We made it! Happy 2 years.

Pretty Little Liar...

Image Courtesy of playbuzz.com

Have you ever been in  a situation where you create lies to impress people? People commonly refer this as 'white lie', usually done to avoid offending people. Of course, we all have. Denying it, is lying.

White Lies are harmless. More often it saves friendship. But wrong management of lying can end up being worse for both parties. Once a lie begins, People tend to create new lies to make them more believable. Without realizing it, they became "Serial Liars". This does not only destroys friendships. it destroys trust.

It was a few days ago when I had a conversation with my friend Carrie about Fern. They used to be best buddies in school when Fern decided to ditch the friendship and move on to blaming the world for her inability to have friends. I don't usually enjoy gossiping about others but I am human, and at times I needed to vent about how I was being treated. Fern was a bully. And I didn't realize it until Carrie enlightened me.

Let me brief you about Fern. Fern is known to be a "rich" snob. At least that's how people describe her. To me she was just a girl who knows what she wants and apparently what she wants is to appear rich and pretty. She only friends rich girls and look down on others. Especially those who are poor and/or chubby. I know this from the start but for me, she's just being herself. People are born different. Fern was different. We're friends, close friends perhaps. But recent events opened my eyes a little to be careful of what she is capable of doing.

Fern is a liar. She lies her way through people. At first, it seemed she lie to avoid hurting people. But, people ALWAYS find out about her lies and became more offended than ever. Then, she lies to impress people. To make people think and believe she is all these amazing things she labels herself as.

Rich. Up-to-date. High-taste. Smart. Open minded. Courageous. Independent. Brave. Honest.

I call Bullshit.

Fern is all the opposite of those. She created lies upon lies to put herself high on an imaginary pedestal. It makes me wonder, why did she even have to lie in the first place? Why is she so desperate to make people look up to her? Is she in that much need of respect to even lie for it?

The conversation left me in deep thought. It reminded me of the web of lies she entangled me in and I was stupid enough to believe them. She even lied her way through her career, saying one thing and meaning another. I guess, I should have been smarter than to put my trust in one person. We are, after all human, born to make mistakes.

Why do people lie?

That One Person...

The adventures of the know-it-alls

I realize in every seminar or workshop I attend, there would be this ONE person (well maybe 3 or 4) who craves attention. They would talk a lot, too much, unaware of the fact that people would doze off 20 seconds after they start blabbering. I don't get it. Why must these events be that place where you vent your anger about the education system and won't let go of that microphone once given?

Everytime... I mean EVERYTIME the facilitator opens up a Q&A session, these Mr and Mrs know-it-all would be jumping towards the microphone... Not to ask questions, but to make a long ass speech of how they feel about everything. It gets boring and lame in time...

 These people would never just "Shhh...!!!"

Sometimes I feel like no matter how old you are... there's always a point in your life where you'd feel just like in high school.

Love,
Ms Anne

Exploring another side of INTERNET...

I welcomed internet into my life in 1998 where cyber cafes were a "thing" in my hometown. Those days, we had to type out long URLs written in entertainment magazines. Photos of celebrities were hard to find, thus making it a trend to save those JPGs and Gifs into a 1.44MB disc, producing series and later, boxes of colourful discs we called "disket". mIRC and ICQs were the main source of outside communication, along with Yahoo! as the best search engine and Hotmail as the main e-mail host. We also had to learn http to create personal websites.

Fast forward to the future, Social Websites took over the internet. Almost everyone above 15 had either a Myspace or Friendster (maybe both?) account. Old friends were found, reunions were organized as easily as sleeping and wedding invitations became stingily cheap. Then came Facebook and google, who managed to take over the internet.

Attending an Interactive Learning Circle Training course, I realized there are more to internet than gossip and memes. I was introduced to a humongous list of teaching tools I never thought of finding or using. I am more motivated to apply these tools (provided, a strong internet line) to impress and attract my students. The only thing that worries me if whether I'll get the response i expected.

Web 2.0 tools proved that the internet is more than just Facebook. With collaboration tools such as Padlet, Todaysmeet, Piratepad and Voicethread as well as storyboards such as Blendspace, Storify and Wordpress, class discussion would be made easier. All that's missing is superspeed internet.

LEARNING THEORIES

As seen in AKEPT training...

The Rude Salesman

Have you ever walked into a store (especially branded ones) and find yourself being treated like crap? Well i guess unless you're a Holllywood celebrity, we all would get that experience at one point.

Okay, I am no diva and i do not expect to be treated like one... But when i walked into Machines in Empire today, looking at the iPads, one of the salesman looked at my bro and i up and down as if we were there to rob the place. i asked if they had any iPad mini 3 with 128gb in stock and he just said "takde". Yup just one word, No recommendations, nothing. So i asked which one do they have with 128gb. So reluctantly he said "iPad air 2 only. And we only have the one with celullar and wifi". And again, he voiced that as if trying to say "yeah but we only have the super expensive iPad air 2 that you obviously can't afford..." 

As we were losing patience, i decided to shove the fact that i could afford it in his face and went on talking to another sales guy about ipad mini and air comparisons. In the end i decided to go with air 2 as it has higher specs and only RM300 difference. And his whole "lol poor **es, go away" look faded as i made payment. For that iPad and also a super overpriced iPad cover. 

As we walked out of the shop looking rich and cool, i noticed there was a couple being treated invisible. I could see the frustrated look on their faces as they walked out buying nothing. I guess we weren't alone.

The thing is, aren't you supposed to treat every potential customer the same? Or do i have to wear Prada designers to buy a simple iPad? Sales representative can be so rude, thus not making it too far in their field of work. Most of them judge you by what you wear and it's scum. If this goes on, i might start filling up customer complaints forms. 

Annoyed,

Ms Anne

iPad? or iPad?

This post will probably feed the haters but I am now stuck thinking whether I should buy an iPad Air (which costs me approximately a liver) or an iPad Mini (which is cheaper but also smaller...)

After googling information and asking people's opinions I decided that people don't help that much. My problem still hasn't been solved.