hope shines whenever the sun shines! @depthoverdistancee - Tumblr Blog

Questions:

Will students be staying alone in their allocated homestays or will students be sharing a homestay?

How does the influx of Chinese tourists affect the Japanese nationalism? Are welcoming Chinese tourists purely business or are they really happy about receiving Chinese tourists? What happens when Chinese tourists disrupt the Japanese social order such as when they behaved unruly like spitting in public or climbing up sakura trees? In extreme cases, where does citizens strike the balance between economic and social considerations?

How does Japanese feel about having heritage that is based off China?

moral relativism is the idea the morals are shaped by the unique culture of each country. i find this to be particularly appealing because i have always been more inclined towards moral universalism which is that morals is shaped by human’s cognition, reasoning and argument.

usually these two overlap to create moral judgements. Take the idea that one should not insult or belittle the religion of another person. From the moral relativism perspective, such an act is immoral because the government, our parents and teachers teaches us from young to uphold religious tolerance. On the other hand, from the moral universalist perspective, one simply does not commit such an act because he may believe that the right to believe in a particular religion is the basic freedom of a man. Or he may understand the consequence of the receiving party being hurt by such malicious insults and believes that to hurt another people, not physically but rather emotionally, is wrong.

there are, however times, when these two separate perspective are conflicting.

examples include:

1) in indonesia where your muslim parents condone the act of burning churches but you yourself believe such an act to be morally wrong.

2) rearing animals and feeding them food that causes accelerated growth and killing them for human consumption is wrong after some reasoning at a personal level but almost in every part of the world, poultry consumption is a socially accepted norm. Besides, what separates domesticated animals from farm animals?

In some countries, the norms may be legalised. in such cases,

consumed-wanderlust

This is a ‘where are you visting from?’ board at a local restaurant

年轻时，因为家境平穷，所以所有的出国旅游经验都是亲戚去旅游，想带我出国去玩玩一下，我才能享受到旅游的经验。因为那时还小，加上费用都是亲戚负的，所以做什么事，吃什么，买什么，全部都是亲戚做决定。我长大了之后，看见朋友们去旅游好开心的样子，加上互联网读到西方人常说的，“踏出你的安乐窝，出国去会开变你的人身观.”,我也渐渐得想出国旅游玩玩，看看到底这体验是不是有我遇过的每一个人说的那么棒。但是我有心无力-我的翅膀被我的空皮包而绑了下来。

二十一岁，从初级学院毕业，我终于鼓起一把勇气，把辛辛苦苦打一个一小时六块钱的临时工存起来的钱，全部都花在一个二十一天的韩国旅游。说老实话，我对韩国完全没兴趣，只是那时我有个姑姑在那停留四天和那时韩风很流行。但是兴奋等待的旅游不但不好玩，而食物不合口味，还有人很冷淡。我第一次属于我的旅游简直就是大失望。可是那时我告诉我自己别因为一次不好的体验而对出国旅游定下个不好的评判。可能别国会好玩一点。

就因为我相信别国会好玩一点，我就从那时去了台湾，日本，印尼，印度，马来西亚，泰国，越南，香港，广州。除了日本和泰国之外，每个国家都给了我一种想回家的冲动。最恐怖的是旅游景点全都是骗人的。爬了那座山，风景只不过如此，拍了几张照片就下山。去了那条名街，全都是假货。去了那皇宫，我想为什么人要来这种地方。上了那高塔，风景就不只是全部东西看起来小小而已嘛。

我开始讨厌旅游。直到两个星期前，我到了珠海。起初到了珠海，我对那地方的期望并不高因为那个地方主要是以商业为主。在那里的四天的第一天的下午我就开始闷了。我记得很清楚，我刚走完了靠近澳门的拱北港口的地下街，到了莲花路。这莲花路，第一眼也没什么有趣的，直到我看到这网咖。我走进了这间网咖，我想玩一下dota就因为我没事做。Dota这游戏对我来说，我已对它失去兴趣。可是那是我在珠海的网咖玩的dota和我在新加坡玩的dota是很不同的游戏。珠海的dota的队友很乐于助人，我的英雄死时，队友会毫不犹豫来救我。当我做错事时，队友骂我的坏话也好有趣。网咖的价格也好便宜。在珠海，我从早打游戏打到林晨，没去那购物中心和水上乐园，但是我觉得好充实。到最后一天，我真的好不想离开我的游戏天堂，回新加坡。但在抱着一个沉重的心在乘搭的士时，我看到了最美的情景-珠海的雨。我最爱的就是下雨天。但是珠海的雨好特别。珠海的雨是特别的小，特别的细。走在去打的士的路上，那么小的雨落在我身上完全没感觉。在的士上，我看到这么轻的雨在风中完全没权利要落在哪里，只好随着风怎么飘，雨就怎么落。我无法忘记从的士看出去，那细小雨在风中乱乱飘的那情景。

