Which came first, the religious devotion or the self-control?
It takes self-discipline to sit through Sunday school or services at a temple or mosque, so people who start out with low self-control are presumably less likely to keep attending. But even after taking that self-selection bias into account, Dr.McCullough said there is still reason to believe that religion has a strong influence. Dr. McCullough. “For a long time it wasn’t cool for social scientists to study religion, but some researchers were quietly chugging along for decades. When you add it all up, it turns out there are remarkably consistent findings that religiosity correlates with higher self-control.”

As early as the 1920s, researchers found that students who spent more time in Sunday school did better at laboratory tests measuring their self-discipline. Subsequent studies showed that religiously devout children were rated relatively low in impulsiveness by both parents and teachers, and that religiosity repeatedly correlated with higher self-control among adults. Devout people were found to be more likely than others to wear seat belts, go to the dentist and take vitamins.

He said. “The rituals that religions have been encouraging for thousands of years seem to be a kind of anaerobic workout for self-control.

Brain-scan studies have shown that when people pray or meditate, there’s a lot of activity in two parts of brain that are important for self-regulation and control of attention and emotion

Refugee in a tower of agony
Hungry from ceaseless beauty
In love with eternity
Refugee in a tower of agony

In early rainy morning
When the bird started singing
He woke into a vision crying
in an early rainy morning

stepping down the hill slowly
pondering over his troubles calmly
he was seeking for a canopy
Stepping down the hill slowly

As the uncertain and nears
Rocks, trees, leaves, rivers
none but one hears his fears
As the uncertain and nears

In need a fundamental change
Past life and fears scream with rage
Ivory tower is no different than a cage
In need of fundamental change

Not knowing the final destination
In the turbulent life-story ocean
Re-discovering a one-to-one relation
Descent ivory tower becomes ascension

Bali has a place which is mysterious. This place is legendary and famous. Many people visit this place if they visit to Bali because they wouldn’t  missing this place and they also want to feel the myterious effect inside this place. Trunyan village is situated in the seam east of Batur Lake. It’s about 45 minutes from Kintamani when we want to go there by rowboat. Trunyan is one part of Bali Aga village (ancient Balinese). They called their people as Bali turunan, which means there was the first people who had been got down from the sky in Bali or the first people who staying in Bali Island. They also called the other people in Bali as the ethnic of Bali. They were the people who came from Java (Majapahit). Although most of Trunyan people are Hinduism, but they usually have another civilization each other.
One of interesting event which made the visitors felt amazing is the death of ceremony. Although they are the same Hinduism, in Bali, Trunyan people didn’t burn or burry the body when they took it in the funeral event. The Body was laid out under Taru Menyan tree. The body only covered with white cloth and put a fence along the edge of the funeral with bamboo. The death of ceremony in trunyan is called “mepasah”. The body was laid out in the grave which has been digging in the hole that’s not so deep without covered anything. There were seven graves which are used for the dead body by turns. That’s not so astonishing if we would see the skulls and bones were scattered around the cemetery.

Though trunyan people didn’t burry and burn the dead body, they just only put it under tree. But the body wasn’t making putrid odor around it. The Trunyan people believed that the putrid odor of the body was sucking up by Taru Menyan trees. Purportedly, taru menyan trees exuded a fragrant odor.
According to the folktale, the trunyan people believed that a fragrant odor which comes from taru menyan trees had ever been smelled by Danu Goodness who was staying in the heaven. Then, she got down on earth to try lokking for that odor sources where came from. After she got it then the people called it as trunyan.
The trunyan people had three kinds of “sema”(cemetery). Sema wayah (common cemetery) is a funeral only for people who died in properly. Sema muda (young cemetery) is a funeral for babies, children, and adults who had not ever been married. Anyway…sema bratas is a funeral for people who died in an accident or commit suicide.

Sema wayah become the object of interest to tourists. There are many foreign tourists who visiting there. To reach there the tourists must be road a boat to cross by way of the edge of abang hill in the side of Batur Lake. They would see beautiful scenery during along boat ridding to reach there.

We can see beautiful scenery of the hills from north around the Batur Lake and we can also see the altar which built from stones from east. From there we usually see a mount of skulls and bones a rounding the altar that rowed under taru menyan tree. So, that’s all will be made a mysterious senses.

Can a nation’s history be both fact and fiction?

Singapore was first mentioned in 1365 in the Javanese ‘Nagarakretagama’ as ‘Temasek’ or Sea Town. A third-century Chinese account described Singapore as “Pu-luo-chung’ or island at the tip of a peninsula. But, it was from the 14th century, following a Sumatran prince mistaking a tiger for a lion, that the Sankrit term ‘Singapura’ or Lion city gained currency. It was Sir Stamford Raffles, a 19th century British civil servant, who founded Singapore in 1819. An official of the East India Company; Raffles combed the Straits of Malacca for a small trading station to counter the Dutch influence in the area. The tiny fishing village of Singapore was perfect because it was at the crossroads of the East and West.

Raffles did not just discover Singapore. He literally laid the city’s foundations. After establishing a trading post, he planned to build a business quarter on one side of the Singapore River. But, because it was low-lying, he ordered a small hill to be excavated to fill up the area. Today, that land is the core of the city and the heart of Shenton Way, Singapore’s answer to Wall Street.

Can a melting pot have its own distinct flavor?
Singapore retains its special multiracial quality acquired from its early days when Arabs Chinese, Europeans, Indians, and Straits-born Chinese (or Peranakan) came to live side by side with the indigenous Malays. Today, the population approaching the four million mark has forged a single national identity, so much so that you are likely to hear someone regard himself as a Singaporean first before Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian. The testimony to this is the island itself where the layers of the three main races complement and supplement each other. From enclaves such as Chinatown, Geylang Serai, and Little India to the Asian Civilizations Museum to any public hawker centre where one can find any of the culinary delights of the respective races, the mood is warm, friendly and harmonious.

What is cross cultural understanding?
It is very difficult to learn about another culture and not to think that is very strange. It is impossible to be totally objective. When we look at another culture, compare, and contrast it with Indonesian culture as a mean of discussion, and try not to judge the other culture but only become aware of the differences. In the course we will fight against the tendency towards stereotyping which happens all too easy when we talk about cultures. We will try not to make sweeping statements like ‘all Indonesian are friendly, all westerns are ‘sombong’, but instead look at why these stereotypes have occurred and how much they are founded on truth. We will look at subcultures and cultural variables within one culture. For example, there are cultural divisions in Indonesian within the different islands and the different sub-cultures.
Why is CCU important in learning English?
If language is just a set of grammar rules (as it is too often taught to be), there would be little place for CCU. But it is not. There is a lot in language learning that does not fit into a prescribed set of structural rules and it is the understanding of this element of language which is aided by cultural knowledge. Cultural Understanding can aid language learning to have a deeper understanding of the idiomatic use of language, by giving some background of cultural and linguistic features and by bringing the language to live so that students are motivated to the English language as means of communicating ideas.

Tolerance
The opposite of prejudice and discrimination is tolerance. These people know that other social groups are different, but they appreciate the differences in beliefs, opinions, behavior, etc.
Culture Shock
When people for one reason or another travel abroad, they are not prepared for the differences in the new culture. They don’t like the food, they can’t stand the cold or rain, they don’t understand they way the other culture behaves, socializes what they believe, etc. so, they become tense because everything is unfamiliar.