“We’re a mobile, wired nation that works and eats at all hours — and the fast-food giants have noticed.
“We saw a skewing toward a 24-7 society,” says Taco Bell spokesman Will Bortz. As a result, Taco Bell and other fast-food restaurants have created ad campaigns to promote eating late in the evening and well into the darkest of night. “
I’ve been a lot of time hanging out late, looking for any food place to get some quick bites, and staying quite long doing some project. Where I always go is to some 24-hours places where I also can find people doing the same thing. Well, I found it FUN! Beside we could get food and drinks straight there, we also can still find people who is doing the same thing and feel time is being prolonged. That might be one of the reason why people nowadays get used to going there, knowing these days people have so much work to be done in a short time.
For some people, they tend to change to different schedule, from the traditional 9-to-5 day has morphed into a 12-noon-to-midnight day. For some students, they attend class during he day, some work an evening-part-time job, then pick up fast food after working. We can say, as students aswell, that they must be looking for something fast, and not always care about the nutrition. However, we tend to consume more between 7 pm to 11 pm, due to the downtime or might need some more energy to do work.
However, is it a good habbit that people start doing,particularly in Singpore? They do need something to fill their energy, but by eating junk food? In late night? Isn’t that unhealthy?
“In the U.S., fast-food chains often thrive in tough times. But not so in China, where Western quick-service food isn’t the cheapest stuff in town and, in target markets like Shanghai, there’s too much competition. Plus, a growing number of consumers see it as unhealthful.
“Western fast food is still not cheap enough,” said Yee Mei Chan, a group-account director at Millward Brown’s office in Beijing.
In a recent survey, the marketing research company found that 78 percent of Chinese consumers were feeling some effect from the global financial crisis. About half said they were likely to cut down on eating at Western fast-food restaurants.”
As we live in Asia as well, we also cannot find that western food is cheap enough for Singaporian, especially for us, students. Nontheless, there are quite a lot student are still cunsuming those food. So does it actually become trends among youngster?
Mentioning this country is being influenced by western life and most of the people here are following western culture, I think it become obvious that it become a trend in our enviroment.
Filed under: Uncategorized — psychedqueen @ 10:14 am
You might remember the news told about the death of Japanese reporter in Ranggon, Vietnam. Mr Nagai was killed by a bullet to the chest while filming the demonstration and seen falling to the ground still carrying his camera (Friday, 28 September 2007).
“…Mr Nagai, an experienced journalist who had worked in many dangerous parts of the world, was killed near the Sule pagoda, which has been a focal point for several of the demonstrations.
Japanese TV has been running footage which appears to show a government soldier shooting the journalist at close range. …”
Here’s another news which is also telling the same fact, written in Wednesday, September 09, 2009.
“…Farrell, in a report on the newspaper’s website, said: “We were all in a room, the Talibs all ran, it was obviously a raid.
‘There were bullets all around us. I could hear British and Afghan voices.’
Farrell said Munadi went forward shouting “Journalist!” but fell in a burst of gunfire, which Farrell said could have been from the rescuers or the kidnappers….”
Every work has their own risk. For journalist, they do really know what their life sacrificed for.
In their past of a good news coverage, the professor of journalism taught the student in telling public what they should know and what they wanted to know. It absolutely become a big resposblity knowing that they, the journalists, are the the main tunnel between the public and their enviroment occurence. The journalist should be able to determine which is needed in acquiring a good life and what is more important to be known by people.
Mainly, the responsbility assumed by any news institutions is being a “watch dog of the government for public”. A news orgaization didn’t falsely promote itself but instead take a pride of the quality of the news. The writers don’t share their opinion in an issue, their emotions and feeling cannot be any part of the news. They only tell the reality, and attempt to dig deeply in seeking any realiable sources to be added more in their issue. That might be the reason why they can be willing to work in dangerous place,and even sacrifice their life; to be the most trustworthy channel for public in obtaining any recent story around their enviroment.
