100!

I think this journal thing is a very good habit. Although I sometimes forgot to do my journal and it is very difficult for me to remember to do them, I still think writing these journal entries helped me a lot. It helps me develop a habit of doing something continuously without stop. It also help me develop my opinions and thoughts. I find this helpful because when I look at the short answers and essay part on the tests, they are all just like my journal entries and because I already have a developed and matured idea and thought on the topic, I can develop even further during a test and I would be ready when a short answer question pop up. Even though I didn't have all one hundred journal entries, I am still pretty close and I am proud of the fact that I continue this for so long and did it almost everyday. This has been a great experience and I am glad that I didn't do all the journals at once at the last day not only because I couldn't finish a hundred journal entries in one day but also because it is a better exercise to have a developed thought each day after discussion with the class and to put it down at the end of the day then to rush through a hundred journal entries.

Finl Exam

I am not very confident and believe I would get a perfect score but I believe I would get a decent score. I am familiar with most of the stories we've read and I have read them all one more time to review the content and literary element in it. However, I am a bit confused and not sure about the 102 Minutes story because the names and the story are confusing and I couldn't really understand it. However, I still have a decent knowledge on it. I've also look over the Talking Skull folk tale thoroughly several times because I couldn't understand the meaning of "Talking brought me here." the first few times I read it but then I think it means that they bragged about something they are not sure about and that's why they got killed in the bush. I'm not quite sure about the meaning of the bush, is it the forest or an actual shrub. I am pretty confident that I would get a decent score on this test and would be surprised if I did not because I have spent a lot of effort and time on reviewing the vocabulary, story's content and literary element, and going through the folk tale. I would also be pretty surprised if I get a perfect score or close because I am not that confident. However, I have good feelings about this test and believe it would boost up my grade.

Group Work

I like group works more because during group project you only have one specific job to do and you can make it perfect. You can dedicate all your energy and thought to that specific area of the project and make it work. But I dislike group project with an irresponsible teammate. Usually what happens when I am pair with an irresponsible teammate is that I try to focus all my energy to perfect my part of the project but I still get a really low grade because my teammate decides to slack off. During a large group, we can focus our energy on a smaller part and when one person decides to not do anything it wouldn't hurt as much. However, we must learn to cooperate with anyone. For example, if you are to be selected to cooperate with a person you dislike or does literally nothing, you just have to treat it like a more difficult project and focus half your energy on doing their part for them. Although you might not get a good score but that's the downside of working with a person that does little to nothing or working on a difficult project. I think group works is really helpful in that we can learn to divide and distribute roles to members withing the group and that teaches us leadership. We can also learn to cooperate so in the future we would know how to.

Strangers Together

During a crisis situation, although people don't know each other and are totally strangers to each other, they must work together to survive. This is because people will do anything to survive, it's human and any animal instinct to use any technique, work with anything to survive. During "102 Minutes", the two strangers must work together to survive until the rescue team come and rescue them. The author points out that these two people are strangers and alone to show that even two people that knew nothing about each other would trust each other and accomplish something when it is absolutely necessary to work together.I can't really think of any experiences where I have been in a dangerous, risky, or near-death experience so I wold not have been in that kind of situation with a stranger too. However, this kind of situation is in the movie all the time, where two people are caught in a situation where the killer or monster is approaching and they must work together to survive or kill the beast. In this kind of movie, the characters usually become good friend. I would also expect this in real life. Even if you are in a situation with a person you hate, at first you might refuse to talk to him, but when you're life is on the verge then you will do whatever it takes and after this event you might become good friends with him becaue you would understand him more.

Project Reflection

I found out that if our homework was to read the book of our choice and do the project that we choose, it would be much easier because we are willing to do it and we are happy to do it. We chose books that we would read on a daily basis and instead of reading purely for enjoyment, we get a grade while enjoying reading it. The key point in successfully finishing and doing this project is only to choose a book that you like and to just read it casually while making a project on something you like. I didn't spend much hard work in reading the book because I enjoyed reading the book and find it fun. However, the start of the book was kind of painful. The book doesn't have a hook, or at least it doesn't work on me, that grabs me to keep me reading in the beginning. However, towards the end of the book, when it gets more intense, it grabs my attention and it became easy to continue reading. I spend a lot of time working on my project and I enjoy making the project. I am kind of proud of my project because I feel like my profile on Winston Smith was in great detailed and I have spent a great deal of time researching and making the profile and files look legit. I think this project is worthwhile because by letting we choose the book, we can read a book that we enjoy and it's our own choice and by regulating the reading difficulty we are still learning. Also, the weekly reading check and analysis let us further understand the novel in a more critical way.

911

911 is a very terrible event that marked the largest terrorist attack on the mainland of the United States of America. On September 11, when people were watching the news about a plane that flew into Twin Tower, another air plane flew in Twin Tower on live stream. For the viewers, it is devastating and horrible. However, for people who have lost their dear friends and families during the incident have a really strong personal sense of anger and resentment against the terrorist. These people crave massive retaliation because the terrorists have done the unspeakable to them and they seek revenge. For people watching live news at home, people are dying inside the building and it is nothing like how it is on news. Real people, colleagues, friends, random person who is delivering mail, and every people in the building are dying at any second. There are many speculations that after the death of Osama Bin Laden, there will be a power vacuum in AL-Qaeda and there will be a lot of extremest and or Bin Laden's close friend or assistant that will plan a big terrorist attack, bigger than 911, to prove their worth to be the new leader. It might be a even more dangerous place for the next following years.

Jargon

Jargon is terms used in a specific activity, profession, or secret code used between people. Usually people use jargons so it's easier to communicate and easier to pronounce. Also, some uses jargons for connection and link between people to feel like they are part of the same thing. Jargons are also used for secrecy, so other people who doesn't need to know the information would not know. For example, teenagers now aday uses jargon commonly known as slang for a number of different reason. One reason being that they feel closer and more connected to their identity when using slang. Another reason might be that they don't want their parents to know exactly what they are talking about. Drug dealers and crackheads uses street names for drugs so the police wouldn't know what they are selling or even what they are talking about. For example, marijuana is referred to a wide variety of ways, such as sweet mary jane, the buddha, and weed. Some drugs' street names are so common because their professional name are too hard to pronounce such as MDMA now known mostly as ecstasy. Some mountain climbing terms used are short-roped, and it refers to assisting someone injured during a mountain climbing expedition, and reppal, meaning to descend off a steep slide by a rope and repelling against the wall in small back-eject.

