Getting To Know The Periodic Table - Hastings Middle School: Fill & Download for Free

Having a sibling surely is a boon in life. You have wonderful memories to cherish.My brother is 5 years older than me. He's been everything to me- A tutor, a helper, an enemy, a sidekick, every duo relationship one can think of.- Bodyguard: I had always been a shy, meek kid, and hence, was an easy punch bag for bullies. Whenever I got into any sort of altercation with bullies of my class, my emergency call was my brother. He would come and straighten things out with them and that's how I survived my elementary and middle school. Whenever boys (as old as him) from our society teased me, made me cry, he would hesitate not even for a moment to march up to them and smack them.Being avid fans of WWE, we always had a daily match scheduled for the evening. Our ring was the sofa. We used to wrestle ruthlessly and he shed no mercy at me. Any new move, any new lock, half of which were his own creations, were experimented with me.- Fear: Although, brothers, we weren't always soft on each other, in fact, never. He used to have an amazing collection of games and toys in his cupboard. Yes, they lured me. But it was never possible for me to get my hands on them. It was like getting into 'The Chamber of Secrets'. My brother used to have Table Tennis coaching from 4 to 6 in the evening and that was the time I had the golden opportunity to get my hands on them. My brother had an eidetic spatial memory of his cupboard and knew where exactly (as if he knew the coordinates of each item) each stuff was. I had to make sure that whatever I touched had to be put back exactly as it was. And while I was at it, out of nowhere I'd, at any point of time, hear his rickshaw arrive and in haste, would try my best to put things back neatly. He'd come in and head straight towards the cupboard and it'd take him less than a second to know his stuff had been touched. I would lock myself up in the bathroom and wait for my dad to take the blame on himself and wouldn't come out until the heat had settled.Also, I used to dig up snacks (especially the jim-jam cream biscuits) secretively whenever he was asleep, because if he was awake, then boy, it was trouble for me. So I tried my best to finish my part of snacks, or in fact, all of it, before he got them. Both of us were greedy.- T.V. and Water Wars :We used to fight for T.V. We've broken several remote controllers during all this. He was an insane cricket fan, and still is, and seldom used to let me have my hands on the remote. The only time I could watch peacefully was during my mom's slot. Nobody messed with her. And that wasn't all, we used to fight for water as well. During summer, we obviously had water bottles stored in the fridge. I always used to fill them and his job was to finish all of them and leave them unfilled. This got so annoying that I had to make him agree that he'd have his own bottles and I'd have mine. None of us shall touch each other's bottles without each other's consent. He knew that I would always fill my bottles. So he essentially ended up drinking from them, didn't care about the agreement. Now I hated this, so in order to prevent him from touching mine I used to fill his bottles as well. Once they were empty he would use mine and I'd get into brutal fights with him. It was water wars.- Spending Money: Daily, parents would give him money to get home from the bus stop after the school was over. And every time I was tempted, I would beg him to buy me a gola. I had to promise him that I'd not let mom get the slightest hint (she's strict about eating unhygienic, artificial stuff) and would keep my mouth shut. As soon as we got home, my mom would somehow see my coloured tongue. I had no guts to lie to her. And once again, my brother would get a dose of firing. I've made him hear a lot from my mom. Whenever we fought, whenever I got hurt, my brother had to face the wrath. In fact, he had to hear the rebukes when I read non-veg jokes on his phone and my mom learnt about it.My brother was, and still is, a rebel. Definitely, my mom used to have a soft corner on me. So, whenever I cried after a fight, my mom would punish my brother. The worst of them was when he got into fights with her and she would send him out of the house and wouldn't let him in until he apologised. Now this man was wise and knew how to make the best of time. So he'd go watch a movie or two with whatever chillar he had in his pockets. Mom would be dead worried, feeling guilty about what she had done, and this man would come home merrily late in the evening, completely carefree.- Teacher: He took a 2 week leave from his job to come home and teach me during my 12th boards. He was more concerned about me than I myself was. But that wasn't all. After he fell short of leaves, he went back but ensured that he completed everything as much as possible and taught me via Skype. He put in hours during his hectic period of work to make sure I did well in on of the most important exams. He taught me most of the Science and Math during my school years.WHO PUTS IN SO MUCH DEDICATION TO SEE YOU SUCCEED (parents included)!Although he's clumsy, he's still a proactive and zealous person. Ready to lead any task, ready to dedicate himself to do any task assigned to him. Honestly, it's time I stop Googling for motivational speeches and people. I have always had that by my side.

The premise of this question is based on a very “black and white” assumption while the truth is nowhere close to it and full of nuances as already answered here Hoàng Phan's answer to Both Vietnam and China were similarly poor in 1980's. How did China improve so much faster than Vietnam, as of 2020? Why is the gap between Vietnam and China even widening?China is interested in world domination, and is betting on the future of gaining technological independence, financial independence and manufacturing independence before developing all regions of China equally. It has been sacrificing citizenry income / wellfare at all cost.Vietnam is not interested in putting its economy on that kind of steroid and likely never will.