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SEE WEE HAN UK36255
Emmanuel Buckman

This is the very first time I heard about Gambia, the only thought that I have is can they understand English? Can we understand them?  The good experience I have shared with the Russian makes me feel so excited and can’t wait for the first meeting with the Gambian. I came a little late because of the traffic, so when the moment I came in, the link had started. However, it appear that the internet connection for Gambia is rather poor so the both video image and audio were not good to make any further communication. Some of us just barely made self-introduction and during the link they happened to keep disconnection so it was rather not a good experience.

Yet, I didn’t give up on it because we are provided with the contact email of our partner. So I move on and started the conversation with my partner through email, we manage to exchange whatsapp and I personally found his facebook and made friend with him. However, things doesn’t turn out as I think, when I tried to exchange our culture with him, talked about family history and religious. When I wrote a whole long pages of our culture and send it to him via messenger hoping that his reply will opened up the door of their country culture to me, unfortunately he only replied: Wow! Your culture are way more better than mine!

Although it didn’t turn out well as what I think, but still, I hope next year the Gambian will improve their internet connection speed and maybe show more interest in exchanging culture part.

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My reflection on all the 3 linking we had been through

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My reflection on all the 3 linking we had been through

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1. Russian

We did learn a lot from our Russian friend especially on their culture and religion. Though this is the most formal compared with the next two linking. However, it might be cold in Russia and that's why our friends are tend to be more cool. But it doesn't hide their passion toward their dream and life goals, and they are actually a very friendly person. From personal link, Valeriya was kind of delay in replying messages because Whatsapp wasn't their primary social app. After the final link, we have no conversation since since then. I have sent her my regard but it eventually ended up with seen. Therefore, i thought we are friend just for this class which kinda make me sad about it.

2. Gambia

Unfortunately, we couldn't have our general linking with our Gambian friends because i think they are facing some internet problem over in their country. But for personal linking, i managed to contact my partner, Jeng Assan. After the conversation, i discovered he is a very fun person and like to talk. We talked a lot on our family, country, food and even football. This is because he is a diehard Manchester United FC fan and we talk non stop on this topic. Until today, we still keep in touch with each other.

3. Peru

Conversation with Peruvian is another great experience from this course. They are friendly, passionate, and like to share. At first place, they appeared to be bored on this course which might cause by the morning laziness since they had their class in morning while we had ours at night. But it turned out they are willing to share their daily life with us and information regarding their country which is the main purpose of this course. I had a greater time with Ingrid compared with the previous linking.

Overall: From this course, i learned how to communicate with friends from oversea and work together with them to present our ideas to everyone in the class despite the differences in our timezone and culture. Even though we living in different country, i believe that we are all the same under one sky. There is no difference in race, skin, languages and religions. Thank you Dr Azza for giving me this opportunity to expose the outside world and it is truly a great journey.

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By: Nurul Ausah
Partner: Abigail Diaz (Peru)
Lingeswaran (Malaysia)
Cheong Theng Ho (Malaysia)

My partner for this link is Abigail Diaz and we called Abi. She's studying in Environmental Engineering in her university and she is 19 years old. Here I describe Abi as a shy girl. She's different from my partner before which were Anna and Pa Sallah. She does not share much. Here is the little bit of her college life.

Abigail love to paint and she already painted a few paintings in oleo. Oleo is a term for oil. In her free time she enjoy watching series in Netflix and she also like gymnastics. Abi also live with her parents as any university in Peru has not rooms for the students. She travelled to her university by car which take 20 minutes without traffic and hen there is congestion it will take for 1 Hr and 15 m. Her dad drive her to the university and sometimes she will take the bus. From her we found out her favourite subject is Microbiology. Abi only speak english just in her class and her native language is Spanish and she speak a bit french.

Abigail did not share much with us and she only shared when we asked her any question. Linges asked her on what is her first impression about Malaysia. According to Abi, Malaysia is a beautiful country from the photo of Malaysia that she found in the internet.

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GREGORY DOMNIC UK33776
PARTNER: Brandon Legonia

We received the topics of the collaborative project two weeks before the date of presentation.  Out of the 10 topics given, Brandon, Ching and I mutually agreed to choose the topic about a music song that portrayed your culture as we believed that music has become a part of the norm of society and many songs symbolized cultures of countries. After much discussions and brainstormings, we agreed to choose a hit of the 2000's by the Black Eyed Peas, 'Where is the love'.

Throughout the duration of the discussions of our collaborative projects, we learnt many astonishing facts from each other that we might have left out during our weekly link. After the completion of the slides portraying both the countries ideas on the song, I realized that both of our countries did have many similarities, om the aspect of our daily lives, our dreams and aspirations, and the cruel reality of the world politics.

During the preparation of our collaborative project slides, we faced a few challenges that we could not overcome. Firstly, we found it difficult to get together on a group skype on a mutual time because of the time difference of both countries and poor internet connectivity due to peak hours. Also, our ideas were put to bed as the idea to record our own versions of the song as part of the project was cut short. This was due to a time constraint on both sides and the inability to construct a joint video.

However, we completed our slides with great success and performed the project to the absolute understanding of the fellow students and professors. This was indeed a great way to bid farewell to the Peruvians and we will sorely miss them and our joint links.However, Brandon and I promised to keep in touch after this class and to share with each other ourlife's story as we head for the working world ahead of us. Thank you to Madam Dr Azza for this wonderful opportunity to be able to be selected among the best to participate in this course.

Peace out.

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Reflection on Collaborative Project(Peru Link) 

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Reflection on Collaborative Project(Peru Link) 

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079)

1.       How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?

-As we need to choose topics as past link, we need to choose again the topics. After we all do discussion, we all choose the topic “what do most people around the world want in life by their mid-30s”. It is an interesting topic because people always say their main goals only and some person won’t share their want in their goal by age of mid-30s. By this presentation, I can know my partners goal as well as my goals and see the similarities also differences between us.

2.       What did you enjoy most during the collaborative project process?

-I enjoyed most is when we talk about cultures and tradition because everyone got their own culture and tradition. May be for us, certain traditions or cultures in this world is weird for us, not for the people who follow it. For example, guinea pig festival each year. On this festival in Peru, guinea pig is dressed up and cooking the guinea pig. You all must curious how the guinea pig from dress up like king or queen and cooked for meal. Next time, we all must visit to Peru to see with our bare eyes the festival. How is the meat tasted like? Sweet and hard to chew? Maybe .

3.       What do you enjoy least during collaborative project?

-I get very late reply from my Peruvian partner. I think that maybe they don’t take this subject very seriously. That’s why a late reply.

4.       How will you improve the collaborative in future links?

-I think we need to chat frequently and make our partner notice how important is the subject and the project.

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Name : Nur Alia Binti Johari
Partner : Ingrid Tracy Vasquez Calderon

My partner texted me first, because supposedly I am partner with Kewin but Kewin has dropped the course. So I am sharing partner with Jacky and Wallace -.-

Ingrid is very nice and understanding. She tried to find convenient and suitable time since our time difference is 7 hours. For our first private chat, just simple chat. She shared her pets in home and I did shared mine too. She also said her parents are divorced and now her father in Argentina and her mother is in Italy. She stayed with her brother now.

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Link with Peruvian (By: Wallace Chee Jeng Yang UK36034)

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Link with Peruvian (By: Wallace Chee Jeng Yang UK36034)

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This is the last link with foreign university. I’m lucky to have Ingrid as my link partner together with Alia and Jacky. This is the first time for us to have a “three-to-one function” conversation as last two link was ‘one-on-one’ or ‘one-on-two’. I know Peru through sports which is in FIFA with limited knowledge on their speaking language (Spanish). One of the Spanish language that I’ve known is ‘Te amo’ as it is a same title song by Rihanna. First time, when we have been assigned to our link partner, I’ve already received email from Ingrid on that day. She’s kind of proactive person during this first link through email. A little introduction was briefed by Ingrid with her wonderful slides before starting our conversation. She was born in Milano, Italy before study in Peru. She’s cames from diverse-races family in which her father is Italian-Peruvian and her mother from Spain. Mixed-racial faces has been a remarkable speaks among friends and neighbours. In my opinion, they are pet lover as Ingrid has 4 pets (3 dogs and 1 cat). Personally, they are living in a large house which are able to accommodate higher number of pets and family members. Most important is they able to spare their hustle time to play with pets and sports. Culture shock in term of language was faced by Ingrid as we chat in group like: ‘Geramnya…., Aduh, bully me. In term of the meaning, she shocked as she think that it is true for bullying and angry, but we just mean to make language more fruitful. At last, we have taught her some ‘culture’ of Malaysia. About the topic campus, their university is astonishingly beautiful and classic but UMT also beautiful in its own way to more nature look. The capital of Peru has been shown by the image from Ingrid. One significant knowledge from personal link is the thanksgiving ceremony (Payment to Earth) which earned us a credit on be grateful what we have.

During the video meeting, I’ve learned that most people defined their success life with financial-independent, do whatever still can, and strong belief in religion to strive through in life. In our collaborative project, we agree to choose a music that reflects our culture. We think that everybody would listen to music and music greatly unites peoples. Exchange of music meaning would definitely help us to define a thing in a more ‘open’ way and agreement on others view.

Jacky and Alia were great partner during this link conversation, great communication skills learned from them.

Thank you and safe journey in our life. Bye.

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 Link with Gambian (By: Wallace Chee Jeng Yang UK36034)

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 Link with Gambian (By: Wallace Chee Jeng Yang UK36034)

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As I first came across with Gambia is from the new of election of new president (Barrow) which succeed Jameeh during February. This is the first experience to have a link partner with Gambian. My partner, Faal has brought some new perspective from Gambian on College life, family and religious before ‘disconnect’ due to bad internet connection in Gambia. She is a 21 years old which studying Information System (Informative technology). Mostly, the course in her university last for 4 years except for Medicine (7 years). Her college has lots of volunteering programme and curricular activities. She has a thought of college life taught her to be more experienced and educated for a better tomorrow. On the other hand, she has 8 family members but lost a brother last year which impact her quite some time. On the topic of religion, two major religious which are Muslims and Christians. They practice their beliefs in their own ways without concerning of the others religion. In Gambia, there are different cultures and ethnics such as groups Mandinka, Wollof, Serrahulli, Serer, Jola and others.

