Confucian Confusions: Recent Episodes
Confucian Confusions
we’re gracia and ashley and on our podcast confucian confusions (its name is a homage to where we met and who we are) we’ll be sharing our two cents on • art, film, literature • current affairs • singapore's education system • food and environment • chinese culture if any of these speak to you, you’ll be able to find us on spotify, apple podcast and any other major streaming platforms! (its also the laziest way to learn)
In this week's episode, we discuss the thrills and adventures of residential life on university campuses in Singapore! Hopefully this will give you a better idea of what to expect if you are a freshman waiting or thinking about applying for residential living!
Some questions we answered: 1. What advice would you give to a freshman on choosing a hall of residence? 2. How has your impression of residential life changed since you first moved into campus? 3. What are the food options like on campus? 4. What kinds of interest groups/ CCAs are you involved in and how has that shaped your experience staying in hall? 5. What types of leadership opportunities are there available to you on campus? 6. What are your best and worst memories of residential life? 7. What are the most important things to bring or prepare for a better residential experience?
Following our previous episode on the black hole that is productivity culture, this episode will be on our personal experiences with failure and what it means to us.
Like everyone else in this pandemic, we have been missing out on the tourist experience. In this episode, we attempt to live vicariously through lonely planet guides, Airbnb listings and vibrant blog articles (even those that grossly romanticise the most boring of tourism spots). We have also done our research about the impact of international commercial tourism as an industry. We ask ourselves this question: In today’s globalised world, can international tourism continue to expand without infringing on local economies, local communities and their surrounding ecosystems?
There are millions of apps to download, but we zoom in on a few of our favourite apps to use. From sustainable apps to alarm clocks that track sleep patterns, we explain the best features and advantages from our list of one of today's most used technologies—apps!
Our first book club episode! With none other than the iconic book that is The Da Vinci Code. This mystery thriller novel by author Dan Brown incorporates both masterful storytelling techniques and valuable insights into christianity, symbolism and art history. Join us as we bring you into this museum of a book and share our emotional connection to it (and some literary analysis)!
Advances in technology and communication have become driving forces of globalisation, and with this, the swift ascent of ecommerce like Lazada, Shopee and Taobao. This has created a new model of consumerism, one that we imagine to be a whirlpool, not just in the way it lures people into its depths, but also the destructive form it represents for social and environmental equity. How has our generation been coping with these changes? In this episode, we invited a special guest, Charis Chua, and together we acknowledge and discuss the challenges we have faced in navigating the murky waters of consumerism!
Our passion for food and chinese culture converges in this episode, where we explore how the appropriation of asian food for white people is perceived differently from the “appropriation” or commercialisation of western food for asian palettes. We ask the most important question of the century: How is Panda Express’s approach to fast food different from KFC?
Memes and jokes about colonialism have been making their rounds on Tiktok, but how exactly does our history of colonialism affect our lives today? How is it related to Phineas and Ferb, Singlish and the beauty industry? Jump on our metaphorical ship and sail the sea of colonialist baggage with us to find out!
We dive into another practice unique to Singapore—library camping! We wanted to explore this phenomenon because of how much it encroaches into both physical and mental spaces in Singapore. In this episode, we also discussed our personal backgrounds within the education system and how this influenced our experiences with library camping.
We had so much to discuss about our cultural holiday and traditions that we decided to make a part two! In this episode we delve deeper into the connection between chinese new year and the unconscious effects it has on our spending and perspective towards materialism.
We wanted to start off with something closer to home. What better way to start our podcast than to reflect on one of the most momentous celebrations of chinese culture and history? This occasion has for us merely been a lived experience, but in this episode we unpack what more it has to offer that we ourselves may not have been conscious of—its history, origins and the commercialization of it.
Our first episode, an introduction to our personalities and what makes us tick. Welcome to Confucian Confusions, a journal for our pursuit of knowledge about the world and our connection to it. We hope it will be a nexus of constant discovery about not only our own identities, but that of the world itself.