Four Types of Love

Four Types of Love

The lecture today was interesting and was given by a good speaker, Judith Castle who used understandable language. She was also relaxed and made the class feel comfortable. She encouraged the students to speak and to ask questions. I actually liked this method of teaching.

The lecture was about the four different types of love: philia, romance, agape and eros. Miss Castle explained each of these kinds to us. Philia is the love of friends and is characterized by loyalty and trust; in this kind of love we need the support of our friends and their trust as well so that we can make good judgments. Romance is passionate and is characterized by falling in love with another person; in this kind of love endorphins are produced in the brain and this makes people have strong feelings for others. Agape is human caring and kindness that we show to other people, even to strangers; we have compassion and empathy for others. Eros is the love we have for ourselves; this is the amount we love what we do or who we are.

I learned that each person is powerless because we are all influenced by others. In terms of love this works so that we expect that others have the same kind of feelings about love that we do. After she explained the four kinds of love I realized that I do understand these different kinds. I have experienced all of them. This is the way the brain is constructed to understand these different kinds of love.

I enjoyed this lecture especially when she asked us if we won the lottery what we would do with the money. I was shy to answer her because she asked me first. I wanted to say that I would like to give money to charity and to help others but what I said was that I would buy a Ferrari and have a good time. What I really believe is that I would do both things. I would spend money on myself and I would help others.

Happiness

I am sitting in my apartment now (10 o’clock Monday) and a lot of people are sure sounding happy outside. I think the Montreal Ccanadian have won the hockey game tonight.
This is an example I think of a collective happiness. The celebrating people all belong to the same group who like that team. This is a wonderful experience for that group of people. This is one form of happiness that we can all relate to. I have had this kind of experience when my favourite team won an important soccer game. All the fans were on the streets, honking horns of cars and driving and drifting around in celebration.
There are different things though that contribute to our general sense of happiness and these are mostly in relation to our relationships with other people and with God. I believe that the article we read is correct when it says that the people who are the happiest are those who are in relationships like married people. I also believe that having faith is very important to a sense of happiness. Faith gives all of us hope and profound peace of mind. It takes problems away from us and make them to a bigger power.
I did think before that money would give happiness but the article sure told me that is not true. I was really impressed with the statistics on the lack of correlation between wealth and happiness. I particularly like the comment that the person on the bus is often as happy as the person driving the Mercedes. I did not think that this was true before but I understand better now.

Noval Project

The thesis of this novel is that medical care is not simple. It is actually quite tricky. The young doctors in the story all have wonderful educations and good data about helping their patients. What we learn is that this is not enough to help sick people. Many of the sick people are crazy and do not cooperate with the doctors. Others are there just for attention. Some are even dead and so the doctors are dealing with their living family members. Based in real life events that Lam experienced as a doctor, his novel was a series stories about four young doctors Ming, Fitz, Sri and Chen. The author displays the relationships between these characters have with another, as a patient and in their careers. Lam’s own experiences as a doctor are clearly visible in his writing. He was showing a serious change that occurs in people who work as a doctor. He wanted the readers to know that helping the sick patients is not easy. It’s often complicated .the telling of the stories helped him express his ideas.Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures

This was an interesting book. I really think the man who wrote this book had to be a real doctor. That is my impression. The part of the book I liked best in the book was the parts about the love triangle between Ming, Chen and Fitzgerald. I like love stories. It was interesting to me that Ming who is Chinese was going with Fitzgerald who is English. This is unusual for me and for people from my culture so it was good to read about.

The Differences between Men and Women in Communication Patterns

The Differences between Men and Women in Communication Patterns

The points that girls made about being able to talk for hours comfortably about so many different things are really interesting. Women can talk and talk and talk for hours about something not important. She and her friend should waste their time on something important . How can she spend this length of time without getting bored .Men are not like this. When they have something to say, they say it. It does not take us two hours to make a point. We can say it in one sentence. I can say, “I don’t like that girl” and right away everyone know what I think. I do not have to spend the next two hours saying why. Men want to have conversations that have meaning and are important. We do not want to waste our time talking and talking . We do not need to have exercise for our tongues. Men can sit in the same room together and say nothing for hours and still be comfortable with each other. This is not possible for women. If there is silence in a room of women they are all worried what the others are thinking about. They cannot stand the silence and will have to start talking because they are afraid that the others are thinking bad things about them. To stop these possible bad thoughts, they talk. Men do not care if other men are thinking good or bad things about them.

language learning

Language Learning

Making mistakes is helpful for people to make progress in learning language. When people make mistakes and the teacher corrects their mistake, the student learns the right way and so makes progress. In learning it is important to try new things. This is true in language learning too. A student has to try to say things and to write things the way he thinks they should be. Of course, the student will always make mistakes and that is not bad. In fact, it is good. That way the student learns two things. He learns what is wrong, and after his teacher corrects him, he learns what is right.

Practicing as often as possible is really important to language learning. I know this because after I completed Level VI, I went home to Saudi Arabia. I thought my English was really good. I stayed there for 5 months, only speaking Arabic. When I came back I had a big surprise. I had forgotten so much. I had not practiced for those 5 months and it really showed. I had forgotten vocabulary and grammar. Going back to school was really difficult.

Analysing the speech of other people is important too. It is really good to listen to other people and how they say things. Of course, we must listen to English speakers if we want to hear the language spoken correctly. I try to listen to English television and to English people when they are talking so that I can copy the way that they say things. This is a good way to learn.

Skyscrapers

These high buildings are good because populations are increasing and more and more land is needed for them. It is too bad to use this land for houses because it is better to use it for farms to grow food. For this reason the skyscrapers are good because many people can live in small amounts of land. The buildings are high with many floors so hundreds of people can live in them. These kinds of buildings are also good for business and offices. Skyscrapers can have shops on the lower floors and offices on the higher floors. Some are used for different purposes. For example, a new skyscraper in Montreal has the bottom floors for a hotel and the higher floors for apartments. The best place in the world to see skyscrapers today is in Dubai. They are everywhere and some of them are really interesting looking. The tallest building in the world is now the Burj Dubai.

The bad side of building skyscrapers is that they make hundreds of people live too close together. No one has gardens or places for the children to play. I think it must be hard to live as a child in a skyscraper. Where do you play? These buildings are also expensive to live in or to have an office in. If a problem comes the building can be a sick building which means that the air is bad and people get sick. Disease moves from one apartment to another. In emergency situations people cannot leave quickly. You cannot get in an elevator if the building is on fire.