去过好几个国家，我觉得西方的说法是骗人的。出国很不舒服吗？为什么出国是踏出安乐窝呢？珠海旅游让我领悟到了，别人的好玩就不一定是我的好玩。我的好玩对99%的人来说，是浪费钱，浪费时间。谁会出国打电动啊？可是相反的，我也觉得景点没什么有趣的。

it has been a little more than a week since school started for me and i am really enjoying my new room in the hostel. i managed to settle in rather quickly and i am conscientiously doing my weekly readings and preparing for the lectures and tutorial. what really gets on my nerves is those lecturers that keep assigning readings for the sake of assigning readings. The assigned readings have little relationship to the material taught in lecture. It does not provide us with a fundamental understanding of the subject material that allows us to better comprehend whatever that is taught during the lecture. For example, in trauma psychology, my American lecturer assigned readings that talk about types of memory, i.e, long-term or short-term memory.but does not touch about the relationship between memory and trauma in lecture.

but then again, i feel like sometimes the silly assignments from lecturers can be a positive learning experience. In health psychology, the lecturer asked students to interviews friends and family by asking them, “what is health?”. At first glance, the simple assignment reinforced my impression of her as a tardy professor which I got from reading her project instructions laden with typographical errors. But when i asked my family, I also asked myself what does health means to me and this question made me realise that I don’t even know the answer to such a simple questions.

After some deliberation, health means being of contribution and productive and taking care of my relationships.

1) being productive means good time management, being focused and concentrated on the task on hand and planning your schedule ahead of time.

2) taking care of my relationship means i am maintaining a positive relationships with people around me.

3) being of contribution means i am contributing to the society

the recent readings on trauma psychology is quite interesting, particularly its neurobiological aspects.

why victims of threatening situations do not get past the initial, adaptive arousal response and eventually calm down actually has a neurobiological explanation to it. Turns out that when we are aroused, our hypothalamus activates the adrenal gland to release epinephrine and norepinephrine. These neurotransmitters shift blood away from the skin to the muscles and increases heart rate. When we are aroused, the hypothalamus also activates the CRH to activate the pituitary gland to activate the adrenal gland to release cortisol which returns our body to homeostasis. Victims of trauma have a lower cortisol which causes prolonged states of arousal.

Additionally, when remembering traumatic memories, both the amygdala and the hippocampus is at work. The amygdala remembers the emotions of the events while the hippocampus puts the event in time perspective and context. For trauma victims, the hippocampus is suppressed during threatening situations and thus, the past event that is remembered can sometimes be perceived as the current reality.

Arousal responses need not necessarily be triggered by traumatic memories, but rather, it can run the other way - traumatic memories can be triggered by arousal responses. for example, increased heart rate and the paralysis is associated with a car accident. the recall of the car accident may not be triggered by the events of that day but rather the autonomic symptoms.

Last but not least, I discovered that arousal can be trigger by somatic nervous symptoms such as parallel postures between reality and that of the threatening situation.

events and mood over the last few days

the most eventful thing that occurred to me recently was the fact that i just realised today that Module Preference exercise for level 4000 modules are only for year 4 students. I spent quite a lot of time and effort thinking and planning out my modules very nicely but it turns out that i can only bid for lvl3000 modules?!?!? actually i can bid for level 4000 thousand modules but it is just that i can only do so in the later rounds and provided the fact that there are leftover vacancies from the earlier rounds that get passed on to lvl 2A (the round that i am allowed to bid).

so this morning i was left scrambling to decide on which lvl3000 modules to take the next semester. But for better or worse, i was only given, excluding the core modules. a choice of seven lvl3000 modules to choose from. So the time i spent on MPE while i was in vietnam all went down the drain. I don’t actually blame anyone for this because it is due to my own ignorance, arising from lack of networking or not reading enough of the rules, that caused me to not know that lvl4000 modules are only for year 4 students.

