY!! singpost closed at 6 on a weekday so my parents literally sped off to causeway point after work. when we asked for the tickets, they came in a box. A BOX! so after that the excitement was sky high. we went to eat at crystal jade and i tore the box open like some ADD kid ripping his x'mas prezzie a the stroke of midnight. for the memories to come...

the much awaited tickets in a very supicious box. does this count as a suspicious article??

wtm an empty box! they wasted lots of tape on this. hard to open. talk about going green.

supicious looking dvds?

tada! lanyards for each day! i wonder if the walkabout tickets are already this elaborate, how about those grandstand ones?? patiently waiting for 26 sept (:

high low

gosh two posts in one day!i must be going bonkers

ok so my mum came home from work and was telling me about her colleague leaving the school over dinner. brief background information, my mum is a teacher at an international school, thus her colleague is also a teacher. let's call her Mdm B (she's french), since i'm not going to name names here. now Mdm B is rather well liked in the school so naturally people are quite sad that she is leaving. one of the other teachers, Mr H, decided to have a little farewell piano recital for her. the students would play some songs. when it ended, Mdm B was touched and she personally thanked one of the students, S. S is a 7 year-old Japanese girl. her response to her teacher's appreciation was going up to Mdm B and poking her nose, while saying "you have a long nose!" for god know's what reason. if you weren't close to someone and they made such a remark to you, i'm sure you would have been insulted. however, i digress, i was rather taken aback by her lack of politeness around her teacher, and the fact that she was just so direct. perhaps she's kid, thus explaining the nature of her behaviour. but she's also a Japanese, and aren't Japanese suppose to be of a high context culture? while her behaviour seemed to lean on being a characteristic of low context culture.

low context culture has great importance on the spoken word, while high context culture has subtle cues as part of their communication. high context culture sees explicit communication style as rude and insensitive, while low context culture sees indirect communication style as tricky and deceptive.

is this an indicaiton that the new generation is going to revolutionize our world and make the majority of the population be of low context culture? but then again, perhaps kids are just being kids, you can't change who they are. at least not yet.

be an individual

You know that feeling, when you're a newbie in some situations, say a freshman in school. So many new people, so many different cultures. Culture here doesn't exactly mean race-Chinese/ Malay/Indian etc. The culture here refers to a particular group's collective answer to fundamental questions like "who we are" and our "template for living". You try your hardest to change your previous habits and routines to fit into your discovery of this group's culture. Finally you fit perfectly in your new culture and settle as a member of the group. Later you become on such good terms with the group that you may even rise in rank/status within the group and move form a new member to a full member. But what if that culture isn't a good one?

I was reading this article in Seventeen magazine (July issue), just a few minutes earlier, about glue-sniffing. It was a feeling as simple as wanting "to feel like one of the group", that cost this girl Charlene* a rehab stint. Yup, that was how bad her situation was. Well it wasn't elaborated how "hellish" her life was for an entire year, but I think we can all imagine. Glue-sniffing is considered an illegal substance. When the addiction goes out of control, the side effects include - loss of control of the body, cramps and pain, vision nad learning difficulties, tendency to bleed and bruise, memory loss, permanent brain, liver and kidney damage. Regardless of how much pressure you were under to pick up this horrible addiction (as far as I'm am concerned, NO is not that hard to say), would you really risk such stuff just to be accepted into the group? Are humans so weak in nature that we always succumb to the herd-mentality? Is there anything wrong with being an individual - unique in all it's glory? We all have our fair share of cliques at some point of time, and we choose to hang out with certain individuals instead of others. But sooner or later you'll come to realize your own identity, your true self. You don't necessarily have to fit into any group, but you will share a culture with them. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. For example, off the top of my head, a singer - Jason Mraz and a author - Lauren Weisberger are different. They are obviously not of the same gender and will most probably have different behaviours, though not necessarily because of their gender. But ultimately they share a culture of being interested in arts - lyrics and writing, respectively.

So I say, ditch that mentality of I-must-fit-into-a-group-because-its-the-right-thing-to-do. Just be yourself, don't do something that's not what you'd normally do. Be an individual.