Losing instinctive ability in modern times

If you’ve ever been in love, there must be a time when you felt that the world evolves around the both of you. You would somehow want to call each other up at the same time, eating the same food, thinking of the same thing. The relationship between you and your other half somehow becomes exclusive. You somehow can detect the feelings of your loved one. There’s a significant connection. It’s like you’re psychic.

In the famous scene in Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham where the mother suddenly paced towards the outside of her home. She can somehow sense that her eldest son is coming home.

Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity seems to be able to explain this somewhat paranormal circumstances. Without sounding superstitious. It’s like humans are in sync with each other. In social media, algorithm explain why things that interest us keep popping up on our feed. In human beings? Is there some sort of electromagnetic wave that connects us all subconsciously? Perhaps Prof Xavier’s superpowers are real after all.

Practicing handwriting

Help.. it looks so ugly 😭

Trying to make sense of the Chinese language

Random thoughts on the language.

Pinyin is meant for you to know how to pronounce the word.

To write a Chinese character, you use various strokes. These strokes have names and ways how to write them. It is a very fine form of art.

The Chinese language has 4 different tones. A word may have the same pinyin spelling BUT will bring different meanings depending on the tone used.

If I understand this correctly, to be at a certain level of mastery of the language, you need to know a certain number of words. This means you need to memorize thousands and thousands of words. I think I am beginning to see why young children have loads of homework pertaining to the writing exercise.

The current OUMH1403 course is aimed at students to know basic communication – to listen and speak. Knowing how to write and read Chinese characters is a more advanced lesson but students are welcome to delve into the language and steer through the course in any way they wish. Maybe this is the pathway I am looking for as a motivation to sit for the HSK exams.

OUMH1403 – The registration

It was a choice between learning Chinese and Japanese by substituting one of my subjects. I swapped SBFS1103 : thinking skills and problem solving with OUMH1403. I figured it would be more interesting to learn a new language. It was a bit confusing for me at first to sign up for this subject. I had thought that when we dropped a subject, we would be automatically enrolled in it. Or it would be offered as one sometime during the semester.

This is why I waited and waited for the subject to appear as an offer. But it never happened.

Time is running out though. I used the UKR06 form to add the Chinese language as a subject. It worked this time. I will be learning Chinese for semester 8!

Ethnic studies

Malaysia is a Nation Without State. Negara Tanpa Bangsa. We are not like Indonesia yet where its citizens are identified as bangsa Indonesia. A person may be from a Chinese ethnicity but his name is probably Ari Wastroyo something. She may be a non muslim by the name of Siti Murni. In Malaysia, we are still identified by our race and religion. It’s not really a bad thing to be honest, in fact, multiculturalism is worth celebrating.

In this semester, ethnic studies or Hubungan Etnik is a mandatory subject. Browsing the topics, it looks a bit like history class. I am intrigued to see how the tutor is going to bring forth this subject in a neutral manner. This is because the last thing I want is for us learners to feel like we are being brainwashed in a camp. We’ve only had 2 classes so far and it seems OK. Of course, the topic will get more difficult and challenging as time goes by as we navigate around the sensitive issues of social contracts and such.

The Assignment

The question is about kesepaduan sosial dalam mewujudkan kestabilan dalam konteks Malaysia where we base our essay on the local animation, Upin Ipin. The essay is to be written in Bahasa Melayu. The assignment itself carries 70% of the total marks. That is a lot of weightage. Screw this up, it brings down the whole grade.

That was what happened with my Cognitive Psychology subject last semester. (sob)

The deadline for this assignment is next month. Time is running out. I need to start soon.