“Window guidance” (an informal mechanism and a form of credit control by which lending limits given to commercial banks as guidelines to specific industrial sectors or companies rather than as legally binding restrictions) is the reason that the fastest growing economies of the last half-century are in Asia, including Japan and South Korea at one point. This is why most economic miracles are just facades because the credit expansion provides an illusion of economic prosperity when there is a very limited prosperity in reality, structurally. They were all Stalinist regimes that became highly efficient at industrial-export production at the costs of citizenry incomes to compensate for high saving rate. Paul Krugman also wrote the “Myth of Asian Tigers” around the period of Japanese bubble collapse. He also agreed with the following ideas and even expanded much further than I can described. He published his journal a year before the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, what a prophecy!In a very short summary, how you do East Asia investment driven economic development is quite simple: increase national savings by decreasing consumption of the household sector (at the expense of citizenry income) and pool that money then use the money in some sort of centralised investment project. During China’s early reforms, Chinese agricultural output was able to provide an expanding population with a subsistence livelihood while a significant proportion was being mobilized by the state for industrialization.In addition, you can increase the saving by numerous ways: high progressive income tax, forced savings (like Singapore's Central Providence Funds), environmental subsidies (if you skim on environmental protection and develop recklessly, for which Vietnam becomes the first developing country against Vietnam pioneers post-pandemic carbon pricing | East Asia Forum). Sure you get very fast GDP growth on paper but you will also wreck the environment and leave burden to the future generation, in terms of heavier healthcare cost and shorter life expectancy), or financial repression.That last financial repression part need a bit of explanation. Household sector generally have few access to financial services other than banks and saving accounts. What you can do is to set the interest rate on saving accounts to below inflation rate; for example, interest rate on saving account in Singapore is about 0.1% (and I'm being generous) while inflation is usually 2-3%. Then you can also set the interest rate on loans to also be below inflation rate; say 2% in a 3% inflation environment. What happens in reality is every year, the household sector loses about 3% of their savings and that money is being transferred to the financial and corporate sector who sees their loans being forgiven at about 1% per year.This is fundamentally backwards economics thinking. Well, the majority of the world, like the very fast growing China, the pretty developed Singapore, or more recently the USA follows the idea that you should keep interest rates as low as possible. The idea is by punishing savers for saving their money, you stimulate investments and force savers to put their money to work, supposedly stimulate the economy. The result is one crisis after another and one bubble after another because it is not always easy to direct credit being flown towards productive investments even with tight control over financial and economic system.It is even harder for Western neo-liberal economies to do soLike when COVID happens, a lot of people don't even have money to stay home for 2 weeks. So they eat shit. Everyone is gangsta until the financial crisis hits and everyone moves back to their parents' basement.Japan suicides rise as economic impact of coronavirus hits homeLuckily, Vietnamese are a bunch of insurgents and those tactics don't really work. When they see their money evaporate like that, they say "screw you guys" and buy gold or park their money in real estate (which the government very strongly prevents speculative bubbles). Right now, interest rates on savings account in Vietnam are somewhat higher than inflation rate and interest rates on loans are very high. It is very difficult to borrow money to start a business and the only way you can do it safely in Vietnam is to use savings.So what's else wrong with the aforementioned model? First of all, it sucks BIG TIME to see your savings evaporate at about 3% a year. Second, Japan followed it and we can sort of agree that Japan has a developed economy. However, if you look closely:Japan has a 236% public debt Japan General Government Gross Debt to GDP and 223.8% private debt Japan Private Debt to GDP. For Japan, 450% total debt to GDP, a 1.36 total fertility rate , and the Central Bank that owns the economy? That sounds like a no future.South Korea is doing better public debt-wise, at only around 36.6% public debt to GDP, but its private debt is still 260%. Also S. Korea's household debt highest in world in comparison with GDP. Total debt to GDP is over 240% National Debt of South Korea SnowballingSouth Korea has a 0.92 total fertility rate, even lower than Japan.Vietnam's public debt Vietnam 2020 government debt to stay in line with current sovereign rating: Fitch is only set to rise to 42%, private debt Vietnam Private Debt: % of Nominal GDP is 140%, which is approaching the danger point (~160% or so). And there are constant groaning about it in the press and media ("oohh, we are leaving so many thousand dollars of debt per head of our children, etc ...). Vietnam has a 2.1 total fertility rate.China is also heavily indebted China's debt tops 300% of GDP, now 15% of global total: IIF. China has a 1.69 total fertility rate and it has been dropping like a rock.Everywhere in the world where the economic growth on paper is driven primarily by debt, you see young people seeing their future being priced beyond their reach, be it housing, family, or children while their income, being heavily suppressed to favor national savings, is laggard relative to the rest of developed world. South Korea and Japan also have large “poor” population with highest household debts and lowest rate of wage raises. Both of them are suffering from deflation in many forms to the others - South Korea hasn’t entered deflation yet but many economists assert that they will.And China is heading there:China’s household debt ballooned in the first half of the year, rising by about $380 billion, according to new Bank for International Settlements data. That increase was almost four times as large as the second-place U.S. And it compounds one of China’s biggest economic vulnerabilities.It has been widely reported that China’s industrial production and exports have helped to power its recovery this year. But the other leg of the recovery is the continued rapid rise of real-estate investment, which is set to outstrip GDP growth.Chinese Household Debt Surges Through the PandemicI subscribe to Dr. Lacy Hunt’s opinion that such indebtedness drives people into not wanting to have children.Ironically, the top overworked cities in the “Cities With the Best Work-Life Balance 2020” ranking are all found in the Asia-Pacific region with Hong