Before this link was ended unexpectedly from Gambia, I’ve learned that creates your own pathway is a good way to live the life out and do discuss with family if encountered any hard times.

Sorry for my link partner of unfruitful conversation.

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Name : Nur Alia Binti Johari
Partner : Ingrid Vasquez

In collaborative project, I am team up with Wallace and Jacky Chan. So we decided to choose a song that reflect our culture.

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Collaborative project of Russia and Malaysia

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Collaborative project of Russia and Malaysia

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079) and EKATERINA VOLOS

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Link 4 (Stereotypes & Prejudice) Peru Link

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Link 4 (Stereotypes & Prejudice) Peru Link

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079)

The most important stereotype that happens at Peru are people who living at hill is always thought badly by that people who live at ground. According to people who live at ground, people who live at hill is dirty because they put litter everywhere. Another stereotypes are all Peruvian women are lazy, lying and if there are not do plastic surgeries, then there are not pretty. But, not all Peruvian are like that. When I see my partner, Abigail Diaz I think she is very pretty although she didn’t do surgery. It shows that not all stereotypes are true and there are unique also need surgery to make them pretty.

Normally, Peruvian also give inequality to women. Due to Peruvians society‘s prejudice, women historically have suffered discrimination from the country’s pervasive poverty and unemployment. This shows how Peruvians women are suffering. Our country’s women are very lucky and thanks to God when we compare ourselves in Malaysia to Peruvians women. Although human rights issues affect many sectors of the population, there are some violations which are gender-based, or affect women to a greater extent due to prevailing patriarchal systems. In addition, race and class may worsen women’s position in Peruvian’s society. This was a major difference between both countries.

In my point of view, I think there will be no stereotypes and if there is only one religion, race, caste, gender and God. Most of people believe that differences create uniqueness and give benefits but, I feel very sad because difference among people that they think is unique that it creates all problems and unfairness to all people in this world. Thus, I believe that I am blessed living in Malaysia as the stereotypes are not too serious as in Peru.

Thank you.

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079)

Religion is an important thing that decides a human path to make sure that a person always in a correct path. Religion and life is the thing that relates to each other. Life is decided by path of religion. Peruvians are given a freedom to choose their own religion when there are mature ready. The official religion of Peru is Roman Catholicism. Other religions based in Peru are other Christians, Hinduism, Buddhism and many more. Although there are different religions, they respect each other equally with equal rights. Our country official religion is Islam and followed by Chinese, Indian and Christian. For us, religion comes before science when according to Islam. It is because God who created the world. So, God is beyond anything in this world.

What is life? Life is divided into three parts past, present and future. Once one can take control of his/her present, he gets the life. If he didn’t, he not living his life. The most important thing that people searching is peace. Because if you start to live in present, you will find peace. According to my Peruvians partner, you must have a goal in your life. If not, you will have blank and will think no point of living. We must always find happiness in non-materialistic, not materialistic. It is because materialistic is just a temporary happiness.

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079)

This our second week communicating with Peruvians. My partner’s name is Abigail,19 years old and she is studying at University San Ignacio de Loyola. She is studying a degree in environmental engineering. In her free time, she likes to watch series of Netflix. She also loves to painting and play gymnastics. She lives at Lima, Peru. She lives with her parents because the distance between university and her house is near. She travels to university by car. She knows 3 languages which include English, Spanish and also French. Their gastronomy is very varied and their dishes change by regions. Some of traditional dishes are Ceviche, Papa a la Huancaina, aroz con pato and arroz con pollo.

She likes countryside more compare to city because city has a lot of traffics. In the way to thank the spirits associated with the natural forces, the benefits that grants them. Offerings buried in Mother Earth include cpca leaves(for the worldwide and the son of mediators between nature and the human) variety of cereal seeds, unprocessed silver, chichi, wine, animal, fat, sweets and huairuros (red and black seeds with symbolic and magical powers). They have festival like Fiesta del Inti Raymi (Festival of the Sun) in honour of the God Inti (Quechua for "sun"), one of the most venerated deities in Inca religion. Peruvians also have a lot music festivals like Atajo de Negritos Procession.

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Reflection on Collaborative Project(Russian Link) 

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Reflection on Collaborative Project(Russian Link) 

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079)
1.       How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?

-          First of all, we both see the list of topics. We also don’t know what to choose. After that, we choose a topic that we both agree and can give a lot of ideas regarding the topic of “How do you define success in life”. I think this is a common topic but I also want see the similarities and difference between Malaysian and Russians. Are they having same mentality with Malaysian’s?

2.       What did you enjoy most during the collaborative project process?

- I think the most things that I enjoyed during the collaborative project process are when I make a new friend from Russian. It is very exciting that I have never had a foreign friend. Before this, I have tried to make a contact or want to make friend with foreign people via social media, but failed twice. Another enjoying moment, when we waited for the time when will be the another Tuesday, so that we can chat with the Russians.

3.       What do you enjoy least during collaborative project?

-No reply from your partner although, you try to contact them in any way. Our first class was        cancelled and we can’t chat or Skype with Russians.

4.       How will you improve the collaborative in future links?

-I could prepare earlier about the country that we want to discuss because I did my task last minute only.  It is because I didn’t get enough information from my partner, Ekaterina Volos. May be next time I must ask frequently although, they won’t reply us back at most of time. This is to ensure that I complete the assignment on time.

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By : KHOO SHING CHING UK33940
GREGORY A/L DOMINIC UK33776
(PARTNER : BRANDON LEGONIA)

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Peru ( Introduction, Family and Culture)

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Peru ( Introduction, Family and Culture)

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By: KHOO SHING CHING UK33940

My partner was Brandon . I am very happy to meet him during this course. He is the only friend who is the first to contact or get in touch with me through email. My two previous experiences were long waiting for the response of my partner and end up with getting another partner from the course mates. It's really a different feeling for me.

I absent for the first live chat meeting with Peru as I'm not feeling well that time. Therefore, my first meeting with Brandon was personal chat in Skype. During the chat, we talk a lot about our hobbies, style of living and stories related family and friends.  One amazing thing is that he was having his breakfast while I was eating my dinner. We share what we eat for our breakfast and dinner. We also introduce our local food with each other. When talk about food, it's always a great topics to share a lot.

Brandon stayed in his house, university campus was near to his house. During our chat, he introduced 2 of his little sister with me. I had a simple talk with his sister although they were shy to talk to me. It's new thing for me to meet a friend and also his family members.

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BY: KHOO SHING CHING UK33940
Sad to say that I didn't receive any respond from my Gambia partner. I didn't manage to get in touch personally with my partner. So, the reflection i can give only based on the live chat with Gambia.

I never know about Gambia. What is this country and where is it ? It's all very strange to me. I'm quite looking forward with them after the amazing connection with Russia. I still remember I post the picture of waiting for the first live chat  connection with them in the class in my instagram. However, the first live chat with Gambia was not that good, internet connection was poor and we couldn't have a chance to get know about them. We just able to make self introduction with them , we didn't have chance to exchange much thoughts about family and culture and other topics with them.

Feeling sad that we missed a great oppurtunity to exchange thought and opinion with foreigners. Hope next batch students can get better partner and able to carry more fun activities in this course.

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Link with Peru (By Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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Link with Peru (By Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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This was the third link with a foreign country that made me excited to communicate with. For Peru, at first, I have no idea where is it and I even donno more about it. Firstly I was assigned to have a partner called Kevin with the collaboration with Alia as my partner from Malaysia, and I have tried to email him once I got the information from our instructor and I hope to get his reply as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I didn't get any reply from him. So during the class which group video conference and meeting, I was absent, once the class finish, my friend told me that Kevin has been withdrawn from this course and I will be assigned to another partner. Same goes to Alia as well who has been assigned to another partner too during the video conference. So I have no idea whom will be my partner until I went for the second group gathering and video conferencing. To be glad, I was assigned to have Abigail as my partner. For the first time I got it know, we are discussing on the religion and meaning of life as our topic.
Majority from Peru have Christianity as their beliefs and surprisingly Abigail's parent is a pastor in which she might have a very strong background in term of her religion and belief. During the video meeting, we had discussed one interesting question that, can you accept or will you fall in love with people with different types of blood or races as compared to you. If I am not mistaken, Abigail's answer was surely no since she already had a boyfriend but another partner of mine called Lingeswaran was answered he did not mind about the races but mainly cannot to be like that due to family issues. Besides, during the video meeting, we also discussed the meaning of life and generally different people does have different opinions on that. It was a great experience for me to meet the first sight with Peruvian.
During our personal chat with our partner namely Abigail, we have the difficulties to contact with her due to many reasons such as jet lag and during this period of time, they needed to sit for their examinations and gonna prepare for the examination. With that, we rarely can receive any replies from her. But after the examination, she replied us and we are on the topic of family and culture.
For her, Peru is on the coast and don't have many family traditions. But according to her, they do have one tradition called "the payment to the earth". This is all about the Thanksgiving to the spirits associated with the natural forces, the benefits or the benefits that grant them. Offerings buried in Mother Earth include the coca leaves, a variety of cereal seeds, unprocessed silver, Chicha, wine, animal fats, sweets, and huairuros will be used during the ceremony. Besides, in Peru, they do have a lot of musical festivals.
For our collaborative project, we are in the agreement of doing the topic of describing your life at 35. We would like to exchange personal ideas and opinions regarding on that topic and see is that any differences between these two countries and even personal view on that. We assigned the tasks and we managed to complete it within the deadline and we are happy to exchange the different view on the same particular topic.
I'm glad to have Ausah and Linges as my partner together to share our view with respect to Abigail. Since our group contained three major races in Malaysia which are Ausah (Malay), Linges (Indian), and myself (Chinese), so I do believe that with different races can provide a clearer image to Abigail in term of our culture, religion, tradition and etc.
Thank you.

