signs that you are thinking too much.

I was sitting on the train plateform today and I couldn’t help but give up on boarding my train to watch the advertistment that was on the television screen.

The advertistment went like this:

A delivery man was asked to deliver a parcel over to a man named Zhang who works at the factory. He takes the parcel and happily goes over to the factory. Upon reachgin the factory, he announces a parcel for Zhang.

delivery man: “Parcel for Zhang!”

After doing so, he notices all the workesr staring at him and slowly inching towards him. He is startled and takes a few steps back.

The workers continued to move in closer and at this point in time, the delivery man feels threatened and took off with the parcel still in his hand. He rans back to where he first came from and asked his boss for more information about the receipient.

delivery man: “Which Zhang?”

voss: “The Zhang working at the factory.”

deliver man (not getting the necessay info he needs, feels a little desperate): “Which Zhanggg?”

boss(feeling a little aggitated): “The Zhang working at the factory!”

delivery man(whinning): “Which Zhanggggg????????”

The advertistment then shows a caption of:

“There are over 88 million people living in China by the name of Zhang.”

Followed by a man in the FedEx uniform handing the parcel over to a factory worker saying,

“This is for you, Zhang Wei.”

The advertistment ends off with the caption,

FedEx. We live to deliver.

I feel that this advertistment is very interesting and it captures people’s attention. It not only incorporates the message that “FedEx is the best choice” when it comes to delivering parcels, but it also possesses a jovial tone which will leave an impression on viewers making them remember the advertistment and the company. The music in the background also makes the advertistment more lively (especially while the first delivery man was walking to the factory) and also gives viewers the kind of “in a hurry” feeling (while he was at the factory) which helps people relate to the desperation of the first delivery man. Not only does the advertistment show that FedEx will deliver the parcel to the right receipient, it also tells its viewers that FedEx would take good care of their parcel and will delivery the parcel to the receipients properly without hassel.

I feel that the advertistment is good also because it worked on me so from now, I will chose FedEx as my number one choice for delivery.

Click the link below to watch the advertistment for yourself and be the judge!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c5iTBNCTbU 

on expression..

 

I was looking around youtube again when I chanced upon this very short but funny clip. I watched it and realised that in Japanese animes, the artist makes use of the character’s eyes to depict their thinking and emotions. Though often exaggerated, it is very useful and helps bring out the emotions and the idea of what’s happening at that time.In this short clip, the girl with the two long pony tails, Asuna, is playing a banjo and trying to compose a song about chupacabras (a kind of mutant robot in the anime series magister negima). Her facial expression looks as if she’s really into her song composing and is paying a lot of attention to herself. In a way, she is very absorbed into her chupacabra music-making process. Her eyes are shut and in a very slight ‘U’ shape. In Japanese anime drawing, a slight ‘U’ shape for eyes is used to represent either a sad or serene expression. Her eyebrows are slanting downwards at the sides which, coupling with the ‘U’ shaped eyes, further emphasizes either the serene or sad feeling. Thought both her eyebrows and her eyes give the serene or sad feeling, her mouth is drawn in such a way that one side of her mouth is tilted or jolting upwards. The combination of these three expression changes the whole feeling that Asuna gives to her viewers about herself. Instead of sadness and serene, she actually looks deeply engrossed in her own music-making but because the combination of facial features also looks rather awkward, the exact meaning of her facial expression is depicting that she is engrossed in her music-making, thinking that she is doing a very good job but in actual fact, her singing is bad and so are her lyrics. 

In the next few seconds of the short clip, her friend is seen sticking her head out from behind the door to peek at what she’s doing. Upon hearing Asuna’s song, her friend gets a bad shock. This emotion is brought out by the music inserted at that instant. The inserted music sounds as if a sword is drawn and this brings about an emphasis on the instant she suddenly realised that the song is going to be their theme song for chupacabras. Her facial expression looks as if she is shocked, stunned, and looks as if she just heard grave news about an impending doom. Her eyes are drawn in huge ellipse with thick black circumference. This gives her the very blank-out look. her brows are slanted downwards which give her a very frustrated look when coupled with the thin stress lines the artist has included (look around the area at the start of the brows) Furthermore, her mouth is of a huge trapezium which further emphasizes the shock she experienced listening to Asuna’s song.
 
To enjoy a cartoon, one must be able to understand what is going on and to be able to relate to the characters’ feelings. By exaggerating the facial expressions of characters, Japanese anime artists are able to make their anime engaging and fun. Without all these good use of exaggerated expressions and technique of using different geometric shapes and manipulating normal human behaviour such as the slanting of the brows as a non-verbal cue,  the artist is able to deliver the emotion and thinking of his character freely and effortlessly.

ps. click here for the short clip to judeg for yourself!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zESZmcdnJPA&feature=related  

Music. More than just lyrics and tune.

