Natural Inquirers

Non-academia laymen usually think becoming quantitative or qualitative researchers demand relatively long-time well-structured training. Having received strictly structured training in both quantitative and qualitative research methodology in the past five years, ironically, I observe these skills, particularly qualitative analysis, have been used by everybody in our daily life.

Qualitative analysis skills include a variety of skills such as establishing connections among available data, comparing and contrasting, and soliciting abstract and generalized meanings from big amount of concrete and detailed information, and sometimes searching for more useful inforamtion to support a conclusion, researchers need to master to make sense of social phenomena. Regardless of how skillful an ordinary person is, he or she is constantly using one ore more skills to understand people and his/her surroundings. I didn't realize this until some dramatic stories happened on some of my friends here.

Over a regular weekend-gathering dinner, one of our long-term single friends informed everyone that she had obtained her marriage certificate with a guy she has been Internet-dating for merely three months. Everybody was deeply shocked. She has been single since we got to know her five years ago and has never been seriously considering dating any guy. Now she was telling everyone she had married to a guy she merely met for four times. After she left the party, stunned friends that stayed couldn't help tougue-wagging about her sudden marriage. EVERYBODY enthusiasticly provided their understanding about the reasons this female friend got married so unpredictably soon. Interestingly, everybody not only provided the reasons that they think triggered this sudden marriage but explained how they discovered those factors. More interestingly, the information based on which they concluded about the factors can be traced back to years ago. While contributing to the heated discussion, I observed how amazingly everyone was presenting their "research" process and their "findings"like skilled natural inquirers.

Despite the fact that qualitative "research" is used by people every day, qualitative research paradigm was not accepted as a solid research paradigm until 1980s. Quantitative research paradigm has been considered the orthodoxy for more than one century. Even recently, qualitative researchers still have to defend the value of qualitative research in front of some die-hard quantitative research proponents. What an irony...

Cyber Citizens...

A saturday night talk with my friends brought up one interesting topic. When we were criticizing the clumsy social skills of a guy who just moved to our area and came to our party last week, a friend pointed out those were his "cyber-social" rather than real-life skills. The idea of interferring role of cyber-social skills in normal social life didn't come to my mind until the next day when I was reading articles on contextual influence on human mental development.

Internet, paricularly online community, seems to have become a main living space for many people nowadays. Because of the number of people and the interaction time they spend in various online communities, special culture, such as linguistic and pragmatic patterns, has been formed in each community. Some people, particularly those who are willingly or unvolunterily lack of face-to-face social interaction, have gradually been acculturated into these cyber cultures. Before they realize it, they start to use the lanugage patterns within the online community in normal social communication. Apparently, the online interaction is quite different from normal social interaction, which causes normal people think those cyber-citizens are insane... Interestingly, these cyber citizens may not realize the weird impression normal peole have on them until some day someone cannot stand their self-claimed jokes any more...

Miss World 2006

Miss World 2006 is fresh-out-of-the oven now. She is sweet and beautiful. No objection. But a look at her age astonished me. 18! And the first runner-up is 17 and the third is 20! I checked the Miss World website, but failed to find any criteria/requirements for MW contestants. I didn't watch this beauty contest thus had no clue why this Czech teenager won this contest. It is because of her appearance or both her external and internal assets? I have the urge to question what the result implies and what this contest implies at all. Miss America beauty contest has been viciously against by women in the U.S. since mid 1990s. Because more and more woman realize the sole purpose of this kind of contests is to entertain men in the U.S. by providing a new young female idol/doll every year. All assets the contestants need are their beauty. North American women have realized the deep underlying gender discrimination and they started to boycott all of them. Come back to the topic of Miss World 2006. At age 18, or 17, what assets do these girls possess besides youth and beauty? Isn't the newly crowned Miss World another fresh female idol/doll for the man-controlling world?

Health and Life Style

My latest blood examination shows that my organs are in great working condition, which is reflected in the red & white blood cell count and percentage of protein, sodium, calcium etc in my blood. When the doctor congratulated me on those great numbers, I was thinking"my life style does work in the right way!"

In the past several years, I have developed my own regimen including my diet and exercise rutine. The goal of my regimen has evolved from initially mere weight-watching to currently a more realistic one: keep fit and healthy. I used to be obsessive of searching for new and so-called effective dietary and exercise tips. But it seems I can pause for a while. At least my current life style works quite well. Hopefully, I can grow into an expert of healthy life style and someday publish some books on it:-)

Thin is out soon?

Starting from criticism of super-skinny models in Spain, backlash on thin models and celebrities in Hollywood has been on the headlines since July. After over a half century of thin-as-fad, people suddenly realize being thin is way out of trend. Thin models are suddenly facing the risk of losing their jobs, which they used to deadly starve themselves to gain. I don't know how long this thin-out "campaigne" will last. But models and celebrities are merely victims of this over-a-half-century weight drama. Models and celebrities keep thin to please the producers and ultimately audiences in order to keep their jobs. If nobody was willing to see some skeletons showing their bones and intruding cheeks on TV or runways, there would have never been such a group of idiots strarving themselves while they can afford plenty of food. After satisfying the weird taste of the audience for so many years, those poor girls have to make sudden changes because their audience suddenly reallizes their taste is not healthy! Let me put aside the comments on those poor girls for now. Talking about weight is always one of my interests.

Being thin is never one of my favors. Being healthy is my true concern. Some people confuse thinness and beauty. It may be true that a thin person looks better than a fat one in the same dress. However, it doesn't mean we should pursue extreme. Not mention the health issues caused by being under-weight, looking over-thin makes you look unenergetic and cold. In some cultures, being thin indicate a calculating personality. Well, nobody wants to have a calculating friend. My ideal figure must have toned muscle with radiating skin, which cannot be obtained without appropriate amount of exercises and appropriate diet.

PhD Syndrome

This comic strip illustrates so well some typical syndrome I have, ha^_^ I usually carry a book or papers with me whereever I go, particularly on weekends. I always think I can read them whenever I have a tiny slice of time. The thought makes me so comfortable with my identity: well that is what a PhD student is supposed to do--keep reading and thinking, and if possible writing actively. Guess what, I've never seriously finished anything I had expected myself to do over a weekend. My Sunday night always wraps up like this: I am eating my dinner while thinking 'I got to finish the reading or writing I promised to do before the weekend'. Well, for your knowledge, I always eat my dinner in front of my computer. Well, since I feel so comfortable surfing the Internet while eating, I cannot resist staying on the Internet even after the dinner. Then I end up keeping blaming myself for lack of willpower to do anything planned ahead at my bedtime. Maybe people always think bigger than they do...

Social Interaction

I have been secluded since I stopped taking courses. When I have no meeting or no course to teach, I stay in my office either writing my dissertation or reading books or articles. Most of time I feel satisfied with my situation because I can concentrate on my reading and thinking. But sometimes I feel sort of detached from the outside world by which I mean interaction with friends. The feeling is always mixed. When I interact with friends, the life seems interesting and lively. But too much social life, particularly those that are not quite constructive, makes me feel guilty because time is not used productively. Apart from that, social interaction may also cause some conflicts and confusion, which may demand unnecessary time and energy to deal with the frustration. Well, life is always complex. Every coin has two sides. You can only enjoy the joys while suffering the bitterness.