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Link with Gambia (By Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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Link with Gambia (By Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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It was a good opportunity to have a link with Gambia which is one of the countries that I'm not familiar with. Through this link, I am able to communicate to Gambian and know more about them such as personal belief, culture, food, opinion and etc. I am glad to have Maimuna Drammeh as my partner throughout this link. She preferred people to call her Muna and she is 20 years old and is a third-year student studying physics as a major. During free time, she would like to hang out with friends or staying at home for relaxing and watch TV. For their college life, they normally share the same system that would like to choose the course individually. But for the differences are that the maximum courses per semester are 6 which different to choose in term of credit hours. She normally studies twice a week and she has classes 4 times a week this semester. She joined Arts and Sciences Association that normally involving the event organization. She lives with her family so am always in contact with them. Sometimes, when she confronted stress in her life, she usually chooses to eat and talk to her friends as a way to relieve stress. She has chosen physic as a major because she liked during her high school.

For family and tradition, she does have three siblings, 1 older brother, and two younger sisters. Naming ceremony is one of their important traditions to be pass down. To be in detail, naming ceremony is a traditional naming of a child after 7 days from its birth, a cow or ram or any other animal of that category is slaugtered and the baby is named. A lot of food is prepared and people have fun later on if they play music. This is significant because it brings people together and family or friends whom you have not seen in a long time, and you could meet them at such events. Since most of Gambian are Muslims, they normally greets people by saying "Salam Alaikum". In some formal situation with elderly relatives, they greet

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Collaborative Project with Peru (by Cheong Theng Ho, Nurul Ausah and Lingeswaran with Abigail)

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Collaborative Project with Peru (by Cheong Theng Ho, Nurul Ausah and Lingeswaran with Abigail)

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN (S39079)

Peru is our third country that we want to Skype. It is very nice that we want to chat with South American people. First of all, Dr. Azza give us the list of our partners. I will pair with Nurul Ausah and Eric to communicate with our Russian partner, Abigail. As usual, we introduce ourselves and then, followed by Russian (Brandon, Ingrid, Jose and Abigail). When we all introduce ourselves, our partner was very silent and I thought it is difficult to communicate with her. But, luckily she is a very friendly person. The lecturer also was excited with us as we showed us many photographs of Peru life and we also showed a lot of pictures of the Malaysian life.

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Link 4 (Streotypes & Prejudice) Russian Link

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Link 4 (Streotypes & Prejudice) Russian Link

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079)
We are discussing by Skype at class and continued to chatting again this week via Whatsapp. Our topic was a stereotypes and prejudice. First of all, I don’t know also what stereotypes are and prejudice and I am a bit nervous when we want to speak about this topic because if we accidently speak something can lead to any controversial.

Furthermore, when we say about this topic, first thing that comes to our mind is all Russian love Vodka. It is because Vodka is cheaper than water. So, now I understand why Russian love Vodka than water. I think that if I am in Russia, I also will love Vodka because its gets high and also cheaper than water. The issue is not all Russian love Vodka because there are some of them who like tequila and beer. And some, believe it or not, don’t drink at all.

Moreover, other stereotypes that I think Russian don’t like to smile or laugh. It is because for them when they’re doing smile at stranger for being polite and their also think that it is waste of time. They also feel very weird to smile at strangers. This totally opposite with the Malaysian. Normally, we will smile at other people especially foreigners. I think Malaysian is friendlier when we compared with the Russian. But if you see in their point of view, I think they have a solid reason which is acceptable because they don’t give a fake smile especially when we give a fake smile when we want to take photograph.

I think that it is very important for us to know about stereotypes and prejudice about a people or country. At least, you must know the basic, so that there won’t be any controversial or misunderstanding occur.

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079)

There are 3 main religion in Malaysia is Islam, Buddha and Hindu followed by Christian and Sikhism. Others religions are freely convert to religion except Islam. It is prohibit to Islam to convert religion and considered as a big sin in Islam. Whereas religion in Russia is diverse. Orthodox Christianity is largest religion in Russia and followed by Christianity, Islam, Buddism and Judaism. Russian is freer in term of religion. They can choose in any religion that they want.

When comes to our life, we always have a different opinion about a meaning of life in this world but almost the same opinion of life among all people in this world. The important that we want in our life is peace. We can achieve peace by make ourselves nearer to god. For example, we do all the good deeds and help other people when there are in trouble. We should realise that spiritual is more important materialistic because materialistic is just a temporary happiness. Setting our goal and achieving your goals also plays an important part to make our life meaningful. Without our goal, our life will be empty or lost direction because we also don’t what direction should we go in our life and we also will be lost.  As I can see, there is no difference when we want to define life between Malaysian and Russian.

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Link 2 (Family & Tradition) Russian Link

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Link 2 (Family & Tradition) Russian Link

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By:LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN(S39079)

We communicated via Whatsapp as her house got very bad internet connection that make us can’t contact via Skype. My partner name is Ekaterina Volos. She is the only child in her family and has a couple of cousins. She lives in Moscow and the university is very nearby to her home. Male cousin, Dima, 28 who work as a tax inspector and female cousin, Veronica is 26.  She study 5 days a week and have 2-4 classes a day. She got 14 classes a week. At home, she spends 2-3 hours a day doing homework. She didn’t involve in any clubs or any extracurricular activities. She lives at home with family in Moscow. She is not very stress out because of school. She having problem to manage her time properly as a college student. Her major is linguistics and she chose it because nowadays every company demands from its employees to speak foreign languages.

Their normally very rare do family reunion and maybe once a year on New Year. One of the festivals that are celebrated at Russia is Maslenitsa, which symbolizes greeting the spring. On this holiday everyone bakes pancakes, so children especially love this time. Their greeting people depend on how close you are with this particular person. We kiss each other on the cheek or embrace with her close friend and just say hello with other acquaintances. As for the family, she also kisses her mother on the cheek. In Russia, people are supposed to give their sits in the underground to elderly people, pregnant women and people with children but she feel that it’s always worth it. The traditional food is milk porridge, beetroot soup and crepes with different fillings.

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By : NUR ALIA BINTI JOHARI UK34928
Partner : Conteh Bintou

Assalamualaikum and hi Dr and friends,

Well, my partner is Conteh Bintou, as i informed you Dr, I have a confusion with mt partner' gender -.-. In the Excel written as male, but 'his' profile picture is female hihi..

We started our first link by WhatsApp on 15th April 2017, and Conteh Bintou was quite busy on that week because he (i would put as male) was involving in IEC (independent electoral commission). We are talking about his country too. His country just finish the election for Prime Minister and he did told me about his brutal and cruel ex Prime Minister. His former Prime Minister killed gays and lesbians in their country.

Bintou also said his country dominated by Muslim (80%) and another 20% is other religions. Bintou seemed very intrigued when I said Malaysia has 3 main races and he asked the differences and I just gave him simple example like, food, festivals and our religions. He said he loves cooking so much and did shared with me some of meals in Gambia. Their daily meals too. Personally, I think their food almost same with Arab cuisine.

Done with food, i asked him about his ethnic. He said he is from largest ethnic called Mandingo. Followed by Wolof, Fulas, Jolos, Akus, Manjagos and other minority ethnic groups. He said what makes the ethnic different is culture in both material and nonmaterial, traditional clothing, festivals or even lifestyle.

We stop until here after that Bintou is missing in action. Pretty sad lol.. I just received WhatsApp from him 3 days after that but he was quite busy for the election. That's all from me. Thank you, Assalamualaikum and have a nice day :))

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By: Nurul Ausah
Partner: Abigail Diaz

Her name is Abigail Diaz and she is 19 years old and studying environmental engineering. In her free time she watch series on Netflix she also like to paint and she love gymnastic.

Abigail live with her parents because she said that the university has no rooms for the students. She goes to her class by car and her dad will drive her there and sometimes she'll take the bus by herself. I takes for 20 minutes when there is no traffic but with traffic it takes for 1 hour and 15 minutes..Abigail live in Lima.

Her favorite subject is Microbiology and currently she taking chemistry, calculus and also physics. She only speak english in her class and Spanish all the time and she can speak a bit French. (Bonjour, c'est Ausah, Je suis Malaisien. )

Abigail prefer to live in the city rather than the countryside. According to Abigail the countryside is not safe in Peru. The development of infrastructure in the countryside are very slow. The government did not invest much in the countryside. Some part of the countryside don not have have a good utility such as electricity.

Thank You.

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Reflection on Collaborative Project (SEE WEE HAN UK36255)

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Reflection on Collaborative Project (SEE WEE HAN UK36255)

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1.    How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?

Well, me and Anastasiya were thinking to choose a topic from
the provided list of topics. Because of her grandmother just pass away that
time, so I decide to choose some topic that will complete very fast, so that
she can spend more time on handling the funeral of her grandmother. And I got
my knee ligament tore too, so we decide on doing project that we think will be
easy for us to complete.

2.
2. What did you enjoy most
during the collaborative project process?

I enjoy the time with my partner during the discussion of the
project. Although some of our opinion is different, but both of us also plan to
help people with the money we get (Our topic is If I had 1 Million). It was
interesting to know the culture of another country without going there, and we
share our photo of spending our weekend leisure time at café or outdoor
activities.

3. What did you enjoy least
during the collaborative project process?

We discuss the project and including previous discussion
topic all thru email. This is somehow inconvenience because we have to type a
lot and waiting for partner to reply. Additional issue is the time different
between both of our country. It slows down our progress of discussion.

