I just started a group named 'online social networking for stress relief' on facebook. Until now 20 members have joined the group. I am eagerly waiting for a broader response and being from an advertising school, I am publicising my group widely. I am also searching for related groups like, counter terrorism, social networking, internet & websites, etc. and sending the administrators of the respective groups a personal message to join my group.

I want to carry out my research through discussion forums and understand their psychology through short and decent questionnaires. I have already started a forum and put in two simple questions for people to answer. Response is slow and I think I need to do the marketing of my group in depth.

I have now changed the anticipated outcome for my masters project into a positive one. The concept is the same, "counter terrorism". I was quite depressed and disturbed reading about the radicalisation of young Muslims. Terrorism is a broader arena so I thought to turn towards the post terror event trauma suffered by general people, people who are suffering from a terror attack or the survivors of an attack. I am looking forward to understand the psychology of people suffering from depression because of these issues. Media hype about terror events is also increasing gradually making the environment more depressed.

I was just surfing through the web and encountered a website, www.wearenotafraid.com. This website is a simple portal with uploaded images from the people world wide. It contains images uploaded by people with their families, individuals or any snaps with a slogan "we are not afraid". This website was a medium for people to unite together and give a message to the radicals about their fearless attitude. This also was a notion of confidence building among the people.

I was reading through the art therapy for de-stressing people suffering from traumatic conditions. Drawing is a creative medium for expressing oneself and quite a pleasant activity as well (stating from my personal experience). Considering these things, I thought of developing a website comprehending creative art such as drawing, music composition, poetry writing, etc. in a digital paradigm. My project advisor suggested me to involve social networking into the website as a prime criteria. Resultant of this, the website would be a social networking website including digital creative art as the main aspect.

Now I am looking forward towards involving my peers in an interview and understanding their idea about their way of tackling depression, usage of internet when being depressed and such other things. A question and priority for myself, at the moment, is to generate a profound idea which would be a pitch-able product after my masters.

I had a chance to watch a live surgery today. It was a colon surgery, the patient was suffering from crohn's disease. Initially, I though I would faint in the operation theatre, but the environment was quite friendly and not serious at all. There was music running on a small music system, doctors were chatting and cracking jokes while answering to our questions.

As I am working in a group in a project of redesigning a surgical stapler, the motive behind watching the live surgery was to understand the use of the surgical stapler. It basically consisted to observe the storage, its use by the prime stake holders, the surgeon, assistant surgeon and the scrub nurse, to learn about the usage of its packaging, and handling of the stapler by the surgeon and his assistant. A lot of information was revealed after watching the actual live procedure with the stapler's use.

It was an unforgettable morning in my life. Earlier, in the last days of my school, I used to feel like becoming a doctor and performing a surgical procedure. In my childhood, I used to perform a fake kiddies surgery on my grand parents while they were asleep, pasting wet white papers on their body as bandages. My grandpa also used to enjoy and praise the performance, making a relieving sound as a disguise of feeling better after the surgery. Today, even if I didn't perform a surgery, I actually felt like being a doctor. The picture below elaborates my feelings neatly. :)


That's Fiona (my colleague) and me, watching the surgery with a broad smile. :)