After  watching La Bi Xiao Xin (Crayon Shin-Chan), I decided that I should talk about how it’s background music helped in creating certain moods for viewers and enhanced it’s jovial tone.

ps. It would be best if this is minimised and dragged to the side while the link to the clip is opened in another window (easier referencing!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGvE-uXQy-4&feature=related (subtittles are a little off. Sorry!)

At the beginning of the episode, a soft, gentle, but happy tune was inserted into the cartoon as it showed Shin-chan and his friends going skii-ing.

The music then changes into something a little more up-beat and sounds like as if someone’s sneaking around or trying to pull a prank on another at the part where FengJian’s mother tried to boast about her wealth by saying that “going overseas to skii is way better than skii-ing in Japan.” This kind of music showed and emphasized the “boastfull-ness” or the sacarstic, show-off and jeering tone in FengJian’s mother’s voice. On the other hand, it also showed the awkwardness of Nini-chan’s mother after hearing what Feng Jian’s mother said about skii-ing, especially when she laughed with the “oh, really.” kind of expression.

At the scene where the other teacher ran to look for Shin-chan and his family, the music is short but give people the feeling like “oh… I seee…aiyooo…” kinda of feeling which allows viewers to connect to what the teacher was feeling at the time upon seeing Shin-chan and his family sleeping on the bus.

At the scene where JiYong (female teacher) and SongYan(over dressed teacher in flower print top) were sneering at each other, the music was that of a sneaky tune and it enhances the process of the two women sneering at each other. 

The music changes to that of a happy tune when the screen flashes from Shin-chn commenting about a love triangle to the snow-capped mountains. It prepares viewers to receive something good and in a way snatches their attention from where the “love triangle” joke left them. In a way, the music provides the transition from one scene to another without making the screen play awkward.

It changes to the same sneaky music heard initially when the male teacher announces for those who are familiar with skii-ing to report to teacher SongFan. Upon hearing this, she gets nervous(shown by the sweat drop on her forehead) and uptight. Coupled with the music, viewers are fore-warned in a way that she can’t really skii and was really actually just boasting about herself before (where she and the other teacher was sneering at each other). It tells the viewers what to expect in the foolowing scenes and exaggerates SongFan’s nervous-ness.

Overall, I feel that the music incorporated in this clip helps enhance the emotions and actions of the characters and helps to create a more complete understanding of the clip. Also, the music not only has brought out the feelings to the actions of the characters, but it has also helped in the transitions of the scenes.

Indeeed, music is more than just lyrics and tune. it can be used for so much more.

superficial love — giving people the benefit of doubt.

 

As much as we all love to believe that the people around us are sincere and true, how much and to what degree are we able to do so?

We, at UB, are required to take a module on communications which supposedly puts us on an advantage in judging if someone is telling the truth or not. What’s more, some of us have even taken a module on psychology. Doesn’t that allow us to judge people better? Judging meaning to see if they are trustworthy, speaking the truth, or even just behaving and saying something that is of contradiction to what they really are thinking.

We’ve learnt that there are non-verbal cues which will allow us to draw conclusions about a person whether he is being truthful or not and we’ve also learnt about psychologically affected behavior when one lies – The heartbeat increases, the liar feels uptight or even more energectic as blood flows to his brain faster as he attempts to cook up a wonderful lie. Sometimes, he may even perspire or feel that the room temperature has risen as a cause of increased activity within the body.

If we knew these at the tip of our fingers, then why is it that we can still fall for lies that sometimes may be so far-fetched?

The difference lies with the person who is telling you the lie.

Take for example, if you heard about something really far-fetched from someone you are close to or have known for a while, you’d probably just listen and then shrug it off if you know that is impossible given his/her character, looks, social status(of any sort) and lifestyle. However, if you are hearing this from someone you’ve only met, you would tend to give him or her the benefit of doubt that this ridiculous story MAY be true since although drama scripts may sometimes be very ridiculous and exaggerated, situations like that of in dramas can also be true depending on your luck and the people around you.

We have learnt that body language, coupled with oculesics and many others like adaptors can give away someone if he/she is lying, but keep in mind that if something can be built, it can also be destroyed too. What I’m really trying to say its that these can also help liars to curb the potential slip.