4. How will you improve the
collaboration in future links?

I would definitely encourage video call discussion if my
partner ok with it. Because it will make delivery of ideas become easier.

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(by SEE WEE HAN & Anastasiya Pogulyaeva)

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Link 4 Stereotype and Prejudice (by SEE WEE HAN UK36255)

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Link 4 Stereotype and Prejudice (by SEE WEE HAN UK36255)

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Russia is still somehow a bit of a mistery for most of the world. And people just usually don't know as much about their culture, let's say, Italian, or French, or Jpanese. There seem to be 2 polar outlooks on Russia: the 1st one is something connected with "mysterious Russian soul", classical literature like Dostoyevskiy or Tolstoy, great nature (but somehow always cold), our great territory, great culture with all the writers, ballet dancers, composers, philisophers, scientists, cosmonauts... Something a bit too museum-like. And the 2nd one is all about those antidemocratic, barbaric, always drunk, chauvinistic, slave-like Russians who are still all either commies or religious fanatics, who are extremely rude, narrow-minded and lazy. Which is not true.

The stereotypes of Russia culture that most troubling them is that they all drink vodka all year around every day like tea or coffee, starting with the age of 5-7 years". They DON'T. Although high alcohol consumption is a problem for our society, but it's far from being that bad. Some of them have never tasted vodka and not going too. During some celebration people usually prefer cognac or wine. The way people in their culture live and behave is the best and the only right way. Understanding that there are no good or bad ways, that they are just different and all have rights to exist can be learnt, but it's hard. It's easier to create some generalised opinion or image of another culture, which often makes it seem inferior comparing to your own.

Lastly, in order to break down prejudices, we both agree that learn more about different culture before judging them, try to understand them before adding strange “tag” Sometimes strange doesn’t mean bad.

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Link 3 (Religion and Life) by SEE WEE HAN UK36255

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Link 3 (Religion and Life) by SEE WEE HAN UK36255

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In the term of religion, Malaysia and Russia seems to be multicultural countries and have multiracial residents. It is quite similar to Malaysia that people have their freedom to choose what they want to believe in. However, there are major differences between Malaysia and Russia in term to religion they believe in. Most of the people in Malaysia practice Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christian, Taoism and so on. But in Russia most of the people practice Orthodoxy religion (widespread religion). Basically most of them are baptized and some of them think that they have some ability to control supernatural power or become superhuman. However, they do still respect religious people.

For the discussion of life, it is an easy topic but hard to bring on discuss. People may have different thought, as one of the question I ask how do you define the meaning of life. For example if you ask a 60 years old man and asking it to a 6 years old child, their answer will definitely be different. Some of them may not understand the meaning of life well enough because they haven’t experience it. Some may choose family happiness as their center meaning of life while some may choose their career. For me the meaning of life will be living the life we wish for, with our family member around us.

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By: Nurul Ausah
Partner: Pa Sallah Drammeh

His name is Pa Sallah Drammeh and he is 22 years old(same with me). I decide to call him Pa. He major in Mathematics and Minor in Physics. He enjoying playing football during free time and football is his hobby. He also enjoying watching movie during leisure time. He state that he was sad because of the first link and we could't had a proper discussion as they had an issues with their internet connection.

For the college life, we started sharing our college life. He is a second year student (second semester). He take 6 courses because there is rule that a student most take at most 6 courses in a semester. He also travel to his his campus by bus or taxi (15KM away from house), and he takes less than 30 minutes to reach his campus depending on the traffic, also stated that there is only one university in Gambia but there are different campuses in the country. He also said that college life in Gambia is different from most part of the world because no students lives in campus and there are no hostels for them to stay. He also shared that the School of Arts and Science which he is situated is in Brikima, and medicine is in Banjul the capital city of Gambia.

Fast food is not common in Gambia so he always eat homemade foods that cooks by his brither wives(polygamy), his mom does not cook anymore. They live together in one house and basically an extended family so the house is never bored. His favourite dish is Benachin commonly known as jollof rice. Benachin can be cooked with fish or meat. But mostly they cook with fish.

His university offers not more than 5  fields in masters, so Pa want to travel for his masters if he have the scholarship. He want to continue in Statistics or an Engineering field. One of his friends is in Malaysia doing his masters. He said id he is lucky he will live in Malaysia ^^. He wish to continue his master in Australia. The instituitions in Gambia is not up to standard (not enough professor to take the higher courses and lack of facilities).

Pa wish if he finish his studies he want to contribute to his country so maybe he will upgrade the facilities or education in Gambia. He will return to Gambia and  build his society so the next generation will get a better life.

Thank You.
Assalamualaikum and Peace be upon you <3

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By: Nurul Ausah
Partner: Anna Gavrilova
1. How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?
I got a shortlist of topics from Anna. The topics including many interesting topics. At first, the topic on song was chosen. We agreed to discuss it again on Sunday. But on Sunday, we decided to changed our topic because we don't have enough time to compose any songs. So we decided on the charity topic as our collaborative project title.

2. What did you enjoy most during the collaborative project process?
I enjoyed the time when we exchange our opinion in the topics. Anna also suggest some effective way to make the charity project that suggest by me to become more interesting. As Anna want to focus on worldwide I suggest her to do in Russia first because the amount of money is a small amount to do the charity worldwide. Anna agreed with me. She did not reject all my ideas or suggestions. She is very supportive that make me enjoy doing the collaborative project.

3. What do you enjoy least during collaborative process?
Well personally i enjoy doing the collaborative project.

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NUR ALIA BINTI JOHARI UK34928
PARTNER : KRISTINA MAKOVETSKAYA

I asked few question and told her about my stereotypes and prejudice. My questions are:

1. How do you think your culture is perceived by the rest of the world?

Kristina : Well, I believe that Russian are seen as people who drink a lot, especially vodka and there are bears walking on our streets. Actually, several people from European did asked me whether it is true or not. so, i think it is quite common for the most of the world to think that Russian are not afraid of nears and perceive them as their friends and drink at any convenient opportunity.

2. What stereotypes of your culture are the most troubling to you. Why?

Well, personally it makes me sad to think that Russian are seen that way. There are certainly no bears wandering on our streets and usually Russian drink during holidays. Drinking on New Year's Eve and on Birthday is absolutely normal :))

However we did not drink during the Defender of the Motherland Day (23th February) on Easter during Maslenitsa and on the 8th of March :)During Maslenitsa we eat pancakes.

I did told her about my stereotypes and prejudice. First about Russian behavior they didn't smile to strangers, second about public's misconception about Muslim women. Third is about some of public view about Uber/Grab drivers in Malaysia

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1. How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?
I got a shortlist of topics from Anna. The topics including many interesting topics. At first, the topic on song was chosen. We agreed to discuss it again on Sunday. But on Sunday, we decided to changed our topic because we don't have enough time to compose any songs. So we decided on the charity topic as our collaborative project title.

2. What did you enjoy most during the collaborative project process?
I enjoyed the time when we exchange our opinion in the topics. Anna also suggest some effective way to make the charity project that suggest by me to become more interesting. As Anna want to focus on worldwide I suggest her to do in Russia first because the amount of money is a small amount to do the charity worldwide. Anna agreed with me. She did not reject all my ideas or suggestions. She is very supportive that make me enjoy doing the collaborative project.

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NUR ALIA BINTI JOHARI UK34928
PARTNER : KRISTINA MAKOVETSKAYA

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Reflection on Collaborative Project (You Chiek Yi UK36117)

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Reflection on Collaborative Project (You Chiek Yi UK36117)

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1. How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?

At first, Me and Valeriya were thinking to choose a topic from the provided list of topics. However, we decided to talk something that we have discussed before which was family and culture in Malaysia and Russia. This is mainly because both of us have different perceptions on how the development of a country causes an impact on this particular matter.

2. What did you enjoy most during the collaborative project process?

I enjoyed the time spent with Valeriya when we were discussing what is our opinion on the topic. Most of the time, i found that both of us have similar opinions about the family and culture in Malaysia and Russia. It was amazing to know the culture in a country that i have never been before through this collaborative project. Before this, what i know about Russia are Cold War and Moscow and now i know more than that! For me, Russia is a fantastic country!

3. What did you enjoy least during the collaborative project process?

We discussed our topic in Whats app which was quite inconvenience because we have to wait for our partner to read the message and it took a lot of time to type our opinions. Lack of decoration on our slides is another disadvantage for us to present in the class as it is less attractive.

4. How will you improve the collaboration in future links?

I will encourage my partner to use videocall as a medium to discuss the project because it will improve the develiry of ideas and thoughts. We will decorate our slides by inserting picture and video to make it looks more interesting.

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Done by:
Malaysia: You Chiek Yi (UK36117)
Russia: Valeriya Saricheva

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Universal Music Slide .by Afnan(UK36330 and Ekaterina.

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Universal Music Slide .by Afnan(UK36330 and Ekaterina.

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The topics that I have done with my partner.

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Introduction, Feedback on Conversations and Reflections.by Wan Mohamad afnan Uk36330

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Introduction, Feedback on Conversations and Reflections.by Wan Mohamad afnan Uk36330

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Reflection on Collaborative Project (by Wallace Chee Jeng Yang UK36034)

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Reflection on Collaborative Project (by Wallace Chee Jeng Yang UK36034)

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1. How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?

We have 14 short-listed question from Anna and Nastya. We choose 2 topics for each of us that we are interested. Coincidently, we have chosen one topic that same for each of us which is mutual topic.

2.            What did you enjoy most during the collaborative project process?

Conversation between each other during this project is the most memorable moment. We do message to each other through WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook and Vkontakte (Russia’s Facebook alike). However, the most frequent used is Telegram due to the Emoji and experience are more human friendly. During conversation, we do chat almost anything along nonsense with some relates to our project though.

