CONFLICT!!

In a group task, teamwork is the key to success. However, Sometimes, people just don’t see eye to eye in everything because everyone has their own personal opinions and thoughts, hence, conflicts are inevitable. First of all, we were facing trouble coming up with the proper place to meet up as everyone were at different locations. Next, When distributing our jobs and roles, some of us were competing for the same role because certain tasks were easier to handle. Yee Teck Hing and Fiona wanted to write on the orientation part, which is the first step of the team evolution. Besides that, as Shahuma was from another course, business psychology, it was hard to arrange a mutual meeting time initially. It was her exam period and she was very busy. In addition, initially, she was unsure of what needs to be done as she failed to attend the first few classes. Fortunately, after a little explanation, she managed to execute an excellent job. All in all, there wasn’t so much of a conflict but more of inconvenience.

Team Evolution- Brainstorming

During the meeting, after everyone has arrived at the designated meeting spot, we have put our heads together to thinks up of a name for our blog, and to pick out the theme that we want to write in our blogs. At first everyone was hesitant, then Grace Chow suggested, just for the fun of it, to name the blog 'cowpushers'. That got everyone to start thinking of a name then a few other names were thrown on the table. In the end, we all agreed on 'lifes-good', suggested by Fiona Kee and Sim Xuan Chin, to use as the name of our blog with the theme "We only live once" to dictate on how we were to write about our dreams and aspirations.

Team evolution - Orientation

Team orientation is the first stage when forming a team. The team consisting of Teck Hing, Sim, Grace, Fiona and Shahuma was formed during class hours. Introductions were made and there was that usual chaos of heys and hiiizz and number, name and email exchanging. Hehe. It is interesting how everyone tried to keep everyones face and name in order in the first meeting.

Live. Love. Laugh

Yee Teck Hing. Heard of him? Nah, coz you haven’t. He’s just an average joe. Anyhow, here’s the story of the boy who has not accomplish something big in life, JUST YET. Now, where should I begin?

******

The very first thing you should know about him is, he’s more of a Hedonist, instead of ‘study/work first; enjoy later’, it is the other way around for him. He’s been living sybaritic lifestyle. Actually, he’s just downright lazy.

(see, I told u so)

If there one thing Teck Hing appreciates, it’s definitely beauty.

(No that’s not what I meant pervs!)

Beauty comes in all forms, shapes and sizes, be it music, art, buildings or food. He just loves to enjoy the aesthetic qualities of everyday life. “Life is too short not to make the best and the most of everything that comes your way everyday.” - Sasha Azevedo . Speaking of beauty, he discovered his passion for body building recently after watching Transporter 3. Now, he may be a little interested in body building, but don’t go calling him narcissistic. Bodybuilding is both a form of art and a practice of science after all.

Dayum! Would u look at that.

(Don’t get me wrong. I’m not gay :/)

Like i said, he’s is pretty much a hedonist. But unfortunately, he isn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Working is inevitable as money doesn’t fall from heaven. He wants to earn a fortune but he doesn’t wanna move a muscle. Having said that, he’s always been intrigued by the human mind and behaviour. Humans are the most intelligent species on Earth and we have yet to discover the full potential of mankind. Therefore, he wishes to study more of the human mind and behaviour.
It sure took him awhile to realise his ambition, but now he strives to be a successful psychologist. (at least for now)


"If I fail, I try again, and again, and again. If YOU fail, are you going to try again? The human spirit can handle much worse than we realize. It matters HOW you are going to FINISH. Are you going to finish strong?" — Nick Vujicic. One of Teck Hing’s all time hero is definitely Nick Vujicic. With no limbs whatsoever, Nick Vujicic didn’t give up on life. He always says that he loves living. He never gives up. Believe it or not, he actually swims, surfs, and plays golf! Things that almost seem impossible for a man without limbs. Now that’s what I call inspiration.

Are you serious?

Teck Hing lives by 3 L’s, Live, Love, Laugh. Live life to the fullest; Love and treasure the people around you; Laughter is the best medicine. There is a quote, ‘Every man dies. Not every man really lives.’ Makes sense doesn’t it? The world would be a better place if everyone lives by the 3 L’s in his opinion.

Team Evolution - Reinforcement

After going through orientation, conflict, brainstorming and emergence, the state where harmony is re-established among the team members has finally achieved. During the state of reinforcement, team leader has decided to divide the five phases of group development equally to all team members. Likewise, one of the member, Sim Xuan Chi, was assigned to contact the other member who was absent during the meeting. As for blog, Fiona Kee was holding the responsibility of creating one and she was supposed to invite the rest of the team members and grant them admin as well as author privileges. Shahuma and Grace Chow would continue working on their reports and blog posts. On the other hand, Yee Teck Hing would be taking care of all team members’ work and compile them altogether before the printing is done.  