Brutus is wrong. In a world wired for mass communications, it seems that the good people do lives after them and is not interred with their bones. When Princess Diana and Mother Teresa died, television offered countless images of the good that the “People’s Princess” and the “Saint of the Gutters” had accomplished in their lives. Television’s juxtaposition of these two humanitarians was stunning: the tall young princess and the diminutive, wrinkled nun both lovingly clutching the dispossessed of society. Diana wore Versace while Mother Teresa wore a coarse sari. But by the media’s standards, both seemed destined for sainthood. Earl Spencer made an earnest plea against his sister’s canonization. But Diana was buried on an island on her family’s estate like a modern-day Lady of the Lake.
Media commentators have been calling Mother Teresa a saint ever since she received secular society’s first step toward canonization when awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her service to “the poorest of the poor.” Since they both died in the same week, the two seem strangely linked in the minds of many of the faithful. When Cardinal James A. Hickey celebrated a Mass for Mother Teresa in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 7, The Washington Post quoted a Catholic couple saying they came to the Mass “to offer prayers to Lady Di and Mother Teresa.”
There is a sense in which the media have unwittingly helped retrieve the ancient manner of saint-making. Veneration for the early saints began as a spontaneous response from the people. It was not until the 11th and 12th centuries that an official procedure for papal canonization was established. Any analysis of the media’s role in contemporary canonization involves a close look at how they operate. The mass media are not just governed by a distinct set of values; they also have their own particular dynamic. The script they offer for a film star, pop singer, pope or politician can also be discerned for today’s media saints:
I. There is an account of some new person with talent for doing something unconventional. A star is born.
2. This is followed by stories about the star’s success: a landslide election victory, a blockbuster film, a high rating in the polls.
3. More reports follow that begin to ask if the star can continue to shine, to be successful.
4. Since we are gluttons for titillating stories about our stars, the media feeds us next with stories about how our idol has feet of clay.
5. Next we have reports about how the star has stooped to alcoholism, drugs, sexual misconduct or boredom. The star seems on the way out.
6. Sometimes there are stories of “the comeback kid.” A star’s image is restored. A happy ending. Often this happens when the star dies.
As Neil Postman has reminded us in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, what propels the media (including the news media) is not simply information but entertainment. We are entertained by some form of the above script over and over again. The six-step script shaped the way both Diana and Mother Teresa were presented to us by the media. Step five might not seem as applicable to Mother Teresa as to Diana. But we should remember that the media did try. In 1981 Sister Camille D’ Arienzo wrote in Brooklyn’s diocesan newspaper, The Tablet, that Mother Teresa is “an enormously holy and compassionate woman” who was “being inadvertently used by the men in the church” to project a passive image. D’ Arienza said that church leaders wanted all sisters to get the message, “Be docile, do your womanly caring thing, but don’t get out and criticize anything else.”
Right now the media is presenting us with step six of the script, both for the Princess of Wales and the Jewel of India. We are remembering only the good. But if society continues to crave entertainment, then supply will follow demand. A seventh step will follow (a variation of step five) that will dig up both the sins of Diana and the shortcomings of Mother Teresa. Their place in history will depend in large part on how the public will respond in forgiveness and adulation. .
An incredible love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch the world. It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peace for over half a century
The 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has passed away in the cave which has been the couple’s home for the last 50 years.
Over 50 years ago, Liu Guojiang a 19 year-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu Chaoqin.
In a twist worthy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.
At that time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman. To avoid the market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin County in Southern ChongQing Municipality.
In the beginning, life was harsh, as hey had nothing, no electricity or even food. They had to eat grass and roots they found in the mountain, and Liu made a kerosene lamp that they used to light up their lives.
Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him, ‘Are you regretful? Liu always replied, ‘As long as we are industrious, life will improve.’
In the second year of living in the mountain, Liu began and continued for over 50 years, to hand-carve the steps so that his wife could get down the mountain easily.
Half a century later in 2001, a group of adventurers were exploring the forest and were surprised to find the elderly couple and the over 6,000 hand-carved steps. Liu MingSheng, one of their seven children said, ‘My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for over 50 years and never been apart a single day. He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother’s convenience, although she doesn’t go down the mountain that much.’