Kong coming in first place, followed by Singapore, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo - Most Overworked Cities In ASEAN.One example of this process, confusingly, might even be the United States in the 1920s, as Marriner Eccles (the brilliant Federal Reserve chairman under then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt) explained endlessly to an uncomprehending elite: if all the chips at the poker table are held by the same few players, the only way the rest can keep playing with them is to borrow chips, even though in the end they will not be able to repay the loans.Very predictably: Singapore, Japan, South Korea and China all have rather high debt load and very low fertility rate. Demography is destiny and it's coming up fast for China. There’s often intellectual confusion on why demography is important. Your savings by not having children will matter less and worth less than you think in the face of a declining population. Basically, if the population shrinks in half, the money you save up now with the current workforce will have to chase goods and services produced by only half of the population in the future when you retire. This means, assuming productivity does not increase by twice, your savings worth only half as much. In some sectors, productivity can increase more than half, but in sectors that matter to retirees: healthcare and services, productivity has hardly increased.Interesting article on Japanese and Chinese demographics. While China's total population will begin to decline in 5-10 years, its working-age population has already begun to decline, making it the fastest aging country in the world.Subscribe to read | Financial TimesThis makes it more urgent than ever that China shift income equal to at least 1% of GDP every year from the state sector to ordinary households. Once China reaches debt-capacity limits, only rapid rebalancing of income can keep real growth rates high.As a Vietnamese who was born in Vietnam, but goes around other places for over a decade, an aspect I only recently look closely at is how much hope and optimism the youth in Vietnam and elsewhere have for their future. I have come to a conclusion that such hope and optimism manifest itself as the total fertility rate. If the youth is seeing their future (in terms of housing, and the cost of having a family or raising children) being priced out of their reach, they will not bother with family or children. Since you can't pay for family and children anyway, why not hedonistically consume: "pursue hobbies they’re passionate about, travel the world dining and partying". Those are hedonistic consumption. You get a booming consumer-driven economy but disintegrating family and social bonds. Btw, celebrities are the icons of hedonism, in my view. They are the poster child of that. Coincidentally, they also divorce a lot, use a lot of drugs, die from drug overdoses and suicides. Not the type of life I envy.Repeatedly in the story of development, countries see their TFR dip lower and lower with very few exceptions. Most of the time, increasing debt load goes along with that. Vietnam is having a plateaued TFR at about 2.1. Very few developed countries managed to keep their hopes up. I wonder why. The exceptions are France and Israel. For all the advances, development, and uncorruptibility of Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Singapore, their population lost hope in the future and stop breeding. I'm not convinced that they had everything right, if at all.Western Europe also experienced a short economic miracle after WWII but they put a halt to it because many economists feared a bubble and financial/political dependence on the USA. Meanwhile, the party never ended in Asian Tigers/Asian Cubs and Japan during the 20th century, where all of them gladly received the favorable export conditions from the USA as well as the financial advices from Wall Streets to expand credit creation. Only China, India and Vietnam with state capitalism evaded Western exploitation of the financial systems because their economies are highly controlled and politically independent.In term of credit creation, there is no risk for China as long as the USA can't force the Chinese to sign a Plaza Accord or open the free markets for foreign investors. China acknowledged this so it is the first one of the these East Asia “miracle” on an uncharted path of deleveraging and undoing past excesses in order to gradually command the bubble “popped” on its own term - which it hasn't succeeded so far as reversing all of it is the actual hard part, not the “miraculous” growth China Tries to Shut Rising Income GapIn principle this makes sense. Once it had closed the underlying gap between desired investment and actual investment — which it probably did in the early 2000s — China needed to base growth on domestic demand driven by rising wages, rather than depending on exports or on increasingly non-productive investment. Because China has relied so much on the latter, its debt burden has soared to one of the highest in the world.China’s practices of the investment driven growth model is even more extreme than Japan and South Korea. Since 2007, the incremental capital-output ratio (ICOR) in China has tripled from 3 to 9, while the growth rate of GDP has fallen by half. Beijing has been proposing urgent rebalancing ever since, when a speech by then-premier Wen Jiabao promised that Beijing would make it a priority to rebalance domestic demand towards consumption. This didn't happen. The consumption share of Chinese GDP remains extraordinarily low, just two percentage points higher in 2019 than it was in 2007. Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, during this period China’s debt-to-GDP ratio doubled. The Chinese people are still saving a bunch, but investment is paying off less and less. Imagine trekking into a headwind three times as strong as it was ten years ago; it would make a pleasant hike into a painful slog.