3.            What did you enjoy least during the collaborative project process?

Personally, I enjoy all the time during this project. Speaking frankly, time for us to sit back and discuss is less than we could have due to different time zone. Overall, I enjoy all the time but with only one constraint which is time zone difference.

4.            How will you improve the collaboration in future links?

I’ll choose only one topic that most interested rather than 2 topics. This may lengthen time for us to have more time to discuss and prepared for presentation. With this improvement, better work or video presentation idea may be utilized for presentation instead of using common slide presentation.

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Reflection on Collaborative Project (BY: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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Reflection on Collaborative Project (BY: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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1) How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?

We got a short list of question that including many interesting topics from Russian friends. We firstly chose some of our favorable topics. Based on the mutual topics that we chose, we filtered down to one of the most interest topic.

2) What did you enjoy most during the collaborative project process?

Surely I can say is the conversation during the progress of the collaborative project.We both preferred conversation such as Skype and Whatsapp rather than message to prevent any misunderstandings occurred between both sides. Next, from the same subject of the collaborative project, I do keen on how do both different countries' people think of the same topic with different cognitions.

3) What did you enjoy least during the collaborative project process?

Frankly speaking, I do enjoy the cooperation that contributed by both of us. Nevertheless, it will be great if we have much more time to prepare for this collaborative project in order to produce a profound discussion and work done.

4) How will you improve the collaboration in future links?

I will try to get the decision on the topic chosen more faster in order for more time to prepare the collaborative project. Once the decision has been made, I will go on with the research on that particular topic to know it more and precisely. Communication on that collaborative project also needed to be increased in order for information and thoughts exchange.

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By: Khoo Sing Ching (uk33940)

1.             How did you decide the theme for your collaborative project?

It was Anna suggestion on question 8 which is 2 or 3 person who has the most influence in our own culture. She got excited when seeing the question 8. Her mind came up with 2 person for this question which is Alexander Pushkin (Russian poet who introduced a new literacy style and Vladimir Lenin (main revolutionary guy who turned things upside down in not only Russia, but indirectly in several others as well)

2.             What did you enjoy most during the collaborative project process?

The part that I enjoyed the most is through this collaborative project, it provide a great opportunity to know the grest people with great deed.  I have to admit that I don’t know much culture of Russian and also the people there. I enjoyed every sharing moment between both of us.

3.             What did you enjoy least during the collaborative project process?

Honestly, I enjoyed most of the sharing moment, but it will become less enjoyed when it came to homework. However, the presentation slides were done within a short time. Both of us have a great time anyway.

4.             How will you improve the collaboration in future links?

Time given to discuss on the relevant topics or questions can be lengthen and I hope that we have more time for presentation section so that every group have the chance to present and share their thought.

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By : Khoo Shing Ching (UK33940)

It was my first experience to chat with a Russia through social network. It was exciting. My partner was Anastasia Degtiavera. I called her Anna. We chatted trough telegram apps which can be access by mobile and web. It’s quite convenient for both of us to communicate and contact each other.

The first topic we discussed together was stereotype and prejudice.  There was a blank in our mind when we heard about the topics on the spot. This topic seems to be quite strange for both of us. We managed to begin our conversation with Anna’s point of view.

For Anna, she thinks that most stereotypes are race related or ethnicity, but some exist in the realms of gender and sexuality.  For their culture, many jokes persisted based on stereotypes. For instance, a German, an american and a Russian walk into certain place, obviously they make fun of other nations and prop up Russians. According to Anna, the same scenario could be seen in the minority cultures in Russia, like the Dagestani. For example, the native Siberian peoples (they are treated like foreigners-immigrants-exotic) throughout the history. Russia expanded east-ward, and lands of Siberia and the far east were basically colonized. With Dagestan, it was a different matter, because they asked to be part of the Russian empire. Either way, even though it says in the constitution that all races and ethnicities are equal, still there persists this thinking among the Russian people.

Anna shared her experience on stereotype and prejudice when she was study abroad to American school. It happened a long time ago when she was just 7 years old. The American kids teased her and asked her to tried vodka.  A few of Russians actually like vodka, but it doesn’t show that every  Russian was born alcoholics. Russian people drink vodka only at wakes to honor the dead person's memory. It tastes foul, which Anna guess is appropriate, since Russians see death as a sad occasion.

Stereotype on gender and sexuality could be seen in women. A common Russian name ‘NATASHA’ is now used as a euphemistic synonym for prostitute. Anna said one of her friend got laughed at when she went to a summer camp in Switzerland just because of her name.

Lastly, we concluded that stereotypes are subjective and don’t reflect the majority's way of thinking. Those who practice stereotype and prejudice are born of fear of the unknown. Stereotypes appear in situations of conflict, and even after the conflicts are resolved, stereotypes stay on because people are afraid that history might repeat itself. Therefore, the entire nation's job to educate people who are close-minded and prejudiced are crucially needed.

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(By: Khoo Shing Ching & Anatsasiya Degtiareva

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Stereotype and prejudice (BY: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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Stereotype and prejudice (BY: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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Stereotype always leads people to circumstances of bad impression and indicates unpleasant to be discussed with. We were happy and lucky to mutually agree to discuss it to elucidate the stereotypes in both countries.

For Russia, it is common to be said that all Russian loves Vodka. After the explanation, surprisingly Vodka is cheaper than water in Russia. This is totally different in our country that alcoholic drinks are much more expensive than other beverages, yet Vodka even much higher price among the alcohols. In reality in Russia nowadays, not every man in Russia loves to drink Vodka, they also preferred beer and tequila either. But honestly to say, this only represent certain people in Russia, they do concerned about their health also, only portion of them are still getting into the drinking habit. Even many of them are not keen on drinking it.

Secondly, many people do have the pre-conceive that Russian are not friendly and they are not often smiling in their daily lives, but this is vividly untrue. As we can see from our introduction to world culture class, many of them love to smile, grin and even laugh. Besides, from what had she explained, it is partially true about in general Russian people doesn't smile a lot, but we cannot just judge a person that is not friendly just based on they smile or not often. Happy behavior cannot be seen or judge just based on their face emotion. In addition, Russian people are funny but just not reveal it in a general way, from their perspective, they do not normally smile to strangers as compared to our culture in Malaysia that we often giving our friendly grin to the people of unknown. This is probably due to in Russia, they do think that smile at strangers is a kind weird and unpolite.

There are much unclear especially for this kind of stereotype and prejudice to be solved by the discussion in order to get it well known and to prevent the misunderstanding between people, and even countries.

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Nur Alia (UK34928)
Partner : Kristina Makovetskaya

It is very nice to see and get to know each other with Russian students. They are active and has lot of idea. They are linguistics students and most of them major in Russian language and their second languages are different. Like my partner, Kristina Makovetskaya, she is majoring Russian and second languages are Spanish, Italian and French. We are discussing about College Life, and their period of semester is almost similar with us here in Malaysia.

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Collaborative Project (by Wallace Chee, Anna Sedova, Anastasia Khazova)

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Collaborative Project (by Wallace Chee, Anna Sedova, Anastasia Khazova)

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Stereotype and Prejudice (by Wallace Chee UK36034)

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Stereotype and Prejudice (by Wallace Chee UK36034)

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For this topic, many misconception and presuming ideas may generate if no trusted reviews are done. Therefore, we decided to discuss in a way thoroughly to reduce or eliminate the misconception in our thoughts. Common cliché that encountered by Russian surely “more beautiful girls than handsome boys in Russia” or “Overload of girls than boys in Russia according the claims by reports”. After seeking clarification from them, this is only the “feels”. Actually the percentage is 54% to 46% of demographics for female and male respectively. In Malaysia, the percentage is 50.7% to 49.3% respectively for male and female respectively. Therefore, cliché that more girls than boys in Russia from Malaysian seem to be true. There’s some interesting fact in studying and working that, more girls are active in humanities field in Russia as compared to boys in Mathematics and Sciences. Another prejudice to Russian is that “they are alcoholic”, “Vodka is their common drink”, “No Vodka not a day”. That’s totally not true according to their clarification. They take some wine and cocktails during weekend or occasions. Vodka are mostly related to them frequently as it is cheap in Russia but not safe for drinking. For Malaysia, alcohol is prohibited for Muslim’s friends but for others are occasional drinker.

Another prejudice that we’ve discuss is “Russian are grumpy” or “Russian cold treated every people”. They clarified that Russian are more warmer and funny with acquaintance than strangers. This has leads to consequence that foreign people thought that Russian are not friendly, aggressive and unhelpful. I think that we tend to have guard against strangers as we do not know of what strangers thinking or acting. Currently, cliché of “Russian are linked to bears” spread to all around the world as more political caricatures would commonly indicates Russia as bears. She told me that this is just more bears in their forests. Therefore, lots of cartoonists pictured Russia as bears. Discrimination do actually happen in both Russia and Malaysia but not in well-educated people. Discrimination often happen due to cultural differences among ethnicity.

Most common stereotype that other country would conclude about Malaysia is “all Malaysian are Malays”. This stereotype had been eliminated as more people are well-educated. There are two deeds in which we must continue to practice in ourselves are friendly and smile. They’ve heard that Malaysian have a very good attitude to little children and smile always, therefore, we should preserve our impressions by keeping the good values in our heart.

After we’ve discuss this topic, we found that stereotype and prejudice may ‘built up’ or strike the country’s image. A country may famous due to the stereotype and infamous due to stereotype. Therefore, stereotype and prejudice should be eliminated to exhibit peaceful, happy and livable country. Prejudice stops on clever but spread on idiot.

