This session at university, I took a class that not only opened my eyes to the actual way uni and the work future are connected but gave me rich insights into what a beautifully tangled web each of us is in, in work and in life.
1. Webs
This session at university, I took a class that not only opened my eyes to the actual way uni and the work future are connected but gave me rich insights into what a beautifully tangled web each of us is in, in work and in life.
“‘What are you going to do with your life?’ In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever … Better by far to simply try and be good and courageous and bold and to make a difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you.” (David Nicholls, One Day)
Not long ago, in the middle of the night, a good friend from high school messaged me. They were exhausted from overworking. On top of that, they had just split up with their significant other, who—hurt from a lack of couple’s time and communication—immediately booked the earliest flight possible back to their city. My friend was shattered, to the point that they could not shed any tear. They were in dire need of someone to listen to their story, but they struggled to tell it. Continue reading “Young and Wild and (Never) Free”
Why are us consumers the (seemingly) only ones responsible for changing all of our habits to save the Earth?
Assuming online magazines like TrendHunter are truly trend hunters, we are all in a craze for all things “design-conscious, cost-effective, and low impact alternative[s]” (Pijak 2018); from eco-packagings to eco-vehicle and eco-house, the slope sure is slippery. That is by no means to say we are a blind herd of trend-chasers, but it sure puts some wondering in one’s head—why are us consumers the (seemingly) only ones responsible for changing all of our habits to save the Earth?
Continue reading “Get the Balance Right (a.k.a. An Intervention for an Intervention)”
or, as subtly aggressively subtitled, ‘The treachery of elasticity’.
“… the possibility of narrating the lived and passing to another person his/her life experience, makes the experience that is finite, infinite, and of fundamental importance for the construction of the collective notion.”
(Muylaert et al. 2014, p. 185)
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My gratitude goes to Shooshi, for her time, her guidance, her kindness—for the person she is.
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I have always been an overthinker, a perfectionist, someone always looking for approval—all of which had led to tangled ruminations over whom to choose when I was tasked with conducting a narrative interview with an individual in my dream profession. What do I want to take on upon graduation? Who do I want to become? Who can give me the most crucial advice?
An autoethnographic look into my previous experience with Japanese literature–Kitchen, Socrates in Love, Norwegian Wood
Warning: Some spoilers ahead (Kitchen—Banana Yoshimoto, Norwegian Wood—Haruki Murakami, Socrates in Love—Kyoichi Katayama)
In my most recent post, I went down a nostalgic memory lane of experiences with Japanese literature, setting up a background for my upcoming Digital Artefact* on Japanese short stories and the culture’s reflection between the lines—the stories are like age rings of a tree, looking at which one can observe the subtle changes in history and culture, especially among the commoners. Now that I have had some time to distance myself from my writing, it is only apt that I practise looking at that narrative with some objectivity, dissecting the emotional with more logic to bring out an autoethnographic aspect. Continue reading “Reading {J}ournal—on Japanese Short Stories—2: Reflect”
On a little playful (literal) dress-up for a serious cause, which even guys are doing.
“Size tip: If you’re doing something active, we recommend going up one size from your usual dress size.”
This tip, by the Australian non-profit organisation One Girl, applies to both female and male volunteers in Do It In A Dress (henceforth DIIAD), an annual initiative started in 2011 to battle educational inequality in Africa, aiming to provide at least one million girls with the proper education to which they are entitled. Fundraisers—in teams or individually—partake in (usually active) activites: dancing, surfing, even skydiving, all while donning school dresses issued by the NPO, to attract donors. Continue reading “Playfully Serious—on One Girl & the ‘Do It In A Dress’ Initiative”
On the memories of the Japanese fiction books I have had my nose stuck in so far and my upcoming autoethnographic journey into Japanese short stories
Here’s to all the memories of the very few Japanese fiction books I have had my nose stuck in so far and my upcoming autoethnographic journey into Japanese short stories.
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I first picked up a copy of Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto eight years ago, when I was bored out of my wits at a sleepover at my cousins’. I barely remember the details of that story now—other than that it is a short window into the life of a make-shift family of a young orphan, her friend and his transgender mother—but the afterward melancholic feeling and indescribable thoughts, so alien to a thirteen-year-old back then, still surface so vividly at any sight of the book cover.
Continue reading “Reading {J}ournal—on Japanese Short Stories—1: Rewind”
In my version of the future of work, STEM will not dominate over the humanities. For the “human” in “humanities” is what allows us to work with ambiguity and make sense of our complex narratives.
“Humanists ‘have known there is no right answer for hundreds of years,’ and they are comfortable with that.”
(David Blei, cited in Mackenzie 2013)
A few days ago, in my Future of Work seminar, all of us made a human bar chart which I titled in my notes ’30 Average Uni Students’ Level of Tolerance of Ambiguity’.
Later, I added a line about where I was among those 30—the highest end of the tolerance spectrum, along with another friend. I scored 30 (the median was about 55-60) on the Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale, a psychometric testing instrument of which the design alone seems to be another embedded test for a person’s patience towards confusing instructions. One is supposed to reverse the score they get for even-numbered questions, and the higher the final result, the less tolerant they are of uncertainty and change. Continue reading “Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and the ‘Human’ in ‘Humanities’”
On a project, a movement, a collection of blunt stories delicately handled.
Of the 60,000 stories contributed by visitors worldwide on the Everyday Sexism website (Kellaway 2014), such raw, uneasy stories occupy a significant portion. Blunt as they sound, they are handled delicately by the team behind the project. Founded in 2012 by Laura Bates—a British feminist writer frustrated with blatant harassment—it aims to counter societal denial towards existing sexism (Everyday Sexism Project n.d.) through an ever-growing collection of stories, small and large. Visitors are greeted by a textbox asking them to recount any sexist incidents in their daily lives, and they can do so anonymously. Currently, the website comes in 25 country-versions and roughly 20 languages, including Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, and many more. Continue reading “Delicately Blunt—on Laura Bates & the Everyday Sexism Project”
My take on the 1988 anime Akira.
It’s almost the end of the film and I’m still very, very lost. So you’re not alone.
— Mia (Minh-Anh) Do (@thespecsofMia) August 9, 2018
The 1988 anime Akira has officially topped my list of hardest-to-watch films, packing millions of details in both the graphics and the content of each sequence, in the span of more than two hours. Admittedly, I yawned rather widely during the middle part, since it started to drag on and became too slippery (plus excessively violent) for my attention to grab on. Continue reading “On ‘Akira’ (1988)—The Beginning of the End”
The Specs 