*Source: DBS Bank.At the same time, China’s labour productivity and total factor productivity growth have also dropped like a rockIn contrast, Vietnam’s labour productivity (NSLĐ) growth before GDP revision has continued to remain stable:As well as Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth:After Vietnam’s recent GDP revision, labour productivity growth have been actually much higher than above, doubling during 2010–2019 period:We need to understand that China’s low domestic consumption rates — among the lowest in history — is mainly the consequence of household income retaining one of the lowest shares of GDP of any country in history. To rebalance demand towards consumption means nothing less than a major rebalancing of income towards ordinary households. For Chinese consumption to be broadly in line with that of other developing countries, ordinary households must recover at least 10-15 percentage points of GDP at the expense of businesses, the wealthy, or the government. This means rebalancing involves a massive shift of wealth — and with it, political power — to ordinary people. The fundamental hindrance is very powerful domestic groups with an abnormally high share of income and an unwillingness to allow any reforms that rebalance income. In reaction to suchs is the “no-term limit” centralization around Xi Jinping presidency and his anti-corruption campaigns across all levels of Chinese politics. Chinese growth has depended so heavily on the current distortions in income distribution, the transformation to a new model will almost certainly require a very very difficult adjustment period in optimistic terms.Japan seems to have reached the end of a fairly limited rebalancing that occurred in the 1990s and 2000s, during which household consumption rose from 52% of GDP to 55%, while the country’s share of global GDP collapsed from 17% to 7%. China began the process around 2011, even though it had been promising to do so since at least 2007; consumption in the country has grown from 36% of GDP to 38% percent today, a still astonishingly low figure. Unfortunately, until the rebalancing is complete, both countries require large trade surpluses recycled through the capital account (more investment on foreign demand abroad) to resolve low domestic demand. As the world becomes increasingly protectionist, however, both countries may be forced into much more rapid adjustment and a possibly dramatic resolution of their debt burdens.Vietnam isn't on haste like China, so we develop regional economies much more equal and fair. There’s low inequality, low regional discrepancies and high household consumption / income. According to HSBC, private consumption is the economy’s main growth driver with the second-largest consumption share in ASEAN, and the potential to outpace the Philippines soonOver the past 15 years, private consumption has actually been the biggest contributor to GDP growth. Expanding at an average annual pace of 7.5%, private consumption accounted for roughly 75% of the most recent five years’ GDP growth.Vietnam employs similar elements of China but with clever control mechanisms. Vietnamese government is smart because they have enforced debt ceiling and a penchant to shut down any economic disruption/bubble. Any real estate bubble, fueled by artificial speculations by foreign or domestic forces, will be met with the Communist authority.Germany also has the similar mechanism to suppress any economic bubble through layers of bureaucratic laws. Many free market advocates hate bureaucracy because the bureaucrats prevent those capitalist assholes tricking everyone into speculative bubbles, so the capitalists can steal the wealth. Vietnam seems to also emulate the Germany model of Mittelstand with low taxation, high personal wealth and low state intervention unless it’s foreign security issues. Vietnamese model is the combination of Chinese authoritarianism and German ingenuity since many Vietnamese economists studied in Germany. Vietnamese policies value stability above growth, and it’s quite effective for decades now. I don’t think many people realize this surprising fact. Vietnamese is far more Western than their Asian counterparts.High Wages Versus High Savings in a Globalized WorldThe main lesson here is the structural reforms. Many people blame the Plaza Accord for Japan and the Asian Financial Crisis for the Asian Tigers but Germany didn’t get hit severely. The others got all the blows. Germany already reformed itself structurally through an unique mixture of socialism and capitalism unmatched on the planet long before WWII, called social market economy. Germans didn’t have any insane speculative bubble in history nor high debts in both government and private sectors for a long time. They also dumped the Mark currency in favor of the Euro to avoid the same fate as Japan. Today, Germany is still a technological and industrial leader that even the USA constantly conducts technological thefts.Snowden says NSA engages in industrial espionage: TVGermany fears NSA stole industrial secrets | DW | 03.07.2013Germany expels CIA official in US spy rowhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/The East Asia miracles were betting their entire economy on export and manufacturing, while it didn’t invest at making its citizens becoming wise investors and technological geniuses. Not just a handful of Nobel laureates rather than a population of like-minded, innovative people. The US generously gave them crucial technologies for manufacturing, which the US later forced them to return those techs and compensate American companies. They never invested into the type R&D that would ensure technological independence, unlike China and Russia.Also of note is the inefficient bureaucracy which hammers innovation, growth and profitability. Western world killed the conglomerate model around 1950s and monopoly model around 1920s. The rise of shareholder capitalism and disruptive capitalism created a more growth-driven world of entrepreneurship that we see today.For perspective, Vietnamese corporations are more Western than their East Asian counterparts. Traditionally, Japanese or Chinese groups would not be this brave like Vingroup below (or Kinh Do, which has been sold to Mondelez) to shut down operations like this because of jobs and employments. They would likely receive subsidies from governments but I am glad that Vietnamese government isn't like that. But again, this helps them streamline and refocus on real productive investment opportunities.Vingroup further shrinks retail with exit from electronics chainBasically GDP is not a measurement of wealth, you can make a bridge, destroy it and make a new one and your GDP double but your debt will growth as well, the economy is all about making the most out of their capital/resources/man power. For developed country, they have little rooms to growth so they start to build more and more useless junk, which benefit few but cost many, that's where their debt start accumulate.It's not that hard to hit any GDP you want. GDP just records any transactions made within the economy. The disconnect between GDP and welfare can be easily demonstrated as follow. A happy family where only one parent works and the other works as homemaker is a GDP wreck. They spend on one house, just the essentials like food, water, the some