More psychology of seating

SO in the continuing saga of the french-class-seating-arrangement, me and rish went for french early this week, having come from a lunch at ghim moh (damn everything was closed for CNY) after a visitation to smith.

So i started to feel myself gravitating towards the seat i took last week. Rishi wanted to sit in a seperate side of the classroom, but for some reason i felt really uncomfortable about displacing someone else, so decided to move back to where we were last week.

So the theory now stands like this:
- Initally, given a choice of seats, people will choose the seat they prefer, i.e. far from teacher, near to teacher, next to window, in a corner, etc.
- Following the first session of class (or meetings or whatever) people's preferences will mature further with more info (the teacher is a slob and spits when he talks, i'm sitting further away. The woman next to me is super antisocial and apathetic, i should find a more interesting person etc.) and their desired choice of seats will change. Thus there will be a difference between the utility they gain from staying in their current seat, and moving to their most desired seat, especially if their choice was restricted in the first place.
- The perceived costs would be that of displacing the person originally in the seat (which is privately assumed to be their desired seat), which is probably mostly fears of repercussion of some sort and generally creating a negative impression on a potential friend/ally/etc....
- So depending on the costs and benefits.......

of course after time passes and people get more used to their seats the cost of unseating people rises..... and you get used to your seat....

my sister just disproved all that theory by saying "why do you care where people sit? I just sit the first place where it's empty."

oh well.


oh and in other news there was yu sheng at my house last night.


My mum rocks. =)

Happy Chinese New Year, everyone =)
even the cousins and nieces of mine who chose to wear pink. ^^

French Social Psychology

So last week was the first lesson i took in french, and after everyone finished filing into the room and taking up spaces, lo and behold, there were just enough chairs, by pure coincidence, probably. And everyone who came with friends of course sat together, and people who came alone started to make friends with the person next to them and that sort of thing. And then the teacher made us partner up because you just need someone to throw bad french at.

And so after the lesson, one day when i was bored in camp (which is rather common anyway) I start to wonder if the seating arrangements this week would be the same as last week. I mean, obviously the people who were partnered up would sit next to each other, but would they still sit in the same places around the classroom and resume the same order as before, or not?

Turns out they did, even after i deliberately sat in a diff spot (I was early coz i went for that singing thing prior to this lesson) so everyone sat in the same configuration as before, even with extra chairs now (which were there because there were not enough chairs for the hesitant singers) just that the social groupings were more clearly demarcated this time around with the spare chairs (and missing people).

So, why? Because they're still into remembering people's names by location, instead of by face, and thus by sitting in the same place they're implicitly agreeing to a pact that everyone should sit in the same place damnit so i know who you are? Because they're comfortable with certain other people being 'on the other side of the room'? Probably when they first came in and took their places at the start of the course they would try to sit next to someone they would possibly get along with, based on pre-held prejudices and assumptions and things. So the 15 year old schoolkid didn't sit next to the ..... relatively more chronologically advanced remiser, and instead sat next to the other young girl.

The thing is, would those initial impressions change, and would they instead sit next to other people once they've discovered what they're like? hm. apparently not, maybe because the primary purpose of the class is to learn french, after all, and not make friends. But well certainly observing other people is starting to get rather interesting.

Happy birthday, Rish

At Victory Restaurant just off victoria street, in..um...the road just after jalan pisang. It has one of the best murtabak i've ever eaten. But WHY did they chop it up into itti bitti bits?? It looked really promising on the gridle coming in. Oh and if you're wondering, rishi's drinking warm bandung, which just makes it a hot pink drink.

Qui peut faire de la voiles sans vent? (8)

One thing about the Alliance Francaise is that it's got such a cool building. It's the sorta place which is just nice to be in, nevermind that you don't know what everyone else is saying or what's written on those posters. =)

Je suis etudiant de francais! And for those of you who can read french and think that that's (ooh) grammatically incorrect.... hush. first lesson only. We have a really way cool french teacher, who was ironically born in Italy, and now resides in holland village. Our class is a pretty fun group too, or well, at least a pretty funny group, it struck me somewhat like a mind your language kinda situation... we have one aussie lawyer, a PRC, a half-french, and then the singaporeans, one of which is malay, and another one, of course, my favourite indian. And one of them is working at MOF and another at EDB. Utterly. Hilarious. =)

To top it all off, one of them looks just like raptor smith, with her mannerisms and ever-so-addictive confident put-you-downs, and that ... smile.... of... a predator looking at her prey knowing that she's right and you can't do anything about it and darnit hand in your essay now or else. And another one is just like A-gan..... albeit a female version (sorry, Andrew) with the same hesitant sort of look he used to have in his eyes in sec 1. 'Course, he's changed lots since then. But it's really a freaky sort of connection. A motley crew, our class, with typical yuppies (I live in orchard road and drink french wines after i finish a day of good hard market research) and typical singapore students (I'm waiting for my results and i figured i might as well learn french..... what do i like? dunno. What's my favourite movie? dunno.... do i wanna visit france? sure! What am i gonna do there? er... tour lor! tour what? huh?) and somehow everyone's just sorta endearing in a strange sorta way, like we're all bonded by this common desire to learn french and are really enthu about it and will have fun doing so. coolness.

----

Chanced upon this gem of an excerpt from a jasper fforde book..... the well of lost plots:

'Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren't you working on this?'

Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts.

'Indeed. The use of had had and that that has to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the Imagino Transference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid.'

'Go on.'

'It's mostly an unlicensed usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty-three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim's Progress may also be a problem owing to its had had /that that ratio.

'So what's the problem in Progress?'

'That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked but not if the number exceeds that that usage.'

'Hmm.' said the Bellman. 'I thought had had had had TGC's approval for use in Dickens? What's the problem?'

'That the first had had and that that in the book by way of example,' explained Lady Cavendish. 'You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not.'

'So the problem with that other that that was that --?'

'That that other-other that that had had approval.'

'Okay,' said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, 'let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim's Progress, which had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC's approval?'

There was a very long pause.

(with thanks to Sandy.)

c:\dos\run

Someone said my blog was too philosophical of late. so, in responding to popular demand, i now present the next piece:


Forth Eorlingas!!



Yea, that's about it.

no it isn't. Public safety message: Drive carefully when highly sleepy, if you can't avoid driving altogether.
Couldn't resist after all.

Leadership ponderings

One of the things we wonder about in the army is the work ethic. Or lack thereof. And so we develop lots of theories:

This is what you're capable of doing.
|---|---|---|---|---|

And this is what you're willing to do under your boss.
|--|

Simply because hard work is rewarded with, well, more work! If you're going to get paid the same amount ANYWAY, and aren't going to get any other sort of tangible benefits except less free time... then the only thing which is going to convince you to work harder and do a better job is your own morals and conscience, and basically how much you care about the quality of your product. But of course, if your boss doesn't do anything to make you feel that your contribution is valued, or in fact, doesn't even do anything to make you feel anything more than cheap labour... then with each passing grievance what you're willing to do shrinks even more:

|-|

But under a good boss (hahahahahahahha) then he'll do things like make you feel a part of the team etc. and basically make you feel good about working and make you want to work. Up till what you're willing to do is the same as what you're capable of doing.

Then, a REALLY good boss, that's someone who will challenge you and push you beyond what you think your limits are, so much so that now the part of you that grows is not just what you're willing to do, but also what you're able to do.

So where have all the good bosses gone?