Songs vs music

It is true that songs and music communicate !
Yea.. Much of friends has showed how the song they liked give them impression and sometimes even give them comfort and help. For me, same like others, songs also give me comfort especially songs in church. When i was depress or my faith was disturbed, songs cheer me up.
However, we need different song in different mood. Not every song suit our mood in every moment even our favorite. For example, when depress we may need songs that can cheer or comfort us. On the other hand, when we were happy we may like some relax and lively songs.
Songs also communicate differently in different moment with different mood. You may get different impress followed your mood although it is the same song and the same lyric. However, most of the time we just install the first perception when we listen to the song.
Music is one of the important part for songs but can you get the meaning by just listening to the music??
yesterday night, i listen to radio. There was a band, a group of music lover showing their product, music they wrote. When the music played, i can't even get what what they trying to carry out, what the music says. Actually it is a dramatic music, you need to imagine when it played. A story about a planet that occupied by others and the music is telling the situation there. It is not easy to get the contain in a music rather than a song.
Music and songs communicate but everyone got the different while listening to it.

david

Communicating with the dead

The Hungry Ghost Festival just recently passsed. I have always been fascinated of this month where the "Gates of Hell" open and all the restless spirits roam the earth. Sounds scary huh. If you live in a community which is mostly populated by Chinese, during that month, they will set up big tents where prayers and special performances are held for the spirits. The purpose of the performances is because the spirits also want entertainment during that month too. Rumour has it that, these spirits are those who did not die peacefully. If you had observed the roadside, there were joss sticks and food placed at every corner. The purpose of this is so that the "hungry" spirits do not disturb the families. Also during this month, families will go to temples and seek mediums so that they can communicate with the deceased. The medium will first ask the family what they want to ask. Next the medium places joss sticks at the alter and then he starts to chant. Sometimes the medium will shake violently when he is communicating with the deceased. After the shaking subsides he gives the family the answer and the family will make offerings to the temple. This may sound hard to believe because you might think that it is impossible to communicate with the dead, but you will never know that these things are just make up or the real thing.

by Jillian Cheong Ping Ling

Skill of communicating

Everytime a teacher ask a volunteer to come out and speak, the students will either look elsewhere or put their heads down fearing the teacher will call their names out. Not everybody has the skill to communicate well. Some people are so called born with it and some people are able to master the skill of communicating. Communicating is a everyday thing, either with your parents, close friends or even yourself. There are a few ways we can improve our communcation skills.

1) Be a good listener. If you learn to listen well, you can make use of what the person says when you are communicating with someone else.

2) When you speak to people always BE POLITE! This is one of the most important aspects of communicating.

3) It is beneficial to have a sense of humor in conversations, but you must know your limit.

4) Always be optimistic when you start a speech. It helps to overcome fear when speaking in front of an audience.

5) Lastly, talk to people with good communication skills, that way you can learn a thing or two.

Good Luck =)

by Jillian Cheong Ping Ling

Types of Sexual Harassment

Ever wonder the term sexual harassment actually has alot of meanings? Well, if you should know, it could be expressed verbally,non verbally, visually, physically, or mentally.

Those that i mentioned above are self-explanatory and if you dont understand any of it, i could say the acts of sexual harassment that are done verbally are words expressed such as ''sluts,whore, sexy, promiscuous and other unpleasant words to describe a person regardless of gender. For non-verbal acts of sexual harassment could be seen by eye contact, whistling, and more to the body language. However, visually expressed sexual harassment could be explained with the examples of colleagues putting pornography posters on his desk would actually be counted as sexual harassment. As for physical and psychological sexual harassment, we can see that physical body contact between one and another without relation will be accounted as being harassed and psychological harassment could meant undesired social relation or physical intimacy.

But there are other 2 types that are also part of sexual harassment
Those 2 are Hostile environment and Quid Pro Quo

Perhaps these 2 terms would be new to many people as it clearly explains how important the terms can be applied to our daily lives, well mostly toward girls.

Hostile environment is mainly occurred in education since when we were a child, half of the day we spend time in schools,colleges,universities and of course there would be other students in groups or gangs around you. This term applies when an individual or a group tends to disturb or harass a student in school. Examples, whispering in the ear, send unpleasant love messages or even stalking without you noticing. It could actually affects an individual in many aspects because his/her performance would be affected, unwilling to attend classes, and lack of concentration due to environment disturbance.