The couple had lived in peace for over 50 years until last week. Liu, now 72 years, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed. Xu sat and prayed with her husband as he passed away in her arms. So in love with Xu, was Liu that no one was able to release the grip he had on his wife’s hand even after he had passed away. ‘You promised me you’ll take care of me, you’ll always be with me until the day I died, now you left before me, how am I going to live without you?’
Xu spent days softly repeating this sentence and touching her husband’s black coffin with tears rolling down her cheeks.
In 2006, their story became one of the top 10 love stories from China, collected by the Chinese Women Weekly. The local government has decided to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived as a museum, so this love story can live forever.
SOURCE : By Sheern Tami on Saturday, July 26th, 2008, filed under Travel
Filed under: Uncategorized — psychedqueen @ 11:07 am
Dance is a form of nonverbal communication that requires the same underlying faculty in the brain for conceptualization, creativity and memory as does verbal language in speaking and writing. Means of self-expression, both forms have vocabulary (steps and gestures in dance), grammar (rules for putting the vocabulary together) and meaning. Dance, however, assembles (choreographs) these elements in a manner that more often resembles poetry, with its ambiguity and multiple, symbolic and elusive meanings
(Source : Wikipedia)
People use nonverbal behaviors to tell each other how they feel. Many different positive relational messages are communicated nonverbally to help define relationships. These nonverbal messages include behaviors such as smiles, close distances, touch, and gaze. People communicate various messages in the act of dance, communicating with their bodies every time they dance. But what are they saying and how is it being received by dance partners? The meanings associated with messages sent by people who are dancing in a social setting are evident through the codes of space, touch, facial expressions, and eye contact. This leads us into haptics, which is a code that refers to touching and physical contact.
All dancers are making sense of their nonverbal messages. Dancers know what the other is trying to say without saying it because they are taught to make sense out of the messages that are sent and received. Males and females both use dance as a flirtation, attraction, and attention device. Males and females dance in closer proximity with more touch because they are attracted to each other and the way the other dances. This also calls for more intense eye contact because they want each other to know that they are interested enough to focus on one another.
If individuals are touching themselves while dancing, they will more likely touch a partner while dancing. Sometimes it is just a place to put hands while dancing. Males usually gain attention by showing off their dance moves because it is rare to find a good male dancer and females are more attracted to males that can dance.
Making eye contact is another way to flirt. Making eye contact is another way to get into someone’s space because looking at someone this intensely is very intimate. Eye contact displays interest because there is enough attraction to keep looking. Sometimes it may look like someone is trying to gain attention, but they are really just confident in their dancing.
Facial expressions are something that let other people know what you are thinking without having to say it. It is very apparent when a dancer is having a great time or really annoyed by the look on their face. Female dancers use these more because they are more animated and emotional than males are in every day life. This is the same when dancing.
Beside making an eye-contact and any other non-verbal message with the dance partner, dancing is also a way to tell the story or any messages that is going to be shared. Here’s one of famous balinese dancings. Barong Dance.
Barong is probably the most well known dance. It is also another story telling dance, narrating the fight between good and evil. This dance is the classic example of Balinese way of acting out mythology, resulting in myth and history being blended into one reality.
The story goes that Rangda, the mother of Erlangga, the King of Bali in the tenth century, was condemned by Erlangga’s father because she practiced black magic. After she became a widow, she summoned all the evil spirits in the jungle, the leaks and the demons, to come after Erlangga. A fight occurred, but she and her black magic troops were too strong that Erlangga had to ask for the help of Barong. Barong came with Erlangga’s soldiers, and fight ensued. Rangda casted a spell that made Erlangga soldiers all wanted to kill themselves, pointing their poisoned keris into their own stomachs and chests. Barong casted a spell that turned their body resistant to the sharp keris. At the end, Barong won, and Rangda ran away.
Somebody can die or get seriously injured in a Barong dance. It is said that if Rangda’s spell is too strong, a weak soldier may not be able to resist it, even with the help of Barong. He may end up hurting himself with his own keris.
The masks of Barong and Rangda are considered sacred items, and before they are brought out, a priest must be present to offer blessings by sprinkling them with holy water taken from Mount Agung, and offerrings must be presented.
