Vol 3 Issue 3
Pandora
Febuary ) March 2012
The Ten Commandments: The Do’s and Dont’s of dating
Racism:
The shortcut to popularity at Dulwich?
Of Happy Men and Women: Condoning violence but condemning love
Sherlock:
A fresh take on a timeless classic or a haphazard attempt at renewing an antiquated novel?
Pandora || Index
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Other&Writers: We would like to extend a special thanks to Mrs. Taylor who has been very sup: portive of Pandora.
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Pandora || Contents
02
03 The Ten Command, ments , The Do’s and Dont’s of dating
The IB Common Room , Continued
Contents
05
Racism , The shortcut to popularity at Dulwich?
07 Of Happy Men and Women, condoning violence but con, demning love
09 Sherlock , Breathing life back into a classic or vandalizing a household name?
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A letter from
The
Editor 0
In0Chief
W
elcome to the February0March issue of Pandora! As you may have noticed, since the last issue, we have introduced a whole new layout and design for Pandora. We’ve decided to continue with this layout for this year so we hope you like it! In this third issue of Pandora, we have the usual Ten Com0 mandments by Grace Chan and Ginyin Lim, as well as Heaven however this issue features a TV review of the show ‘Sherlock’, instead. We also have of course, a few articles that are a little more controversial and audacious and may arouse some debate. well as a commentary on an immerging social phenomenon at Dulwich: racism. We hope you enjoy reading this third issue! Please feel free to website pandoradcb.weebly.com to leave any questions, com0 ments, or concerns. We would also like to remind everyone, that Pandora is a very open student0led publication, so if you would like to join our team and contribute in any way, you are wel0 With regards, Yida Wang Editor in Chief
IB COMMON ROOM
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IB Common Room 8 A Follow Up IB students struggle to make the IB common room ‘work’
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ecent proceedings suggest that IB students are not just complaining about the current IB common room situation, but also trying to solve it. On December 11th, a weekend to clean up the Common Room and organize the sofas. With their efforts, on the following Monday, IB students were pleasantly surprised by the new orderli8 ness and cleanness of their Common Room.
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common room and how it was getting too small for the growing school. However, the lack of visual evidence bothered me, so I decided to add a ‘sequel’ to empha8 size the seriousness of the situation. Please note: the the next school year, which means that they will not have a comfortable common room to go to if no solution is established. There have been talks and rumors of the establishment of a new IB common room for next year, but for now they are all speculation. Even so, will this new common room be ready in time for next year? (If you want to find out more, please refer to the first Pandora issue of the year. This applies especially to the Year 11s, who will probably have to deal with this problem in the coming future too).
Sang Woo Doh 1213CTE
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Ten Commandments From the creators of ‘Picking up a chick’ 9
Dating Do’s and Don’ts If you’ve followed the previous 2 issues, we’ll assume you’ve hooked up with that very special apple of your eye, so congratulations! Call them and then kindly put that phone down and turn your attention to these tips:
For%the%Men Thou%shalt%gussy%up
Sims%(the%game,%not%the%registering%system)%men%can%all%do%it,%so%we%don’t%see%why%real%men%can’t. crummy%t9shirt%and%hair%looking%like%Albert%Einstein,%good%luck.
Thou%shalt%open%the%door
We don’t care if your lady’s a hard9core feminism activistD every girl loves a gentleman who opens the door for her.
Thou%shalt%treat%her%like%it’s%her%birthday
She’s out on a date with YOU, so give her the special treatment. her attire, or give her a small trinketD do whatever it takes to make her swoon over you.
Thou%shalt%loosen%up starts to have second thoughts.
Thou%shalt%be%the%Beast
Keep your testosterone levels in check, we didn’t mean it that way. In ‘The Beauty And The Beast’, Beast had to open up and show his caring side in order to win over BelleD similarly, when you care for your Belle, you will easily achieve
DISCLAIMER: The ‘Ten Commandments’ guide is a purely satirical piece and cannot be blamed for an increase in breakups, injuries or food poisoning. The writers at Pandora will not be held accountable for anybody’s heartbreak, scuffles or stomach indigestion. Content is from one perspective and thus is not a representative of all the types of dates out there. Follow this advice at your own risk. Any resemblance to anyone or anything living is purely coincidental.
