Blog 4 Whether it is necessary to use monitors?

Last week we talked about whether it was necessary to have monitors everywhere, especially in the offices for employers to keep an eye on their employees. Being interested in this topic, I tried to clear up my mind and think more in depth after our class discussion. Here I would like to share my opinion with you.

In the first place, to view it at an individual level, it seems that no matter where and when the monitor is used to keep track of a person is a kind of invasion of privacy. To put it differently, each and every one of us is an entire world, a world in which we have the right to do whatever we want without others’ interference. Just as Shuzhi has put forward, it has nothing to do with the employer if we want to scratch the back to make it more comfortable at work, but we will be absolutely stopped to make such an embarrassing little thing when under observation which is likely to decrease efficiency instead. Hence, there is no doubt that it is unnecessary to have monitors to watch us when we are doing some “personal things”.

However, here comes the critical problem: what is the accurate definition of “personal things”? Seen from a social angle, every thing that an individual does is closely related to the whole society, even when we are in a public washroom, what we do will undoubtedly affect some other people. Nevertheless, why we usually don’t have monitors in washrooms? To some extent, it is because the society tends to pay as much attention as possible to value individual privacy and try to solve the problem in a more acceptable way, which means to put up slogans and to use some public-service advertisements and some other ways to improve people’s quality. Although it still may not work for everyone, at least it is effective for most people.

As far as I am concerned, using monitors is not a shortcut for high efficiency, it is the policy we put forward when there is no better way to protect the rights and interests for most people. For companies, I think it will be more reasonable to guarantee the efficiency by giving each employee appropriate task within fixed time instead of tracing the working process. As for the situations where it is hard to keep a balance, such as in the supermarkets, it seems that we have no choice but to use the monitors to achieve relative equality for most people. What’s more, it is significant to inform people when they are under observation, since that the right to know is a basic right for all of us.

To conclude, using monitors is a means to protect more people's rights and interests when there is no better ways to make it.

Blog 4 My Roommate

For the first time, I try to describe a person in English. He is my present roommate.

Forgive me that I will not mention his name here. We have lived together for nearly 3 months. The first impression he gave me is shyness. He is really a shy boy who even has difficulty talking with strangers. After he becomes familiar with a person, he will not be shy anymore. Actually, I enjoy making fun of him. Although I am not very outgoing, I believe myself that I can make him more active than before.

No wonder he is a capable person. I am used to calling him "literary youth","technical youth",and "academic youth". It is not common for a boy to enjoy literature so much. He wrote his own novel in senior high school! I often find him writing journals quietly which are not allowed to see by others. He is also good at using mobile phone and computer. However, frequent replacement of operating systems brings him trouble. Both his cellphone and laptop have broken down for many times. Fortunately, they got well in the end. I think this is his difference from my character. I seem to be more cautious while he is more willing to take risks. Actually, I extremely appreciate his exploratory spirit.

His another personality I want to mention here is diligence. He is really an "academic youth" who likes studying. To many pupils, studying is just the access to good grades and happy lives.

However, his thought is that a person should always learn something to render his or her life meaningful. So he learned literature and computer skill by himself. He does well in self-studying.

In brief, I am glad to know him and be his close friend. I will know more about him while we live together.

Blog 4:My Experience of Battling the Ants in my Dormitory!

To tell the truth, after I came to Singapore, if the irritating traffic noise is the second most disturbing issue which I have been trapped in, nothing but the enormous ants in my dormitory can be the most disturbing one.
The first time I came into my dormitory, I lay in my new and soft bed while my skin of my arm itched. It was ants in my bed! I still remember that I spent much cleaning my bed. Hopefully, after a few days, this "cute" ants never came back.
To my surprise, 1 months later, they came back. After analyzing the matter, my intelligent roommate found that it was after we ate up the Vinegar Garlic which I bought from my hometown when ants appeared again. So he went out to buy the Vinegar Garlic, but unluckily no store in Singapore sells the commodity, so he just bought garlic. However, it had been proved that the garlic did not work. Afterwards, we met the female senior who once lived in our room. She told us that there was a large ant nest near our room and she had already spared no afford to kill all the ants but never succeeded. Then we tried,too. Obviously, we also failed.
Now, we are not bothering to battue the countless ants. "Let them go."I think. And we always amuse ourselves by pinching the ants and killing them. It is just like a game, a boring and cruel game. Maybe the best way to defend the ants is to avoid eating snacks in the bedroom, and we are trying.

Blog 3: how to choose our majors

       Last Sunday, we were invited to a programme which was called the discovering engineering @nus.  The reason why we were invited to participant this programme is that we will choose our majors in university in April and we need to know some information about the majors we can choose.

