Holy Spirit Auto Correct

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." -- Romans 8:26-27

Auto correct seems to have a mind of its own -- it corrects and chooses words for us and often those words change the entire meaning of the sentence. Take the example above. Spell check doesn't recognize the word "Disney" and so it auto corrects and chooses the word "divorce." Ever had this happen to you?

I actually had something similar happen to me the other day and boy did it cause an avalanche! But it got me thinking about how poorly we are at communication. It's been said that communication is comprised of 55% body language, 38% voice tone, and 7% content of words. And now that we've become an electronic generation -- often preferring to communicate via text messages, email, and Facebook, we've taken body language and voice tone out of the communication equation altogether. No wonder we struggle so much!

But there is one area where we don't have to struggle. I like to think of the Holy Spirit as our "auto corrector" when we're praying to the Father. The Spirit understands the will of God and prays for us according to His will. And one thing is certain, we don't have to worry about the Holy Spirit choosing the wrong words. Now that's an auto correction I can appreciate! ;)

For infants, walking is more than just another step in motor development

When an infant starts walking, this important achievement is more than just a milestone in motor control. According to Melissa Clearfield, the child's newfound locomotor skill arrives hand-in-hand with a raft of other changes in social behaviour and maturity. This is an unfolding, interactive process of development that before now has been little explored by psychologists.

Clearfield first had 17 non-walking infants (aged between 9 and 11 months) twice spend ten minutes exploring a 3m by 3m floor area dotted with toys, and with their mother and three other people positioned in each corner. The infants first explored the area crawling and then in a baby walker (this piece of equipment allows infants who can't yet walk to move around in an upright position as if walking).

The infants spent the same amount of time interacting with toys and people, gesturing and vocalising, whether they were crawling or in the baby walker. In other words, there wasn't anything about being in an upright position per se that changed the social behaviour of these children.

Next, Clearfield had a new group of 16 infants (also aged nine to eleven months) perform the same task, except these children were all walkers. These walking infants, even though they were age-matched to the first group, spent considerably more time vocalising and making socially-directed gestures, such as pointing at or waving a toy whilst looking at their mothers. Overall, the walkers spent three times as much time interacting with their mothers, and twice as much time interacting with the toys, compared with crawlers of the same age.

A final study tested another set of fourteen 9-month-old infants on the same exploratory task, once a month for six months, to see how their behaviour changed, not by virtue of their age, but rather according to whether they had yet learned to walk (onset of walking ability varied across the group, but all were walking by 15 months).

Irrespective of age, Clearfield found that infants gestured far more during their first walk session compared with their last crawl session, and that they interacted with their mothers more, and their toys less, during their first walk session compared with both their last crawl session and their second walk session.

By twelve months of age, eight members of this final infant group were walking, whilst six were still crawling. Comparing the walkers and crawlers revealed once again that the walkers interacted more with their mothers and performed more social gestures. 'This more mature mode of interaction did not come about through age or more experience in the world,' Clearfield said, 'but rather, the transition to independent walking itself changed how infants interact with others.'

The message is that the same developmental processes that lead an infant to take its first steps, also seem to drive changes in their social behaviour. Importantly, the baby walker study showed this isn't simply because of different opportunities afforded by being in an upright position. 'Under this explanation,' Clearfield concluded, 'processes such as perception, attention, memory, cognition, and social behaviours all shift to accommodate infants' new mode of moving through the world, and each process affects and is affected by the changes in the other processes. From this dynamic view, learning to walk becomes much more than simply a motor milestone; instead, it becomes the core of system-wide changes across many developing domains.'
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Clearfield, M. (2011). Learning to walk changes infants’ social interactions. Infant Behavior and Development, 34 (1), 15-25 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2010.04.008

Photography of Ho Chi Minh City

Here are some of the photos I've taken while touring around Ho Chi Minh City with my mom.

Taken with a wide angle 10-22mm lens.

Notre Dame Cathedral






















Interior of Notre Dame Cathedral










Post Office
















Opera House




City Museum

A psychology lesson in a box?

Marc Smith of Boroughbridge High School, North Yorkshire, reviews the AS/A2 Biopsychology PsyKit from Uniview Worldwide. Price £49 (excl. VAT)

"While I have been aware of products offered by Uniview for some time and have purchased a number of their DVD’s, I have tended to produce my own resources and lesson activities. The idea of a ‘Psychology lesson in a box’, therefore, was immediately appealing and offered the prospect of reducing a teacher's workload by offering everything that was needed for an entire lesson. The kit is certainly packed with ‘stuff’ (some more useful than others) and briefly comprises: an animated neuroscience DVD illustrating the brain's response to nicotine, cocaine and marijuana; a brain jelly mould (presumably for making jelly in the shape of a brain); a shower cap activity kit (more later); two bags of jelly brain sweets; 12 badges displaying a brain with the caption ‘are you using yours?’; 6 brain function magnets; 3 mini neuron soft toys; 12 metal puzzles; a stopwatch; a ruler and finally a ‘scrap sack’ for an echo-location activity.

The twenty-five minute DVD (individual price £40) is very well produced - although the American narrator may confuse some students with his pronunciation of some key terms - and it includes some effective animations illustrating the synapse and neurotransmitter release. The brain jelly mould is a rather curious thing and is perhaps best filled with plaster or silicone rather than jelly. The shower cap activity kit is another curiosity. In the past I have used a baseball cap and post-it notes to carry out this activity rather than a bright pink shower cap with magnetic laminated cards. The premise is quite simple and involves students placing the cards on the appropriate part of the cap to represent the likes of localisation and brain damage. I suspect that getting one of my male students to sit with a bright pink shower cap on his head may prove problematic - but would at least liven up the lesson.