Risk for a Reason

There are different behaviors that will emerge at a time of danger or crisis. For example, one might risk his or her own life to save another person, sometimes a stranger or sometimes someone very close. Or, one might save himself first before trying to save others. Also, there are people who doesn't risk any chance of getting hurt or risk their life in trying to help other people in need of help. People says, at a time of crisis,it's when one show their true self. For example, if you have a friend you feel really close to; they might ignore you and only save themselves at a time of crisis. It is really not their fault because it's human instinct to do whatever it takes to survive and avoid harmful behaviors. However, it is also human nature to save another person without thinking but just doing it out of selflessness. However, there are people who save people only for the benefit of the result of saving the person. Usually at a time of crisis, people doesn't have much time to think it through. Maybe people doesn't think about how risky the behavior is and it's because they have miscalculated the cost-benefit analysis that they risk their life to save other. That is why usually when there is an abundant of time to make a decision, less people risk their life in saving another person. WHen a person save another person out of pure selflessness, that is altruism, and our society praises altruism because it is a quality we want to be implanted in everyone's mind.

Why Take Risks!?

Mountain climbers take risks because they like the feeling of adrenaline rush. Just like many activities that requires a chance of risk, participants enjoy taking risks because they enjoy the fact that there is a chance that they might lose. People get addicted to taking risks because they are addicted to the good feeling when they take a bet and the sudden adrenaline rush fills them with pleasure. Just like gamblers, they are actually not addicted to winning or getting a huge amount of money because what end up happening is that they lose all their money but still come back every year after getting their paycheck to lose them all again. This is because they are addicted to the losing of the game. They came for fun, for risk, and the minute they set their bets and leave their money, there is a chance they might lose it all, and the sudden adrenaline rush fills them with joy and excitement. You often see gamblers laughing after they have lost a couple thousand because they feel like they have had a huge amount of enjoyment and they won't cash in until they lose everything. This applies to mountain climbers too. Although dead mountain climbers don't live to tell how exciting it is to lose it all, one reason mountain climber go climb higher and higher mountains is not just because they want to prove that they can conquer a high mountain, but rather the adrenaline that kicks in when they are in such dangerous situation.

Cause and Effect

Stories are basically a chain of cause and effects relating to each other that moves the story. Just like life, it's composed of series of events that interrelated to each other so that after one action is performed, it will cause another to happen and that action would be the causation of another event. The causation and effect of events are predetermined by your personality and other's personality. While others' personality determines what they will do,  their action causes you to act in a way that suits your personality the best. In a short story, author use a variety of different techniques and focus on different part of the story. While one might focus on the effect of one or more actions, others would focus and discuss the causation of one ore more causes. There are also authors who focus on the whole chain of causes and effects and these are ways to help us understand the story and relate to it. Cause and effects in life are complex chains so complex that it's impossible to figure out because it takes on everything that happened in the world. The Butterfly Effect is the explanation of cause and effect in life. While one butterfly flaps its wings in one place, a chain of reaction, or cause and effect, might cause a tornado to occur somewhere halfway across the globe. However, short stories tend to simplify this chain into the most simple form, sometimes even to where there's only one line of cause and effect.

Compare Disasters

Krakauer's story is different from the all three of Titanic's account. The first one is the R.M.S Titanic. The author of this account is not even part of the event so his point of view would be third person and his sources would be second hand and first hand from a variety of different sources. This made a whole lot of difference because any feelings and opinions in this account would very much not be the author's but would be a collection of different sources he got from. Also, because he is not involved in the event, he would not include as much feelings and personal thoughts into the account as Krakauer. The second one from the fireman would be more related to Krakauer's because the fireman actually was involved in this terrible incident and is one of the victims just like Krakauer is in his conquest to the top of the world. However, this is a bit different because their view on the subject matter might be different. Yes they both think that what happened was utterly terrible but because Krakauer is a trained journalist and he is trained to keep his thoughts in a minimum level, there was less feelings involved and the writing was more professional. However, the fireman wasn't trained to write professional articles, so he obviously included more personal feelings and less fact.

Partipation

The role of a journalist should not be bias, they shouldn't include their personal thoughts and opinion to persuade or have an effect on the reader in any way possible. However, it is almost impossible to be absolutely objective without any influences. Participatory journalism is even more so because the journalist is involved in the event. No matter how uninvolved he is, he is always more involved then a random reporter reporting the event because he actually took part in it. When one is part of an event and he is to write about it, it is nearly impossible to not put thoughts and opinions in it even though he might not mean it because when you describe the situation you are using your own judgement because you were there and that's a first hand source. In the case of John, he was a participatory journalist that witnessed a terrible event of his team member dying. This tragic event led to him filling the article with his own ideas and opinions because it is just too stunning. Some have argued that participatory journalism is questionable and should be abolished because journalist in this field will often include their own personal thoughts and opinions that might sway the article in a certain way or might persuade the audience rather than simply informing real facts and this might be a problem.

RISK

Risk is very pleasurable because when a person takes risk, he is flooded with adrenalin and the feeling is very pleasurable. Also, one of the best feelings when can get is the feeling when you have risked something and you win the bet because there is a chance you might lose the bet but the moment you win the bet you feel good. It's what makes human human. Many decisions we make is based a risk taking and analysis, we take what's the outcome and we take what we might lose if we lose the bet and then we analyze if we should take the risk. Because we have spent energy analyzing and deciding what's the best to do, winning the bet would mean that we didn't waste our hardwork and that's why we get the good feeling, also that we have made the right decision. However, because teens are less likely to calculate the risk because we are young and ruthless. Younger people tend to make mistakes in taking risks and they will be extra careful with taking risks. However, for most teenagers, although we have never face and real big deal loss from taking risk, we only enjoyed the good feeling from making the right decision where we didn't think much about it. That is why young people tend to take more and more dangerous risks than adult. This is because we are using the trial and error reasoning. We only stop taking risks when something had really gone wrong last time we take risks, and that usually never happens, Smart people learns from other's mistake while teenagers learn from its own mistakes.

Free Write

If I am going to choose to have a dog, I would choose a dog that could protect me and is loyal to me. This would be my criteria because I think it would be cool to have a dog that will fight off other dogs because I'm afraid of dogs. Also, I want it to be loyal so even if it's too powerful I wouldn't have to be afraid, I would actually be happy if it became more powerful. Dogs are a lot like monkeys but I wouldn't want to keep a monkey as a pet because of a few reasons.First, they don't look cool or cute; monkeys are ugly and hairy. Secondly, monkeys are very noisy and they are big and messy. These are the two primary reasons why I wouldn't keep a monkey as a pet. People being hairy are mostly from genetic reasons and that means if a person is hairy, his/her parents are most likely be hairy too. Genes are very complicated and scientists now have no fully understand how it worked and what ever single strand are for. The causation of cancer from radiation is when the particles go into your body and knocks off parts of your DNA and that strand would mutate. People that mutate through radiation happened a lot for generations after Japan got nuked by the United States of America because the DNA blueprints of parents have been messed up and their kids' genes would be messed up too. During the World War II, most battles happened in the sky and are called dogfights. The pilots shot down but still alive sometimes would have their injured parts amputated to avoid infections. Now the technology is very advanced and people doesn't have to amputate body parts just because of a few bullet wound. People even have plastic surgery done even for the public and is now a very profitable business in China. However, in China, many people fake their doctor certificate and they practice plastic surgery while knowing nothing about it so many mistakes and death occurs.

