Tuesday, 15 December 2009

  • outgoing gym-goers

    i need to make an amendment to a post i made recently. in that post, i said that the people i've met at the gym seem like they don't have any friends outside of the gym. i've been talking to them more lately, and i've changed my mind - i think they are just very social people.

    in fact, the more i've realized how social they are, the more i've admired their genuine interest in others & the way they love meeting new people. when they talk about their lives outside of the gym, it becomes evident that they are just very outgoing people.

    i'm more of a responder than an initiator myself, but i think it's nice that initiators exist. and now i think they're cooler & less lonely than the non-talkers at the gym.

Saturday, 12 December 2009

  • "achieving success with difficult people"

    my job is letting me take an online course i found called "achieving success with difficult people." it started wednesday, and i like it so far! the basis of the course (as i understand it) seems to be that we all have different communication styles, and the "difficult people" in our lives are those whose communication styles differ from our own.

    our first assignment was to find out the preferred communication styles of people we interact with regularly by using a questionnaire. strangely, almost everyone i gave it to (coworkers, friends, & clients), including the "difficult people," got the same result: "feeler."

    most people found the questionnaire confusing and were unsure of their answers, so i am doubting the accuracy of these results. but through reading about the various communication styles, i am classifying people myself, according to how i perceive them. i got a coworker to classify me too, so that i could see if the way i perceive my own style is different from how others interpret it. our answers pretty-much aligned, but a couple of her perceptions surprised me.

    anyway, it's a 6-wk course, and hopefully by the end of it, i will be a more understanding person who can communicate more easily with "difficult people." anyone can begin the course at the start of any month, so if you're interested in it, let me know! :D

Sunday, 06 December 2009

  • the sad truth about gao zhisheng

    okay it's current events time! i spent like 5 minutes trying to choose a topic from the news sites i frequent, but i didn't really care or know anything about any of the articles i saw, so i gave up. then i remembered gao zhisheng! this topic is amazing & heart-wrenching, so i'm going to write about it. okay here's the deal:

    gao zhisheng is a worldwide-acclaimed Christian human rights attorney in china. apparently china doesn't really like human rights attorneys, because they point out the government's flaws & ask them to change. in the past, gao zhisheng has been harassed, kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured for his work. at the beginning of this year (feb 2009), shortly after gao zhisheng released the account of a gruesome 50-day torture he endured in a chinese prison, he disappeared, and no one has seen him since.

    there's a huge outcry because of this - it turns out that the chinese government took him (surprise!), and after 11 months, they still won't give information about his condition, except that he is alive. reading the account of his previous 50-day torture in their hands raises a lot of concern for his current condition. it's been 305 days now!

    gao zhisheng's family has been granted asylum in the US, and many people are working to free him. you can read the full story at Christianity today, and you can find more information + ways you can help on the "help free gao zhisheng" website.

    chinese people are awesome, and they don't deserve this suffering. i'm reading a book called "safely home" right now that talks about the persecution of Christians and "prisoners" in china, and i'm almost tempted to disbelieve what i'm reading because it's so extreme. ignoring sad truths doesn't make them go away though.

    this post is about a sad truth - you can ignore it, but it won't make it go away!

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