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Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Law

Ironic things you hear in the law lecture :-)

"Racism was and is accepted in certain countries as a law. It is pathetic, it is bad, it is wrong. This is the DARK side of the law. The law itself is BLACK!"

Friday, October 6, 2017

"screwed up"-"nailed it"

How come "screwed up" and "nailed it" be so similar but mean totally opposite things?

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Fears and Phobias

This speech is co-authored as well! Again, I am not going to say which version is mine.
Gender crossovers might be found in the text.

Essay 01


Who here will admit to have phobia? I can see quite a few people. Almost all of has something that we are afraid of in our life. Good morning dear lecturer and my dear colleagues let me take you through the world of phobias.
 Now I want all of you to imagine a giant hairy spider crawling on your arm. It’s not doing any harm but it is just sitting there; for some of you, this is your worst nightmare. If you are one of those people you may have arachnophobia. Not familiar with the word? It is the extreme fear of spiders. If we define the word ‘phobia’, it is to have an extreme and irrational fear of something to a point where it is disabling and is considered a mental disorder.
The most common phobias are acrophobia, the fear of heights and glossophobia , the fear of public speaking. Most of the times people who say they have a phobia do not have a phobia, they are just afraid of that thing. Some psychologists believe that no one is born with a phobia, that it is learnt over time. You get scared about something, re-play it in your mind over and over again, making the fear worse until it becomes a phobia. For an example if a person fell down to a well in his childhood, that traumatic experience will make him an acrophobic and aquaphobic; fear of water over time.
I already have mentioned you four phobias. Well that is just a tip of an iceberg. You name anything; there is probably a phobia for it. I can tell you two types of phobias that most of you in this room will have. Nomophobia; the fear of losing your phone signal and anoptaphobia; the fear of staying single. There exist even stranger phobias than this. Bearophobia; the fear of gravity. That is really strange. I fear no gravity than there is some gravity. Then archibutyrophobia which is the fear of peanut butter sticking at the roof of your mouth. You may feel all these really funny but for the people who suffer from these phobias, those fears are real for them. These phobias affect hundreds of people around the world.
Talking about strange fears, the person who comes to my mind is my mother. She has a fear of birds, specially chickens and that also do have a name; alektrophobia . I know that it is really weird. I wonder what things in a bird can cause this phobia, whether it is their feathers or whether it is the fluttering of their wings. Also I have a friend who is extremely afraid of butterflies. Surely a butterfly cannot do you any harm. Out of all the other dangerous animals in the world why is she afraid of this innocent butterfly? Well that is the nature of these phobias. For some it may be very funny to fear a butterfly but for her it is not. You may wonder whether I have a phobia. Well I do have a phobia. I have a fear of speaking to people and also an acute phobia of public speaking. Almost 75% of the world population suffer from fear of public speaking; glossophobia. I know some of you here know this feeling very much like I do. Sweating on your forehead, with your knees shaking, your heart is beating so fast and some of you may even feel nausea.
 The world is a scary place, it's true. We are most of the times surrounded by things that frighten us. However, we seek out things that terrify us anyway… horror films, roller coasters, and all sorts of dangerous sports and other stuff. Why do we do it? I can't really tell you. But I think that it may be to remind ourselves we are alive. And if you ask me, fear is one of the liveliest emotions out there. Today being on this room in front of you I have embraced my fear of public speaking. I would like to invite all of you to step out of your phobias and embrace your fears.