A Challenge

I enjoy some kinds of challenge. However, i especially hated when it is clearly impossible to beat or it would take a really long time to beat the challenge. Usually when I encounter challenges too difficult or too time-wasting, I just give up once I think there's no hope or it's going to take a long time. However, I really like the feeling of beating a challenge that at first you think it's possible. I think the feeling is really great when you are faced with a challenge, mentally or physically, and you overcome it through hard work, never give in attitude, and     talent. Base on the descriptions, I would conclude that the challenges I like would be challenges hard enough for me to think it's impossible for just a little while in the beginning and just easy enough for me to solve before I get tired and sick of it. I usually always prefer mental challenges because during the physical challenges you get tired and sore and that would make me lose morale and the time for me to want to try will shorten significantly. However, mental challenges that are more challenging and difficult can be very frustrating and cause anger and for me, sweating. That is why sometimes I get really angry when I can't solve a problem because I become very hot inside. Usually I like game challenges because I take a great deal of enjoyment while trying to solve the puzzle or trying to beat the game.

Highwayman

A highwayman is a person that is a kind of pirate but he hijacks cars with guns. They stand in front of cars or jump in front of cars on highways with their guns and hijack rides.What happened to the Highwayman in the story about the highwayman is that he is forbidden to love a girl that is the landowner's daughter. It is very similar to Frank's situation because he is forbid by the nurses and nuns to speak to, laugh with, or any communication with girl next room, Patricia for reason's such as the spreading of germs or that they shouldn't express praise to any aspect of England. Toward the end of the story, Frank was sent to another place, away from Patricia as a punishment for talking to her. This is also similar to the highwayman situation because Frank doesn't know what happened next and the highwayman is not allowed to go to Patricia as a punishment for his crime. I think Seamus' conclusion is reasonable in that aspect, that they are separated and forbid to communicate in any form with each other, which indirectly means no relationship can happen between them. However, it is even worse in Frank's case because he and her both has disease that was incurable at that time so not only are they not allowed to experience love but they are also fighting death constantly. It's can be a romantic story because Frank likes Patricia and Patricia and there's an outside force trying to put a stop to their affection to each other and that is the conflict to all romances.

Humor's Role

"I had to laugh 'cos I couldn't cry no more"

--anonymous

Humor can make a really sad story just barely acceptable. When we read a depressing story, we feel very bad, however, the jokes and humors make the story readable and maybe even enjoyable. This saying basically means, you can't feel sad forever about everything; if your life is sad, try to have fun with it and try to enjoy some parts of it. Angela's Ashes is a very sad story by Frank and the fact that it's a true story made it worse. However, the story is also filled with silly little details and events to make the story enjoyable in a sense that it's not sad all the way to the core. Also, for a story that sad, everything that's not so sad is going to be mildly good relatively so it's easier to create a few humorous details here and there. Usually in this kind of work, a very sad tragedy, authors use catharsis to soothe the tension because some of the events might just be too horrible. For example, when a very close friend of the main character dies and the character is experiencing a lot of grief, the author sometimes adds a little twist or details that is just enough to make the reader smile or sigh in relief. When a story is just too sad and the characters are just too depressed, even though there is almost nothing to laugh about, they will laugh at their misfortune and to make their life bearable.

SICK

Sickness can refer to as physical sickness or mental sickness. Usually when we refer to a sickness we are talking about a physical sickness. However, there is two distinct type of physical sickness. One being a biological sickness and another one being physical sickness. For example, one can be heart attack, liver failure, or cancer where there is a malfunction of organ in your body. The other kind is where there is a physical dysfunction and or deform of body organ such as the the fracture of one or more bones, or the amputation of a leg. I haven't been hospitalized for anything before but I have had relative who had been hospitalized for a few days and me myself have went to a hospital because I have broke my arm. My sister was hospitalized when she was littler due to her problem regarding her digestive system. If I remembered correctly, she was hospitalized for 2 weeks. During the time span, the hospital personnel would test some of her blood sample to see if she gets better. Also, she has to absorb nutrients from a tube. It is very common for hospitalized people to only be able to consume food and other nutrient through a tube because the main reason they are hospitalized is because they can't function normally and they can't live the normal life and the most common problem is diet. It's very sad to visit people in a hospital because they can't go out and play with you and they know that too. This makes the mood very depressing because both of the people knows that the patient is in a bad shape.

Perspective

Different perspective can make a story totally different because the feeling you get from the different perspectives  can be extremely different. You can read a story and think the main character is a hero without a doubt and another person can read the same story in a different perspective and think the same character is very evil. Perspective is different when different people are telling the story because people are often biased and when people are bias people influence the way they tell the story even though they didn't mean to. For example, when two people are telling the same event, one might say, "He killed the poor little puppy that didn't deserve to die while pushing the old lady aside." and another might say, "He heroically stepped in front of the truck, saved the old lady by pushing her away." This is an example of two opposite extreme. While, reading the first one, you see a reckless person pushing an old lady and for some reason killed a little dog. When another person read the second line, the person would think that the person is very brave without a flaw because they know nothing about him killing a dog. This is what perspective does to the reader. Different perspective can twist the story and give as totally different feeling by not providing certain information, using different adjective, different word choice, or by describing the event in a way that praises or scolds someone.

Writing in a Style

Subject: Sofa area mess, again.
Body:
Dear all,
I know how hard it is to lift our hand and hold our garbage and walk a few steps to the garbage can. However, there is a rule that prohibits food or drinks outside of the cafeteria and it has been announced a few times using class times. This rule has not been very well enforced and the people breaking the rules are supposedly in higher grades. Nonetheless, we all have the responsibility and a great heart and I hope we can all try our best and overcome our greatest difficulties of not living the life of a bum.

Subject: Sofa area mess!
Body: This morning I saw the mess in the sofa area and it is ridiculous! You are high school students! You should learn to clean up after yourself. This is ridiculous! This is not the market, the trash cans are just down the hallway and you are so lazy to go there? Don't give me any excuses, anytime I see another student leave garbage behind he will be punished. One more time I see mess in the sofa area, whoever leaves trash behind will get a detention and the second time will be suspension!

Subject: Please clean up after yourself.
Body:
Dear Students and Faculties of PAS,
I'm sure you all have noticed about the indecency in the sofa area. Regarding this issue, students must clean up after themselves or the rule of no food will be imposed more strictly on students who does not comply. This mess has been a great issue throughout the year and I hope we can create a better and cleaner learning environment for everyone. Let's work harder in keeping our community clean. Thank you.
Sincerely.

