There is this quote which I once read in the Great Eastern “100 Life Greatest Quotes” which I agree very much. It recently appeared in the form of Brian Tracy’s “Quote of the Day” email, and I thought it was rather meaningful.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. – Eleanor Roosevelt
I think it is rather true. Most of the time we feel inferior to others because we keep comparing. We tell ourselves that we have to win and become better than others, but most of the time it really makes us unhappy when we keep losing. As such we feel inferior and lousy, but actually, nobody did really look down on us. We are looking down on ourselves, hence we feel inferior. If you do not think that you are lousy, and you feel confident about your abilities, no one can make you feel inferior. It is only through our consent (though we didn’t explicitly give consent), that we allow ourselves to feel inferior.
Another thing I would like to share is that sometimes misunderstandings occur due to us repeatedly feeling inferior. Our friends might have said something that makes us feel inferior, although that was not his purpose. Similar to the quote, this friend didn’t make us feel inferior. We made ourselves feel inferior. There are many things that are actually very simple, and we are overly sensitive and think that our friends are criticizing us, and then we feel lousy. But most of the time it is not like that! If we have confidence in ourselves and not feel inferior in the first place, then we would not be over-sensitive about other people’s achievements, and think that other people’s achievements show that we are lousy.
I do not know if you all can make any sense out of the above two paragraphs, but I would still like to urge everyone not to feel inferior about yourselves because honestly, there is nothing much to be inferior about. There is nothing much to be proud and haughty about and looking down on others too!
I would like to just end off by saying that I have always treated people kindly if they treat me well. But I don’t really like it when people just vent their anger on me for no reason. Sometimes its really frustrating. Bleah.
I don’t really like using the Runkeeper software because it is prone to errors when the GPS is not working. I ran three rounds round my usual route today, hence it should be about 7.5km in total and an average speed of 8.5km/h. The GPS went haywire in the final round and shortchanged me.
Today’s run made me really tired but I had a great appetite for dinner as usual after all runs. It makes me feel like working harder also. Maybe I should run more. 
Yesterday marks the third and the final time I would be attending ENGIN Bash as an undergraduate. I didn’t go for the one during my freshie years, but attended all the other bashes as a councillor. The first was at Attica (unsure of the spelling) at Clark Quay, then the second one was at St James Power Station at Harbour Front. Yesterday’s was at Supper Club near Raffles City.
Of all the 3 locations, I like St James the best because of the space and the seats. The second goes to Attica because it still had more space to manoeuvre, although the seats were like limited by the time we arrived. Then Supper Club. Supper Club, at least has seats when we arrived, so it was not that bad. But we couldn’t see the stage at our location, and it is quite crammed.
But I totally could not understand the theme “White Noise”, which just reminds me of image processing. At least last year’s “What the HAT” was because of people wearing hats to the event itself.
Due to the squeeze and the lack of vision, it was quite a boring night, just chatting and lazing around. And the first HUH (alright it was WTF) came when we tried to collect our free drinks when we arrived and they said drinks only start at 10pm! Ice water only. It was retarded cause when we reached St James last year, we got our drinks immediately so we didn’t have to crowd later.
Thankfully by 8 we’re allowed to get our drinks, else we’ll just bore to death. We actually left the event like 10.30pm? So if they served us at 10pm we would have to drink fast? Or leave without the drinks. (Maybe that’s their original plan? Haha)
Ended up at some Chocolate place at Robertson Quay. The waffle wasn’t fantastic in my opinion, but it filled a hungry stomach. By the time it finished, it was beyond 12 and the last train had left. So I discovered a new bus, 5N, that reaches somewhere near my house so I can walk home. That bus stop also supports another Night Rider bus, so there are 2 types of buses I can take in the future!
And it is now back to “more work!”. When is it time for “Job’s done”?
Have you all read the news about the I hate yog facebook group that surfaced? As well as this single person calling for the burning of the minister whose ministry oversees the yog? Well that guy has been arrested and I would have thought that singaporeans by now would have realized about the level of the freedom of speech in Singapore.