For!the!ladies !!!Thou!shalt!not!have!great!expectations
Having unmet expectations might make you unhappy, and your boyfriend won’t like it when you’re unhappy. Men, with their huge egos, also won’t feel very good when you The only way not to be disappointed is to not have expectations at all, or at least keep After all, you’re no perfect Snow White either.
Thou!shalt!go!au!naturale
That doesn’t translate to ‘birthday suit’, so keep your clothes on. If your boyfriend can’t like you without inches of makeup on your face, then he’s probA ably not the one for you. He asked you out because he likes who you are, so don’t fret too much about your looks.
!Thou!shalt!keep!quiet!occasionally
“So he was like, and I was like, and she was like, and they were like OMG SRSLY?!?!?!” Woman, quit yer jibberjabber. share of conversation time too.
Thou!shalt!be!an!onion Peel each of the layers distancing you and him one by oneP don’t tear it all up in one go. night, and keep your clothes on too.
Altogether: Thou!shalt!be!a!rabbit
Sure, rabbits are cute and cuddly, but another known fact is that they can only look at what’s in front of them. Much like a rabbit, you should keep your eyes only on your partner when you’re with them. Let your eyes linger for too long on other carrots around you, and you might just kiss your relationship goodbye.
Follow%these%Ten%Commandments,%and%you%lovebirds%might%just%experience%your% < ing%a%snob%and%a%hussy%respectively,%to%which%we%give%you%a%simulation%of%what’s%to% come: Babe,%where%are%you%going? %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%… Baby,&baby,&baby&nooooooooo! Gin Yin Lim 1213 LAT Grace Chan 1213CTE
The Ten Commandments
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Racism The shortcut to popularity? he phrases: ‘This class was so boring’, ‘I didn’t do this homework’ ‘I don’t like this teachC er’ are amongst the common – if not triteC sayC ings we, students hear and utter on a daily basis. However one alarmingly and frequently expressed sentiment that has wormed itself into the pot of academic clichés as well as esC C ternational student population is: ‘I hate China’. Having witnessed a colorful variation of SinoC phobia[1] throughout my sixteen years of life, it was only recently that I stopped to actually contemplate the roots of the said hate. I decided to follow a logical, linear path of reasoning – people must hate China because of well, China, right? So I did what every student does when pressed for answers: Wikipedia it (so sue me). In a 2009 poll gauging the amount of ‘unfaC vorable views’ towards China and not necesC sarily its peoples , the highest country was unsurprisingly Japan – with a whopping 69% of the people interviewed entertaining ‘unfaC vorable views to China’. Logical enough, Sino – Japanese relations have never been great afC ter World War II, picking up any news paper at any given time would tell me that. The second and third ranking countries however (GermaC The top three countries are all democratic, the lower ranked ones less so: did this mean peoC ple hated China due to its political standing? However a surprising discovery was that the United States (38%) and Britain (29% tying with Russia) were quite low on the scale, the two countries most famous for their ardent advocation of: freedom of speech, democracy, all the things China is infamous for lacking in. This anomalous result seemed to have disC I then turned to my personal experiences, have I experienced racism? Yeah sure, I disC tinctly recall walking down the streets of: Madrid, Florence, and Athens and having inC dividuals of high intellect do the extremely C
‘ Have I experienced racism?’
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‘ I hate China’. clichéd eye pulling movement, presumably to emulate my ohCso tiny eyes (which I may or may not have responded to with a few choice words in English). However I realized one issue: quite a few of the incidents involved individuals usC ing ‘konnichiwa, konnichiwa’. Okay, so that was probably just a blatant shot of racism against Asians in general. It was on the other hand, quite another thing to be experiencing racism against Asians in continental Europe to witnessC ing said racism in China. Another such memC ory seared permanently into my mind would be that of a student, repeating the exact same hand motion, adopting the exact same mockC ing tone and expressing the exact same racist sentiments here in Dulwich College Beijing.
1. sinophobia is the hate or fear of Chinese people and/or culture
It has become a common occurrence to see 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
about China. Merely examining the stu8 8 bly arrive at the conclusion that the people 8 cally Chinese. I must confess that I myself 8 8 8 8 8 8 8
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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC; Nothing, absolutely nothing.3
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Racism- the shortcut to popularity?