Two Styles

Lahiri use to try to hide about her culture and background because she used to feel ashamed of it because she lives in an American society. However, America is a giant melting pot and it is composed of many different culture.After she became older she is not afraid of her friends or other people knowing about her culture because she learns to be proud of who she is and that includes her culture. In her writing, we see a blend of culture of her education, which was American, and her heritage, which was Indian. This might also be a boost for her unique writing style because she had combined to two kind of culture into her own unique style that captures the heart of both American and Indian. She learned to integrate the good part of each culture into her writing. Because she was the first generation born in America in her family so she was more influenced by the Indian culture. Lahiri has the same struggle as any other immigrant. She has to choose which culture to be more influential in her life. For example, she can choose not to live the American way and live completely the life of an Indian as if she is still in Indian. Another option is that she can drop her Indian heritage, disregard of family tradition, and live like an American girl. However, she chose to include both in her life because she believed that blending into the society is important but keeping heritage and tradition is also important.

Two Lives

When a person is influenced by two or more different culture, education, family, environment, friends, or ethnicity, sometimes the cultural differences might conflict with each other making one's life difficult. For example, a Muslim with strict Muslim family tradition and rules that grows up in the United States would most likely enter a dilemma of whether he should obey his parents on every single aspects of life or maybe he should live the way that pleases him the most. Sometimes, it's not up to a person to decide which cultural standard to live by. For example, back to the strict Muslim scenario, if the child disobeys his father and married an American without his dad's permission, he might get slaughtered right in his house and that is called honor killing. Cultural differences effect writers a lot. For example, an Indian that lives in the United States might write in English with the English humor, however, he might include Indian traditions, aspects, and teachings into the plot or integrate them into the theme. These writers with a cultural difference are different from other writers because they include their own identity in their works and when people who shared the same identity as them read their work, they might feel a sense of connection to it.

Taking a Leap

Taking risks happens all the time. We gain or we lose everytime we choose to risk it or we choose not to. When you take risk your life to save a little kid standing in front of a speeding Lamborghini, you gain praise and you feel good about what you have done. When you have taken a leap of faith and have done something good, something you feel proud, something you want to tell your grandchildren, and you have succeeded, you feel very good. If you have risk a lot to do something or to achieve something, you would most likely regret it and it could act as a lesson for further decisions. However, there are things where you tried and gave up everything for a greater cause but failed, you still feel good about it because you have done your best and you have given your best shot. Usually when you are considering a very big choice in which you would have to risk a great deal and you would list out the pros and cons, or the costs and benefits of taking the leap. However, when there is a emergency need for you to make the decision at the moment, you don't have time for detailed analysis, you do what feels right and usually what is just. Those are the times where you regret the decision and those are the risks where they failed to succeed.

Nature's Role

People encounter nature everyday. To be technical all people encounter nature every second because nature is the setting we are in and we, technically speaking, are parts of nature. However, besides being essential and everywhere at all time, it plays an important role in everyday life. People are trying for decades and for centuries to harness nature because it is the most powerful force. Some people view nature as harmful, some people view nature as helpful. Some just go with the flow. These are all legit arguments because nature such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, which took thousands and thousands of lives away are always pending do strike at any given time. However, nature is helpful in that without many of the aspects of nature, our work can be infinitely harder, such as wind power, solar energy, river transportation and many other forces. When I go hiking, nature is an obstacle that I have to conquer, however, nature makes hiking enjoyable with all the green, sunlight, and periodic breezes. Nature is an obstacle in itself and almost by definition but if people can learn to appreciate and understand nature it can be a very good. Writers write about nature all the time. With different styles, we see writes who show distaste in nature when they talk about the obstacles and forces against the main character. We see writers who show appreciation  through how the main character relaxes through nature and loves and enjoy nature's all aspect.

How Do Artists Convey Style?

Artists convey style in their art with 5 different ways. The most obvious of all is what the art is about. What the art is about tells people a lot about what the artist is trying to convey through their art because it tells people what it is all about and what the audience should look for in the art. The second part of conveying style is that if the art is suppose to be realistic or nonrealistic or a combination of both. Being realistic means that the art uses real life element and attributes such as a portrait of a person or an event. Nonrealistic might be the portrait of scenes that defies physics and drawing of impossible images or of supernatural events or beings. The third part is the actual drawing of the artist. The use of color, light color is more optimistic and warm and dark color is more pessimistic and cold. Then, does the author uses more curve lines or straight lines. Also, there are different type of art. Religious art, impressionism, abstract art, and many other kind. Light and shadow also contributes to a writer's style. However, light and shadow are more related to the subject and how the art should look like to convey a point and to be logical according to logic. However, extra lighting and shadows on unnecessary spaces and with inappropriate places to spotlight some important aspects might be a way artist convey style. Take the painting on  page 409 for example. It's an illustration of the sinking of the Titanic. The purpose of this painting is probably to tell that there are people on half filled life boats just watching as people die in front of them but they are too scared to rescue them. The scene is dark because it was at night but it might also be because the author is portraying a dark side of people and that's another reason why he used dark color and only vivid light from the Titanic. It is a realistic painting and the author might use the style of realistic more often because the titanic and the people are quite realistic without any trace of unrealistic aspects.

Style

Stylish basically means a kind of way someone does something. For example, when we we talk about stylish in clothing and outfit, we mean that they are wearing clothes that is famous and fashionable of the year or of the month. This is because the fashion of the year or of the month is a trend, which is what style means. When we talk about style in writing however, everyone is different. There are no trend of writing and two people, when examined and analyzed closely, can never have the same style. Everyone who writes has a style in writing because they are all different and it is their own way of writing. I wouldn't say there is a difference between a "bad" style and a "good" style because in the fundamental level it is just a different way of writing. However, if we really have to choose if a writer has a bad style or a good style, the only way to judge is if the style he used in writing is pleasurable for the audience or the reader. This is because a good writing means it's good and pleasurable to read and a bad writing is a writing that gives people a bad, disgusted, bored, or any other unpleasant feelings when reading that causes the thought of giving up on the reading. This is how we define a good style and a bad style. It's like asking how a cook arranges the look and appearance of the dish he made for a fancy restaurant. We can only decide by the result, if we like it or not.

Daring Adventure

I don't quite understand the quote. I think the quote is saying that we can change our lives and our lives are not controlled by anything or anyone. I think the quote is suggesting that the will of the people are stronger than what events are predestined to be and that we can either do something that can change our lives or follow the chains of cause and effect. A "daring adventure" is what shape our life and is what break the chain of boringness. I believe there is no such thing called fate because I believe that our lives are filled with events that we have the ability to change. Although many scientific reports have shown studies and experiments that test whether our decisions are made by us or it is predestined by our body before we know the decision. One experiment I know of is where a person is seated and there are sensors connected to his brains. The scientist asks him to pound the table on the count of three and he could either choose to pound it with the right hand or the left hand. We would think that he has the ability and will power to choose which hand to pound the table with. However, the result is that the brain transmitted a signal to the right hand for the hand to be prepared for the pound before the count to three. This experiment left us to think that whether our environment and previous events already shaped what we are going to do for the rest of our lives and whether we really have control over our decisions.