Moving to the western part, ballet is also a dance which able to tell any story to their audience, and could share so many non-verbal messages to the partner. I give you an example of a ballet dance performance telling the story of Swan Lake.
Dance steps can be choreographed with special emphasis and accents on certain parts, which help to convey meaning. Odette has a very fluid, soft port de bras (carriage of the arms) which symbolizes her swan nature. In contrast to Odette’s signature port de bras, Odile’s port de bras is strong and forceful, showing her powerful nature. Also, Odette’s pas de bourree suivi (series of pas de bourees) is done delicately, while Odile performs this step with more intensity.
Some parts of the story are told with a combination of mime and dance steps. During the pas de deux (dance with two people – often male and female) with Siegfried and Odette in Act 2, the prince dips Odette low which symbolizes a kiss. In classical ballet, normal expressions of love and affection, such as a physical kiss, are not included in the choreography, except as symbolic gesture. Through this language of mime and dance, the story is told to the audience.
Dance club, traditional dance, and ballet, but what about this? A mob dance for me is the best way to share, without being lack of idea in saying something encouraged, to other people we’ve never known, not just focused to share happiness to people we love.
Filed under: Uncategorized — psychedqueen @ 10:46 am
We’ve seen from all the news told that there had been so many bombings occured in Indonesia, and we’re quite familiar with the name Noordin Mohammed Top that has been behind every terorist bombing in Indonesia. The last news informed that he, the Malaysian-born Noorddin M. Top, was killed on Thursday, September 16th 2009, in central Javanese city of Solo.
The bombings, the 2003 Jakarta Marriot hotel bombing , the 2004 Australian Embassy bombing, the 2005 Bali bombings and July’s attacks on the Marriot and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta that killed seven people, six of them foreigners and more than 50 people were also injured in that attack, had absolutely not been doing by himself. There were so many young men and women recruited to be the bride and the groom ( The one who will bring the bomb to the target place and dare to do bombing suicide), or maybe the bombs constructor. But how do these terorists reqruite the youngmen/women so they seems think that what they’re going to do is a good thing? Without questioning, it’s brainwashing.
Korean and Chinese captors during the Korean War had brainwashed American POWs in prison camp results several prisoners pledged allegience to comunism by the end, an they refused to come back to US wheras they had been set free.
Robert Jay Lifton, late 1950s, studied former prisoners of Korean and Chinese war camps. He found that there was a multistep process that began with attacks on the prisoner’s sense of self (his identity or ego) and ended up with a change in beliefs. Lifton finally defined the brainwashing steps based on the case he had been studying.
1. Assault on identity
2. Guilt
3. Self-betrayal
4. Breaking point
5. Leniency
6. Compulsion to confess
7. Channeling of guilt
8. Releasing of guilt
9. Progress and harmony
10. Final confession and rebirth
• Assault on identity: You are not who you think you are.
This is the steps that attack systematically on a target’s sense of self (his identity or ego). The agent says a statement such as, “You are not a soldier.” “You are not a man.” “You are not defending freedom.” This attack will repeatedly be given to the target for days, weeks or months until they become exhausted, confused and disoriented. Then, his belief will seems became less solid.
• Guilt: You are bad. The crisis is setting in.
The next step : sense of guilt will be creating and overwhelming to the target simultaneously. The agent will keep attacking for every sins and evilness he’s done. The target begins to feel a shame and believe everything he does is a fault.
• Self-betrayal: Agree with me that you are bad.
Disorientation and drowning in guilt the target feels, make him easy to be forced, either with the physical harm or mental attack, to denounce his relatives or friends who have the same belief which is “wrong”. The betrayal which is appeared make he feels a loyalty to increase the shame and loss of identity.
• Breaking point: Who am I, where am I and what am I supposed to do?
The great crisis, the deep shame, and the betrayal of what he always believed in, make the target may undergo a “nervous breakdown” (a collection of severe symptoms that can indicate any number of psychological disturbances, involving uncontrollable sobbing, deep depression and general disorientation). Feeling of lost and alone will be completely felt; he has no clear understanding of who really he is and what is happening. At this time, the agent sets him up to be converted to another belief which is meant as a help from his misery.
• Leniency: I can help you.