       At the start of the programme, there was a humorous professor who can speak Chinese, especially the DongBei accent very well giving us an overview talk on Faculty of Engineering. This lecture was really attractive and inspiring.  This professor, teaching the aircraft and studying the reasons of air crash in the mechanical engineering, used some vivid and well-designed pictures of aircrafts to let us know lots of benefits of studying engineering in future.  Maybe one day we can design and manufacture our own aircrafts or cars successfully.  It sounded pretty cool, right?  Maybe one day we can repair furniture and even cars in our houses by ourselves instead of going to the repair shops.  As a result, our life will be more convenient.  Maybe one day we will not choose the jobs in the field of engineering.  However, it does not matter.  We can use the skills and strategies which we use to solve problems in the field of engineering to deal with other kinds of problems. In other words, the most important thing engineering will teach us is not the knowledge but the way of thinking and being practical workers.  Afterwards, we had a sharing session by SM seniors.  The seniors told us a large amount of information about every major in the Faculty of Engineering.  Thanks to their patient answers to our questions on choosing majors, we knew this faculty well.  Having known the benefits from engineering studies, we also heard some shortcomings and challenges students met so far.  Since everything has two sides, dialectics affords a broader overall view of the things.

      After this process of discovering, I have learnt that taking lots of detailed factors into account before doing any decisions in our life is crucial.

  

Faith
Today, in our afternoon class, we watched a very old movie called “Chariots of Fire”. At first, I thought the movie is a documentary concerning about the war or the military. However, I am totally wrong because it is actually about some hardworking and persistent runners who go through kinds of difficulties to get the golden medal in the 8th Olympic Game. The two main characters are Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams. Eric, a Scottish hero, is a much talented athlete with a strong belief to god. The most impressive to me is that he did not make any compromise with the royalty to attend the preliminary race on Sunday which is seemed as profaneness to him. Luckily, a polite runner initiatively exchange the event with him, thus, he can achieve his goal in the 400-meter race successfully. Likewise, Abrahams is also a gifted runner but he is not as talented as Eric. After he loses the game with Eric, he finds a very good coach to instruct him, and through a hard train, he managed to defeat his rivals in the 100-meter race, although he does not beat him in the preliminary race. In conclusion, the movie is far away from our daily lives, but is a meaningful and far reaching instruction to our mental lives.

Blog3: Thought about Homosexuals

Nowadays, the attention to homosexuals is increasingly more. Shall we consider it in an open-minded way or never accept it?
For teenagers, especially boys, they would like to joke on the topic of homosexuals. And if there is a person whose sexual orientation is a person who has the same gender, they won’t laugh at him at all. When I was in senior high school, one of my best friends is a lesbian. She didn’t dare to tell anyone else that her partner is also a girl. When she told me, I was surely surprised. However, when I thought of it completely, I believed she must have considered this different thing thoroughly, so I smiled to her and said that it was OK.
In China, we all know that homosexuals won’t have a good reputation. Because of the stereotype that a man who found his own family and has a child is filial, most of them have no bravery to be a homosexual for fear of being laughed at. Eventually, they will also get married with a woman, but they don’t care about their wives at all. Therefore the phenomenon that wives of homosexual don’t live a happy life is very common in China.
Things are different in western countries. For example, homosexuals are allowed to get married in USA and their right is protected well. Because of this, those in China choose to immigrant to USA to get married. From this distinction, I think Asian countries must pay more attention to them and take measures to protect them from being hurt. There is no mistake for them to choose the partners they love.
In conclusion, we new generation should be open-minded enough to let the mindset away. We should treat homosexual in the same way we get along with ordinary people. As long as they think they live a happy life, we ought not to have prejudice on them or force them to change their mind.

Blog3: My Little Cat

Cats are my favorite animals. I raised three cats in total in my childhood, all of which were very cute and affectionate. I think the stories of them were worth writing into a book. But in this blog I will just introduce the second cat I raised.

       I got the little cat from a neibour who intended to give it away. The little cat was only less than three months’ old with white fur and two bright yellow eyes. it was very mischievous, always trying to explore unfamiliar areas under the bed or behind the sofa but ending up upsetting things or trapping itself. And sometimes it could be very affectionate, especially when it came to meal and sleeping time.

       Most of the time we adored and tolerated it, but one thing we could not bear was that the little cat seemed fond of passing urine on pillars, which quite conflicted with our conventional idea that cats are clean animals. One day it committed the same mistake as several times before, and my mother could not tolerate any more. She commanded us to put the little cat in the basement. It was a very cruel punishment because the basement was dark and full of dust and, we children guessed, haunted. One day later, when we at last released it from the basement, the poor little thing had gotten dust all over its fur, purring in a faint voice, hungry and lonely. I felt very guilty. I took it back home, washed it up and made its bed cozy and warm. The cat was very clever and never passed urine on the pillars again.

      It was not long before my mother sent the little kitten to other people for she could not stand keeping it at home. I missed my little cat very much.