Memories

Usually my memories of childhood are good memories. I think that usually we remember more of the good things that happened rather than the bad things that happened. This might be because your brain is protecting you from feeling bad or depressed. It's like when something terrible happened, sometimes you lose all memory about the terrible incident and this is one technique the brain is helping you cope with the sad event that occur. It might be repressed into your subconscious because it is so bad that it does no good from remembering such a terrible event. The reason we remember things is to help us survive and reproduce. Memories are useful in that you can learn from your mistakes and teach your offspring of the mistake so they don't make the same mistake that might very well endanger their life, therefore, increasing the probabilities of living and passing down the genes. We remember bad things because those are the mistakes we made but some things are so terrible that remembering those would impede our ability to function because we can't process if we are currently thinking of the event. When we remember bad things, we only remember portions of it. For example, I get in fights a lot when I was young. Once during kindergarten, a classmate scrathed my face and my face was bleeding all over. I remembered the fight but I didn't remember what caused it or what happened after. However, I remember when I went to New York when I was 5 and I had a popsicle of multiple flavor and color and I had it all over my mouse. It might be because of the pictures that reminded me but I also remembered the flight, when I was at my aunt's house in New Jersey, when I we were walking down the street.

My Role

My role in the project, Of Mice and Man Movie, is acting Carlson, and his man role is to shoot the old, stinky, blind dog of Candy. I also have another role, the video editor. This role is supposed to be editing the videos that are shoot and make it into a movie. I haven't been able to do anything for both role because we are not quite organized and we haven't start filming. Carlson only have about 2 scenes and since Wan-yi and Sean aren't in Taiwan, we can't film the movie with them for a week. This means that we will have to film my parts first because they don't appear in my scene. Because we haven't start filming, I have no video to edit and therefore I haven't done anything yet. However, I have practiced my lines with Brian today. The lines we practiced are about me wanting to persuade him to let go of the dog and let me kill it. I practiced with Brian because Brian's role is Candy and we are in the same scene. Sarah also said a few lines about giving up a pup for Candy and telling me that I should bring a shovel for the dog. I think the organization of the group is pretty well and we are on the right track. However, a few of my concerns are that Julius just wanted to film whenever he feels like. Also, I realized that he wasn't going to use much prop and the only props he was going to use are a classroom, the dog, and the gun, without any custom or anything. That raised doubt in my mind.

Cruel or Kind

Sometimes cruel and kind blends with each other. Sometimes being kind is to be cruel, such as sarcasm, trickery, or traps. Sometimes it's the other way, being cruel to be kind, such as protection with strict rules and warnings. Also, a person can both be kind in some ways and cruel in some ways. A person can be cruel to someone and kind to someone. In Of Mice and Man, After Candy know about the situations, or partial situation, of George and Lennie, he decides to help out by telling them information and gossips about the ranch. One act of cruelty from Candy is when they first met, Candy disliked George and Lennie and didn't help them out. An act of kindness toward Lennie from George is basically everything George do with Lennie, taking care of him, feeding him, getting him a job, and accompanying him. However, at times, George would be cruel and mean to Lennie but that wasn't his true intention, all he want to do for Lennie is protection from the cruel world and at times, he has to be mean for Lennie to obey the instructions that is helpful to him. Another example is Crooks. He is sometimes cynical and ignorant to other people and that's the cruel side of him. However, after we learn more about him we learn that he just wants company. In reality, it is almost impossible that an individual is cruel all the way to his core or is kind and only does good things. It is most probably a mixture of good and bad qualities and everyone is like that, this is why if we know a person fully, it is almost impossible to hate someone.

Analyzing Visual

The illustration on page 409 of the textbook is very significant. It is also very accurate because it is mentioned that the propeller and the whole rear of the whip went up and eventually 90 degrees, perpendicular to the water. While the ship in the illustration is not yet perpendicular, it is still quite a magnificent sight to see the greatest ship ever slowly sinking into the deep blue. The thought of the people, viewing or sinking with the ship, is very paradoxical. One part of their mind is telling them that any time the biggest ship ever is going to sink, for the people onboard the ship, you're going to die any time now. But the other part of the brain is still caught in the awe of the ship that Titanic is unsinkable and the whole situation is just a drill, everything will be back normal. Another part of the picture to notice is the lifeboats. The lifeboats, staying far away from the ship is viewing the ship sinking, pulling thousands of people with it. They dare not go near the ship and rescue the other passengers because they didn't want to be sucked in by the suction caused by the ship when it sinks. This is very realistic and it shows the dark side of the world. While people are struggling on the ship and the people on the lifeboats are mourning for the people about to die. No one rowed the boat toward the ship to rescue the people because no one wants to die for other people.

Will to Survive

It's hard to decide to save someone else or themselves at a time of life-and-death situation. Some people decide by estimating how many people he could save. Some decide in terms of the importance of the person he is attempting to save. Some people decide whether they have a good chance of surviving. Lastly, some people decide whether the person they are saving is worth saving or not, which might be a combination of all these thoughts and analysis. Some people, however, just do their best to save lives without thinking about the situation, the effect of his action, or how he is going to be remembered. Theses are the real heroes. They risk their life in saving other people because they believe it is the right thing to do. There are only two kinds of people that would act on instinct without thinking. The one mentioned above, who saves people not considering the situation. And another one is the ones that flees without any thinking. People who act on behalf of reasoning and analysis is that they have a cost-benefit analysis going on in their head. That is, they decide whether their death can provide the world with more benefit. For example, if he is a nobody, and he is deciding whether he wants to save the president that has done very good things. He would think that trading lives, him to the president, would be the right thing to do because the president would benefit the world more. Some would also risk their life if they could save 10 people, 100 people, or 100,000 people, because they believe that the lives of 100,000 people is far more beneficial to the greater good than the life of himself.

The Band Played On

The band of Titanic played on as the ship is sinking.They know they are going to die and the moment before one's death is a special moment. They believe the only way to celebrate or honor the moment is to play their instrument, a thing they enjoy a lot. While everyone was evacuating and being loaded on lifeboats, the band played a tune until they sink with the ship. Just like the captain not wanting to abandon his ship, the band is experiencing a similar affection toward their instrument and their music. They are very passionate about their work as an art. The reason that they make the decision of playing the music as the ship is sinking instead of getting on a lifeboat might be because, first, they know they have little chance of dying, so why not die gloriously and proudly with their music that they loved so much. Another reason might be because they want to soothe the passenger and the panic because they believe it's their duty to soothe the people because with great talent comes great responsibilities. I've only seen this kind of behavior in movies because I believe in real life, people would give up everything to find a way to live because it is in all animal's gene that they must survive to reproduce. However, there are numerous reports, news, movies that shows that in the end of one's death, there are people who would sacrifice themselves for the greater good or for their vision of justice. Some people would stop in front of a bus to save a little girl. However, some distorted belief of justice, such as the suicide bomber, died for a cause that is condemned by the general public. If I was one of the musician, I would try my best to get on board and violent is almost necessary.