As for Quid Pro Quo, we can explain it in a way that it usually happens in the workplace where by co-workers or employees are usually at the state of being threatened by their higher authorities or bosses or school girls in school wanting to get good grades resulting involvement of sexual affairs with their teachers. Another term for it can be called Power-player in which the employees are forced to involve in sexual treats in order to get benefits, otherwise, their job is at stake and perhaps lower chances of better future in companies.

Thats it for all. Hope this will acknowledge about sexual harassment!




Especially to girls out there, better be cautious! Prevention is better than cure! or am i wrong ? :D

Posted by : Tan Kah Fei

Cultural Identifiers

Before today, I never really bothered about the words that I used to identify people. I did not know that certain words which I used could actually hurt people’s feelings. I had no idea that referring to a lady as woman is also disrespectful but I knew that I should not refer to an elderly person as old man because once for fun I called my dad that and I had to hear a days long of music from my mom. So since that I told myself never to refer to an elderly person as old man or old woman.

Last year I went for a seminar and one of the speaker said that some of the teenagers nowadays are really not respecting their parents. The speaker gave an example that is a dialog between a mother and her son. The mother will be saying to her son that you should listen to your dad and do not talk back when he is talking. The son answered “ Mom ask your husband to not cross my line!” and walked of. I think that refering to your dad as your mom’s husband is way more rude than calling him an old man.

Recently, I met my friend who is studying in a college in Nilai. He told me that once he and his friends were eating in a restaurant and he saw a very tall African guy walking past the restaurant. He wanted to show his friends that guy so he told to his friends “ Hey look at that negro!” The moment he finished saying that another African who was in the restaurant came and slapped my friend and started shouting foul words at him. My friend was so shocked that he just looked on dumbstruck. The African was on the verge of bashing up my friend. Thank God, my friend’s friend started explaining to the African that my friend is from a small town and does not know that he should not have used the word ‘negro’. Only after my friend apologised did the African back off with a warning to never use words like ‘negro’ and ‘black’.

From this incident I learnt that we should make sure that we do not use words that can make other people feel angry or hurt. We should put ourselves in their shoes and think how we will feel if we are referred to as something that sounds rude and degrading. We should try to follow the saying which goes “ Do unto others what you want others to do onto you”.

Posted by : A.Padmassini A/P V.Anand

Hearing and Listening

Hearing is something that we do every second of our lives because hearing happens when sound waves hit our ear drums and the sound is amplified and transmitted to the brain through the nerves. So we hear every sound in the environment that we are in but the thing is we do not listen to every single sound brought to our ears. This is because we listen to things that interests us only and try to interpret those sounds for our own understanding.

This being the case , it is very vital for us to ask ourselves wether we are listening or just hearing when we are involved in a conversation because this determines our relationship with the other. If the other finds out that we are not listnening to what they are saying than this can affect our relationship very badly. Besides, when we listen to the other who is speaking it shows that we respect the person.

Listening is especially important when someone is pouring their heart out to us. This is a scenario where we really have to listen with empathy because it involves the feelings of a person. My friend once told me about her cousin who was going under depression. This cousin which I will be referring to as X was a very bright student but then suddenly she was unable to concentrate and perform in her studies. When X’s results dropped her parents got worried but X would not tell her parents the problem that she was having because to her she felt that all these years her parents were only interested in hearing about her grades and other than that they never really spoke to her empathatically. So X thought that they would not be able to understand her problem now because they never really paid attention to her when she was speaking before.

This clearly shows that due to lack of listening on X’s parents side earlier made X to loose her trust on her parents that they will never understand her. Hence, I learnt that people(including me) should always listen empathatically when someone is speaking to us. We should also observe their nonverbal messages and give feedback to the speaker through our verbal or nonverbal cues. Lastly, we should always strive to improve our listening skills as they are part and parcel of our everyday lives.