The remainder of the kit, for me, has limited appeal. Some schools have rules about handing out sweets to pupils so the jelly brain sweets could be a non-starter and I know that many of my own sixth formers would recoil at the prospect of having to wear a badge. The neuron soft toys are certainly fun and informative but students could probably do with a more detailed three-dimensional representation of a brain cell – a colleague of mine would get students to make their own three dimensional microbes which, I suspect, had a bigger impact on them.

The kit certainly represents value in a monetary sense, but perhaps only because teaching resources remain so expensive. Unfortunately, much of the kit would go unused in my classroom due to the uncertainly surrounding exactly what my students would learn from them. Nevertheless, the kit is fun and would certainly appeal to teachers wishing to wind down on a Friday afternoon."

-Link to the biopsychology PsyKit.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Ah... Ho Chi Minh City.




Or more commonly known as Saigon (the older name of the city before 1975), or abbreviation HCMC.

The former capital city of Replubic of Vietnam.

I know, shocking, you would think the more populated and commercialised city of Vietnam would be the capital, but no, Hanoi is the Capital of Vietnam.


Might I remind that this trip was made quite a while back, so please do not assume that I am in Vietnam right at this moment, so many people have always mistaken this. It's not easy to blog while you're on the go, so I always make sure I blog after I returned from a trip. :)

My mom and I flew into HCMC and checked into a nice budget clean hotel on one of the busy street in Central Ho Chi Minh City.




It wasn't expensive. Probably around RM120 or so per night. Reasonable for two I'd say.

My friend Gerald was to arrive two days after our arrival. He flew in from Brunei and since our trips coincide, we decided to travel together during the days we were in HCMC.

Anyway, on the first day, I met up with a reader of mine, Robin Leong, who brought my mom and I to the famous Ben Thanh Market in Central HCMC for a drink.


that's my mom to the right!


Robin introduced to us a local cendol-looking drink, which name I have long forgotten, that tasted really nice.




It's very rich and much more refreshing than our Malaysian cendol drink. I loved it.

We then down it with some local Vietnamese teas (tasted like wheat tea) to wash off the richness of the earlier drinks.




If you're in HCMC, be sure you visit the Ben Thanh market at least once, if not only for the food.

There are many local spices and souveniers to be found here.




One of my personal favourites were the Vietnamese ham (I don't know what to call it so I'd just name it based on the country I bought from).




These hams tasted very different from our usual western hams or our eastern luncheon meat. They're harder and saltier and by god the most delicious thing you'd ever savour.

I first tasted this ham in Laos (Vientiane city) and it came in a form of a 5000 kip baguette sandwich (that's RM2).




It's a sandwich made of french baguette, spread with pork pâté (well they were a french colony once), pork floss, cucumber, little shredded lettuce (optional), and drizzled with really delicious local soy sauce (also found in Ben Thanh market, more fragrant than the typical Chinese version, I call it Vietnamese soy sauce, go figure).

Not exactly the most halal thing in the world. But god it's defintely one of the best sandwich I've ever tasted this lifetime.

God I missed it.


Since we're in Vietnam, here's a photo of a beautiful Vietnamese lady.



I'm sorry if your view of beauty is different from mine. :)


We then did a walking tour (according to Lonely Planet guide book) around HCMC (just momsy and I).




Starting from the Reunification Palace, which unfortunately, was not open to public that day. :(




Then we progressively walked along the dotted line as stated on the map and brought ourselves to the side of a beautiful cathedral.




The Notre Dame Cathedral to be exact, in HCMC.


More gorgeous photos with my wide angle SLR (when I was more arsed about taking good looking photos) in the next post.


Group of Vietnamese playing Chinese chess at the street side.




According to the guide book, we 'had' to visit the post office, which was an odd request, but obliged anyway.


Buu Dien in Vietnamese?



Old French telephone booths.


It was unmistakenly one of the fanciest heritage post office I've seen, even more so than the heritage red building post office in Melaka.




From here onwards it's quite a walk to see the next spotlight which was a hotel continential building, next to an Opera House, also next to an LV store. All which looked pretty French colonial style.


LV Saigon!



Opera House.



topless lady statue pillar



a very tired mom


Considering my mom's age at that point (well over 60), she's doing pretty well, though I have intention to buy her an electric motor-chair one day to bring to our travels.

Finally, we decided to head into residential street to visit the Ho Chi Minh City Museum to end the day.


I have walked to the middle of the road to take a photo of the motorcycle 'trend' in HCMC.


Took a photo of this ghastly eletrical pole in the centre of the road.




Tell me this is not the scariest thing you've ever seen.




I bet millions of pigeons die every year in Saigon, Vietnam.





HCMC Museum finally.

Spotted a 40's Citroen in front of the building.




Still kept at a very good condition. Ahh, I've always love looking at classical cars (note: not drive nor own one).













We didn't have any tour guide so we decided to just look-see around.


Lobby.


The museum showed the life of father of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh in his days; and the early life documentaries of the early Saigon.


a log boat












skin drum!








Then at night, reader Robin Leong brought us to dine at a local up-scale Vietnamese restaurant in town that served overpriced Vietnamese food.


Mom choosing her food with her spetacles. So cute.


Food was nothing special, and really expensive even for our (Malaysian) standard. But I guess it was a good experience and it did have nice atmosphere, albeit a bit noisy.


The young yuppies of HCMC knew how to enjoy life.









I liked these salt and pepper shakers.


Me and my freakishly long arms.





back when I still have fringe.



opps blurry



Mom and daugther!



Tuna Salad, cause I really didn't know what else to order.



Pretty so-so Vietnamese spring rolls.





Ah.. I do miss my fringe.

But never again.