YAY for no arguments! :)

Bits of narcissism

This is all about her, Fiona Kee. Age: 20.

Life does feel good when it revolves around love and beauty. Well, that applies to hers at least. Sometimes, when narcissism kicks in, she would literally stare herself into the mirror and begin to put on makeups and mismatching outfits. Whats next? Camwhore mode -on!

Perhaps that makes her a perfectionist when it comes to fashion and beauty issues. Demanding in a way tho. She'd spend a whole day reading posts from fashion bloggers and try getting inspirations from latest celebrities makeups and outfits. Afterall, beauty is so commercialized that plastic surgery is becoming more common than before! I mean, c'mon, have you seen a brand ambassador w/ flabby ass, plump and distorted facial features? LOL.

This is RumiNeely from FashionToast and Chiara from TheBlondeSalad. :D

It is almost unbearable and instantly becomes an eyesore when she sees people w/ shabby outfits. Like ughhh, get back home please. you're killing the atmosphere yo!

One of her dreams in life is to travelling around and being able to grab the front seat rows for countless of fashion shows held by infamous brands such as: Prada, Machesa and Chanel. And for once, she wanted to become a fashion stylist and assist ladies in looking perfect and presentable.

OK okaaay. all these above make her sounded like a materialistic bimbo. But, so what? There's always a fragile side of her who gets emotional easily.

"Your face is like an open book. pretty easy to read about." -anonymous

It's almost inevitable that tears start rolling down whenever she sees video of kids suffering from insuffucient meals and poverty. Like omg. And the urge of giving them financial and educational support has never stopped hitting her. Guess that has pretty much explained why she has signed up for Psychology course. To have a better understanding about human and to becoming a part of UNICEF.

This is an old picture of me taking care of a girl from Yellow House Community.

So anyways, unrealistic as it may seems, she wishes tht she can travel around and come across w/ diff lifestyles. cultures, and FOOOD. She wanna be a food critic so badly as she has a thing for FOOOD. like real picky kind of person. -_- Life will be great if pictures of memories are taken from diff places w/ the one she loves the most! :)

Well, dreams are always good. but who knows if they'd eventually become realistic someday? Life's always changing as we move on. Shall just go with the flow, stay positive and appreciate things that we're having now instead. TADAAAA! =)

Interwoven...

Interests, dreams and aspirations are interwoven. At least for Shahuma, who just turned 24 earlier this month, it is!! ;D She is currently waiting on pins and needles to finish her degree!!

Her interests?? People people people annnd people as the photo indicates!! Hehe!! That pretty much covers it. People just plain interests her. Maybe you might have been clued into the fact that she studies psychology now… Although by that guess you’d only be partly correct… She does business psychology... So whats the difference you might ask. The difference is that it’s just business incorporated into psychology. It covers the human element part of the business world.

So let’s get back to her favorite topic!! Yup!! People!! They are so alike yet so different. Sometimes it’s the similarities that make them fascinating… and sometimes it’s the differences that make them fascinating. Their predictability in the course of life... and just when you decide that everything about them is predictable they do something unpredictable. Alryt… as you might have guessed she could ramble for hours and hours nonstop about how intriguing people can be. So she’ll just stop right here and talk a bit about her dreams and aspirations. What does she dream of?? She dreams of doing something for humanity. Something that would make her life seem worthwhile. Something that would bring a change to society. A cynic might categorize her as a hopeless dogooder. But hey... as Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”. If no one does anything about any of the world problems thinking that they can’t do anything alone then the problems would just escalate, won’t they? Moreover if you ask around enough people there are others just like you who wanna help make the world a better place. Guess its getting a little heavy here. Alryt…winding down a bit… Lets hear abt why she chose to study business. She believes that she gotta have a head for business if she is to manage a charity organization one day. And yea… thats right... you gotta have money to achieve any dream.

Team Evolution - Emergence

Hello again people!

This time around, I'll be talking about something more serious. It's about Team Evolution for the group assignment. Sounds cool huh? It's so so la.. Well, enough ding dongs and here goes :

Emergence is a stage when a consensus is reached amongst teammates. To tell you, it wasn't that easy. First, there is this thing called Problem Awareness. It is as obvious as it sounds. Now that's the easy part. There are always speed bumps known as Communication Barriers. First and the most common one is Noise and Distractions. When you're with a bunch of friends, it is almost GUARANTEED that there will be noises. Not too much from the surrounding but the friends. Apart from that, the meeting was carried out in a cafeteria. Oh yeah... Maximum noise and distraction. Food, people talking about their spouses and checking out girls who passed by, just to name a few. The other barrier is Competing Messages. Once we managed to get together and discuss, each member splurts out their own ideas and methods on how to do things. Yay! Another half an hour gone sticking into each other's throat. Once the drama's over, we stepped back and dealt with it like civilized people. You've guessed it, democracy. It may not be the best way to govern a country, but hey, it works for a bunch of students trying to just finish the assignment on time. Finally when everything's planned out, it was good enough. We said goodbye and went off looking as happy as this dude.