Posted by : A.Padmassini A/P V.Anand

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Sexual harassment can be defined as any unwelcome verbal, non-verbal, visual, psychological or physical conduct of a sexual nature that might, on reasonable grounds, be perceived by the victim as placing a condition of a sexual nature on his or her employment because of his or her sex. As stated above, sexual harassment may exist verbally, non-verbally, visually, psychologically and many more. Let us look at the types of different sexual harassments :

• Verbal harassment – includes uncomfortable and offensive teasing, joking, questioning, or making suggestive remarks or sounds.

• Non-verbal harassment – a leer with indecent overtone or desire denoted by hand signal, lips licking or food eating and persistent flirting.

• Visual harassment – covering the wall with pin-up, calendars, drawings, photographs of naked women or other sex-based materials.

• Psychological harassment – harms a person's psychological well being and includes oppressively constant proposals for dates, repeated undesirable physical intimacy or social invitations.

• Physical harassment – includes distasteful action such as touching of an intimate body part, patting, pinching, stroking, brushing up against the body, hugging, kissing, and sexual assault.

by : MITHRAH KURHANDRAN

Body language

Body language is a for of non-verbal communication which can constitute 50% or more of what we are communicating. If you wish to communicate well, then it makes sense to understand how you can and cannot use your body to say what you mean.

Body language comes in clusters of signals and postures, depending on the internal emotions and mental states.

• Aggresive body language: Showing physical threat.
• Attentive body language: Showing real interest.
• Bored body language: Just not being interested.
• Closed body language: Many reasons are closed.
• Deceptive body language: Seeking to cover up lying or other deception.
• Defensive body language: Protecting self from attack.
• Dominant body language: Dominating others.
• Emotional body language: Identifying feelings.
• Evaluating body language: Judging and deciding about something.
• Greeting body language: Meeting rituals.
• Open body language: Many reasons for being open.
• Power body language: Demonstrating one's power.
• Ready body language: Wanting to act and waiting for the trigger.
• Relaxed body language: Comfortable and unstressed.
• Romantic body language: Showing attraction to others.
• Submissive body language: Showing you are prepared to give in.

Posted by : Maisara Manja Bt Kamaruzzaman

Difficulties faced in communication

It is a known fact that communication takes place between two parties ; the speaker and the lisener. The first half of communication is to express what you feel and your opinions whereas the second half of communication is to not only listen, but to understand the message that is being conveyed. The message conveyed may be verbally or non-verbally, depending on the speaker. When the message is being sent by the speaker, the receiver decodes the messagge and interprets it into understanding and meaning.


However, most of the time, effective communication does not take place and the main reason is because the speaker and listener face difficulties while communicating. Firstly, let us look at the difficulties faced by the speaker while communicating.

• Including too many unnecessary details while communicating, thus making the message complicated.
• Forgetting the point of interaction.
• Volume of the voice is too low to be heard.
• Not using proper body language. For example, smiling when hurt is being expressed.

Listeners also face difficulties while communicating and some of the difficulties faced by listeners are :

• Making judgements about the speaker or the message that is being conveyed.
• Being distracted by what is happening in the surrounding.
• Listening to your own personal beliefs about what is being said.
• Not willing to listen to the speaker.

To conclude, it is important for both parties to play an important role while communicating. Effective communication will only exist if both parties play their roles well.

by : MITHRAH KURHANDRAN

Flirtacious

When you see someone that caught your attention, you want try to strike conversation with them. While you're talking to him, you can also try to flirt to show that you are interested in him. For those of you girls who dare to try to flirt with some guy, try this!

a) Eye contact is very important. It tells you, you are sincere.

b) Do not stay in a group. No man can't stand a rejection in front of a herd. Also, he may feel that he can't approach you because of your friends.

c) Be positive. Feel good about yourself and everyone, and they will feel good about you.

d) Get to know him. Try to find out whether he is your type or not. If you feel comfortable with him, then go ahead.

e) Compliments. Be sure to compliment them on things that are true, so you sound more sincere naturally.

f) Soft giggle and smile. If your perfect smile and laugh to be seductive and sweet, you will fine great results.

g) Lastly, be YOURSELF! You will not enjoy any moment of it if you are playing somebody who you are not supposed to be. Stay focus and be proud of who you are!


Posted by : Maisara Manja Bt Kamaruzzaman