luxuries and that's about it. A divorce makes a GDP heroes. Court fees, lawyers fees, cost to pay for agents to sell the marital home, cost to buy two new ones (throw mortgages on that for extra), babysitter fees, additional schooling fees to keep the little shits busy, etc ... GDP counts all of that. A crumbling family add so much to GDP but an intact, happy one doesn't. I think it's pretty obvious which one is better for society or individuals. You can extend that to a healthy lifestyle where you eat well, exercise, cook your own food, etc ... You don't spend much eating out, and you also don't contribute much to GDP. Someone who eat tons of junk food, eating out, then get obese, then pay for personal trainers to attempt at losing weight, get really sick, get expensive treatment to prolong his/her life, etc ... is a GDP hero. You can hit any GDP target you want by public infrastructure building. Bridges to nowhere, widening roads that is already too wide for little traffic there is. You can pay a crew to build a bridge, another to blow it up, then build it, blow it until you hit whatever target you want.The focus of the government should be about making as much thing as possible, lasting for as long as possible, at as low cost as possible, to benefit as much people as possible. After that, if the government is smart enough they can forget about GDP and focus on accumulate wealth instead of GDP growth and debt. In other words, they should provide funding for things and services that are important and socially productive, but not financially profitable: like infrastructure, research and development, education, healthcare, public health, etc ...Vietnam, the country is now far from poor. It is developing and less industrialized, for a good reason. It doesn’t have the super strength of China, so it’s very cautious to avoid any bubble. The industrialization has not been super fast like South Korea in the past because Vietnam is very cautious at credit expansion. The correct term is developing. Vietnamese individuals, Kinh people, enjoy quality of life as much as those in the more developed country. They have more savings in the rainy days than most Americans right now. Their PPP have reached one trillion USD in 2019. However, we don’t have concrete data to support most of these information because the Vietnamese government withheld certain statistics to enjoy the financial privileges of a developing economy. Trump and the IMF have been trying to get Vietnam coming clean of their wealth. Trump administration even removed the country from the list of developing nations.As for the true state of Vietnam’s economy, I tend to love using simple but somehow tells you a very deep and accurate picture of the world. I don't read GDP figures or those but rather look at something else that is more meaningful. The meme about less developed countries that I grew up with was: "oh so we export rice, food and agricultural products at such a cheap price (in terms of USD/ton) and import back expensive products (like iPhones at 800USD/tiny lightweight phone). Well, the Nazis believed that it was a problem, too.However, looking deeper, something interesting I found: Vietnamese living in larger cities are buying and eating direct imported expensive cold-stored fruits like strawberries, cherries, kiwis, blueberries, and raspberries. These fruits are notoriously difficult to transport and preserve. In such places that grow and sell these, the raspberry and strawberries were disintegrating as we travel between the supermarket and our fridge. Yet Vietnamese in large cities are eating and buying it. People found it profitable to buy these fruits from Americans and Australians, pile them onto a plane, keep it cold and refrigerated between warehouses and the plane, fly it from the USA or Australia to Vietnam (BTW, there isn't even a direct passener flight from Vietnam to the US), then keep it cold from the airports to various Vietnamese cities. It isn't the children of extremely rich elites that eat these. It's your average middle class and middle class online sellers who hawk these fruits on Facebook markets. The price is about double of the price locally in say, Australia.One of my high school friend's family run a company that used to export seafood. After a spate of dead fishes, he switched to importing fruits from the USA as well as nutritional supplements. That tells you that Vietnam market had sufficient foreign exchange to not only buy high-tech products but even luxuries like refrigerated raspberries.Look, we all know that Vietnam isn't ranked very high on Transparency International list. However, what kind of activities that is going on that people grab money from matter tremendously. When the wealth of a country is mostly dug out of the ground (oil, ore, diamond, etc ...), it's very easy for a small number of people to dominate and eat everything. Diamond mines can be run with starving slaves and oil fields can be drilled by foreign corporations. The wealth in Vietnam turns out to be none of that. Even farming is a complex thing and if you ever try to grow a home garden, you'll instantly realise why. It's not easy. I haven't been able to eat a single leaf of lettuce in my garden despite 3 tries; birds and rodents ate them. Thai basil is a fantastic herb, but grasshopers prefer it over everything else and a single rain and fungus is growing all over it. Yes, lots of the output are siphoned off, but the ruling class need to keep the working somewhat educated, somewhat connected, and their living standards somewhat reasonable for wealth to be generated. And at all cost, don't kill the farmers. A lot of revolutionaries found out the very hard way.In reference to the specific perceptions of "Communism", my response is "in reference to what?". For example, Western advocates usually points to the lack of private ownership of lands in Vietnam (in Vietnam, you have the permission to use the land) as a lack of freedom. Well, Singapore, which is a somewhat democratic country (Singaporeans poked fun at us for having "One Party" and we riposte with "well, you guys have one family"), also have no land ownership for 80-90% of its population. Singapore follows an even older (medieval) legal principle of "All lands belong to the King" (or state), which they inherited from the Her Majesty, the Queen of the United Kingdom. When Singaporeans "buy" a Housing and Development Board "flat" they actually signed a lease from the Housing and Development Board.Economically, Vietnam is less socialist than, for example, Belgium or much of Western Europe. There are probably more honest-to-God communists in the University of Berkeley