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Religion and Meaning of life (by Wallace Chee UK36034)

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Religion and Meaning of life (by Wallace Chee UK36034)

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Both Russia and Malaysia are multiracial, multiconfessional and multicultural countries after having some discussion with them. Same in Malaysia, people are free to choose their religion but majorities followed their family as well. However, there are some differences between Russia and Malaysia in term of religion. In Malaysia, majority of our residents practice Islam and small portion practice Buddhism, Hinduism, Christian, Catholic and etc. In Russia, mostly of them are practice Orthodoxy religion (widespread religion) which shares belief almost similar to Christian. One significant difference in Orthodoxy between Catholic religion is the Christmas celebration on 7th of January instead of 25th December. Technically, most of them are baptized since they were born. Although they are baptized, some of them do considered themselves as agnostic person because they believe in some supernatural cases which is not a practice in religion. However, they do respect religious people unconditionally. From this discussion, we should choose to lay our faith and follow it thoroughly as religion would aids in our life journey. Religion is one of the moral guideline for all people to act politely and thoroughly in doing things.

In discussion of life, this question is kind of “hardest and struggled”. This is because we are only able to define meaning of life personally without acknowledged by others of this perspective. Distinct people are having different goal or meaning in life. However, significant perspective of this topic is financially independent, loving family, happiness and passionate on what we are doing are the common answer for meaning of life. Family provides safe and lovely place for us to settle down and having a rest during journey. Money, as all of us knew that, we could find happiness through money. But, we couldn’t buy happiness by money as some happiness created from memories, career, study and play. Happiness are different for each person and therefore will need to find a way that we enjoy. One of the saying from my partner which is “time should pass before you realize what you really want to do in this world” really ‘sober up’ my mind. Do what you passionate about with the time are needed to explore it.

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By : LINGESWARAN S/O RAMACHANDRAN (S39079)

It’s very exciting when you never get in contact with foreign people and get chance to Skype with Russian. It’s very nice feeling when you get to know about a person from Russia. Amazing! Firstly, lecturer brief us before having video chat with the Russian. Then, we introduce our self  and get to know each other. Sometimes our conversation didn’t go smoothly because connection lost. I felt little nervous because worried that their English slang will be different from Malaysian. We ask about their life for example, hobby and their daily routine. We also obtain their personal email since we all had different partners.

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Name: GREGORY DOMNIC,  Partner: Olga Luneva

This individual link gave us an idea of what preconceived opinions about our respective country was like. Olga brought up a few questions in relation to the discussion of this topic. Firstly, what do people actually believe in the country's culture. A few stereotypes that the rest of the world believe about Russia are that Russia snows 24 hours. 7 times a week, 365 days straight and that bears flood the roads of Russia. This perception is false although the fact that Russia snows pretty heavy for most part of the year unlike a warm and wet/dry season throughout the year in Malaysia. The rest of the world also believe that Russians drink a lot of vodka which is a wrong perception. The younger generation in Russia do not really prefer to drink vodka and beer but rather take a traditional and familial approach by opting for tea as their favorite beverage of choice.

They are also a few stereotypes that brings a bad impression of the Russian people. People around the globe believe that Russia is an aggressive country with their focus solely into nuclear weapons and artillery that scares the world. Olga doesn't believe that Russia is a country with an aggressive foreign policy and a wrong country to assume for wars. Another stereotypes that brought a grin on my face was that Russians are regarded as a grumpy population. This was because Olga is one of the most wonderful and cheerful person I have ever met. We then proceeded to the question of the causes of these stereotypes and prejudices in the world. We mutually agreed that at times it goes back to the history books to perceive the country negative points. The reason why people believe that Russia is an aggressive country is because of the past history in Russia where the Tzar (communist) were a strong force, but its different today. We also understand the impact of the media around the world which imprints a much maligned face of a certain country. These prejudices come from the fact that people have fear on top of their list of emotions. Secondly, the human race tend to have a weak understanding of another culture, and we appreciated the fact that this course has brought our countries closer to one another thru understanding of ones culture. We believed in one not having a rigid mind and being educated on a motion before speaking it out.

According to Olga, during her 22 years of life, many things have changed in Russia, especially on women's rights. In the past, the position of women in many sectors were undefined. Discrimination of women were aplenty and there were no benefits being a women in Russia. However, today's generation sees a bright spark in its women by allowing women to take a maternity leave of an astonishing 3 years to be with her baby. Kindergartens and pre-schools are all sponsored by the government of Russia, leaving an positive mark in the early stages of childhood, leasing an easier route for busy parents. There is also a stereotype among selective ethnic groups in Russia, with the probability being higher if you were a foreigner, say Turkestan and Uzbekistan. In Russia, as we speak, these people do not have a perfect interaction with the fellow Russians. However, Olga believes that if they work hard enough, they get the job equally as the homelanders. The only trouble they have are to communicate and interact with common homeland Russians. Olga says that in Russia, people only have conversations if there are on common grounds of debate.

In conclusion, we questioned one another on whether or not stereotypes are bad. We mutually agreed that these stereotypes can be good and can be bad at certain times. For example, we believe these stereotypes actually allows people from other parts of the world to catch a glimpse of what the particular country is like. However, as I mentioned, educating ourselves and not becoming ignorant to worldly issues and culture would improve our understanding of ones culture and stop negative stereotyping and prejudice.

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By : GREGORY DOMNIC (UK33776)

This group 'therapy' session saw us have a group conversation link together with the class of Russians ladies. With an interesting topic on Religion, we had to play the questions and answers we presented close to our chest to avoid any misunderstanding or hurt among the two parties involved. From this session, we learnt that the Russians love their beloved country with a deep sense of patriotism that we could learn from. They believed that the hardships their forefathers went through motivated them to fight with a sense of purpose to receive all the basic rights they should obtain.

Moving on to the topic of religion, we learnt that the Russians do put a certain level of importance to religion, although they did admit that at one time religion was a must practice and religious institutions forced everyone to participate in their rituals. But today, the Russians see a positive freedom of religion practiced in their country where every individual has the freedom to choose the religion they would love to practice and some of them are even atheists. This certainly made us feel blessed that we are strong with our faith of our religion here in Malaysia. However, I personally believe that no matter you are an atheist or a spiritual person, it doesn't change the fact that God will eventually look at your attitude towards your fellow humans and His creations.

We also extended the topic of Life to the motion of happiness. The Russians made it clear that their definition of happiness focused on personal health and relationships with others. They believed that only with personal perfection, only then you would be able to help another brethren. We also agreed that happiness could also be achieved by forgiving one another that has done a wrong or two. In a nutshell, I learnt that the importance of life in giving oneself to the need of others, and that religion plays a vital role in personal perfection.

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(BY: GREGORY DOMNIC
& OLGA LUNEVA)

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Presentation ICC Gregory Domnic & Olga Luneva (1)

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Collaborative project (BY: Eric Cheong Theng Ho and Maria Moiseeva)

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Collaborative project (BY: Eric Cheong Theng Ho and Maria Moiseeva)

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LMSU

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9th May Holiday

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Dressed Herring

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Olivie Salad

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Maslenitsa Holiday

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By: Nurul Ausah (UK33503)
Partner: Anna Gavrilova

In Anna viewed, stereotypes and prejudices normally arise when there is something we do not understand, like foreign culture, we rather try to explain it by ourselves with the helps of generalizations. As for me, this issues arise when someone observe one bad person, they will simply labeling the whole community that they live or stay also the same as that but the reality are differ. It is like one bad apple spoils the barrel.  We both also agree that media play a big role in the stereotypes and prejudice issues. Before the emerging of the internet, the fake new always travel by newspaper, magazine, television, but now social media also give a big contribution in this issues.

It was great to has Anna as my partner because she have a lot of things to share with me. For the second meeting (chatting through whatsapp), we discussed on the topic of stereotypes and prejudice about Russia and Malaysia. We started our conversation on asking each other on what they things about both of our country. As for Anna, she doesn't know much on Malaysia, so I share with her some of the stereotypes that happen in Malaysia. When we mention on Russia, I  always thought they always drinks vodka, and raised a bear farm behind their house. Anna corrected me, she said that not everyday they drinks vodka, and as matter of fact Anna does not drink vodka either. Bear, she never seeing someone from her town that raise bear at the backyard. This is the stereotyping that made by me to the Russia.

Anna also shared with me the other stereotypes and prejudice that whole world thinks that are true. The common thing about Russia is to image Russia is a cold country and unwelcoming place where people don't even try to be friendly with each other. There is an article saying that Russian don't smile at the strangers for the sake of "polite" because they consider this gesture is weird. Unlike in Malaysia, where always smiling at each other is consider as polite and friendly. Anna said if you smile at stranger in Russia, they might said you are strange. So when you go to Russia, please keep your smile. The Russian might be not friendly from the outside, but when the ice is broken, Russian can become  very good friends with almost everyone as they love guest very much.

The issue on labeling all the muslims are terrorist is one of the worst issues that stated by Anna. While on the issue on President Donald Trump's second executive order on immigration bars citizen of 6 Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, Anna said that is not rational, and he looking the issues from the stereotypes perspectives. She strongly do not agree with those bans. But, somehow we understand that The President want to protect his country, but we could not agree on the way of him doing it. We also shared on the thought that, the education on islam is not only apply to non-muslim people, but to the muslim as well for them to be able to distinguish  between islam and terrorism.

As conclusion, we both agree, by learning on others culture's tradition, language, food and religion might able avoiding the issues on stereotypes of prejudice arise.

Assalamualaikum and Peace be upon you. <3

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BY: Nurul Ausah and Anna Gavrilova

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Religions and Meaning of life (By: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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Religions and Meaning of life (By: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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In term of religion, Russia and Malaysia experience huge different among themselves. This is probably due to the reason of the residents. Malaysia is a porous pot that contains multiracial residents and is a multicultural country. Therefore, owing to different races in Malaysia, there are different religions as well such as Islam, Christian, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and etc. But for Russian, is a country that free to choose their own religion, but majorities are followed the religion of Christian. Due to majority of them born from a Christian family, they were baptized since they born. When they reach to an age that possess the conscious cognition and mature, they are free to decide their own religion which they want to follow based on their own will. But there are also some part of the people preferred Atheism. Some of them do think that people themselves possess the ability to control their destiny and believe about the law of nature which people possesses the capability to influence each other. Besides that, due to multiracial country has many religions, therefore, there are also many festival to be celebrated and holidays as well as compared to Russia.

