First Week of lesson

The past week was my first week of the semester. The first lesson was on Language and Internet. We had a hands on interaction with a computer program called Eliza - meant to simulate a person, but its responses are actually based on rules and keywords, according to what you type, the program will respond in a definite manner. There are 2 programs we need to use in order to analyse language use in communities and chat programs - WordSmith and WMatrix. Specific patterns of language will become apparent as we analysed the language data collected from the internet. There should be similar patterns according to gender, age, occupation, and the type of forums, or country that the data is collected from.

The new module Cinematic Discourse is rather interesting. It is mainly about questioning the basic assumptions that are normally taken for granted when we watch movies, or rather, we often abide by a schema to make sense of what is happening in the movie. An example shown during the seminar is from Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). The cowboy in this movie does not know how to use a gun, nor does he know how to ride a horse. Does this mean that he is not a cowboy? No!! A cowboy does not necessarily need to use a gun and ride a horse. This is just a stereotypical assumption that we often take for granted which is the schema that we used to make sense of the world. Therefore, we have to step back, and question this assumtion. The project topics have 3 broad categories: Discourse of Home movies, Discourse of advertising and Discourse of animation.

Narrative Structures is an advanced EL module that has some relations to Cinematic Discourse and Narrative Structures. Narrative mainly involves two notions - the what and the way. The what is the content of the narrative and the way is the discourse, or how the narrative is presented. Narrative is an important concept because it is present in many other fields such as sociology, history, psychotherapy, medicine, etc. The CNM lecturer, Mr Alex Mitchell also attended this module, he seems interested to learn about the other modules in NUS. Towards the end of the seminar lesson, we were shown 2 videos. The first one has no narrative, it is just like the visualization that we see when we open an instrumental music with Windows Media Player. The second one is the Crazy Frog Video:



Why is there a narrative? Basically, there is an exposition, or opening sequence to the video where the frog just starts the music. Then the scene changes to where the evil guys are building some gigantic robot in the sea, and the frog gets dragged into the conflict with the evil guys when he went fishing in the sea. There is the climatic moment when the crazy frog confronted the gigantic robot and is able to escape from the gigantic robot, and up to the surface of the water by the end of the clip.

The last lesson of the week is on Child Language. I took this module out of curiosity, although I'm not confident about the technical aspects of the module - phonology and morphology. Was late for the class because Friday was raining heavily in the morning and there is a very big jam at Clementi area. The lecturer is very nice because she smiled at me even though I was late. Lesson started with brief introduction from the students. The assignment is to get hold of a child up to 4 years old and gather language data from the child by the next seminar lesson. The baby blues comic strip is later shown to us, although not very funny but is relevant to the contents of the module. Had the first test in the semester - the prerequsite test for this module, basically testing students knowledge in analysing morphological, phonological and syntactical data.

A lecturer in Sociology department collapsed and died on Tuesday when he was having a thesis discussion with one of the students at 2 pm. Associate Professor Ananda Rajah had collapsed in his office due to cardiac arrest. He is one of the nicest and friendliest lecturers in NUS. I had taken 1 module from him last summer term which is Singapore Society. I had enjoyed his lessons tremendously. I still remembered how he had spoken about the various food cultures in Singapore, and also how he related his experiences in the army of how the soldier says something or apologises to the tree spirit when the soldier wanted to urinate near the tree. His tutorials were also memorable, he shouted loudly when he announced that the hell gate had opened according to a diagram he drew on the board, in order to catch hold of the student's attention in class. I had communicated frequently with him by email during the term, he even asked me why I have not slept yet 2 am in the morning and still sending him emails. I want to quote some of the email exchanges I had with him in remembrance of him:

Offering to write letter of reference for me on his own initiative.

Hi Weimin

Over the years, I have had many students asking me to write letters of reference for them when they apply for foreign exchange studentships at universities which have signed memoranda of understanding with NUS, when they apply for jobs, when they apply for scholarships to pursue graduate studies at Masters and PhD levels. That kind of thing. So, if ever your are thinking along those lines, when the time comes, do let me know.

Cheers.

Ananda


Asking me why I was having late night.

Dear Weimin

My goodness! You are still checking your e-mails so late in the night?! I have, sometimes, to stay up late in the night to complete responding to student queries and other communications with people in other universities because of the time difference, but I think we all need a bit of rest at some time. Tonight, I shall have to leave rest/sleep to be little later.


