TravelCent » Society

Dancing in the Streets

Scott — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:27:43 +0000

Street Dance is an umbrella term used to describe dance styles that evolve outside of dance studios. Competitive street dancing started in the early 1970s among the New York City gangs, such as the Zulu Kings and the Rock Steady Crew. The street dance movement know as ‘King Tut’ uses the head and arm movements of the Egyptians dance style depicted in the hieroglyphic of Egypt. Break Dancing, dancers spin the body on the head, back, hands and performing aerial dives and complicated fast footwork, started in the Bronx and grew out of the graffiti art and rapping culture. The aims of break dancing which developed control and coordination of acrobatics and athletic feats either solo, with a partner or in a group to demonstrate the superiority over rival gangs. Break Dancing exploded on to the world market not to long after the late 70’s and became popular among non-gang members and any American traveler could witness this phenomena being performed on the train platforms in India all the way to witnessing break dancer as young as eight perform right outside one of Singapore Luxury Hotels to earn a living.

Break Dancing evolved to what is called ‘Body Popping‘ with terms like The Turtle and The Beetle Crawl. Body Popping consist of a jerky articulation of isolated parts of the body creating a chain of movements which appear to ripple. A mechanical effect is created by tensing the muscles in a stiff body; the exacting movements are small and sharp. Today’s street dancing is commonly used specifically for the many hip-hop dances and funk dances and are no longer considered gang related. The popularity among the younger generations have taken street dance to a whole new level. There is now an American television show almost dedicated to the street dancer called ‘So You Think You Can Dance?‘. Which has brought legitimacy to the once gangster related activity and is now being taught in the better known dancing schools and studios.

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Dancing in the Streets

Projects to Manage and Balance

Scott — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:21:12 +0000

Sitting in a lobby in one of the hundreds of Singapore Hotels, Sandra watched the travellers in a constant flow of coming and going. She was waiting for her inspiration, her muse to show as so to spark a new poem or a new short-story. This was her favorite way to be creative, to rely on the world’s population to make her living for her, even though they do not know that that’s their purpose when they come into Sandra’s view. Even if they read one of her pros or poems, they would be unaware that they were the project managers of her work. Demanding she create a project that will enhance their portfolio of awareness and bring in a wealth of understanding.

Sandra is an accomplished writer and poet. But, she never let herself be addressed as a writer or as a poet. She would instead request when being introduced at a bookstore or lecture hall, to refer her as simply an employee of the world. This always gets queer looks of non-understanding from the announcer and many of the audience members hoping for a glimmer to making sense of her and her writings. Sandra is all to familiar with this look and she makes a note of it in her future projects notepad of how she needs to allow another completely different project manager to put on her desk the project she thought was complete. This suits her well, for if she can make one person understand that they are her employer, her project manager and that it is her job to bring to task the very nature of the projects existence, then she herself feels accomplished and to finish the task that of their necessity of living their lives all worth while. This is Sandra’s talent, to find the balance in the project and make the project itself become a medium of conscious awareness. Nothing more than that will she create for nothing more is necessary. So, she waits in the lobby, waits for her that next project in need of balance to be placed on her desk of imaginations.

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Projects to Manage and Balance

Chicken crossed the Road Less Travelled

Scott — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:18:02 +0000

You know that old joke? “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.’ As a young girl in kindergarten, it didn’t get it. I didn’t get why that was funny or profound. To me it made perfect sense. Of course it crossed the road to get to the other side. Children, at that age, do take every statement literally. Sometimes I still do, and I get the weirdest looks from people. For example: I was staying in one of the Business Hotels Singapore for business. Earlier that day, in a business meeting with my clients, one of them say to get someone tonight to sign a document giving permission to access one of our online analysis statistics spreadsheets. I took that statement literally, maybe it was my jet-lag, but I waited until it was night to do this. I mean, I literally waited until dark! Needless to say, my client was very upset I took so long to get him access to this information. My boss, my colleagues and my client, in not so polite words, told me to reconsider my career.

