Hello, new semester! (quit the first week, just like Linh)

Good morning!

It’s 11:15 am 23 Aug 2020~

My first week of the semester just ended.

The 2 months summer internship also ended.

It’s time for myself: sleeping, eating good food, exercising, doing youth activities that I like, going to library reading my favorite books, watching Thai series to learn Thai, studying in class. I no longer want to devote my time to any commitment if it were not for a practical purpose like earning money. :vvvv kidding. I am always willing to help people who need help! <3

Miss nature in Chiang Mai... blow some wind into my Schooling life ;)

Schooling this week has been fine. I didn’t ask any questions in class but it’s alright. I will try to capture the content better next week. There are such interesting topics we touched into:

- Studies of ecology: The lectures squiz the content of the entire 12 schooling year of science and biology. There are many interesting terms that I never learnt such subjects in English. What is happy to me during that lecture is to help my DBTM classmates. They are not familiar with the sustainability topics as well as the assignment. I explained to them and got to know them.

- What is human security and how to achieve human security?

Human security tabs into the core needs of humans, rather than the ordinary national security that is of a focus on every country. I think human security is to meet the goals related to education, tackle poverty and literacy. I joined a group that I am happy to be part of to work on our project. Let see how it is next.

- Reflecting on basic principles of economics and absolute advantage and comparative advantage. Economics is the studies about the management of limited resources. A country that has an absolute advantage if it produces more goods than the other country that has the same resources. While comparative advantage is calculated based on opportunity cost during the production process. Country A has comparative advantage of X product if it takes A less opportunity cost to make X compared to country B making X. So much memories rising back 4 years ago in my first Macro-Economic Course at Foreign Trade Uni.

- Meanings of religion and the practice of popular customs that are not part of religion.

Interestingly, last Wednesday is the first of Lunar July. I got up early to go buy flowers and go to temple to pray for a good semester, my family, friends and especially my Dad’s turning new age. I am non-religious but I like going to the pagoda on important occasions. This is more or less shaped by my mom since I was young. As I grow up, I realize a sense of peace and relief going to such holistic places, I willing to go when I am ready. It was fun discussing the practice with Jijung. Ajarn loves engaging in conversation with students. He comes to every group to listen to us and ask us questions. Marriage, one of the discussed topics, was originally born for nurturing the identity and security of humans. I asked but the purpose is changing nowadays, not to mention from a perspective of psychology, marriage is just a stage of life that people find a need to socialize and tight a knot. But they don’t, it’s optional for us. And there are other ways to strengthen our identity. Well, but the meaning makes sense as the nature of humans.

- Reviewing core characteristics of good governance: rule of law, transparency, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency, inclusion and participation. Governance is a process, not a result. Governance is the relationship between the government and the governed. We took a quiz on how to measure democracy according to the readings related to certain methods to measure freedom in the world. I enjoyed that groupwork the most as we investigated in the political system in Vietnam to measure our transparency level. Our stupidity level was revealed because we had little idea about the actual process. We don’t care about voting for our government. We don’t know how the voting system functions or to what extent that people of different backgrounds, gender, religions are considered to have political rights. Ajarn gave us a framework of questions to measure different areas (I forgot the title) then to put the score for them accordingly. There was a smart – new friend that he helped to reframe the question easily for us to understand. I felt so refreshed to hear from his perception.

That’s all about studying.

Work

- Whenever I have space time like Monday & Tuesday morning, Wed and Thursday evening, I ll do my RA work to earn money. I have been researching the modern history of 2 secondary cities including Lampang and Ratchaburi. The second process has so little information! Plus, I helped my manager to fix the referencing of the Bibliography for his book chapter to be published. Around 10 times has been exchanged for the edition. It is freaking stressing for real. I wrote the stress of this task to put it into the balloon in the Mental Health workshop. In spite of regretting the beauty of the balloon, I used the pen to make it blow. And boom… the stress was gone.

Social activity

- I went to a first meet event of TU travel. They have many body movement activities to bond participants together. It was all in Thai but I met some friends who can speak English. There are always people like that. <3 I am going to another first meet event this week to see their organization. Feel I am old that people were so energetic till the end. They had a mini concert and I like it so much. GSSE is going to have a back-to-school event which I ll be give my little hand for some part of the organizing team.

- Joined a meeting to prepare for “Le Vu Lan’’ (kind of Parents' Day according to Astrological calendar)at the end of August in BKK, organized by our Vietnamese Community in Thailand.

- I joined a Well-being workshop by Tinkle & JUMP! on Thursday afternoon. I had to prepare chocolate, balloon and a piece of paper. There are many tools compared to a normal 1-hour workshop. But it went well. What I learnt is to reduce our anxiety in a right way. It is important to recognize our source of anxiety and try to regulate it instead of giving it on others. Our mental health is like the bouncing theory of the tennis ball. It goes back and forth, up and down. When we throw it towards others, it’s harder to take it back.

- Had a call with Advisor and Core Team of YNC to plan for this semester. We hope to kick start the club’s energy again and move youths’ spirit again!

- I went to Rooftop Bar of Jpark to chill out on Friday Night. Fun. Good drink and music.

Thank you, Linh for a happy week. Thank you for being always honest and spending time for myself without regret or anything. Because we have a life to live. I am happy to be around with Nath and Lihoun. We have a good time having dinner together. We went to bar to chill out. I will just move on. Next week will be happy as well!