John Sim

Come What May

Yo~

Hey, how's it goin'?

How's your day really, cuz' let me tell you hers was just uneventful. Woke up late (in the process, ignoring FOUR deafening alarms situated right next to her ear), waited 2 hours for her friend to pick her up, went to Tropicana City Mall and waited Another 2 hours for more friends, then, they watched a movie (Kungfu Panda 2 is not bad....), later went to dinner, then drove home. Well, this is bout' as uneventful life's gonna get really. Haha...

Introductions:

Hi! Her name is Grace, she'll be in her 20th summer this June (yay!) and well, by now you could really guess that sarcasm is a favored hobby of hers, if you catch my drift.

Let's get to know her :D. I'm ecstatic, aren't you?

Hmm...well from a tender age, people have been telling her, dream big and you will live big. Yea, that sounds good no? However as a child, even now, she never really had ambitions nor did she think of dreams to fulfill. One could say she is contented with what she has, and with what she needs.



Alright, she admits, like any normal human she has things that she does crave for, to fulfill. Like she would love to go to Japan and live there, to learn the art of kendo, speak like a true Japanese (Yes, she's a Japanese fanatic), and that she really wants to experience Europe from a backpackers point of view, and learn to speak Russian, Spanish, German and Korean fluently while visiting each country respectively. While I'm at it, as a Christian, she want to go on missions and help those in need, to fulfill my duty and to shower love to those in need of it.

@.@

Wow...okay. Backtracking a little, she admits, that is a Long list of things she wants to do, with a serious heaping of $$$$ and commitment to actually be able to fulfill them, but hey, she's human right? Haha XD

Well now, she has been able to partially accomplish at least some of her wants i would say, like,
she is currently taking Korean classes, teaching herself Russian with a dictionary (killer she tells me), she has a German friend that taught her the basics of speaking German, and she is currently a student of Psychology; learning to understand the people around her on a deeper level [she's vying for a place with Neurolinguistics, keep your fingers crossed :)]

Ultimately, I will say that, she is still quite contented with what she has. True she barely scratched the surface with what she dreams of, but hey, at least she knows that she has taken the first few steps that she knows, with determination, passion and commitment, she can fulfill her aspirations. Be it 10, 20 or 50 years, why rush? Life is short and she tells me, It's the journey that really counts not the destination, right?

'Remember, life isn't about how many breaths you take, but about the moments that takes your breath away.' - Will smith, Alex Hitchens; Hitch

Hobbies + Dreams = Awesomeness

Greetings fellow readers!

This post is about a person named Sim Xuan Chi aka John Sim, age 21. He is currently studying in HELP University as a first year psychology student.

As for his interests, there are just too many of them. For starters, there's basketball, which he plays almost every week without fail. Any kind of sports would interest him. Kind of a typical guy huh? Anyway, other than sports, there is also music. Music has been his partner for the past 7 years since he picked up the guitar. And now, he also plays the drums! Talk about talent. Haha. He is also into outdoor activities like hiking. The most recent hike took him 9 hours to reach half (yes, half) the mountain and back. It was really weary on him. Almost bedridden.

This is supposed to be the 45 degrees hike up, but the camera didn't pick the angle up. Too bad.

In his recent trip to Ipoh, he joined his bunch of friends in paintball and water rafting. Both were new things to John, so he didn't hesitate to join. Well, maybe a little for paintball as he was broke.

Paintball's fun when you win!

Having said that, he did not regret one bit about doing paintball and water rafting. ESPECIALLY water rafting. It was pure excitement though it was quite scary. He fell into one of the rapids when the raft hit one. Here's the video of the fall :

As for now, he is into fishing. I mean REALLY into fishing. However, he did not bother about what others think of him and his new found hobby. Fishing was relatively new to him, started about a year and a half ago. Now he is getting considerably good at it.

This is his largest catch of a fish native to the amazon, Pacu of 7 kg.

Through fishing, he has made many new friends who are really passionate with what they are doing. This kind of spirit is rare now. It is this kind of passion and people that had kept John hooked to fishing. Not only the people are in great spirits, fishing actually exercises his brain to think more critically to solve problem. Make do with what you have to solve the problem in hand. Creativity went wild when he decides to try anything he can grab a hold of to use as bait. Corn, flour, eggs and even roti canai dipped with dhall was not even spared!

When it comes to dreams and aspirations, John doesn't have any specific target but he is looking to have a career in the line of psychology. In details, he still has not got an idea yet. To puts things rather simple, he never misses an opportunity to learn and earn. For now, he is just concentrating in his studies and tries not to worry too much about the future as it is unpredictable.

Just sit in for the ride called life.