than in Vietnam. I have been living in Australia and I have seen three advertisements for annual Marxist conferences; I have seen zero in Vietnam. I have only read the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx while I was in Singapore (I haven't read Das Kapital).I remember an exchange where an American was telling me: "I can't imagine how life under a totalitarian regime will be like" and my answer was: "It's not that different, 99.5% of the time. If you shut your mouth and make money, everywhere is the same". If you are highly skilled, you can earn good money anywhere and have a comfortable life. It's really only dicey for the unskilled, hard-to-be-employed people. The protests occurring right now in the USA demonstrate that.Employment of the "hard-to-be-employed" actually serve a function for social stability and Vietnam, thanks to the way the government is organised, has some tricks to deal with it. There are large state-owned enterprises, which are not run very profitably; but then again, Airbus, a large European aviation conglomerate ran at a loss for several decades to chip away Boeing market share. Vietnam's Ministry of Defence run several large and small companies, doing everything from banking to telecommunication. Very bizarrely, for example, Viettel, has market share in Mozambique, Haiti, East Timor, Cameroon, Burundi, Tanzania, and Myanmar. the MoD runs companies producing something as simple as clothing and rain coats, which they do sell to the private market.Why? Well, there are many things that are vital to national security; for example, when a war break out, can you depend on normal supply chain for something as simple as shirts or boots? Without them, troops get sick and you lose. However, running them at market efficiency will ensure that these things get offshore in the "race to the bottom". Vietnam's government and communist party are among some of the most strategically and diplomatically adept people. They have a maniacal focus on national security and regime stability. They probably learned that, for example, interest rates below inflation rate will create a lot of GDP growth, but at the cost of future political instability; so they put a stop to that. COVID-19 is a major security threat, so it had to be stopped at all cost, which actually benefit Vietnam since if you correlate GDP growth in 2020 to how well different countries in SEA control COVID, the only countries that even see a positive sign are the ones who control it well.As for the same story with technological patents and IPs regarding Vietnam, only commoners value them as great. A patent of creating an anime body pillow that creates cute sound isn't a productive innovation from Japan. We should see the "CONTENTS" and "PRODUCTIVITY" behind every patent claimed by Japan, South Korea, China. Not the number of patents and IPs. Finland and Sweden, very few patents, are the technological leaders in military hardwares and telecommunications - Sweden has the best submarine, and Finland has the best 5G. South Korea, Japan and China still had to kowtow at the two Nordic nations that have inferior GDPs.I quite admire China in this respect because they realize that the West isn't your friend. They are aware that colored people should be technologically independent from the West. Too bad, the Chinese screwed things up by repeating the same Stalin's mistakes. They should create an union of interested nations against the West, instead of antagonizing every possible ally near you.We should also remember that China has not experienced war from 1953-onward and had opened up to the world through normalized relations with the U.S since 1977. Vietnam, on the other hand, had perpetual war during 1945–1975 including the 1979 Sino-Vietnam war. It had suffered decades of US trade embargo and had to wait until it was eventually lifted in February 1994 and formal normalization of U.S.-Vietnam diplomatic relations took place in 1995.Any attempts at comparison between Apples and Oranges is not rooted in understanding of historical circumstances.

Before Reading this, i will tell you that this article covered all information as much as possible, this is not only for a 10th, 12th student. Each and everyone student read this and apply in you life. So that you will become a successful person in their learning process:To score 90% above in class 12th, you can follow some tips and some changes in your habits. So that you can achieve your goals by securing 90% and above.First and most important thing is that many students ask questions like that:How can i score good marks?What strategies we used that makes me able to secure good percentage?Is this subject is easy?Can i cover whole syllabus in 1 month?How much time I will revise my syllabus to achieve this or that percentage?So these are the some types of question that the students ask frequently, to make their career better.I will cover all types of question that are mentioned above by answering them.Que 1: How can i score good marks?Ans: There are some methods that i mentioned here:Method-1 (Absorbing Knowledge Efficiently)Pay attention in your classes and concentrate The best thing you can do to raise your test scores is to pay attention when you're supposed to be learning the material: in class! Letting your mind wander or not showing up at all are both likely to make you miss out on key information that will later appear on tests.Take good notes. This is important if you want to have an easier time studying later. Not only will writing the information down as you learn it help you in absorbing the information and paying attention, but you'll have a reference for when you go to study later.Do your homework. Homework, such as assignments and at-home reading are where you will find the rest of the information that will be on tests, so doing this homework is important. Schedule time and set aside a quiet place just for homework to help beat the procrastination blues.Do practice tests. Ask your teacher or go online and print a few practice tests. Taking a practice test will help you figure out how much information you actually know vs how much information you think you know. Knowing your weak spots before a test is crucial!Use mnemonics and other tricks. Various memory tricks really can be useful for remembering certain things like numbers, categories, and lists. Just make sure that you learn them correctly and don't mix them up!Mnemonics are phrases which can help you remember the order of certain things. For example, "Katy Perry Came Over For Great Songs" is a great way to remember the biological classifications (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species).Another