We all have at some point in our lives experienced or been in a situation that is uncomfortable and downright awkward; some more than others, unfortunately.  Ever wonder to yourself why these kinds of embarrassing moments seem to only happen to you? Don’t worry.

It’s not ‘just you.’

You may have seen the hand gesture or heard the expression ‘awkward turtle’ used to describe an awkward moment. The people at Awkwardturtle feel the same way.  The concept of the website is similar to other well known websites such FMyLife, where people can post and share their stories. The readers can comment and vote: ‘Awkward turtle, or ‘It happens’ for each story. There is also a photo gallery where you can catch a glimpse of an ‘awkward turtle’ moment.

Why is it a turtle instead of a monkey, hippo, giraffe..etc? I don’t know.  Maybe it is because turtles are cute and sometimes wobbly on their legs when they walk making them prone to get in embarrassing situations. Or it’s simply just fun to put your hands on top of the other with your thumbs sticking outward and rotating forward.

(Quick Tip: Sometimes in a situation saying ‘awkward turtle!’ may in fact make things less awkward!  Best thing to do is laugh it off and don’t stress about it, after all this happens to everyone.)

Cheers! =D

Every now and then we receive some cool research opportunities from the University of Calgary.  We try to help out and promote what they’re doing as they’re work is often connected to youth issues. This one passed by our email and relates to how youth connect with counsellor’s.  Have a read:

Adolescents between the ages of 14 and 16 are needed to participate in a study exploring the relationship between counsellors and adolescent clients. Most of the information on the counselling relationship is from the adult counsellor’s perspective and it is very important that we understand this relationship from the adolescent’s point of view. Therefore, this study requires the following of its participants:

1. To attend a free, 30 minute, one-on-one counselling session with a PhD counselling student (supervised by a registered psychologist) on the topic of career paths, study skills, and/or exam preparation. This session will be videotaped and used in the next part to the study.

2. Participants will review the video tape with the researcher and use it as a talking point to discuss their engagement in counselling and the working relationship with their counsellor. This should take approximately one hour.

3. Once the researcher has reviewed and analyzed the information across the individual sessions and conversations, the researcher will email each participant the themes found in relation to adolescent engagement in counselling. Participants are asked to respond to the email within 2 weeks and comment on how that information fits with their experience.

Participants can express interest or withdraw from the study at any time without consequence. For more information or to sign up as a participant, please contact Chantelle Quesnelle, at the University of Calgary: c/o 403-606-5206, or clquesne@ucalgary.ca

If you have ever traveled to Japan or shipped stuff to Japan, or even better, just go on Google map and look closely at a random street in Japan, you will find that in Japan, many streets are unnamed.  And if you look a lot closer at the map, you will find that the blocks are identified with numbers.  Street names are mostly left blank except for maybe a couple of highways.

Living in Calgary, we always use street names, and I assumed that this is true for all people around the world.  However, this is not completely correct, as I figured out when I considered the way Japanese have and have had used to address their locations.

One interesting video that discusses and look at this instance of opposites that exist in the world is below:

You may ask, why would they use the block system? Well, here is an awesome answer by another youtube user:

The reason why they ended up adopting the block system was the during the feudal age, the military made roads and passages as complicated and twisted as possible to prevent the enemy from invading the main castle, and did not give street names as Roman tradition taught europeans. So during modernization they decided to use the block address system because cities were already in a complicated layout with non existent street names.

– GikoSan

Of course, the opposites in the world aren’t limited to the ones introduce in the video.  There are many interesting normal things that are actually the opposite of what we think they are.

Off the top of my head, some that I’ve noticed so far are:

• The colour of your blue shirt is not a blue shirt, because all the colours that the shirt absorbs are not blue.  The colour that is emitted or reflected from the shirt is blue because the shirt does not absorb blue.  Hence, the blue shirt is made of colours that aren’t blue.
• If you hit someone, you are actually hitting yourself as well.  Action = Reaction.  Another closely related example is that when you are walking forward, you are actually applying force backward.
• When you say you are cold, you are actually hotter than your surroundings.  You should really be saying your surrounding is cold and you are hot. And of course, vice verse.
• We have learned that nucleus of an atom is positively charged and the electrons are negatively charged.  In the world of anti-world full of anti-matter, the nucleus would be negatively charged while positrons orbit around it.

If you have any awesome Opposites that you notice in your life, please share it with us.

Hopefully these examples made you look at the world more objectively.