Prof Ananda relating his army experience to me.

Hi Weimin

My NS experience goes a long way back. A arther long story, so I'll try and summarise. I was enlisted in 1971. At that time the SAF could not take in all the 18 year olds. I believe it was Dr Goh Keng Swee, as Minister of Defence who made the decision that 10 per cent of enlistees (who had been admited to the University of Singapore and Nanyang University - Nantah) could be balloted (a 'Toto system' which was I think in turn was based on a practice in Israel - but I could be mistaken). I was lucky or unlucky (depends on one's point of view) and actually was balloted out. So, after six months (basic training, section leaders training, school of small arms training - nowadays called BMT and SISPEC), I was allowed to go to the University of Singapore. I finished with a first class honours degree in FASS.

Went back to the SAF in Officer Cadet School (OCS), 4th Standard Military Course (SMC), SAFTI (1977). Graduated, and was posted to 6SIR, where as a 2nd Lt, I was a Platoon Commander, DyS1, and then Company 2IC. In my reserve service, after I did my PhD at the Australian National University (1986), I was posted to 1PDF. I served as Company 2IC in Delta Coy in 150SIR, and then as OC. I finished my reserve training as a CPT. That's why I had a Land Rover with driver!

I doubt if I ever met the lady you mention. She must have been in IPDF HQ. At IPDF, most of my interactions were with successive S3s.

Cheers.

Ananda Rajah

Very personal email correspondence with him, from the below exchange, this shows that he does not treat students as less equal position than him as a lecturer professor.

Yes, of course. Let's stay in touch. E-mal is great. I and many former students still keep in touch, even those who graduated. I am 52 years old right now, and I don't plan to retire so soon! But, yes, we will stay in touch. I just got a private e-mail account with gmail.com, on the recommendation fo a former student. The e-mail address is: rajah.ananda@gmail.com. Try it and see if comms can be establish through that avenue. I'm still new to the gmail account - only registered for it a few days ago.

I enjoy communicating with students. As I said, I greatly appreciate our intellectual exchanges. So, no need to be 'pai seh' or 'kek ki'. And, I'm glad to hear that there are other lecturers who are helpful. That's how it should be.

He offered me to take his module during this semester:

Want to a course with me in Semester II, next Academic Year? It is SC2206 Culture and Society. We go beyond the shores of Singpore in that one.

Cheers.

Ananda Rajah


Prof Ananda Rajah came over to my exam location personally to ask me if I have any problems - this shows that he is very dedicated.

Dear Weimin

I trust you are not too exhausted from the examination today. I have to invigilate the examination for the other students at 9am tomorrow morning. But, I'll come over to respond to any queries you might have at your location, after 9.30am. Ms Chia Hsiao Ching will be your invigilator. If you have any queries before I come over, let her know. She will know how to get in touch with me at LT11. She is a very helpful person, so do not hesitate to ask her for any assistance.

I am sure you will do well.

Regards.


PS: Did I ever mention that I enjoy our intellectual exchanges over the Forum and through e-mails? If I haven't, well here it is: I do.

The last email correspondence I had with him:

Hi Weimin

Have you followed the Mr Brown issue that has emerged in the Today newspaper, and related blogsites? The podcasts by Mr Brown and Mr Miyagi are really funny and are all about aspects of Singapore popular culture! I wish I had known about their podcasts before: could have suggested that students check out the podcasts and see how students would analyse them as aspects of popular culture. Only discovered the Mr Brown and Mr Miyagi blogsites after the Today paper issue.

Regards.

Ananda Rajah




張韶涵 - 夢里花

Angela Chang is releasing her new album in a few weeks time. Here's the video of her new MTV titles "Meng Li Hua" 張韶涵 - 夢里花 or translated directly to "flower in her dream". She mentioned that the tune for this song is from her dream and when she woke up she wrote down the tune and let the composer of the song transcribed the song into the official version in the album.



Lyrics at http://mymedia.yam.com/m/886189


I think the MTV is very surreal. The white setting of the MTV makes this song feels like it really does come out from a dream. The melody is smoothing and dreamy. Angela's vocal is still as unique and strong as ever.


10 Jan 07 Cyndi Wang Enews:

This clip is talking about Cyndi's latest enews asking people to go online auctioning for children.