memory trick is if you have to remember a string of numbers. Instead of trying to remember 2537610925, for example, break it up like a phone number: 253-761-0925. You can break up dates this way too. 14 Oct 1066 (the Battle of Hastings) can become a locker combination: 14-10-66.Method-2 (Studying Like a Pro)Study frequently. Studying hard for only a few hours the night before the test isn't going to help ensure perfect scores. If you really want to ace those exams, study old and new material every day, or at least several times a week. This will make test-taking a breeze.Take study breaks. When you study, make sure you take a 5-10 minute break after every 30 minutes of study. This will help keep your brain from getting overloaded and give it more time to absorb the information.On study breaks, try not to fill your brain with more information, even if that information is more about your favourite celebrity's latest concert rather than Winston Churchill's foreign policy.Study according to your learning style. You may know that different people have different learning styles. Some people are visual learners, some people prefer sound, some need physical motion, and so on. Know how you learn best and work that into how you study.For example, if you learn better by physically doing things, try walking around while you study. If you learn better with sounds associated with the information, listen to music while you study. If you're a visual learner, make a chart of the information you have to know.Take advantage of sense memory. Your brain is pretty good at associating smells or sounds with ideas or memories. You should take advantage of this! While you're studying, wear some unusual cologne or perfume (with a smell you don't usually encounter) and then expose yourself to that smell again right before or during a test.Listen to music. Your teacher probably won't let you have headphones during a test, but you should at least listen to music, specifically classical music, right before taking a test. Studies have proven that exposure to certain types of music right before rigorous mental activity can really help, by waking up your brain and increasing your awareness.Que 2: What strategies we used that makes me able to secure good percentage?Ans : Strategies are as follows:Defeat yourself.Stick with your syllabus book.Be careful with your weak point.Time will kill your marks.Solving previous year papers.Thing to do and no to do on the exam day.Management of time during examination.Attempt those questions in which your are confident.Last but most important, to disconnect yourself completely before 3 months of examination.Que 3: Is this subject is easy?Ans : If you practice more, then it will results in generation of more doubt. So nothing is bad in clarifying your doubts.Like for me, Math is the easiest subject. I found it easy since Grade 2. Just memorize how to do the equation and you'll get fast answers. For example, memorizing the multiplication will greatly improve your addition, multiplication and even division. Because of this, I found it the easiest and therefore wanted to pursue math. I am the school representative in Math since Grade 4 and didn't even found the contest so hard. I am consistently having grade ranging from 92-96(nearly 97), and believe it or not, I surpassed our valedictorian's grade at the last quarter which is 96.48 and mine is 96.81. And my lowest average per quarter is 93 and 95 being the highest. I am very shocked because I was only the 11th most intelligent person in our school(smarter than all boys). See, Math isn't really hard, it's just the perception that person always get wrong at simple things but the result is not even near it. Practice makes mastery guys, just memorize, analyze and solve. It doesn't mean that if you are wrong then you're not good, every person learns from their mistakes. I'll be honest that I don't understand division when I was grade and was not able to cope up with my classmates. I soon got it and now I am better than them(mostly like 99%).I will tell you that nothing is easy or hard. It is totally depends on your perception. Make sure if your mind says to you that is difficult, then you should remind this thought.“Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it”.Que 4: Can i cover whole syllabus in 1 month?Ans : Every person have different abilities and they pusses different capabilities. That’s why i cant give you same capsule to everyone. But you can choose better one according to you.20 Scientific Ways to Learn FasterLearn the same information in a variety of ways. The research (Willis, J. 2008) shows that different media stimulate different parts of the brain. The more areas of the brain that are activated, the more likely it is that you’ll understand and retain the information.So to learn a specific topic, you could do the following:Read the class notesRead the textbookWatch a Khan Academy videoLook up other online resourcesCreate a mind mapTeach someone what you’ve learnedDo practice problems from a variety of sourcesOf course, you won’t be able to do all of these things in one sitting. But each time you review the topic, use a different resource or method – you’ll learn faster this way.Study multiple subjects each day, rather than focusing on just one or two subjects.It’s more effective to study multiple subjects each day, than to deep-dive into one or two subjects (Rohrer, D. 2012).For example, if you’re preparing for exams in math, history, physics, and chemistry, it’s better to study a bit of each subject every day. This approach will help you to learn faster than by focusing on just math on Monday, history on Tuesday, physics on Wednesday, chemistry on Thursday, and so on.Why?Because you’re likely to confuse similar information if you study a lot of the same subject in one day.So to study smart, spread out your study time for each subject. In so doing, your brain will have more time to consolidate your learning.Review the information periodically, instead of cramming.Periodic review is essential if you want to move information from your short-term memory to your long-term memory. This will help you get better exam grades.As the research (Cepeda, N. 2008) shows, periodic review beats cramming hands-down.The optimal review interval varies, depending on how long you want to retain the information. But experience – both my own and through working with students – tells me that the following review intervals work well (I explain the entire periodic review system in this article):1st review: 1 day after learning the new information2nd review: 3 days after the 1st review3rd review: 7 days after the 2nd review4th