With that miserable condition, the target will be offered some small kindness to help him from the abuse. A glass of water or a moment to be asked seems a big relief due to psychological attack and abuse, then he will do whatever is offered as the aget saved his life.
• Compulsion to confession: You can help yourself. The first brainwashing process, facing the contrast guilt and pain of identity and the sudden relief, he may desire to reciprocate the kindness offered. At this point, the agent start to present the possibility of confession as a tool for relieving guilt and pain.
• Channeling of guilt: This is why you’re in pain.
After weeks, what the target feels is only that he is wrong, although he actually doesnt know what he has done wrong. It creates something of a blank slate that let the agent fill whatever they want. It might be the new belief, something that the agent try to replace the target’s guilt, and the target starts to believe this new attachment. The contrast between old and new has been established: The old belief system is associated with psychological (and usually physical) agony; and the new belief system is associated with the possibility of escaping that agony.
• Releasing of guilt: It’s not me; it’s my beliefs.
The target is relieved to learn that what make he’s wrong is not caused by himself, but his old belief that made him trapped in the wrong view. He can escape from the wrong belief system by denouncing to the people or institution associated with, and he won’t be in pain anymore. The target has a power to release himself from wrongness by confessing to acts associated with his old belief system. With his full confessions, the target has completed his psychological rejection of his former identity. It is now up to the agent to offer the target a new one.
• ¬Progress and harmony: If you want, you can choose good.
This step let the agent to introduce a new belief system as the path to “good”. Abusing is stopped, physical comfort and mental calm in conjunction with the new belief system are offered. The target is made to feel that it is he who must choose between old and new, giving the target the sense that his fate is in his own hands. The target has already denounced his old belief system, and making a “conscious choice” in favor of the contrasting belief system helps to further relieve his guilt: If he truly believes, then he really didn’t betray anyone. The choice is not a difficult one: The new identity is safe and desirable because it is nothing like the one that led to his breakdown.
• Final confession and rebirth: I choose good.
Contrasting the agony of the old with the peacefulness of the new, the target chooses the new identity, clinging to it like a life preserver. He rejects his old belief system and pledges allegiance to the new one that is going to make his life better. At this final stage, there are often rituals or ceremonies to induct the converted target into his new community. This stage has been described by some brainwashing victims as a feeling of “rebirth.”
It seems too complicated and takes a hard and long time, but what we can conclude is that brainwashing is one of example of verbal communication that we should be aware with. Persuasion and until the changes occure to the person or the target might impact so much thing thing that we can not imagine.
It was a big confuse when I was starting to think which idea I would take for the blog. Finally, at 15.04 I got the idea. I watched a video in YouTube and found a title “Faded Hope: Street Children in Indonesia”.
As you know Indonesia is a developing country where most of the citizens have low income. It’s a common scene if you see along the road there are so many chidren under 18 working as a street musician (playing small guitar with only four strings rubber) or even being a begger. This is the Indonesia’s street and around 1.7 million are children.
Punch and kick from security or cops are likely the addition for their daily life. They have to fight back everyday to survive, if not what else they do to make money for food? They work for supporting their own life, helping parents or it’s probably because they work for one person which called as “the boss”. “The boss” exploit them as an adult worker who dont need education or moral guide anymore like other real children. Many of them suffer violence, and leave home due to the abuse. The girls and some boys become sex slaves, and not few of them are HIV positive. Innocent kids become criminals and drug users.
People seems don’t care and set a wall between themsleves and the street children. They see them as criminals and we think it’ll be so much better if we just stay away, but actually they are not like what they are now. They need help. They get themselves trapped and they need what education is, moral guide, the meaning of life, rehabilitation, and the compassion of love. They dont get any attention from their family bacause of the poverty,thus they have to struggle hard.
Pehaps, Singapore don’t have anything like that, but I just wanna let u know what’s happening in other side of the world. Let’s imagine if we’re pIaced in those position. I love seeing you guys gaining your sensitivity to others, especially to children and being more grateful for everything we’ve got until now.
There are some people who are willing to help rising education of the street children in Jakarta. Here’s the clip and hope it become a big start rescuing them to their nomal life.