I’ve actually been reconsidering my career, my life, my boyfriend, well every aspect of my life really. My career, well I’m just a glorified paper pusher. All my so called mainstream friends think I have a fantastic career; I get to travel across the world. I just get time in the other countries I visit for business to push more paper there. That day, in Singapore, I made a decision, I decided to take that road less travelled. To quit my well paying job, sell my big house, pull out my 401K, buy a used beat up RV and see what I’ve been missing. My boyfriend will break up with me, my friends will not understand and for sure my folks will disapprove. But, doesn’t sound wonderful? To drop out of the rat-race and join in the joy of not living up to other peoples expectations.

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Chicken crossed the Road Less Travelled

Hong Kong Waters

Scott — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:57:22 +0000

Consumers in Hong Kong are urged to respond in action to a global call for access to clean water. With the exception of the Water Supply Industry, all major utilities in Hong Kong are owned and operated by Hong Kongs private enterprises. In terms of price, returns, and productivity, the water supply industry in Hong Kong compared unfavourably with privately owed utilities. The financial performance of the Water Supplies Department (WSD) has been deteriorating in recent years, especially in the Public Rental Housing (PRH) arena. In order to improve the performance of the water supply industry, the Hong Kong Government should consider inviting the private sector to run the industry. Hong Kong can learn from other countries with regard to reforms made in the water supply industry

The travel industries such as the Best Hong Kong Hotels and Hong Kongs Technology Research Centers in a joint effort with the Consumer Council has collaborated with the Water Supplies Department to heighten consumer awareness of the importance and need of maintaining a high quality of water supply at the taps. Although the quality of treated water from the WSD fully complies with the World Health Organization guidelines for drinking water and that more that 99.9% of residence have government water supply in Hong Kong, discolored or dirty tap water remains a source of consumer grievance.

To arouse public awareness and help consumers in their choice of service providers, the Hong Kong Consumer Council has surveyed the market in the cleaning of water tanks. And today quality fresh water supply in Public Rental Housing blocks have a guaranteed certification from the Water Supply Department for Fresh Water Plumbing Quality Maintenance Recognition Scheme (FWPQMRS). The WSD encourage building owners to maintain their plumbing properly and to provide it’s tenants with good quality tap water. The public is further advised that the task of cleaning water tanks should be performed only by personnel with appropriate experience and supervised by competent personnel.

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Hong Kong Waters

The Intention of Healing

Scott — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:51:55 +0000

When I was in my twenties and participating in a weekend workshop for actors being held at a Singapore Boutique Hotel, I learned about Script Analysis. In that workshop they taught us about how to dissect a script and find our characters intentions. We had to do this for every line in the script our characters had. This was my first time having to understand what an intention was. Being young and not too worldly, concepts came slow to me, but learning about how not only my character has ‘intentions’, but how I have intentions. This was a powerful moment for me.

Now, twenty years later, I’m seeing all kinds of books and movies being made concerning intentions, like ‘What the Bleep’ which is all about scientific studies on how powerful thoughts and intentions really are in our lives. The power of intentions is based on the principle of ‘like attracts like.’ Whatever we focus our minds on, we will draw to us. for example, if we have fearful thoughts, we will attract fearful situations and people to us, or if we have thoughts of peace and have inner balance we will attract peaceful situations and peace balanced people. It’s because our thoughts have a powerful effect in the physical world.

All of us have this power, but for some reason as children we were conditioned, educated about our limitations, about the skepticism of us having our own powers. Because of this conditioning we forgot about our innate abilities to manifest what we want; we were taught that all power is outside of us. But, there are now documented studies proving that our thoughts, our intentions do have power. In one study, half of the participants that actually exercised were able to achieve a 30% increase in strength. The other half who just imagined themselves exercising achieved and astonishing 16% increase. Showing that virtual workouts can give the same effects as actually working out. There are now journal after journal documenting such experiments. Seeing all this material being produced makes me wonder if when I learned about my character having intentions that I created an intention to be ready for the next phase of the true power behind intentions.

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The Intention of Healing