review: 21 days after the 3rd review5th review: 30 days after the 4th review6th review: 45 days after the 5th review7th review: 60 days after the 6th reviewSit at the front of the class.If you get to choose where you sit during class, grab a seat at the front. Studies show that students who sit at the front tend to get higher exam scores (Rennels & Chaudhari, 1988). The average scores of students, depending on where they sat in class, are as follows (Giles, 1982):Front rows: 80%Middle rows: 71.6%Back rows: 68.1%These findings were obtained under conditions where the seating positions were teacher-assigned.This means it’s not just a case of the more motivated students choosing to sit at the front, and the less motivated students choosing to sit at the back.By sitting at the front, you’ll be able to see the board and hear the teacher more clearly, and your concentration will improve too.Now you know where the best seats in class are!Don’t multitask.The data is conclusive: Multitasking makes you less productive, more distracted, and dumber.The studies even show that people who claim to be good at multitasking aren’t actually better at it than the average person.Effective students focus on just one thing at a time. So don’t try to study while also intermittently replying to text messages, watching TV, and checking your Twitter feed.Here are some suggestions to improve your concentration:Turn off notifications on your phonePut your phone away, or turn it to airplane modeLog out of all instant messaging programsTurn off the Internet access on your computerUse an app like FreedomClose all of your Internet browser windows that aren’t related to the assignment you’re working onClear the clutter from your study areaSimplify, summarize, and compress the information.Use mnemonic devices like acronyms, as these are proven to increase learning efficiency.[8]Example #1If you want to memorize the electromagnetic spectrum in order of increasing frequency, you could use this acronym/sentence:Raging Martians Invaded Venus Using X-ray Guns(In order of increasing frequency, the electromagnetic spectrum is: Radio, Microwave, Infrared, Visible, Ultraviolet, X-rays, Gamma rays.)Example #2Question: Stalactites and stalagmites – which ones grow from the top of the cave and which ones grow from the ground?Answer: Stalactites grow from the top, while stalagmites grow from the ground.Study smart by using mnemonic devices whenever possible. In addition, you could summarize the information into a comparison table, diagram, or mind map.These tools will help you learn the information much faster.Take notes by hand, instead of using your laptop.Scientists recommend this, and not just because you’re more likely to give in to online distractions when using your laptop. Even when laptops are used only for note-taking, learning is less effective (Mueller, P. 2013).Why?Because students who take notes by hand tend to process and reframe the information. In contrast, laptop note-takers tend to write down what the teacher says word-for-word, without first processing the information.As such, students who take notes by hand perform better in tests and exams.Write down your worries.Will I do well on this exam?What if I forget the key concepts and equations?What if the exam is harder than expected?These kinds of thoughts probably run through your head before you take an exam. But if these thoughts run wild, the accompanying anxiety can affect your grades.Here’s the solution …In one experiment,researchers at the University of Chicago discovered that students who wrote about their feelings about an upcoming exam for 10 minutes performed better than students who didn’t. The researchers say that this technique is especially effective for habitual worriers.Psychologist Kitty Klein has also shown that expressive writing, in the form of journaling, improves memory and learning.Klein explains that such writing allows students to express their negative feelings, which helps them to be less distracted by these feelings.To be less anxious, take 10 minutes and write down all the things related to the upcoming exam that you’re worried about. As a result of this simple exercise, you’ll get better grades.Test yourself frequently.Decades of research has shown that self-testing is crucial if you want to improve your academic performance.In one experiment, University of Louisville psychologist Keith Lyle taught the same statistics course to two groups of undergraduates.For the first group, Lyle asked the students to complete a four- to six-question quiz at the end of each lecture. The quiz was based on material he’d just covered.For the second group, Lyle didn’t give the students any quizzes.At the end of the course, Lyle discovered that the first group significantly outperformed the second on all four midterm exams.So don’t just passively read your textbook or your class notes. Study smart by quizzing yourself on the key concepts and equations. And as you prepare for a test, do as many practice questions as you can from different sources.Connect what you’re learning with something you already know.In their book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, scientists Henry Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel explain that the more strongly you relate new concepts to concepts you already understand, the faster you’ll learn the new information.For example, if you’re learning about electricity, you could relate it to the flow of water. Voltage is akin to water pressure, current is akin to the flow rate of water, a battery is akin to a pump, and so on.Another example: You can think of white blood cells as “soldiers” that defend our body against diseases, which are the “enemies.”It takes time and effort to think about how to connect new information to what you already know, but the investment is worth it.The bottom line:This is a long article that contains a lot of information. But don’t feel overwhelmed, because there’s no need to implement everything at one shot.As the saying goes …How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.In the same way, to implement tips in this whole article, do it one tip at a time. Focus on just one tip a week, or even one tip a month. Once you’ve turned that tip into a habit, move on to the next one.Throughout the process, don’t let the goal of getting straight A’s become an unhealthy obsession. After all, education is about much more than getting good grades.It’s about the pursuit of excellence. It’s about cultivating your strengths. And it’s about learning and growing , so you can contribute more effectively.There’s hard work involved, but I know you’re up to the challenge.Thankyou!!