I never knew these were useful until I met a fellow student from the same institution. Apparently, if one is aware of how he/she will behave in times he/she experiences increased bodily reactions or stress, then he/she will know how to prevent these induced behavior so as to not give himself/herself away. Which by now, really explains how he managed to manipulate a few friends and I into believing his wonderful tale which cause us to fight amongst each other.

Although what is mentioned above may look like a good plan  to cover up for oneself, I have learnt that it is still possible to find out if he is lying or not. By observing one’s actions after you have intentionally assured him of your trust in him, liars will tend to look around as an attempt to try calming oneself down. Many other signs I will explain in next post.

Sometimes, people also tend to believe someone whom they are not as familiar with to someone they’ve known for a long period of time because we tend to give them benefits of doubt. This generosity goes as far as even to situations where pieces of information provided by the liar do not match. Whereas to someone whom they are more familiar with, they would start developing the feeling of “how can he/she do this to me? I thought we’re friends.” and upon developing thoughts like this, friendship and trust goes out the window.

It has come to my realisation that although friends are supposedly those whom you can really trust, this is really not the case in some situations because having someone who you are unfamiliar with lying to you, you would have the tendency to believe him over your friend who may be telling you the truth due to human’s generosity of the “benefit of doubt.”

relationships…a personal account (continued)

Well, in my last post, I did mention that I will try to link my own experience with Knapp’s model of relationships so here it is.

Knapp VS Yu Han:

In Knapp’s model of relationships, there are ten stages and I will start from the first stage, Initiating.

In my own account, I will treat both T and myself as someone else.

In the first stage, Initiating, we can see that Han is starting a conversation with T when she offered him a coke. T, recipocrating, takes the coke and asks about the mouse. In this first stage of Knapp’s model, there is some interaction there and there is an exchange of words which are friendly and non-hostile (probably more evident to myself as I can’t rewind what happened to show you all) By accepting the coke, two conclusions can be drawn, either T was really thirsty, or he was just trying to be polite. If it’s the latter, it validates the good intentions of Han offering a coke to him whereas if the former is true and not the latter, it still will indirectly validate the good intentions for it gives her the thinking that “oh, I’m right, he’s thirsty. I did a good thing.” and by validating someone’s actions, it makes the person feel good about him/herself which builds the basis for a good friendship. Think about it this way, everyone likes to make friends with people who makes them feel good about themselves right.

The next stage of Knapp’s model is Experimenting and this coincides with our subjects going out either with a group of friends, or by themselves. In the personal account we see our subjects going out a lot both with a group of friends and by themselves. Though there are times which they went out with a group of friends, they’re primary focus would be each other as right now, they are trying to find out more about each other and having friends makes things less awkward and allows both individuals to indirectly find out about each other through observing each other’s actions and paying attention to what each other says. As in the personal account, this lasted for quite a period of time and as the frequecy of the meet-ups increased, it takes us onto the third stage of Knapp’s model of relationships.

Knapp’s third stage is Intensifying and he suggests that in this stage, there is a lot of self-disclosure and the time spent together will increase significantly. He’s right. As with what happened in my personal account, as the frequency of meeting up increased, the presence of other friends being around together with them decreased and eventually, self-disclosure became a usual thing whether it happened over the phone, or face to face, or in text messages. Again, this serves as a validation for each other as it shows that they both trust each other and feel secure enough to share some of their personal issues and individual perspectives.

Eventually as the story moved on and T expressed his feelings, Knapp’s fourth stage, Integration, comes into the picture. Both of our subjects were integrating each other into their lives as they made time for each other and spent some part of their time and personal issues with each other. People came to know about them as “them” and they recognised themselves as “we”. In short, they were made known to be a couple.

Though this relationship never went into the fifth stage, Bonding, it did proceed to the sixth stage, Differentiating. This is seen whereby both indiviuals were exerting their own ideas of a relationship and their character onto the other. T was seen expressing his insecurities and anger to Han while making it known what she should and shouldn’t do. Han on the other hand, became upset as T was restricting her social life and felt that he was making her oppose her own character. Though they both knew about each other’s character, both could not accept the other part’s ideas of their relationship and how it should go.

Over time, Their relatinship went downhil into Knapp’s seventh stage, Circumscribing. Both of them stayed away from topics which angered the other party. Han didn’t want to talk about school or about her friends as she knew it will bring about an argument though T wanted to know about her day. It may have been a one-sided kind of circumscribing but it still contributed to the further decaying of the relationship which brings me to the eighth stage os Knapp’s, Stagnantion.