Essay 02


Who here will admit to have phobia? I can see quite a few people. Almost all of has something that we are afraid of in our life. Good morning dear lecturer and my dear colleagues let me take you through the world of phobias.
First of all, let me tell you what qualifies me to speak on this topic. There was this little girl I know a lot about; somewhere back in 2005 she had to make a speech in front of the school assembly about the typical topic given back then “My country (put some topic here!)”. She wrote a beautiful speech for about a week, remembered all the lines by heart and boasted to her parents about how she is gonna make a speech in front of the whole school. Even her sisters were proud to applaud their big sister’s presence in front of everyone.
The big day came and she went to school in a bright white frock ready to make her speech. The assembly started and the usual agenda went on and then she was invited to the front. She went there, greeted the gathering and started the speech. But the words were stuck in her throat. She couldn’t make a single sound. My throat was dry and my knees felt weak. The whole audience was staring at me. I was scared. I felt humiliated. I wanted to cover my face and run away.
Seems like I’ve turned from third person to first person within the speech without even noticing it. I got carried away with the memory and forgot to keep the cover. Yeah it was me. I do suffer from the fear of public speaking—glossophobia– the world’s most commonplace phobia. I am one among the 75% of the world population who suffers from this problem. Enough about me, let us go to the topic.
Now I want all of you to imagine a giant hairy spider crawling on your arm. It’s not doing any harm but it is just sitting there; for some of you, this is your worst nightmare. If you are one of those people you may have arachnophobia. “Arachno” is for spiders. And “phobia” is to have an extreme and irrational fear of something to a point where it is disabling and is considered a mental disorder.
Next is the fear of heights and glossophobia. Let me show you a photo of another small girl. This time it is not me. Once she decided to ride a roller coaster even though she had glossophobia. Her fear is clearly visible on the photo (point at the projector).
You name anything; add “phobia” suffix and then there is probably a phobia on the medical books by that name. I can tell you two types of phobias that most of you in this room will have. Nomophobia-- the fear of losing your phone signal; and anoptaphobia-- the fear of staying single. There exist even stranger phobias than this. Bearophobia; the fear of gravity. They fear that they will be stuck Then archibutyrophobia which is the fear of peanut butter sticking at the roof of your mouth. You may feel all these really funny but for the people who suffer from these phobias, those fears are real for them. These phobias affect hundreds of people around the world.
Some psychologists believe that no one is born with a phobia, that it is learnt over time. You get scared about something, re-play it in your mind over and over again, making the fear worse until it becomes a phobia. That means we create our own fears. So why don’t we conqueror them as well? I assure you that it is exciting! That is why most of us watch horror movies, ride roller coasters, go bungee jumping and in my case I am making this speech! I hope u didn’t notice the sweat on my forehead or notice the fact my face is redder than usual. Today being on this room in front of you I have won my 11 year long battle against my fear of public speaking. I hope I made my 10 year old self proud in doing this. I would like to invite all of you to step out of your phobias and embrace your fears.

Power of a smile

This speech is co-authored :-) I am gonna put my version of the essay and  the original one as well. It is up to you to figure out which one is mine.
Gender crossovers might be found in the text.

Essay 01

Good morning dear teachers and my friends. How many of you have read the famous novel “Love in times of cholera”? Anybody? Eh.. There is a famous quote by the author of this book Gabriel Garcia-- “Never stop smiling even when you are sad; someone might fall in love with your smile”. (Point to someone) You there! Don’t smile! I am not gonna teach you about making people fall in love with you. Instead, I am going to talk about the POWER OF YOUR SMILE.

Smiling can be intentional or not. In the simplest interpretation the intentional ones are for greeting and the spontaneous ones are for happiness. But today, I am not going to stop at the primary interpretation. Let me go beyond that. Smiles do represent a wide spectrum of emotions. To begin with; the big ear to ear grins those mean happiness and joy. Then the beaming smiles of excitement when you get good results in an exam. And those evil smirks of mischief after pulling a prank on a friend. (Oh I see it on <Put some name here>’s face right now. What did you do to <Put the name of the person in front of the previous person>?)

Smiling is a language itself. Did you know that you can say you have no idea about something by smiling with the lower lip turned down? Or else that you can say “yes” or “no” with a smile plus a nod? There are some pretty complex smiles as well; like the nostalgic-homesick smiles with the eyes fixed on distant scenery out of the window. And then there is my favorite type, smiles to avoid conversations!