Bad Choices

Everyone makes bad choices once in a while. It's the bad choices that define a person because there can only be one good choice but you can mess up a situation in many ways. Just like multiple choice, there's only one right choice, but you can make the mistake in three different ways. Furthermore, there is usually only one way to get the correct answer but there is millions of ways you can answer the multiple choice wrong. For example, a question of x+1=2 and it asks for the value of x. One way to get the answer is by 2-1=x and we can conclude that x=2. This is pretty obvious but I forgot how do you prove it. You can get the wrong answer by 1+1+1+1=4 therefore x=4. Or you can get the wrong answer by doing x+2=1 so x=-1. However, life is not a simple calculation question. Every time you think, you are calculating that if false, do what, if true, do what, and it continues for sometimes thousands of steps. The wrong decision you make defines you because it is a unique way of a bad choice. The way you derive to the action also defines you because it's your unique way of solving a question. If the captain of the Titanic have listened and cared about the ice berg and not be so arrogant, there will be a whole lot less people that are dead after the event. This bad choice shows that the captain of the Titanic and the architect of the Titanic is very arrogant, careless, and does not care about the life of the passengers.

Sources

There are many different sources we can find for a research paper, article, or maybe even a movie with non-fiction element. However, it is difficult to know which one is good or trustworthy. Usually a primary source is more trustworthy than a secondary source because it comes from a person that lived through the experience and witness the event. That is first-hand source and it's the best source unless the person is not reliable. A primary source means that the source comes directly from the person that experienced the event to the receiver of the information. For example, if someone lived through the extinction of dinosaurs and they write it in their journal. That would be a primary source because it is from the person that lived the experience directly to the receiver of the information. A secondary source would be a person gathering one or more information from the people that lived through the experience, compressed and distribute to the receiver. This is very dangerous because often what happens to secondary source is that the writer that gathers the information include their own thought and making the information, otherwise neutral, bias. This can be bad when we want a very neutral source and we just want the original information. It's okay if the primary source is bias because it tells the receiver the experiencer's state of mind during the event, but if the secondary source is bias, it is really bad.

Bosom Buddies

George benefits more from the friendship because Lennie is the one that requires the relationship to survive. We can also list out the benefits and costs of the relationship to both sides. The benefits for George is that he gets a company and he likes having someone with him. Also, Lennie's physical strength can help George in physical conflict when trouble arrived. However, the cost of the relationship overwhelms the benefits. All troubles cost by Lennie are burden to George because Lennie is basically like a pet and what the et messes up, the owner cleans it. Also, Lennie wasn't a good pet, he cost troubles almost everywhere they go as implied in the story. For instance, George talked about the man hunting down them because Lennie caused trouble there. Another conflict is when the boss is suspicious of them because of Lennie's stupidity. George is basically carrying the burden of two men. The benefit for Lennie overwhelmed the cost of the relationship. Lennie benefits because George takes care of him and he doesn't concern about anything. George also protects him from troubles he gets in and clean up after him. The cost for Lennie is basically no cost; he has no worries because George would take care of him and do everything for him. The plot moves forward because of their relationship. Their relationships basically is the central motive for everything that happened. Curley is angry and Lennie for being big and George is angry at Curley for being mad at Lennie and that sparks up a conflict. Candy sees that the new men are bullied by Curley and wants to help them, therefore creating friendship between them. Because they became friend with an old man on the ranch for a long time, they become friend with other ranchman too. Also, the cycle of Lennie getting into trouble, George cleans up after Lennie by taking him away and having a new start, and Lennie gets in trouble again, seems to continue for a few times.

Your Lennie

I am very attached to friendship and socializing with friend because I like the sense of having friends. I also like having a best friend. However, if my best friend Bob got hit by a car on the street and blood splattered all over the place with a few of his teeth and he resulted in a hospital with a severe brain damage that made him retarded. I would be as close to him because although I would feel sorry and bad for him, he's not fun anymore and he's not the person I like to hang out with anymore. I would still go visit him and talk to him sometimes but I wouldn't be as close to him. There are a few reasons for this. First, the reason he's my best friend is because of his qualities, humorous, caring, smart, and not uncomfortable to look at. After he got the brain damage that made him think like a 3rd grader or even worse, he would nearly lose all the qualities I like, if not all, therefore, if he does not posses the qualities of my best friend, he wouldn't be my best friend. Also, there's so only so much you can talk or do with a retard and that's the physical limitation of me being as close as I was with him before the accident. If my friends make fun of Bob, I would be upside but I would just go with it because as I mentioned, I enjoy friendship, and I'm not going to lose my friends by accepting half-a-friend. I would go meet him privately for about 5 minutes per visit. Our friendship will probably die out because there's really nothing I would enjoy doing with a retard.

Emotional Setting

The emotional setting of a story is different depending on the atmosphere of the setting. The relationship between characters, environment, or the general impression of the emotional aspect of the situation. It can be a happy emotional setting or it could be a sad emotional setting depending on the situations of different stories. Setting, without the emotional aspect can loose a great deal of details and making the story incomplete. When the reader reads an incomplete story with incomplete emotions then it can really confuse the reader. The setting in Of Mice and Man starts off relaxing because they are relaxing on grass and slept on the grass on their way to the ranch. Then when they got to the ranch the emotional setting got a little tense because they are worried if they can get the job and the ranch boss is also testing if they are qualified to finish the job. Then it gets more tense when they meet Curly because he actually show hostility rather than just being alarmed and because of that the situation was tensing. Then when he left, Candy soothes the situation down. The first time George and Lennie met Candy, the emotional setting was kind of a dog-eat-dog situation, every man for themselves because on the ranch, people do work for themselves and try to keep minimum contact with each other. However, they started growing a little spark of friendship because they started to know each other. Referring back to the previous journal entry, they understand more about each other so it is easier to be nice and like each other.

Base Theme

The base theme of a writing is the fundamental theme that the basis of many themes. According to John Steinbeck's journal, written in 1938, Steinbeck believes that there are only one base theme. It is the theme of understand others and through understanding others you would be kind to each other. He believes that no matter it's what kind of writing it is, as long as it is a honest writing, it would have the base theme of understanding the characters of the story and as the story end, characters will be kind to each other. In Of Mouse and Man, as we gradually understand more about the character, we are starting to condone their action because we feel that it is the right thing to do under their circumstances and background and it is easier to relate to their action. At the start, we doesn't condone George's action of taking the mouse away from Lennie because we feel that Lennie just wants something to per but George is just being mean. However, as we read on, we found out that Lennie used to kill mice when he squishes them too hard and it is pretty clear why George didn't want him to pet mice. Also, when Candy and his dog is first introduced, we would condone the thoughts of people wanting the dog dead because it's crippled, smelly, and blind. It is a useless dog that is a burden for Candy. However, as we understand more, we see that he had the dog since it was a pup and we can understand that he doesn't want to let go. Lastly, when George killed Lennie; if we didn't know the journeys of George and Lennie and how much trouble they've been in and how much George cared for Lennie, we would think that he is a jerk killing a friend that relied on him so much.