But anyway, since i am in the mood, I am going to lament about how NUS, while ranked the first university in the whole of Asia and the twelve in the entire world, is surprisingly terrible in its quality of education. Most students, prospective or current, as well as employers are deceived by all these rankings and do not realise the fact that NUS is so highly esteemed not because it has smart students but rather it has world class research contribution.

recently i heard from a friend who is a researcher at NUS now, that although his department is entirely unrelated to NUS, the professors there are classified under NUS because these university rankings uses size of academics pool as one of the assessment criteria. Most my lecturers so far has been rather unimpressive. My abrnormal psychology and cognitive psychology is the worst..

Moving on to brighter stuff, I watched the movie, “Why Him?” today at Katong 112 and it was surprisingly good. Don’t get me wrong. The jokes are lame and the characters are lame. The part that made me rated it differently was its ending. I thought the daughter was going to agree to the marriage proposal and they live happily ever after but she actually said she is not ready for marriage at this point in her life. I like the ending because I kind of expected it to have a typical movie ending.

should i go vegan, again? The politics of being a vegan in modern Singapore

the previous time i went vegan was a bad experience.

Being a vegan within a group of omnivores brings certain problems. Firstly, everytime I had a meal with somebody, people kept asking questions regarding my dietary choice. In this day and age, it is rather impossible to go eating alone all the time. People will ask me everything from what is my motivation for being a vegan or how does your mum prepare meals for you. Secondly, you’ll be a minority and it doesn’t feel good to stick out like a sore thumb. When ordering food for takeaway in a group and you suddenly have special request, everyone will turn their attention on you. Worse, the ordering was done beforehand and there is no vegan food which means that, 1) you have to go hungry and 2) the person ordering feels guilty and profusely apologises. Lastly, the social group that you are with have to make arrangements such as where to eat or what to prepare cause they have a vegan within them. I hate troubling others and feel like a burden when others have to limit their dietary choices because of me.

The social aspect of being a vegan was really something that demoralises me. And it is something that cannot be avoided. When at work, you’ll be considered aloof and unsociable if you eat lunch by yourself and in other social settings, such as family gatherings, you can’t possibly avoid every festive gatherings. The benefits of being a vegan includes better health, lesser environmental footprint, more respect for animals but I am unwilling to trade in all of this simply because I don’t wish to stand out.

myarlat2

After reading about Syrian civil war conflict, I am going to attempt to summarise it with a confused state of mind and end off with several personal viewpoints..

The whole Syrian civil war conflict that involved not just regional, but international powers was ignited from a small criminal case of several teenagers spraying revolutionary messages on walls. In March 2011, people started protesting against the prosecution and after security forces opened fire on the demonstrators, more people took to the streets. The case of several teenagers vandalising school walls unleashed people’s brewing frustration towards the autocratic rule of Assad and desire for democracy.

This conflict between government forces and the civilians erupted into a complicated civil war between the Sunni majority and Assad’s Shia Alawite. There was also the Islamic State(IS) involved as a third party as well. US supported the rebels but did so in the form of logistical assistance such as providing food and medical supplies. In June 2014, the IS has taken large control of Syria and Iraq and its fighters are fighting against rebels, government forces and rival jihadists. In Sep 14, US-led coalition starting launching air strikes targeted towards the ISIS but avoided air strikes which will benefit the government forces. On the other hand, Russia, a year later, started her own air strikes that are supposedly meant to target the ISIS but resulted in mostly death of Western-backed rebels.

The war seemed to stagnate with either parties able to inflict a conclusive victory over another. There was talk about a political solution where a period of ceasefire lead up to elections.

However, in December 2016, Iran and Russia and Assad’s regime won Aleppo by managing to surround the rebel’s forces and depriving them of food. Eventually the rebels lost and the civilians in Aleppo were reported to suffered under vile crimes.

Media has framed Russia and Iran in the wrong for supporting Assad’s cruel regime but i think all intervening parties here are fighting for their own political beliefs. In the case of Assad’s allies, they are helping Assad because they all share the same political beliefs- communism. In the case of the rebels’ allies, all of them strive towards democracy.