While it goes to the topic that called meaning of life. It is a easy but difficult question. People rarely think about this topic seriously. But for the meaning of life, it can only to be think of when we reach to certain ages and mature enough in order to think deeply about this question. Let’s say if we ask the meaning of life to a child, they couldn’t answer to you for sure. This may probably due to they are still young enough that hasn’t experience as much as the difficulties in their lives still. After the communication, we both do think that, there must be some tenacities for each of every person with respect to the meaning of life. Different people may have their own important elements in their lives. For instances, some may choose family as their importance in their life but some may choose career as their importance. But after the conversation, we both prioritize family as our first importance in our life, as you cannot choose whom to be your family in this lifetime, the best thing in life and there are free, precious family.

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Family and Cultural Traditions (By: Kelvin See Wee Han UK36255)

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Family and Cultural Traditions (By: Kelvin See Wee Han UK36255)

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My partner name is Anastasiya Pogulyaeva. We communicate through e-mail to do the discussion because she is living with another two girls, so to avoid from bothering them, we choose to use typing method. Based on what she told me about her family, is that nowadays they live in nuclear families (parents and children) like most of the western countries. More than that, their head of family is usually those who earn the most money or the oldest man in the family. The whole family will only gather when during someone’ birthday or festival, which are kind of similar with our culture. The traditional value that hold the family together are mostly mutual help and taking care of children.  However, there’s always conflict among people, so the conflict occur usually because of having different opinion. The typical family structure for her generation would be parents and 1-3 children, as it is pretty similar to what her parents had.  She mention that people nowadays think much more about their education and career, as compare to the past where there are more love, caring and closer relation among family members.

For their children, they can stay with their parents for as long as they wish, same as our country. So theoretically, you can live with your parents even when you are 40, but many teenagers, especially those who come to other place to study have to learn to become independent and adapt to the new environment themselves. Same as Malaysia, in Russian country, women and men will be see as equal. However, women often still regarded as “inferior” in some spheres like (business, family life) women tend to be more shame about their behavior than men.

About their traditions, there are some meaningful traditions like women’s day there in Russia at the 8th of March, New Year festival, and someone’s birthday. The traditions that used to be among popular in Russia is the family gathering that happen in almost all families. For those festival that they celebrated, they usually served with huge variety of different salads, salted herring (often with dressing), cheese, pickled and fresh vegetables, sausage, sandwiches with salted red fish, "holodets" (jellied meat) and everything on earth - but it's all cold. Then comes a "hot meal": traditionally it's mashed potato with roasted chicken, but sometimes you can also find turkey, roasted sausages, or some other meat or fish, usually roasted or grilled. (Which is different with Malaysia, more similar to the western country). Finally after all that comes tea with a cake, chocolate sweets and fruits (mostly bananas, oranges and apples). However, for new year meal has some peculiarities, there will be tangerines and “olivye” (a special salad) and a champagne.

Unfortunately, many of their traditions had been dropped, same like what happen in our country. We are all greatly influenced by Western culture like celebrating Christmas, Halloween, valentine’s day so it kind of replaced the old traditions. What very difference from us is the cultural traditions that their parents and grandparents practice when they were growing up, for our country Chinese culture, our parents used to bring us whenever they go and stay by our side always to protect us. They more towards letting the child to explore and learn by themselves, so that they will grow to become more independent. Most of them have a “dacha” it’s like a small piece of land in outside of town or even with a small cottage house. For most of the younger Russians it’s now place to have a good rest in summer. They spend the weekends gardening, plan a lot of flowers, vegetables so they can have their own clean and reliable vegetables and fruits. It’s also a good place for people who are retired to spend their time. They usually celebrated new year and women days with their own family.  She hope her children will continue to celebrate the customs and festivals that she practice so that the traditions can be preserved.

Overall, I feel like both Russia and we Malaysia are kindly similar. The way we celebrate our festival, how we get along with family members and how we pass the traditions from one generation to another generations. I am proud to be a Malaysian after all.

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Family and cultures (By: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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Family and cultures (By: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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She has a blissful family, both parents and a brother. From what I have understood from my partner, Russian families do very concern about the family values and concept. It same goes to Malaysian as well. We do love our family and we treat our family members seriously. We put our family as our priority. From what have she said, when she is with her family, some activities will be done to increase the family bonding such as watching TV or movie together. They really appreciate every single moment with their family. As a Malaysian, we are not used to spend the whole time for our family especially during teenager’s time. We would rather spend our time with our peers. Maybe I would say that Russian concerned a little bit more in term of the family than Malaysia. But it depends.

Besides, in Russia, their families are large and friendly. The meaning of the family in Russia is not limited to husband, wife, and children, yet they normally get a good relationship with their extended families such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephew, and nieces. They often visit their grandparents and will get some family history from their grandparents about: how their parents meet up?. It is common that in both Russia and Malaysia that we are not dwelling together with our grandparents.

In term of family and friends, it means different meaning at different stages of lives. Friends are needed throughout our lives but family comes first and prior to everything for us. We share the same view that as age goes up, the value of family goes important as well. Of course, we greeted our family and friends in the same way in term of courtesy. As for both of us, we rather share only the happy moments to our family members but not the hardship. We share the problem to our friends rather than family members. This happens not that we don’t want to share, but we don’t want them to worry about us.

In Russia and Malaysia, we took it seriously in term of basic manner. For example, we have taught to be polite when meeting to those who are older than us.

Borsh is one of the traditional food in Russia. Not same in Malaysia that, their traditional foods are normally possess high nutritional and healthy value. For example: the Borsh is made from beetroot, potatoes, cabbage, meat, and onion.

Overall, in term of family, Russia and Malaysia more or less the same. As we treat our family in a good way, our children will get affected and influenced by this environment and learn to be good as well. So this tradition will pass down to many of generations.

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Meet up and intro (By: Kelvin See Wee Han UK36255)

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Meet up and intro (By: Kelvin See Wee Han UK36255)

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For the first day link we have a video call through skype in the class. My partner name is Anastasiya, she introduce herself and talked a little about the job opportunities during the link. It is great to know them, we share a short video with them about island in Terengganu, they feel excited and envy of having such a natural and beautiful view. According to my partner, the quality of both sound and video was rather poor during the link, so it was hard for them to see or hear us clearly.

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College life (By: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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College life (By: Eric Cheong Theng Ho, uk 36239)

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Since we both are university students, she is in her second year while I am the third year student. She has more classes than I, therefore she is more hectic in her university life. Since every university students do hectic in during the university time, when we confronting hardships or problems, we do have our ways to relieve our stresses, just in term of different ways. Since she is studying linguistic and she can speak about three languages in Russian, and she has the passion in language. Even so, she is learning Chinese during her leisure time. The enthusiastic attitude gives me a lesson of the day that: no one can stop our passion if we do really get into our dream and interest.

Malaysia is a porous pot that containing multiracial people and cultures. Basically, we do have the benefits in termed of language, at least we know 2 languages that will be officially taught by our educational systems which are Malay and English. When I told her that for myself as a Chinese, I knew about four languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay and English) until now I’m learning the fifth language which is Japanese. She was amazed and hope to learn as many languages as well.

She lives in a dormitory, three people per room. It shares the same view that in UMT as well. Their dormitory is old which was built during the Olympic in Russian. As for a university student, we only can go back to our hometown at most four times per year which same for both Russian and Malaysia local university lifestyle.

The most challenge for a university student no matter where we are, who we are: homesick at the very beginning. We experienced the same, go to a place that located hundreds kilometers away. Not for fun, but for our dream and future. Although it is hurt sometimes and we reluctant to do so, it is all for our own good. As if every cloud has a silver lining. We do have the same culture that, we often called our family during leisure, not to let them worry, just to share those happy moments during our days.

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Meet and Greet in conference room (By: Wallace Chee Jeng Yang UK36034)

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Meet and Greet in conference room (By: Wallace Chee Jeng Yang UK36034)

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In the live conference during last Tuesday, it is crucial to confidently speaking to clearly send the message that we want to present. Although it is quite awkward in the first meet and greet session, we managed to end up the call with knowing some of their names. When someone has to leave home for further study, homesickness is the major constraint that hit every students. Ways to reduce homesickness could be calling home, listen to music and make new friends. Friends are crucial wherever we go.

Family and culture topic

During last Thursday, conversation through Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp with Anna and Nastya was utilized due to Internet connectivity issues. After having some discussion with Anna and Nastya about family in Russia, family size in current century is quite small (a child or two children) which almost same in Malaysia after the economic crisis hit all around the world in ‘90s. Personally, I assume that more residents are having family planning to increase family’s economy sustainability. What I’ve learned from this circumstance is importance of family planning to maintain strong bond in family. Besides, most of the family are living together with grandparents due to lack of apartments mostly in Russia. In my point of view, they take this as an instance to spend time with their grandparents. They manage to listen to some stories from grandparents that experiences in last century such as joining of army and some festivals celebrated in last 19th and 20th century.  With this platform established, less extent of generation gap occurred in the family. In the discussions, they prefer to stay with their grandparents rather than sending them to old folks’ home as grandparents help to take care of the children in family and giving opinion in some family matters. With these evidences, they showed respect to their grandparents and appreciate what came together with us. In Malaysia, although there are small quarter of family sending their grandparents to old folks’ home, mostly people still prefer to live with grandparents with the almost same reasons as mentioned before. Personally, I’ve learned that we must treasure the cherish time with loved ones and not to regret when they left us. Patriarchal system did exist in Russia too but are less to see in this 21st century as people are start to obliterate this stereotype. We should not practice this stereotype in country to improve quality of life and country.

