Conflicts - What are the possible causes of the conflict?

Garth Brooks, the first country music singer to win six Academy of Country Music Awards 1991, said "The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself." When one is going against one's inner self, it considers there are two parties fighting over something. Thus, Conflict happens when one or more parties disagree with one another. What actually leads two parties going against one another? Conflict can be easily arise due to historical relationships between two parties, fighting over something of value and going against the wishes of majority.

Conflict is easily arise between two parties with bitter past relationships. Kuwait and Irag were former British colonies, both were under the Ottoman Empire. Before the Gulf war happened, Iraq and Kuwait had already been in an intense relationship. Even though Kuwait was granted independence in 1961, Iraq had never recognised Kuwait's independence. They have had been unhappy about the unclear land dispute. Because of their bitter pasts, conflicts were easier arise between them. The intense relationship had continued to create conflicts for both sides such as how Irag was not happy about Kuwait not following the OPEC's quota of oil productions and prices and also, territorial dispute over a profitable oilfield. Bygones are not always be bygones, the bitter past would create more conflicts between two parties.

Another cause of conflicts is fighting over something of value. Recently, there were fightings and violence taken place in the Thai-Cambodia border area. Both Countries were fighting over the temple Preah Vihear. Preah Vihear was listed by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2008. Both countries decided that the world heritage site belonged to Cambodia in June 2007, but they were still fighting over a strip of land nearby. Both Preah Vihear and that strip of land are something of value for both Thailand and Cambodia. They may have signed on some agreements that what belonged to whom but conflicts can be arise over again.

A classic example of conflicts is one going against the wishes of majority. Do you ever idolise a pop band group? Then one day, your favourite member left the group suddenly. Most fans would be upset yet respect his decision but hardcore fans would not and it becomes a conflict. Park Jaebom was once in, a famous Korean pop band, called 2pm. He was the leader but one day, due to his past offensive message, he decided to leave his band for good. The chaos started when hardcore fans are not happy over his company's decision of not pulling Jae back to the group. They boycotted the band and threw all the 2pm discs they owned at the company's building. Jae's action of leaving the band had go against many fans' wishes. This caused massive mess in some streets of Seoul. Thus, conflict arise when one going against the wishes of majority.

In a nutshell, conflicts have many causes. The past conflicts might be the causes of present conflicts. Conflicts can be solved yet it can happen over and over again. Human can think and would think differently. Thinking differently would leads to conflicts but let's look at the causes of the conflicts at a brighter side. Walter Lippman said, "where all think alike, no one thinks very much." We are sometime somehow lucky.

"Needs" - What does the term ‘needs’ mean to the average person today, and how does it differ from one person to another?

“They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.” This is one of the quotes made by Tom Bodett. How can one define his own needs? One’s definition of his needs could be different from another. The different needs of people are due to the different stages of their lives.

One’s definition of the term ‘needs’ changes as one grows.First let’s imagine that our lives have 4 different stages just like the 4 different seasons. The first stage is from our births to 20’s (spring), the second stage is from 30’s to 40’s (summer), the third is from 40’s to 50’s (autumn) and last stage is from 50’s till our deaths (winter). What are the basic elements which plants need in order to grow beautifully during spring? The sunlight, water and air are needed. It is the same goes to our first stage of our lives, what we need are simply air, water, food and warm love from the people surrounding us. These are called the physiological needs, it is the basic yet the most important needs which humans cannot survive without.

Furthermore, as the earth evolves the spring ends and the summer begins. As we know, summer is the hottest season of all four. Many plants might not be able to survive in such a hot weather; nature fire may occur in forests and kill the trees. Thus, nature is kind enough to create different adaptations for them; different plants have different adaptations for the heat, they need it to be able to survive. After the first stage, what needed to be adding on for our needs list are probably the safety needs and a level up of our love life. The safety needs simply refers to our personal and financial security and well-being. At the “summer” stage of our lives, we are more prone to illness, or stress; which leads to poor mentally and physically health. This is where we are more concern on our careers, how to secure our jobs, how to build strong relationships with our lovers and settling down with our own families. These can be very stressful to us which cause harm to our lives in every way. Some of us may not know how to survive due to the lack of our needs; missing the loyal friends, unhealthy lifestyles, unstable careers and the lack financial plans. How can we survive from this burning summer? It can be from the supports of our loved ones, from the determination of exercising regularly or having healthy and good diets each day or mentors to guide us.