Syrian civil war and Egypt’s Arab Uprising share similar impetus but very different outcomes. In the case of Singaporeans, we should be thankful that since independence, democracy has been the system adopted. When we study these countries that have to fight for democracy but fail, we tend to treasure it more.

After waiting fruitlessly for sleep to set in, I gave up and set my mind on writing on a newfound interest of mine - international politics.

The much publicised Trump’s receipt of a congratulatory phone call from the Taiwan’s president is exciting because it represents the possible uprising of a conflict between the 2 global powers. Trump is delivering what he preached during the election - taking a hard stance towards China who has been flaunting free trade rules to gain an unfair advantage over US. But trade is not the only reason for the poor Sino-US relationship. China is also militarising areas which are still under debate as to whose national boundaries do they fall under.

In my perspective, China’s actions after they gained a superpower status is pure hooligan. The evidence which their claims are based on is simply ridiculous. The Chinese presents an ancient map that dates back to a dynasty long past. On this map, the demarcation lines indicates that certain islands of Philipines, Vietnam and Japan originally belong to China and now they want it back. I think it is simply too bad that when national boundaries are established according to international laws, China was not influential enough or China simply hasn’t found the map yet.

Singapore is also not spared from the big bad hooligan. Singapore has been accused of siding with the US on the South China Sea issue and their nationalistic newspaper even accused us of escalating the conflict by bringing the issue up at an unrelated ASEAN conference. My country is simply trying to expressed her own stand that will serve its interest which is being friends with everybody and anybody. THUS WHEN PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA INVITED OUR PRIME MINISTER FOR DINNER, HE GLADLY ACCEPTED IT! HE IS NOT CHOOSING SIDES! HE IS SIMPLY MAKING FRIENDS! Little wonder that when President Rodrigo said he sides with China and Russia instead of the US, all the Chinese politicians were so happy.

Another example of the hooligan cornering countries to make difficult decisions occurred only recently. Singapore’s tanks were taken into Chinese’s custody after having been to Taiwan for military training. Singapore has been conducting military training there for 25 years and all of a sudden, this happens at Hong Kong’s port? Why? Cause China is now strong enough to play such games? No wonder... no wonder.. no wonder China is so reluctant to let Hongkong break away and achieve independence. Because China likes confiscating port transactions that goes against her national interests!

The most infuriating is the irony that in spite of all these diplomacy warfare, President Xi, in the party’s recent anniversary, claims that the Communist Party of China is peace loving and doesn’t create conflict. Perhaps Trump has come at a good time...

My 10 days trip in Ho Chi Minh city is finally coming to an end and in what follows, I will explain in length why I am so glad to be leaving this city so bear with me.

Most tourists and even the locals will probably agree with me that the transport network here is deplorable. The traffic has little rules and is filled with motorbikes, the bus network is poorly connected and the metro is due only in 2020. Every time I go out, I have to take a Ubermoto or a Grabbike which means that those without a data plan will have a hard time getting around. In addition, I suffered an incident which barred me from riding. When I first got here, I took my Airbnb’s host bike out for a ride and fell down into the grass beside the road. Luckily I emerged unharmed but the motorbike was not so lucky. The front panel was soiled but worse, the motor couldn’t start up. I was prepared to pay for any repair costs incurred but the host was very generous and repaired it himself free of charge. After this incident, I suffered a mild post traumatic stress disorder as I thought about how if I had fell into the opposing lane, the consequences could have been deadly. During my remaining days in HCMC, I became sensitive and reacted quickly to all the vehicles’ horn blasting away. Consequently, I have made more than 10 bookings of Grabbike during my stay here. Each time I make a booking, I dread worrying if the rider is going to play tricks with me or if the rider is going to take 15 minutes to find me within the maze of HCMC; the trip to airport in 5 hours is no exception.

