december, december

A great ending to an eventful year.

posing at the end of youth camp..

JAG

kit and myself during the hawaiian dinner

duet- with su ann in christmas dinner

To: you

I wonder who you are at times
I wonder if you’re reading these lines
For now, you may be a stranger to me
Though I’m pretty sure you won’t be a ‘he’

I’m not so good with poems
In fact, I can’t even find a word that rhymes with ‘poems’
The number of syllables in this stanza does not match either
Not that I bother!

Are you that girl whom I find attractive?
How can I tell? There are many like you
Are you that girl who seems seductive?
My apologies then, for missing my cue

Do you stand tall, or are you short?
Maybe it’s the latter, since you’re hard to spot
It’ll be hard to tell if the ‘One’ is you
Perhaps even harder will be the words “I do”

I think of you now and then
I know you’d be heaven-sent
Yes it’s true, that I don’t know who you are
But as long as you’re in my thoughts,

You won’t be too far

Reward ÷ Effort

I guess I ain't much of a 'blogger'. By blogger i mean someone who almost regards the blog like a diary, except it's online and available to anyone. I dont post anything intimate here (which is why i dont really liek tags), no feelings, not many of 'what happened to me' stories, mainly nonsense crap and occasionally some thoughts/opinions. Sometimes I regurgitate the nonsense i learn in class here. Gonna be done with this subject in a week or so! (quite interesting , Media Theories)

Expectation of reward

Effort

According to Schramm (some dude who came up with communication models) there is a reason to the choices we make when we select the media. He came up with this 'formula' to explain why we do what we do, called the 'Fraction of Selection'.

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In simple words, the choices you make are based on two things. What you gain from the choice (reward) and what it takes to achieve it (effort). You search for the highest incentive and the least effort and then make a choice based on these two criterias.

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Reward over effort.

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But, does it make sense in real life?

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Mother gives young boy a choice between two options: clean up his room and earn himself an icecream, or play and laze around and lose his reward. By Schamm's logic, assuming the young boy really enjoys icecream, the 'reward' would take the form of the icecream and the 'effort' would be his cleaning up. Obviously then, he would choose the former option. But lets say the reward of an icecream does not out-weigh the effort involved to earn it- the young boy is lazy and doesnt mind not having an icecream, then lazing around would be his choice.

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If Schramm is right, we are essentially reward-oriented creatures.

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But what about those altruistic ppl? Those moral, kind, caring type of people, who make choices against their will and even to their own disadvantage for the 'rewards' of other people who, while in most cases are close to them, are sometimes STRANGERS to them? And what about the man who sacrifices his 'rewards' for the reward of another, and almost stupidly endures the 'big effort' part of the equation for his brother's gain?

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Then, 'reward' is a very broad term.

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It just boils down to how you see your 'reward', or whether you consider something a 'reward', because the EFFORT's gonna always be the same, but the REWARD can be altered to how you perceive it.

Repeat.

A. Repeat. Method. Repeat. Often. Repeat. Employed. Repeat. By. Repeat. A. Repeat. Propagandist. Repeat. Is. Repeat. Repetition. Repeat. Usually. Repeat. The. Repeat. Message. Repeat. Is. Repeat. Simplified. Repeat. And. Repeat. Repeated. Repeat. To. Repeat. Reinforce. Repeat. Its. Repeat. Impact. Repeat. I’ve. Repeat. Always. Repeat. Had. Repeat. A. Repeat. Fascination. Repeat. With. Repeat. Great. Repeat. And. Repeat. Charismatic. Repeat. Public. Repeat. Speakers. Repeat. Who. Repeat. Are. Repeat. Able. Repeat. To. Repeat. Make. Repeat. Huge. Repeat. Ripples. Repeat. In. Repeat. The. Repeat. Lives. Repeat. Of. Repeat. Their. Repeat. Audiences. Repeat. The. Repeat. Best. Repeat. Public. Repeat. Speakers. Repeat. Are. Repeat. Essentially. Repeat. The. Repeat. Best. Repeat. Propagandists. Repeat. Because. Repeat. They. Repeat. Influence. Repeat. People. Repeat. To. Repeat. Believe. Repeat. And. Repeat. Act. Repeat. On. Repeat. Those. Repeat. Beliefs. Repeat.

This. Repeat. Is. Repeat. My. Repeat. Aspiration. Repeat.

Flags of white

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose"

comparisons

-received this forwarded mail from JC.

Units of measurement

Today at Theories of the Media class, Mr Abraham (sweat machine) jolted me out of my reverie with a question.

“ABEL. How do you measure love?”
To which I answered without a blink, “You can’t”.

Now, we all know, theoretically speaking, you can’t measure something as abstract as love. There won’t be units to gauge its volume or depth. But if we are honest with ourselves enough, we do ‘measure’ it, don’t we?

Unconsciously, the person who spends more time with you, shoots more sms-es to your phone, buys you more gifts is perceived to have more love for you than the one who did all that but less. You reason that these actions do indicate in some way their level of affection and are by-products of their care.

Picture with me, if the subconscious mind could speak…

“Is this person your friend?”
“Urm… let me see. 3 hours of love, 4 presents of care, 2 and a quarter smses of affection, half a pat on the back, one sentence of encouragement… I’m not sure, because I didn’t receive 5 seconds of smiles, man.”

That’s how we gauge who are our friends and not. Suddenly the one who sends one sms short of the quota doesn’t love you. You then question why people love certain things because they seem to fall short based on the standards you have set.

“People should love dogs instead of cats because they are more useful, guard the home and are loyal.”
“I like that person because he knows how to play the flute with his nose and can dance on his toes while eating jelly. I don’t like the other person because he can only play the flute with his mouth and not with all the other parts of the human anatomy that can release air.”
“You’re not my close friend because you bought me two things only so far. When you buy 1 more, you would be my half friend-half close friend ok?”

Impossible and immature! You say.

But you do it nonetheless. People are guilty of measuring love eventhough they know it can't be measured. Think about it.