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Of Happy
M y father once pointed to a man in a mar1 ketplace and said to me, “That man’s a woman trapped in a man’s body”. When I tried to look for the man my father was referring to, I couldn’t
the same to meA the men looked like males, and singled out for me a man in the crowd holding hand about in a dramatic and somewhat1effem1
‘My long forgotten memory bubbled to the surface’
T
apparently stayed etched somewhere in the re1 cesses of my mind. Just before Christmas break, 1 ality’. My long1forgotten memory bubbled to the LGBT Community in Beijing, and during the ses1 sion, I realized that my father was wrong. but what does it matter whether your father was right or not?” right or notA it’s about what he had told me. My father had, purposely or unknowingly, introduced Secondly, the man was not a ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’A he was a man, no more and certainly no less. And lastly, there is no such thing as an stances. That man in the market was probably weekly business, only to be seen through a col1 oured kaleidoscope by the people around himA he was being judged for being ‘abnormal’ and char1 acteristically different.
Men and Women
‘Why do we compare them to murduerers, rapists and other ‘evil people?’
T his bias does not only apply to an H owever, despite advances in human isolated communityM it applies to every@ morality and acceptance, we still stub@ one from all walks of life, and we are all subject to a coloured kaleidoscope of varying shades of bias whether you @ sions by watching people’s actions. These impressions are hard to break, and we tend to disregard behaviour person’s personality, we even try to rectify it, but over time, we eventu@ ally learn to accept the person as who they are – As long as they are still de@ cent individuals that do no harm, we gradually learn to live alongside them.
bornly shun certain groups for what we perceived them to be despite the fact that these perceptions are based off of super@ looked over. For example, at the talk held before Christmas break, the guest speak@ ers were not a group of people that would suddenly whip out knives to slaughter in@ nocent masses, nor did they act like arro@ gant, pompous individuals that couldn’t give the world a minute of their time. They were ordinary people. Why, then, do we compare them to murderers, rap@ ists and other ‘evil people’ based off of something as trivial as sexual preference?
A s you consider the question above, be aware that there are other people much like the guest speakers at the ‘alternative sexuality’ talk that are being shunned for simply being who they are. They, who did nothing wrong, are treated as sinners. They, who are as educated as us, are seen as foreign sub@humans. They, who are simply being themselves, are denied their individuality. I want to end on a somewhat sobering note. The picture on the previous page depicts the epitaph on Leonard Matlovich’s tombstone. He was a soldier who took part in the Vietnam War (1955@1975). Ironic, isn’t itM we condone violence, but condemn love when it’s directed to someone of the same gender. Elle Hsien Dulwich College Beijing
Of Happy men and Women
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S
A TV Review
E
veryone has heard of the classic British character Sherlock Holmes, but it seems that recently the famous stories have become much more popular among younger genera< tions than ever before. You may have heard of the relatively new British drama on the BBC: Sherlock. Based on the original detective stories, Sherlock is a 2 season long TV series set in London. The characters, mysteries and many other details are true to the original books written by Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle. Dr. John Watson, a quiet and reserved war veteran “consulting detective” who has the gift of a brilliant mind, though his social skills are un< conventional. The two pair up and solve exciting mysteries together. However there is a twist: It is set in the 21st century. This is an ingenious adaptation of the famous novels and to be honest, I’m surprised no one had thought of it before. To begin with, the stories have been beautifully modernized in a way that attracts people of all ages. Sherlock is an avid texter who keeps severed body parts in his freezer for research, and John Watson has a blog! It’s also hard not to love how
“the%perfect%combination%of%actors”
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perfectly capturing the characters’ emotions by us6
thoughts also appear on the screen like tiny labels. Also, the script is so witty and engaging that you really have to pay attention to every word the characters say so that you don’t miss a single line. There are no loose ends to the mysteries. It’s as if Sherlock himself wrote the stories because they’re just too clever to outsmart. To go along with this, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (the creators of Sherlock who both happen to be writ6 ers for the popular series Doctor Who) found the per6 fect combination of actors to play Sherlock and Watson: Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. This is probably one of my favorite pairings (together with House and Wilson) because the two are constantly bick6 ering and yet they are so perfect for each other that you never want to see them interesting stories on the internet based on this “friendship” that have been written by dedicated Sherlock fanatics.
T
he BBC released a very successful season 2 of Sherlock last January. Each sea6 son only has 3 episodes, but the episodes are approximately 90 minutes long so
The highly anticipated third season is expected to be released in 2013, and mil6 lions of viewers are anxiously waiting to see what will happen after the amazing high standardsW let’s see if they can amaze their fans again. Hannah Miller 1213JLA
Sherlock TV Review
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