Next, the autumn arrives, the temperature is going down. During autumn, the leaves change its colours and the temperature drops. Some animals are more active during this season; they are out to find extra food, storing them as preparation for the arriving winter. The next things we need to add on in this stage of our lives are the esteem. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there are two versions of esteem; the lower one and the higher one. What we need here most are both of them. We need the respect of others, the attentions, the recognition (the lower version) and the inner strength (the higher version). As we come to the second last stage of our lives, we often ask ourselves what we need to do before our last stages arrive. This leads to our needs of having attentions may it be from our younger generations, friends and mentors and gaining respects of others too. For the needs of our inner strengths, it helps us to take good care of ourselves; loving ourselves more than others. The inner strengths help us to be stronger in every way, such as courage to do something we are long for. As winter arrives, the temperature is getting lower. Winter is the coldest season of the year. In this “winter” stage of our lives, we are back to the basic needs once again. Some may no longer see the importance of having the safety needs or the esteem anymore. They would prefer being care free and live their lives to their fullest before it is too late.

To sum up, the term ‘needs’ to the average person today may be different yet similar at times. Because everyone go through different stages of live and in those stages, we, humans, do need to share the same needs in order to survive.

Success - How can success be defined?

Do you wonder how one can be so successful? What are their secrets? People often said, “Success is 99% hard work and 1% luck." The path to success is not an easy one. One must have a strong will and make right decisions at the right time. Success comes with one's determination, opportunity and a little of luck.

Determination is needed to achieve great results. What makes successful people different from the rest is that they have this common "Never give up until I get what I want" attitude. Not many people supported Maria Bartiromo to become a reporter to broadcast live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange but she became the first female reporter anyway. Yes, she did have a lot of pushback but what made her succeeded? This is what she said, “Stamina, for me, is just coming back and coming back and doing it again and again." Failure is part of the 'successful' journey, one needs determination to accept the failure as part of the process to success.

Seizing the opportunity is the stepping stone to success. Having the talent, the intelligence or whatever it takes to be successful would not necessarily lead to success. Opportunity will not just appear suddenly, one has to find, chase or hunt for it. One of Randy Pausch's childhood dreams was being in zero gravity, not exactly being an astronaut. He just wanted the floating experience. His childhood dream becomes true because he "hunted" the opportunity. While doing his proposal for a certain program provided by NASA, he grabbed the chance by promising NASA to publicize their team's experiment on more mainstream journals. He succeeded to experience zero gravity because he found out NASA is always eager for good publicity and would allow a journalist from students' hometown to get the ride. Sometime, Opportunity is not directly obvious; One has to notice and grab it to be successful.

Luck plays a part in the path to success. Nichkhun Horvejkul is the only Thai, currently well-known in Korea and maybe worldwide, in the K-pop industry. Luck was part of his success in his career. He was randomly casted by JYP Company during a concert held in United States. Before he was chosen to be a trainee, he had to sing and dance in public. Yes, he embarrassed himself; he had no talent in that particular area at all. Usually one has to go through auditions to make it through and with skills like the past Nichkhun had, the judges would ask you to stop performing right away. He was a lucky man for that moment.

Ingredients for success are not only working hard on what you want. Imagine you are baking a chocolate cake for your fiancé for the first time. You may fail at the first few attempts. Determination would drive you to not give up even though the cakes burnt or tasted weird. Offering this cake is the opportunity to show your sweetest love on the upcoming Valentine’s Day. Lastly, you are lucky that the oven is not on fire after over using it. One needs the perfect ingredients; determination, opportunity and the luck to be successful. Without any of these missing.

Mummies

I came to know of mummies by watching a movie called The mummy Returns. To most people, mummies might be scary or disgusting dead bodies but to me, they are incredible dead bodies because they survived for thousands of years.

'Mummy' comes from the Arabic word 'mummiya' which means tar. Mummies have been discovered with tar-like coating on their bandages. Most ancient people believed there is an afterlife after they died and they need their body in another world thus mummies were created.

I love the process of how to make a mummy, it took about 70 days. Can you imagine what a embalmer has to go through? During that 70 days, there would be smells from oilments, spices or vinegar and whatever needed for the preservation. Its quite a smelly and messy job. However what makes me love this process is to cut open the body and take out all the internal organs and THE BRAIN WAS BEING PULL OUT THROUGH THE NOSE!!! Those internal organs were then stuffed into pots and buried in the tomb together with the mummy.

After the process, the embalmer would recited spells on the mummy. They believed that these spells would protect the mummy in the Underworld or afterlife.

Attitude towards writing.

As you can see from my blog URL, you can conclude that my attitude towards writing is a negative one. Since young I have problems with spellings in my native language. I had always been teased by my relatives about my funny spellings. I guess this is the beginning of my fear towards writing. Since then I am not confident with my writing ability even though its not my native language but English or Chinese. I know writing has many advantages thus I hope one day, something or someone, would destroy this "wall" of fear of writing in me and encourage me to express myself better in writing.