My Thoughts about Anime's

Anime, is a short-form for Animation, it is originated in Japan in the early 20th century. Anime's can be either hand-drawn or computer-animated, Anime's can be shown in television, video games and many more entertainment things.

Animation can be as real as possible to human beings, the most human-like anime people I have seen is from Final Fantasy.

You can see how detailed the drawings are, they drew it so well till I could not tell which is real or fake. Also, Anime's can also be cartoon-like, this is my favourite Anime's, Naruto and Inazuma Eleven.

I like those two Anime's because they are created out of things I like, like Ninjas and Soccer. They have different technique shown in the Anime's that are very creative for example:

Rasengan-A fast rotation of chakra controlled on the palm of the hand. Naruto

God Hand-A goalkeeper move shown in Inazuma Eleven

This Anime's are very long and may last up to more than 100 episodes! These Anime's are mostly fictional, also, they are a form of entertainment, just don't get addicted to it.

Reflections on Prejudice/Discrimination

WARNING: PLEASE DO NOT PLAY THE VIDEO INFRONT OF LITTLE CHILDREN!!!

Make sure you have read the top, seriously don't show or let her hear the video.

Here is what both prejudice and discrimination mean.

Prejudice :an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason

Discrimination : treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.

So, from the meanings, you can tell that discrimination is MUCH more serious than prejudice. Their meaning are almost the same but there is this slight difference. Prejudice only happens within a person's brain while Discrimination involves some nasty actions.
Here is a video on Racism.


Sorry for the vulgarities, try to ignore it. I like the part where the "Black" man tried to scare the woman and looking at her reaction, she was pretty scared. All these little actions like moving a little further away from the "Black" man and clutching your purse, is signalling that you think he is a bad and uncivilised guy that will steal a handbag . If you listen closely, he is complaining about Racism and there was a little twist in the end of the story. Instead of taking the purse, he screamed, "Boo!" at the lady and she gave him her handbag on her own accord. This video is very meaningful although it is kind of vulgar! :)

Black Eyed Peas - Where is the Love

Term 1 Week 3: (Weekend Assignment)

19/01/2011

This week, we have touched on the concepts of Prejudice and Discrimination. This short assignment requires you to reflect and blog on these concepts. What is the main message in this song? Which part of the song do you have the strongest feeling? Why? Note: Your response to the above questions should be about 150 words in length.

I feel that the message in this song is "Stop Racism". I have the strongest feeling in 2:14 of the song where they said, "People killing people, dying. Children hurtin you hear them crying. Can practise what you preach." I feel that this part of the song is very important as it states the consequences of Racism, this also comes in a from of a catchy tune. People killing people sounds like barbarians, we are smart humans and we should behave like one, children crying when they feel hurt makes it inhumane. 91 No parents would like to hurt their dearly loved ones, their children. Which normal person would feel happy when they hear their child cry? Also, Racism has caused many to be hurt, lives lost and there are still many suffering right now, although they are promoting Racism, there are still many who do not care and continue doing evil deeds.

By 2A328 | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

I chose the Setting in the house as the Bear is getting ready to sleep, I needed some place cozy and a house with a big comfy sofa should do the trick.

The Child is technically a very playful kid, when he is playing, he did not hear the Bear telling him not to disturb him, and when he shouted out that he won the card game, he woke the Bear up accidently.

The Bear is technically a very RASH animal, everything it does is by violence, just like the average living bear. Just because someone woke him up, he must smash the person with a mallet.

I chose the theme as "Don't mess with the bear". I used many elements like the Bear's huge size to show his prowess, also I made the boy Pale White and Black to show how terrified he was and the words he used, " Ouch..." was to symbolise that he could not escape, he just stood there waiting for his punishment.

This comic strip is Copyrighted © Quek Yue Heng, any attempt to plagiarize will be prosecuted.

How To Speak Well to an Audience

Here are some tips to help people who have trouble speaking well. People who will get stage-fright will find out that actually there is nothing to be afraid of. Here are some points you must take note of during your speech, they are stated randomly, not by any order of importance.

1) Clarity
2) Voice Level (Loudness)
3) Confidence
4) Eye-Contact
5) Tone of voice
6) Respect

7) Rehearsal

Clarity

Firstly, what is clarity? It means how clear your words are, this includes both your pronunciation and Voice Level. (I will explain Voice Level later on) To speak clear, firstly you must have a good body posture. You must NEVER be slouching as it will affect your voice, try to stand straight. Many people will sway around like some old oak tree when they make a speech, I had that problem too and I had just gotten myself off it recently. Your body posture states alot of things about you, your attitude towards this speech etc. Stay still, back straight and you will have a good body posture.

Also, try not to mumble when you are speaking, swallow any saliva in your mouth that could affect your Clarity. Speak clearly and preferably loudly, so people can hear you, without clarity, your speech is good as nothing. Your audiences cannot hear you, they will get bored and maybe would start to talk.

Voice Level

This should be pretty easy to understand, the voice level is the volume of your voice. I included it into the tip list as I feel that it is quite important. Firstly, no matter how well your speech is, if you speak too softly, your audiences cannot hear and they will have questions later on. Speak too loudly does not guarantee your voice level, speaking too loudly will cause the people to get irritated to your speech and will be "pissed" off.