Another bad experience occurred during my second Airbnb stay. After watching a soccer match in a bar along the Backpacker’s street, I couldn’t book a Grabbike as I have exceeded the number of cancellations permitted weekly (most of the cancellations were the driver’s fault as they couldn’t find me). I was left with no choice and had to hire the services of those riders commonly seen hawking at junctions or landmarks for customers. I didn’t like the idea as the price is highly inflated and after bargaining, the price is still more than Grabike. Furthermore, they had no credibility. But I was left with no choice and got on the bike of this motherfucker who initially wanted a price of 100k dong for a 2.5km trip which I managed to cut down to 40k dong (Grabike charge about 25k dong). I confirmed that this guy had loose morals which he asked me if I wanted girls for the night. But the worse had yet to come because when I reached home, I realised I only had a 200k dong note and all the shops around me were closed already. I asked him if he had change but he caught me offguard when he grabbed the note and sped away while saying, “I go in front change! I go in front change!”. Initially, I still naively thought he was really going to find change for me. But literally after a second, I realised that given the motherfucker he is, he would never come back. At my realisation, I sprinted after him and shouted for him to come back but it was too late. I vividly recall him turning into the main road at the end of the alley.

The food was disappointing as well. I have tried different kinds of food but only few seems to fit my palate. The highly-raved Vietnamese coffee didn’t meet my expectations as well. After waiting for 5 minutes for the coffee to drip through the sieve in front of you, it taste like antibiotics. Why the Westerners seem to be so crazy about Vietnamese coffee is simply inconceivable to me.

The saving grace is probably the shop that I found near Ben Thanh market that sells used and rejected apparel. I bought an Adidas shirt and a Champion shirt there. Also, I managed to find Vietnam war Zippo replicas at very cheap prices. The last 2 days in my Airbnb apartment is spent watching movies and studying Japanese. I hope my Hongkong/China trip is early January will not be as terrible as this.

Looking forward to the return flight in 5 hours.

sayunni-deactivated20170213

改めて写真を撮る楽しさを知るきっかけになった日

hostile sexism takes the form of one harbouring negative stereotypes towards women. he may think that women are the weaker race in terms of intelligence, strength, compassion, etc. But more interestingly, sexism can also take another, less obvious, form which is called benevolent sexism where men act more chivalrous and are more willing to provide for women. Both types of sexism assumes that women are the weaker sex but it is benevolent sexism which takes the disguise of generosity and affection. Some examples of benevolent sexism includes paying for girls’ meals, protecting them. Women may find this charming but if they examine it, it is actually very patronising. This results in women being relegated to traditional stereotypical roles in the society.

Personally, I feel that when it comes to physical abuse, men should still come to the rescue of women simply because women are less physically able to protect themselves. But anything other than that, i will respect them as indepedent and capable people who are able to achieve whatever they want by their own ability.

in mat kearney’s song titled sooner or later, he wrote about the relentless pursuit towards his dream of becoming a musician. It is pretty inspiring because he wrote about how the journey is full of waiting for a reward that may not ultimately materialise and end up to be simply wishful thinking. there is another line which i find to be personally appealing which was, “trying to feel the high without the low”.

I don’t recall a time where i enjoyed high moods without the subsequent emotional crash. When i am high, i feel confident, eloquent and risk-seeking. Such high mood may be the result of a certain event or social interaction. But everytime, such euphoria will eventually crash into low moods. The certainty of such a cycle makes me wonder if others have the same experience. From my observation, some people have a constant apathetic mood while others seem to be most of the time very high or very low. Few people seem to experience such mood swings like mine. This is why the song lyrics drew me out on a very personal level; there is someone out there trying to feel the high while avoiding all the lows.

in my recent abnormal psychology class on mood disorders, I learnt that there are different types of alternation between the highs and lows. For example, in major depressive disorder, we have the extreme low with brief periods of normal mood while in cyclothymic disorder, sufferers alternate between mildly high and low moods. when i knew of this, i felt a little comforted because it seems to prove that it is impossible to feel emotional high with the accompanying low. It makes me my mood swings seems more acceptable.

A plus point of having mood swings that are of a greater extent is the fact that during my normal periods, i experience both creativity and the desire to create something that is uniquely my own. The fact that mood swings seems to be correlated to high creativity is supported by several studies that analyses the psychology of famous creative poets and artists. Such creative people appear to experience high degree of emotional change as compared to common people. Personally, i have received feedback from those around me that I am very creative and I always assumed that it is just part of me; that i was born this way. But it is only until now that i realised that such creativity is inevitably accompanied by the unbearable moods. That you cannot have simply the beautiful attributes without paying the price. It is, therefore, little wonder that Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf committed suicide as a result of their emotional pain.

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hope shines whenever the sun shines!