A book, film, or TV series enjoyed
I think that most of us can change our interests over lifetimes. I mean we might have been interested in sports when we were young, but when we grow up we might be interested in music instead. I am in that group of people and now I am fascinated about designing experience. Recently, Yu-Kai Chou’s ‘Actionable Gamification’ has become my most favorite book.
My interests on gamification started six months ago when I was given ‘a special project’ at my last job. It was about how to improve customer experience. Most of my colleagues and I found it was challenging to work on that assignment, as we thought that customer experience is abstract, hard to understand and difficult to measure. Although I have worked in the field of client services and relationship management for a long time, I found it is very challenging to design engaging experiences on digital platforms. Like most companies, I had to put in a lot of effort to develop a mobile application that customers would love and could not live without. Therefore, I started working on my project by studying mobile applications from many successful companies such as Airbnb, TikTok and Linkedin, and I discovered that the companies mentioned how they apply psychology in video games to create engaging digital experiences on their mobile applications. I thought that this was brilliant!
I used to think that we cannot learn anything from video games, but reading ‘Actionable Gamification’ changed my perspective toward it. According to Yu-Kai Chou, the author of the book, game designers apply a lot of theories from behavioral science and psychology to make players engage and become addicted to the video games. I agree with Yu-Kai Chou that when we ask people the reasons why they enjoy playing video games, they will give opinions such as video games allow them to be creative, it builds teamwork and they can take on challenges. Now, I have discovered the secret of addiction to video games!
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And a book, film or TV series not enjoyed
In my free times, I often watch movies. I can watch all kinds of films but Deadpool is the worst movie that I have ever watched.
I love watching superhero movies because I want to feel a sense of being chosen to do something greater than ordinary people. I can recall the famous quote from Spiderman "With great power, comes great responsibility. This is my gift, my curse.” It feels like he is chosen to do something bigger than himself. Huge missions are calling him and he needs to scarify his personal life to protect the whole society. After watching this kind of movie, I feel motivated and empowered to handle challenges in my daily life. I think I am influenced and motivated by the psychology in the superhero movies and I work hard and really care about the greater good. If I could ask Spiderman a single question, I would ask him how to make a balance between his personal life and his great missions, as I do not think that he needs to scarify his personal life for the greater good.
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A regular habit
When I arrive home after work, I usually allocate at least 30 minutes of my times to practice meditation.
I began my journey on the trainings of my mind 13 years ago, as I had difficult times to take control of my emotions. I mean my mind was like the weather that kept changing: The sky was so blue when I heard good news; It rained when someone disappointed me; There was a storm when someone betrayed me. I realized that my mind was the source of unhappiness. Fortunately, one day while I was discussing meditation with my colleagues, she invited me to attend a meditation course at Wat Dhammamongkol. With my eagerness to learn, I then quickly accepted her invitation. We visited the temple and we had a good chance to meet Luangphor Viriyang Sirintharo, the master of meditation instructor, as he used to teach Dhamma and meditation to the public on Sunday. Before I met the abbot of the temple, I had learned meditation from books, but it was very confusing. However, the abbot was able to simplify the practice of meditation and his teaching was very expansive. I really enjoy his teaching as it explained through analogy as well as by way of comparison so that it was easy to follow.
In my routine practice of meditation, I begin with sitting with both legs folded back to one side, and then I pronounce “I go for Refuge to the Lord Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. I hereby pay tribute to my parents and teachers. May all Bless. Lead my mind into concentration.” After that, I recite in my mind “Buddho Dhammo Sangho” three times. The third step is that I check my posture and keep my body erect. When I feel ready, I close my eyes while reciting “Buddho” comfortably in the mind for 30 minutes. During this, if my mind wriggles away with various thoughts, I’ll bring it back and attach it with the reciting word “Buddho”. Finally, I can feel the power of the stillness of my mind.
I think your regular habit is very interesting. I attended the maditation class once when I was in school. I could do it only 5 minutes but you do maditation for 30 minutes. You are amazing!!
ReplyDeleteHi Gubgib--thank you for your comment--it means a lot to me. I agree with Peter that meditation is hard work. I used to be exhausted practicing meditation the first month of my training. However, the more I practice the more I feel relaxed.
DeleteHi Gubgib--thank you for your comment--it means a lot to me. I agree with Peter that meditation is hard work. I used to be exhausted practicing meditation the first month of my training. However, the more I practice the more I feel relaxed.
DeleteWhen I was considering my favorite movies for my introduction, Deadpool was one in my list. I like the character of this character because he looks funny and I like his mutated body that can heal itself every time after an accident or especially when he is injured in a fight but the storyline is not very interesting, so I changed my mind. After reading your introduction, you reminded about some not nice scences and I totally agree with you that there are some sex and violent scenes I did not feeling it. There are some scenes where he kills a lot of people easily for just finding a big boss of a gangster in part 1. For me he is not a superhero he is just a mutated character. In my opinion part 2 is much better than part 1. He flights for a school and change life of some people but I have to check again that there are some sex and violent scenes or not. I forgot it because I watched it a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteNat's comments on it following on from Emma's comments about the violence in Deadpool interested me. I don't mind violence, and if I just want to be entertained without thinking, a silly action film with moderate to serious violence does the job (meditation would probably be better, but everyone seems to agree that's hard work). For example, I enjoyed the very violent, and silly, John Wick films, at least the first one. And when I thought about it a bit more, I realized that some of my favourite stories have a lot of violence in them. Everyone knows that Shakespeare is full of violence: people being stabbed, executed, poisoned, drowned, committing suicide and so on. And of course his stories are full of sex. On the other hand, my all-time favourite novel, Pride and Prejudice, has no violence at all, and only politely hints at sex: Lydia is seduced by the wicked Mr. Wickham and has to quickly be managed into marriage with him, which disappoints the gossipping neighbours, who had hoped for a more exciting end to the story with her being abandoned and having to "come upon the town" or be "secluded from the world, in some distant farm house"; that is about as violent or explicit as Jane Austen gets: but the reader's imagination is left in no doubt by her witty comment on the hypocrisy of polite society.
DeleteI think that if violence serves a purpose in the story, it should be there, but not if it has no reason for being in the piece of work. The Godfather, like Shakespeare and Homer, contains violence, but it contributes to the story the film tells, which would be weakened without it. I haven't seen Deadpool, so can't really comment, but from the descriptions, it sounds like it lacks any unity that is helped by violence, unlike John Wick, where it's an essential element in the entertaining silliness.
(Yes. I've read Pride and Prejudice so many times that I do remember a fair bit of Austen's perfectly composed language.)
DeleteI have read an article where you have presented a book that describes the game process. I was interested and thought it would be of great benefit to business and sales. It may also give us a better understanding of the process for attracting people to be more interested in something. I'm going to find that book to read follow your advice.
ReplyDelete