Magic Pictures

Pictures are lines and dots that reminds us of something. It's not the actual thing but it is a illustration that is made to resemble or represent something. Some pictures are abstract, so you can't really tell what the artist wants the art to represent, some are portraits and it would be very clear to know what it is suppose to represent, unless the artist that made the art was bad at art. The picture on page 356 is a ostrich in a house. At first glance you wouldn't feel weird. But then you think to yourself, why is there a ostrich in the house. This is the magic of magic realism, at first, everything is normal and ordinary because the story is in the ordinary setting that we are familiar of. Then, something unfamiliar happened, in this case, an ostrich. We only know it's weird after we give thought to it because the magic realism writing induce us into a familiar world that we would not doubt as being unreal but when we really think about it, it's awkward. In An Old Man With Enormous WIngs, we didn't seem to feel unfamiliar until the falling of the old man with enormous wings. This is because we enter the story through a familiar setting, a rural coastal area, but something unfamiliar happened and at first we wouldn't care much and be very surprised of the landing of a winged man because our brain is in the state that anything happens in this familiar setting must be familiar and ordinary until we give thought to it.

Magic Realism

Magic realism is the combination of fantasy and reality. This combination is like adding fire to water. Some writers mix them well perfectly and create a beautiful symphony. Others might have experience troubles  such as putting out the fire or evaporating the water. A good writer could write excellent work in the magic realism genre. This genre might be difficult and challenging for some readers because the mixing of two opposite element might be confusing and unfamiliar. However, it is the mixing of the fantasy and reality that creates a familiar sense yet an interesting experience. An example of magic realism from our textbook is the story, An Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabrielle Marquez, is a great example because it uses irony to help make the reality look and feel more real and that's what makes it so real and fictional at the same time. I take magic realism very well because I like a little supernatural events to spice up the conflict, plot, or setting. I also think that the reality part gets me more engage to the story because the more real it is the more I feel connected to it and the more I like the story. It's because usually you feel reality to be boring, but magic realism makes the average reality into a fantasy by adding elements of magic. I see why people might feel strange toward magic realism but I don't think it is that strange to not be able to understand and once you do, it is very fun to read.

The Unexpected

The unexpected often happens when you have great big plans for something because it is when your expectation is the highest and when what happened fail you, you will feel the most disappointed. You have to be very quick in thinking to react to the unexpected event appropriately and it helps your critical thinking skills. Unexpected things happen to you at any time and at any place so you can't prepare that something unexpected is about to happen because it would defeat the whole meaning. People should see unexpected events that aren't that serious as a practice that will make you stronger and better. These practices are put into your life at times to test you and so you can practice on facing bad things and not just think to yourself, what a bad day, because that wouldn't help. In fact, telling yourself it's a bad day actually make you feel worse. You should always put up a smile because research studies have shown that your facial expression greatly influence your emotion and they both affect your feeling. This is because when you make the gesture of a smile, this gesture triggers something and will make you feel better. This is why whenever you are having a bad time or a bad day, smiling always make you feel better. Unless you are trying to get the sympathy of others which would also work. For example, you're having a bad day. You feel like only a free drink will cheer you up; so you act very depressed and sooner or later your friend will come and buy you a drink.

Ode

Ode is a kind of poem. Ode means you are praising something or someone using a form of a poem called ode. The famous symphony, Ode to Joy, by Beethoven, is a praise to joy. It is a happy symphony because joy means happy and praising joy should be even happier. An ode can be about anything. You can write an ode praising your dead fiancee, and the title would be Ode to my Dead Fiancee. Ode to something means praise to something in ode form, so the thing you are writing an ode about, will be called Ode to whatever you are talking about. Also, ode doesn't have to have a regular rhyme scheme because it is not like a regular poem. An ode should be quite long because if it's not long enough, you can't express your thought well enough or that the ode is not worth written about. Ode should contain strong descriptive words that help the reader or audience understand and visualize the thing. Also, an ode is normally consist of 3 parts, first being the introduction that introduces the thing to the reader or audience. Then, the second part would be the relationship of the author to the thing. Lastly, it would be twist that the audience or reader didn't expect or it could be a moral. I have a topic in mind and it is my journal. Ideas on this topic would be something like how wonderful it is, how wordy it is, how much I neglected it, and how much I wish I wrote on them regularly.

Another POV

I would like to use the scene of the policeman arresting Christopher. I think it would be quite interesting to show the police's point of view in that situation because although police deals with lots of weird and crazy criminals, Christopher is not exactly like them; Christopher is weird in a different way. Also, when the police first entered, it looked like he wasn't having a great time and wasn't enjoying life at that moment, so I thought it would be interesting for a grumpy, insensitive officer against a emotionally broken, insensitive teenager. A final reason of why I wanted to use this scenario is because Christopher took time describing the officer's nostrils and it would just be fun to picture the policeman and further elaborate on his physical appearances that Christopher had not touch on. I would like to make him a fat, sweaty, unshaved, properly dressed officer with a donut. I chose this look because it suits his personality perfectly. I got a bit of his personality from his reactions toward Christopher. He is fat because it portraits a person that doesn't care about anything. HE doesn't care that Christopher is weird and needs help and arrested him for assaulting him which might not even hurt. Also, he is dressed properly because he follows the law, he didn't put out a fight with Christopher out of anger, he simply cuffed him and sent him to the station.

Holiday Reality

Holiday doesn't always go with what you planned or hoped. In fact, most of your plans doesn't work during holidays because when you have hi expectation you usually fall harder when something failed your expectation even though it might just be that the hotel doesn't have a toilet made of pure gold. This holiday, I hoped I could go on a trip to Japan because it doesn't take a long time to fly there and Japan is an interesting place. I might also want to go to Hong Kong which is also near Taiwan and interesting. However, I didn't go anywhere, the furthest place I've been to is my grandmother's house which I have been far more times than Japan. Not only that, I have to study during Chinese New Year. I thought I didn't have to study as much but no I have to study the same length as school days. The Chinese New Year was a week, same as usual. But this time our family spent more time on family reunion so that means less free time. I thought I could go to my friends' house but that never happened mainly because I never brought it up and the rest being the break being too short. I really didn't expect a lot from Chinese New Year because it is a short one-week break and half of it would be family reunion. However, nothing came true and when I think about it logically, I wasn't surprised because it is just the way it is when we have tons of breaks but not the right length.