As both parties didn’t want it to end after making an effort to stay togther for 2 years, both parties tolerated with each other and most of the time, there wasn’t much interaction and bits of Circumscribing existed where both parties though still in a relationship, limited most of their conversation to extremely safe topics. Days like these continued to pass and though T was able to tolerate this and continued holding onto the relationship, Han began to think about her own situation. This relationship was bringing her no where and it certainly isn’t making her feel good about herself. Her outings with her friends were censored from her conversations, now reduced to almost not at all in two days, and she was feeling tired from not being able to share her days with T.

She found herself often thinking about “them” and often find that being alone was better off for her. She started to take comfort in her friends and found that she no longer thought about T. She begun to avoid seeing him as seeing him would induce recollections of the past few months which would aggitate her badly. She begun to comply to Knapp’s nonth model, Avoidance. She avoided T a lot and tried her best to exclude him from her life.

Finally, while she was at her friend’s BBQ, a few days from their third year together, she ended the relationship upon coming to a final conclusion that she is definitely better off alone or with someone else.

The personal account did not reflect the fifth stage but Knapp’s model had no requirement to follow it in sequence. Most relationships would involve excluding stage five as people don’t marry everyone they date. The fifth stage will only be applicable to couples who have gone through marraige, child birth, or any events that may bind them together officially, where officially referred to their relationship being recognised by everyone, or before god.

Relationships..a personal account

A few weeks ago, I was revising for my COMS101 mid-terms and one of the topics in my syllabus to be tested focused on relationships. So I thought I’d just share a few things about it from my own experience.

 When I was 16, if I didn’t remember wrongly, secondary 4, I found myself stuck in a sticky situation of a 1 year and still going relationship with my brother’s close friend. (Let’s call him T for reference purposes and to make things easier since bring up his name makes m feel sick.)

The first time I met T, he was a really crazy guy. Crazy and spastic, like how I would describe most of my close friends. I don’t mean crazy and spastic like mentally unsound and adnormal. I mean crazy and spastic like spontaneous, outgoing, daring and a bunch of fun. So, finding him rather cool and sociable, I decided to talk to him when he came to my place one day to work on a school project with my brother. I remember what happened exactly and it went like this.

me: “Hi, want a coke?”

T: “Sure, thanks.”

–moment of silence–

T: “Hey does this mouse work? It doesn’t seem to be responding to the clicks.”

me: “mmhmm.. Look behind the monitor. I think there’s a spare one.”

That’s how it all started. My house, in the evening, at my desktop, with a coke. I was only secondary 3 and he was secondary 4, one year older than I.

Eventually, we started talking more after he got my cellphone number from my brother. We talked often and realised we shared some common beliefs and ideas. This sparked even more conversations and our conversations lasted longer than how it was before regardless if it was through the telephone, text messages, or through the internet. We talked a lot more and moved gradually from casual topics to personal issues. Sometimes, we’d even complain about things occured during that day that annoyed us and even go as far as to meet up with a few other friends . This continued for a long period of time and as it dragged on, our friends pestered us for answers to questions we could’nt answer. I kind of shrugged these off and continued going out with T. By now, I was going out with him alone without feeling awkward. I felt comfortable and easy around him due to our similarities and because I fdeveloped a sense of familiarity after all the times I spoke and met up with him.

As close girl-friends pushed for an answer and his fellow classmates pressed on for an answer from him too, we decided to talk about ’us’. Though there was a proposal to talk it over, we never really did do so. Both of us were afraid (on my part I was sure I was. For him, I’m not too sure it this was the case) and probably too shy due to lack of experience to talk about it. After all, we were only 15 and 16, two teenagers yet to experience romance.

Finally on a Saturday in the month of June (I can’t rememebr what date it was), T asked me out for the annual SJI (St. Joseph’s Institution) band concert. At my door step after the evening, he asked me,

“would you like to be my girlfriend?”

I can’t say I wasn’t expecting that after numerous hints from my brother and his friends but I couldn’t possibly go ”I knew that was coming!” So I just stared at him for a moment and nodded.

“Okay.”

News travels fast and I’m sure we all know that for the moment I was don bathing, my cellphone registered many missed calls and I had to delete numerous messages from my friends who sent me very ambiguous text messages like “OH MY GOD! IS IT TRRUUE?” Of course I knew what they were referring to but it probably would be ambiguous to others if they received messages like that out of the blues.

So, we became recognised as a pair, a couple to our friends. People knew about ad referred to us as “them”. We went out a lot and spent a lot of time together.

Days like these continued for months, then to years, and we remained recognised and known as “them”, “we”, “us” for a period of 2 years and a few months.