Before you start agreeing and say that we don’t have freedom of speech in Singapore, let’s just clarify that I think we have freedom of speech, just a more specific one, the freedom of irresponsible speech. As long as you can back up your facts and play the game maturely, you’ll be fine. Calling for the burning of a minister is disrespectful, illegal and childish. Not to mention utterly irresponsible. I think he deserves it. No pity from me there.
I don’t really know why freedom of speech is said to be inexistent here. I find myself living in a comfortable environment, and there are plenty of opinions on the Internet criticising the government for the sake of criticising. It seems they still function pretty well, perhaps they don’t make statements that are of such a horrid nature.
Plus I don’t believe that we should have freedom to the extent we call for violence against anyone or against any partiular religious or racial group. And that falls under irresponsibility.
Hence, the freedom of responsible speech is enough, isn’t it?
It has now been a few days of which people have been raising hell over an incident in the food blogging “industry”, so much so that it even appeared in The Straits Times, igniting debate of whether the blogging industry should be regulated. A rather stupid suggestion, because it is nearly impossible to regulate the internet properly.
I mean, who will follow the regulations and what will happen to those who fail to follow such regulations? We can’t police the internet. Even the Singapore government can only symbolically block porn sites but not ban them it its entirety.
Regulations aside, it amazes me to see the multitude of opinions, harsh and mild, lavished on this one incident. Sides have been taken and wars fought, but what for?
For those who are clueless, the general gist is this. A food blogger was invited to a food tasting session. He brings 3 guests. He was charged for the food and there was some unpleasantness over it.
No one knows for sure what happened other than the people who were present, so I don’t think it is right to jump into conclusions hastily. Xiaxue has a version of it, from “eyewitness”, and who knows what is the truth?
I would rather like to think this is a huge misunderstanding, as the blogger in question had pointed out. It’s a misunderstanding that occurs frequently because as humans we forgot to communicate effectively. Had the restaurant informed the blogger that it was “industry practice” (there’s such a practice and we need regulations to be drawn out?) to only waive the cost for the blogger + 1 of his friends, this would not have happen. Had the blogger asked and confirmed if all his friends would dine for free, this would not have happen. Misunderstanding happens all the time, forget and let live.
But I guess this interesting incident does help raise more awareness on social media, something that many people do not seem to understand as yet. I knew of this incident from a friend’s blog. She wrote about “Truth About Bloggers and Freebies“, a post which I feel does shed some light about blogging as a social media tool.
Even though I had not been popular enough to get invited to blog events, I have had read up many people’s blogs where they did attend such events. Blogs are not just diaries of people’s lives. Blogs have become a great tool to spread word of mouth, and it is something that every company should learn to harness. True enough, the bulk of the blogs are diaries, but they have so little readership it hardly matters. But when blogs become websites where people associate a certain degree of trust, it becomes a powerful tool.
I had once wrote in my EE3001 report about harnessing the power of blogs when I was the “Marketing Manager” of my project team. In it I highlighted how I would invite bloggers to come to my “event”, where I would host them for food and refreshments, and allow them to have hands on trials of our product. We would then allow them to write anything they wanted about our product – what they liked; what they didn’t like; what can we improve etc. Because they are allowed such freedom to write whatever they are feeling, it gives the element of credibility. And I, as a 23 year old undergraduate, can understand the power of using popular blogs. And I don’t see why others cannot.
If anyone wants to say there is no free lunch in this world, sadly yes there are literally free lunches in this world. I have been to one free dinner. Although it is not a lunch, but it was a free meal, with no strings attached. But anyway the point in question is not about a free meal. Indeed, as Xiaxue pointed out, bloggers can then proceed to give their unbiased opinion on their blogs, something that is worth money. Hence using free lunches to exchange for some publicity, I don’t think it is wrong. It is the same as asking a blogger to come and then paying him to write. But paying him to write eliminates any sense of credibility, so it would backfire.
Social media has been here for a few years, and it is here to stay. As we progress to become more connected to the internet through the use of data plans, twitters and other forms of information transfer, the internet has become a force to be reckoned with. Who knows, it might one day take over the traditional media.