Confidence

Confidence plays a very important role in speaking. Confidence is the value not many of us have, speaking in front of a big crowd takes both courage and good confidence. As they always say in novels, you must BELIEVE in yourself, then you can do better. If you can conquer this value, good. Nervousness is also a sign of not being confident in yourself, actions like folding the end of your shorts or as Singaporeans mumble with an "er...". This will completely ruin your speech and will completely break your momentum. Also, try to speak in proper English.

Eye-Contact

Eye-Contact is very easy to master, to master Eye-Contact, all you need to do is to look at the audiences once in a while while reading to check that they are listening. This will also "hook" the audiences' attention and it will prevent you from reading from the script. Reading from the script is a very serious mistake, most people tend to read and read, completely uncaring about the audiences. This will make the mood of the audiences VERY BORING! You have an Eye-Contact at any part of your script, giving Eye-Contact during pauses like fullstops and commas will prevent you from mis-speaking. Also, for more advanced people, they will read a whole chunk of text and memorise it. (Around 5~10 words) After they memorised the words, they will give complete Eye-Contact while speaking the memorised text. If you cannot memorise such a long text within seconds, work harder and memorise the script, as much as you can. Although you memorised, just bring your script up on stage just in case.

Tone of Voice

This is the hard part, even I could not get it right sometimes. The Tone of Voice technically means the liveliness of you speech, using bombastic words does not mean you have a great tone, in fact, the tone comes from your mouth. Tone of Voice actually means that your voice has a high and low tone, fast and slow tone, you can even strengthen some words which are more important in a text. This will give your speech a nice colour and it will also catch the audience's attention. Speaking high and fast when something good has happened, speaking slow and low when something sad has happened. This sounds easy but I can say it is not. Try your best to make the speech more colourful.

Respect

Respect means that the audiences have to give you the rights to speak. If your audiences aren't paying attention to you or talking, you can ask them to keep quiet to get their attention. You have the right to ask them that as you are the speaker, they have to respect you! While asking them to keep quiet, please be friendly and try not to scold them. If they are normal human beings, they should feel embarrassed and stop talking, if not, just try to ignore them, speaking louder would help.

Rehearsal

Speaking needs skill and skill needs practise. Rehearse your speech infront of a mirror at home to check your posture and your pronunciation, rehearse as many times as possible to be sure of your speech. Check for any errors like spelling errors, one error can cause the whole speech to not make sense. If you read the word wrongly, it is wise not to repeat unless it will cause a misunderstanding. If you keep repeating, your momentum would be disrupted and your whole speech would go downhill. Also, never go up on stage without rehearsing as your mouth may get tongue-tied with the words.

Conclusion

This practically ends the tips for speech, I hope this has helped you in anyway. Speaking good gives others a good impression of you, and a good impression is very important.

© Copyrights belong to the owner of the blog, everything here is written by Quek Yue Heng.

How To Train Your Dragon - Movie

Term 1 Week 2: (Weekend Assignment)

14/01/2011 You are to select a book that you have read or a movie that you have watched or a song and write, in about 150 words, how it has impacted you. You are to place your write-up on your blog.

This movie is happened in the time of vikings, where vikings had to kill dragons in order to survive. The dragons were stealing food for the ultimate dragon back at their nest to prevent themselves from being eaten. However, the vikings did not know that and they have always misunderstood the dragons as a thief. One day, a boy, named Hiccup, so scrawny and weak, could never become a viking; but he caught a NightFury Dragon using a catapult that ties the dragon's wings together. Hiccup could not kill it due to the helplessness of the dragon. A NightFury is a very powerful dragon, no one has ever seen it and left alive. His father hates dragons to the core and Hiccup is being sent by his father to the Viking school, slowly, trust is being gathered between the two beings, the NightFury and Hiccup soon became friends, he named it Toothless as he can retract his teeth. Hiccup slowly learns of the habits and the dislikes of Dragons. Due to the fact that a part of the tail of Toothless has been torn away, he cannot escape and Hiccup soon made an artificial one for it. Together they found where the Dragon's nest is and they managed to kill the dragon using stealth techniques. The dragon race, being freed from the threat of the King of Dragons, made friends with the vikings and they lived together from then.

Reflections

From this story, I realised the importance of friendship and harmony. Hiccup and Toothless has truly shown how to best friends can be together even if they are enemies. Toothless will only allow Hiccup to ride on him, if someone else tries to do so, it will burn him to crisp. Although Hiccup's Dad hate Dragons, he still kept Toothless and hoped that he could hide him from his village. But paper can't hold fire and the secret is soon out. They fought the two dragons together, bravery, courage and determination was shown during the great battle. The ultimate dragon was about 200 times bigger than them but they used a stealth technique and won in the end. This also shows that if you've got brains, half of the battle is won. This movie has greatly enlightened me and I hope that Disney would continue to produce great movies like these. I had a great time watching and I tried to make new friends after watching the movie. One more friend is better than one more enemy and I've met many new friends this year in Hwa Chong and I hope to continue to do so in future years. Harmony between the friends are also important, or there would be chaos. This movie is rated 5/5 stars by me! :D

I felt bored and included the photos.