Thanks to some connection between the facial muscles and the brain, we can get the positive emotions even by imitating a smile by clenching a pen between the lips. Smiling can also reduce your stress level – something we all suffer from these days. The simple action of smiling can soften your breathing pattern reduce the heart rate, thus the stress level. Moral of the story (look around)—you cannot be so busy that u don’t smile when you are stressed with the next MA1023 submission.

Ever wonder why are we always asked to smile in photos? It is because people usually look their best when smiling. Smiling can make you look more attractive. When you are facing a job interview you may think that your appearance is just about wearing nice clothes, but it is not. You have to wear your suit with a nice pleasing smile. So the next time when you are dressing to impress someone, make sure that you a beautiful natural smile on your face.

There was a time I believed the smile to be the most powerful expression for all the above reasons. But I was wrong. I have been through bad times as well as good times in my life. I could smile with no effort in good times but it was not easy in hard times. But I always knew good times are on the way. It gave me strength to smile even through the hard times. But few months ago I went on a social service project of the rotaract club at the cancer ward and met a society who has no good times coming around the corner. Their bad times do last until their last breath. And they had no reason to smile!
I am not going to give you the long details of the day. After a few efforts on getting them involved in fun activities we witnessed the miracle-- smiles on the faces on the people who did not want to smile. Believe me when I say this; to smile is not the most powerful thing. It is to make others smile even when they don’t want to!


Essay 02

What is more beautiful than a blooming flower; what is more charming than a lovely sunrise? I hope you guessed it right – yes, it is your smile! Good morning my dear teacher and my colleagues! Today I would like to share my thoughts with you on “Power of your smile”.
When talking about smiles, what comes to my mind first is something that happened to me when I was a kid. At that time I was in grade three, my classmates and I went to an elders’ home to sing carols for the elderly. That was the first time I visited a place like that, so I was a bit nervous. First of all our job was to go and speak with the elders and ask things like how they are and what will they be doing for the Christmas. I still remember what my teacher said to me when I was reluctant to do that, “Most of them just need a friendly smile, so go ahead and smile”. So I kept on smiling the whole day even when we were singing carols. Some smiled back at me and some didn’t. However as a small kid I did not understand why my teacher asked me to smile but now I understand what great things a simple smile can do.
Smiling is a very natural response that shares your happiness with others. Smiling happens without much thought. When you see our friend doing something silly, you smirk, when you are recognised for your top performance at the exam, you beam and when you have done something wrong and you go off without others notice, you grin. There is a smile for every time and most of the feeling: compromise, happiness, excitement, sarcasm and love. There is a lot of power in this little smile.
How often do you smile in a day? If you are not smiling frequently, make sure that you smile whenever possible because that will make you happy even when you are not happy. There is a serious relationship with your body and your brain. It turns out that the simple acts of smiling sends a message to your brain saying that you are happy, then the brain will pump all the good things to your body. It is interesting that people have found that you will just feel happy even if you clenched a small pen between your teeth, imitating smile. It is a wonder that a smile can make you happy and at the same time, it can make someone else happy too. In that sense, if you smile well you are making this world a better place to live in. Imagine, if all the people you met each day would smile. How great this world would be?
Smiling can make you to reduce your stress level. These days almost all of us live in some kind of a stress. The simple action of smiling can make your breathing and heart rate reduced, thus reducing your stress level. This point out that smiling is beneficial for your health. The next time you're stressed about work make sure that you smile even if you don’t want to!
Ever wonder why are we always asked to smile in photos? It is because people usually look their best when smiling. So smiling can make you look more attractive. When you are facing a job interview you may think that your appearance is just about wearing nice clothes, but it is not. You have to wear your suit with a nice pleasing smile. So the next time when you are dressing to impress someone, make sure that you a beautiful natural smile on your face.
A smile adds many more plus points to your life other than in the things that I mentioned. Smile is of no use unless it is given away. It may only take just a few seconds to gift a smile to someone. Therefore smile. Find the whole world smile back at you. Thank you!

Heart ♥ reacts

Do you remember when people were afraid to display affection, to express love was taboo and the FB HEART REACT changed everything?