For the culture in Russia, they celebrate festivals more related to national festivals. We should celebrate national festivals not because of holidays but understand the meaning behind of each celebration. Definitely, the culture traditions of the country and each religion could be maintained. In Malaysia, we are lucky because we can celebrate the festivals together although different religion as most of the case, foods unite people.

Cheers,
Wallace

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First conversation with Partner (Valeriya Saricheva)

It was a great time to chat with Valeriya on Family and Culture in Malaysia and Russia. Before this, we managed to add each other in Whatsapp and we decided to use whatsapp as a meeting room to discuss on this topic. Then we started off with a list of questions that Valeriya forwarded to me. We followed the questions and answered them with our own opinion.

Valeriya has mentioned that Russian used to have big families and people are tend to live with their grandparent and raise by them in their early age which is similar with Malaysia. In the past, head of the family is commonly father who worked to support the money but things have changed nowadays as both genders are equal and responsible for the family. Valeriya has a nuclear type of family in which her parent support her until she finish her  college life.  Valeriya do not have any siblings but she has 6 cousins who are very close to her. It is rare to find Valeriya arguing with her parents as they are the role models for her and she is very respecting them. In the present, Russia families are not encourage to have more than 3 children because it costs them a lot of money and time. Parents are busy with their works and this has caused them to forget their children and spend effort to maintain their relationship with their partner. Thus, divorce rate is high in Russia as well. For Malaysia, the same situation is also getting more serious as our country is developing and more people are worried about money. Children in Russia are encouraged to be independent and learn to survive without the support from family. We also talked about food in Russia. They have Borshch, Pelmeni, and Pirozhki.They look delicious!!

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First meeting

Before the meeting, i felt so excited to have a video call with students from other countries. It was a great opportunity for me to know more about the culture in that particular country. During the meeting, we introduced our self and talked about college life in Russia and Malaysia. It was fun time to chat with them. Speaking of college life, there are not much different in Russia and Malaysia. Both are focusing on the examination and students are stressed in their study. Compare with Russian students, Malaysia students are less socialized because we are not encourage to join any clubs and we don't have the passion to follow it. After meeting, i can't wait to discuss more about Russian with my partner and tell her the fascinating stuffs in Malaysia.

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By : Greg (UK33776),  Partner: Olga Luneva

Firstly, I am very glad to have had a privilege to interact with a beautiful yet outspoken woman. My partner, a 22-year old Russian, lives in the suburb of Moscow. She studies Linguistics in the Faculty of Languages at the Moscow State University, one of the highest prestige government universities in the country. She is mastering English and Spanish as her major language subjects.

My partner is the eldest among 4 siblings, 2 of which who are 11 and 8 years old respectively are females and also a new born one-month old baby boy.  She lives together with her stepdad and mother. Even though she is a daughter of her first dad, she still loves her stepdad and calls him 'Dad' whenever she meets him. She also has a very strong bond among her family members. Both her parents are aged 40.

Since she loves to swim and perform gymnastics, we couldn't resist in starting a conversation on the topic of sports and games we love. From this conversation, I got to know that my Russian Roulette is a giant fan of the Spanish National Soccer Team, since she loves the Spanish language too. I was disappointed though for the fact that I am a huge supporter of the England National Soccer Team. No quarrels there, we moved on!

Since we face a difference in time zones of 5 hours, I was facing a hard time keeping awake at 2a.m and she was at home Skyping with me at 8p.m Russian time. At this moment, my stomach started to rumble and she noticed me grabbing a snicker. And that is how we proceeded with the discussion on Traditional/Cultural food. Pretty smooth no? Borscht (sour soup), Bliney topped with Smitana (sourcream) were the two cultural food names in Russia. Once she clarified some questions of mine about her cultural food, I began to drown her mind with the various Malaysian Cultural food. You bet I spoke to her all that we had here, taking almost 30 minutes to her amusement. My partner loves to live a healthy lifestyle by taking her regular diet of vegetables and meat to class for lunch, since her home is just a stone's throw away from the uni.

A familiar traditional celebration in Russia goes back to the ancient days of the Pagans and Ancient Slavic. This celebration is called Maslenitsa, celebrated during the last week before Great Lent (fast) of the Church. In this celebration, Russians celebrate it among close family and relatives by making pancakes and distributing it among close ones. These pancakes are topped with Kavier (red/black) to blend the sweet taste of the pancakes.

On family life, my partner mentioned of the marriage system in Russia and I do not find much difference to the ones in our country. In Russia, the couple could get married in front of the Register (ЗАГС) or the Church or even both. Since the majority of the population of Russia comprises of Christians, Churches were often visited by my partner for weddings alike. However, an interesting fact of my partner is that she is an Atheist. Boom! Didn't see that coming?

My partner loves to cook, as of the general belief in Russia that all girls should know how to cook. To conclude, my partner is sensational. She is charming. She is lovely. She is fascinating. She is sporting. She is a person who I would love  to have more conversations with. She is Olga. OLGA LUNEVA!

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By: Greg (UK33776)
This first class was an introductory class to our subject. Meeting the Russians for the first time definitely brought goosebumps to us. We were kind of dumbfounded for words the first time we met them. But as time went on, their friendliness  brought us into the picture.

We began the class by getting to know each one of their class members, also introducing ourselves and getting to know more about our partner on the other side. From this link, I understood the importance of socializing with people from abroad often, so that we do not get afraid to speak to them the first time we see someone new.

Besides, we also took down the particulars of our partner, that would be necessary for our second individual link.

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By: Ausah (UK33503)
Partner: Anna Gavrilova

Anna is an only child, she is 19 years old and studying linguistics (learning Spanish, English and Chinese). She lives together with her grandparents because the Russian has strong family ties, and normally there will be one or two kids, their parents and grandparents living together. They put family first and everything. One is expected to respect the elders, but young people are not obliged to fully obey their parents and grandparents.

They also have conflicts occur in their family, they aren't following the total obedience rule, there are lots of disagreement. Kids may quarrel with their parents or grandparents because they don't understand each other because of the generation gaps. As for this problem, it has not only happened in Russia, I think it also a problem and conflicts among Malaysian family also.

Anna also stated that, Russia is gradually moving towards the west. She thinks that there will be more childless families as the tendency to have kids later or not to have them all start to emerge. So more people choose to live in a nuclear family only. They strive for independence from their relatives, but the family bonds are still quite strong. The things that hold the family together is celebrating the holidays. They celebrated the New Year and almost all relatives get together on that day and cook together. In here we can see that, by celebration the family bonds can became strong again by celebrating the celebration.

Anna also concerned about her culture and language. She said there's so much English everywhere and she afraid that one day it will replace all other languages. Russian also have a tradition hospitality, they love guest very much. They will cook a lot of food for their guest. The poor guest can eat, how much they want, and in the past, she said that, the parents even chose a husband for their daughter like that: if a man eats a lot, he'll be a good worker and her grandmother still believe in that. Language and culture are very important to the community as it shows their identity

They used to be a male-dominated society,  still are, but it is not so obvious. The traditional system is as follows: women are expected to look after their families, take care of the children and are in charge of the house chores. Many women don’t work and are housewives, so that they can devote themselves fully to their roles of wives and mothers. Men, in turn, are normally the breadwinners, they earn money for the family and don’t participate in child-rearing activities much. However, that’s, of course, changing pretty rapidly now. Women and men are moving towards more equal possibilities and obligations. Both sexes try to express themselves not only through their families, but also through work, so more and more women find jobs for themselves.

The grandest holiday of all for Russians is the New Year. Everyone gets a whole week of holidays, and the celebration starts on the 31st of December and in some cases finishes only with the first day of work. The 31st of December is almost fully devoted to cooking. Women start cooking in the morning and make various dishes, which you aren’t allowed to eat before the night starts. Everyone dresses neatly, and just before 12 a.m., they gather at a big table to eat, talk and meet the coming year. At midnight, there’s always the president’s speech on TV, so they will listen to it and then the big clock of one of the Kremlin’s tower appear, and it starts counting seconds to the New Year. Men start opening champagne while everyone else is counting; they have to pour it into glasses quickly so that everyone can drink with the last twelfth strike of the clock. Then everyone shouts “Happy New Year!” and that’s how they start their New Year all-nighter.

There’s one salad almost every family cook, and its name is “Olivie”. It’s  a mix of cucumbers, potatoes, sausages, peas, eggs, etc., with mayonnaise. Russians love mayonnaise. One more salad is also very widespread. It’s called “Dressed herring” or “herring under a fur coat”. It consists of several layers, one of which is, naturally, herring, and the other ones are grated vegetables like potatoes, beet roots, carrots (all vegetables are boiled). The final layer is mayonnaise. On the 13th-14th of January there’s a holiday called Old New Year. Basically, it’s the same New Year, and it appeared only because Russia changed its calendar system. Not many people celebrate it; they normally just cook a nice dinner, but don’t stay up late.

The same thing with Christmas. As Russia is an orthodox country, they are celebrating Christmas on the 7th of January (due to the shift of the calendars, the church wanted to keep the old one). It's  only celebrated by religious people. Another holiday is Maslenitsa. It’s a pagan holiday, and it’s meaning was to welcome the spring. People cook and eat lots of pancakes as they are perceived as the symbol of the sun. They also make huge dolls of Maslenitsa (winter, according to pagan mythology) and burn them. One more prominent holiday is the 9th of May. It’s the day when we celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany and commemorate those who died in WWII. There are parades and fireworks in almost every time.

When we discussed together, I feel grateful to live in Malaysia as I can experienced lots of different culture and tradition. It is important to preserve and protect our culture because the culture and tradition will show our identity: who we are.