TED Community » Jocelyn Chow

More About Me

I'm passionate about

NGO, children's development, social issues, promoting love & social responsibility, writing, blogging, travelling and meeting people from various cultural backgrounds.

An idea worth spreading

We shall never cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time ----T. S. Eliot

My TED Story

I believe in the power of words, and I'm dedicated to exerting a positive influence on my readers' life. Having been a blogger for five and half years, I feel fortunate and grateful when I read the comments posted by the readers saying that my words have often brought encouragement, confidence and inspiration to their life...The habit of writing is now in my blood and it seems that every breath I take is inextricably linked with an impulse to record my ideas. Also, I'm fascinated with travelling, not travelling for sightseeing, but travelling to meet more people from different places of the world and talk to each other to further our understandings of different cultures, beliefs, norms, perceptions, behaviors, and values...to try to fight with misunderstandings, prejudice, bias, and stereotypes etc. Mark Twain once said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it solely on these accounts..."

Comments

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• A comment on Talk: Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

  Oct 18 2011: Simply want to say that I love reading Alain de Botton's books...:)

• A comment on Talk: Jarreth Merz: Filming democracy in Ghana

  Oct 17 2011: Basically this talk is thought-provoking to me. I read some of the previous comments by other viewers...somehow, there is a strain of disquiet praying on my mind when I find that people are really critical about this talk. To me, this talk reminds me of the conversations that once I had with a girl from Ghana and a boy from Mali, both of whom were journalism majors at that time, and we came across each other at dinner. So we sat on the same table and started to talk about everything, politics, democracy, international affairs, different cultures, social justice and gender equality etc. Now I still remember that these two shared with me how their governments ran and the political situations in their countries. They also told me that, as a member of the younger generation, they were exerting their effort with a hope to bring some changes to their country...That boy used to be a journalist working in Egypt and he had travelled a lot before he became to a student again, so seeing more of the world has helped him become more open-minded, and true, he was really an outspoken. I still remember that this girl told me about the deep concerns that she had about the future of Ghana, but I also remember the ray of hope shining in her eyes when I was gazing at her. I could really feel the strong sense of responsibility that those young people shouldered and were determined to assume...I simply want to say, as human beings who have got an independent thinking ability...we do have choices, no matter what kind of situations we have been put in...and by making a sensible and different choice, we are making not only a difference but also an improvement in our society, and also in the world...let us be more forward-looking and...selfless...
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

  Oct 17 2011: Being a student majoring in Intercultural Communication, I've been constantly reflecting upon the ways to reduce cultural misunderstandings, prejudice, bias when people from various cultural backgrounds meet each other. To be, it should be a common wish of human beings, since we co-exist in this planet and we need to establish a harmonious relationship with each other. This summer, I joined a group of interns to work for an NGO as a volunteer in a children's centre. Even though before that I had learnt quite a lot about intercultural communication issues and concerns from my textbooks and from our lectures, I have to admit, that was the first time when I had a real contact with those too-familiar terms like cultural misunderstandings, prejudice, bias...stereotyping (just like this speaker has demonstrated in her talk)...Like one of my Egyptian teammates shared with us her story, that once when she was present at an international conference, one of the peers from Europe asked her, "How did you come to Europe?" She replied, "By air, of couse." That boy was surprised, "What? I didn't know that Egypt has airplanes...I thought you all ride camels..." She was speechless at that moment. And after she had shared with us this funny story, she started to ask us about the impressions on her country. I was also stimulated to think a lot about my country...and I was surprised to find that my friends from other countries did have many misconceptions about us, and from that moment on, I have been thinking hard about how to help people better understand each other. Textbooks have always been teaching us to put ourselves in others' shoes, to truly identify with each other. But the point is, if we have never met a person from that specific country, and if we could only get our knowledge from the media, especially the media intensely controlled by the ruling party...how could people really know about each other? I sincerely hope everyone of us can have more compassion and love...