However, things started to deteriorate when I started my JC life with my first 3 months at Yishun Junior College. I had new friends and since I grew up with boys, I naturally felt more at ease around them. Thus, most of the new friends I made were boys and this made T jealous. He asked that I spent more time with him and soon, this “asking” became ”demanding” after a few times where I declined meeting him due to school projects and band practice (I joined the YJC military band). Though these excuses were the truth, he passed it off as lies and insisted that I was cheating on him. During my time at YJC, I met an Indo-Chinese boy named Michael and we became good friends over time. As friends, we met up for lunches a lot and did most of our projects together. Eventually, T knew about him from the times I told him about school and after a while, Michael became the fire starter for our arguments which by now, were increasing in frequency and magnitude. We often argued over small matters and ignored each other for days.

Our relationship decayed gradually until a point where I felt like I was a bird in a cage. Sounds exaggerated but that’s exactly how I felt. Being told what to do and what not to do, I was determined to break every rule he placed on me and eventually, I started to feel as if we have no more common topics to talk about. Everything I said about school or other issues made him angry and everything he said angered me too.

All these died down after I left YJC for CJC (Catholic Junior College) after the release of my O levels. I thought we would be fine. However when I started JC2, I became closer friends with my classmtes.

As February slowly rolled over to May, T felt that I was getting too close to my new male friends and expressed his sense of insecurity. I dismissed it and felt again, irritated by him as he began to insult my other classmates whom he doesn’t even know personally. Our relationship decyaed further from what was already left of the YJC days.

On the eve of our third year together, I broke off all ties with him and though he agreed to it at first, he continued to contact me for the next few weeks. I was often irritated and spent a lot of my time with my close friend, Tiffany. I also spent some of my time with my other close friend, Mao, when he asked me out for lunches when ever he visited his best friend (his best friend lives down the street from me).

As T became more desperate and demanded that I meet up with him to “work things out”, my grandfather passed away. I was going through quite some emotional disturbance and with T barking at me through all means of communication, I was badly angered.

When July came, T’s persistant calls slowly died off and I found myself taking interest in someone else.

That was a long story but I just thought I’d share this after reading through Knapp’s Model of relationship where there are 10 stages. 5 stages coming together and 5 stages describing “coming apart”.

The 10 stages are initiating, experimenting, intensifying, integrating, bonding, differentiating, circumscribing, stagnation, avoiding and finally, terminating.

I found these stages to be relative and closely linked to my personal experience with T, which has already reached stage 10, and also linked to my current relationship which I don’t ever want it to go near any of the last 5 stages.

I will try to elaborate on the stages and the corresponding sections of my experience in my next post.

It’s chinese new year but my eyes are still wide open and prying.

It’s Chiense New Year!

Wow. Ir’s time to get rich and make that bank account look pretty. Pretty with all those digits magically appearing from little red packets given to us by…wait…who cares? okay. Maybe some of us do, I do. Honestly.

I was sitting on my couch observing people as usual (that’s what I like to do when I’m bored and need some entertainent.) and I can’t help but wonder, “do all these kids know what the oranges are for in the first place?” Well maybe to them it’s the key to getting that magically excitment-injecting red envelope coupled with some brand new, pressed clothes and a few four-word greetings skillfully made to sound sincere through an ultra wide smile.

“I’ll bet you that red packet of yours they have no idea what the oranges and red packet means.” I snickered as my brother whispered into my ear.

I politely declined the offer and continued watching the two kids who just randomly popped out from some other unit in my little condo community.

same procedure over and over agian.

kids smile, gives oranges, sing the memorised greetings, smile, gets red packets, leave.

How many people (more targetted at youngsters) actually thought about what these oranges and red packets signify? If they don’t, then why do they just follow these customs blindly? hmmmm….

Bacon’s idols of the theatre?  haha it’s frequently being used now.

Well, to those who have no idea what oranges and red packets signify, here’s a very brief explanation:

1)”The Orange symbolizes happiness and longevity. Giving this fruit to people signifies “many more years to come.” They also represent luck.”

2)”Red packets are passed out during the Chinese New Year’s celebrations, from married couples or the elderly to unmarried juniors. It is common for adults to give red packets to children as a symbol for luck.

Odd and even numbers are determined by the first digit, rather than the last. Thirty and fifty, for example, are odd numbers, and are thus appropriate as funeral cash gifts. However, it is common and quite acceptable to have cash gifts in a red packet using a single bank note — with ten or fifty dollar bills used frequently.

The act of requesting for red packets is normally called (Mandarin): 討紅包, 要利是. A married person would not turn down such request as it would mean that he or she would be “out of luck” in the new year.”

Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know that either. ha.