Holiday Plans

I would like to aboard an airplane to another country such as Japan or Hong Kong that's not that far away.
I also would like to go dine at restaurants that I normally couldn't go because we only go to expensive restaurants during special occasions. Chinese New Year would qualify as a special occasion because it is an important holiday and many Chinese people respect and honor it. I hope I don't have to do a lot of homework because I don't think holidays are for doing homework. Chinese New Year this year is going to be a little different because one of my cousin will be busy with his high school exams that he would not be able to come to the family feast that is held every year. This year, the family feast will be held in Taipei because every year it switches from Hsinchu to Taipei and then back. During Chinese New Year, we would also be visiting many of our cousins because we wouldn't have time or have a purpose to see them during other times. We would go visit my dad's side of family first. And then after we finish lunch with them, we would head to my mother's family's house for dinner. Not all of my aunts will be there because most of them lives in the States now and would only be back during long breaks such as the Summer Vacation. They sometimes came back during the Winter Break but that was quite rare because it is not long enough so a 16 hours flight would be seen as a waste. I look forward to this year's Chinese New Year as I did for all other Chinese New Year.

Omniscient POV

An omniscient point of view is when we know what all the characters are doing and we can know what they are thinking about. In Through The Tunnel, it is written in an omniscient point of view because we know what Jerry the protagonist, the main character, and the main character's mother, Jerry's mother's thought. The first confllict we encountered was an internal conflict because Jerry is facing hagauii, which is the Japanese term for wanting to do something but he can't becasue he's not suppose to. Jerry face the conflict of wanting to go to the dangerous part of the beach because he crave adventure and wantas to grow up. Another side of the thought is tyhe sense of guilt he had for his mother because he doesn't want to make the mother feel all alone and helplessly aging and dying on the beach. Jerry still feels like he should go to the dangerous part of the beech because he decided that his mother can survive on her own without his protection. If it is not an omniscient point of view, we wouldn't know how the mother feel in this situation. The mother in this situation feels like he should let go because Jerry grew up and if she doesn't let her go Jerry would either rebel or he will leave, which are both bad for a parent. If we didn't know the part of Jerry's conflict and only the mother, we would think it is logical and sensible to keep Jerry safe because we don't know that Jerry is striving much for adventure and we shouldn't stop him because it will damage his childhood and he will grow up with mental disorder.

Film v Print

A movie is basically a finished work of a book with all the imagery painted nicely for you. A movie can be bad depending on the producer's interpretation of the story, sometimes it surprises you with a good effect, sometimes it surprises you and you found out it sucked, and sometimes it's almost the same imagery you had in mind when you read the story. But the movie could never be the same to the books because no two people has the exact same imagery. Also, a good movie would be short and precise and a good book would be sometimes very vague and other times extremely detailed. In a vague book, the movie can be very different from your imagination because it leaves lots of room for imagination for the reader and the reader would be the producer of the movie. If it is extremely detailed, a good movie would never include all details in the story because first, a movie could just show the scene without using elegant and educated language and second it wouldn't be long enough to include all unimportant complications and other elements. One thing a movie can do is called a Montage. It is a filming technique where it shows a series of short clips or pictures and usually merged with background music to show time, usually a long period of time, passing by and we see all the details through the flashing scenes. A book could not do this because if a book wants to express a passing of time, it would either have to explain them in a way without any sensitive details such as, "as time pass by, blah blah blah" or "He slept, ate, drank and went back to sleep everyday for the next 10 years". Or it could explain each passing of time with extreme care but that would take up too much time and a movie could just flash through it with almost the same quality but but with significantly short amount of time.

Shaped by Time and Place

Time and space is the setting we are in, where we are. Different time and place can shape our character traits, both physical and mental, into the traits best adapted to our environment. For example, If we lived in the medieval time in Europe, depending on our social status or our job, our clothes will vary from knight armor to peasant rags, and our character will also be dramatically different. Also, if we are rich, we would be able to read and write and be educated whereas the poor never had chance to formally learn to read and write. In this world, almost all are able to read and write because most countries have educational laws that states a certain degree of education for every citizen, the only difference would be the rich people go to private schools, the mediocre people go to public school, and the poor people would be funded by the government to go to small schools. Where we are also shapes who we are. For example, because our ancestors are from China with sandstorms and bigger sun than Europe, we have small eyes to prevent sands from damaging our eyes, darker skins to protect us from getting skin disease or sun burn. THis is the reason why Asians have small eyes and darker skins. Where we are also shape what food we eat and what food we eat when we are young shape what type of food we like.

Rites of Passage

Rite of passage is a phrase that combines the words 'rites' and 'passage' together to form a deeper and more complex meaning. Rite can refer to ritual, both formal or informal. A formal ritual would be like an actual event where something happened and an informal ritual means that we interpret the event as a ritual. Passage means something you go through or pass through. People use the word passage for two kinds of meaning, one meaning is an actual road or route for someone to go from one place to another and a metaphorical meaning of passage is a spiritual journey one undergoes to go to another mental state or to achieve enlightenment. When combining the two words, the meaning of both words are mixed and forms the meaning of the newly created phrase, rites of passage. Rites of passage means a ritual, or an event that is thought as a ritual, that let you go to another place, or help you transform your thoughts into a different state of mind. There are many different kind of rites of passages. Some we all share in common is birth and death. When we are born into the world, the action of being born is the metaphorical ritual and the passage can be literal when you enter the world or it can be metaphorical when you mature your mind into an actual functioning brain. When we die, the ritual of dying let us go through a passage of going to the afterlife, reincarnation, or void, depends on different personal preferences. An example of an actual formal ritual is the actual rite that many religion or culture perform for boys to become a man when they are 13, 16, 18 or other ages when it is thought as the age when a kid becomes an adult.

Symbol of the House

In Julio Cortazar's House Taken Over, the main character and his sister Irene lives in a house left by their grandparents for years. They have a odd routine of life, Irene's routine is getting up, clean the house, then spend the rest of the day knitting supplies such as sweaters. The main character's life is getting up, clean the house, then spend the rest of the day either watch Irene knit or read French literature that has been read long ago. He goes out to buy supplies and look for French literature once in a week. This is a rather odd lifestyle, they have almost absolutely no contact with the outside world and they just live in the house, their little world. The house acts as a symbol in the story, it can be a symbol of their sanity. They've been living in their little world and at the climax of the story, their house is slowly taken over. This can mean that they are slowly going insane and they can't take it anymore. The house can also be a symbol of life, a rather boring life however. They've lived in the house since the start of the story, which is probably a very big portion of their life near the end of the story the house is slowly taken over, meaning they are slowly dying, leaving the world they never had contact with. The story is filled with symbols and because it is a magic realism so the story does not have to perfectly logical or even logical at all. This is what makes the story good. The readers have to interpret what the symbol is and there are no right answer for sure and because the story doesn't have to be logical, the choices of symbols become wider.

Being Tested

Test is an activity given for people to see whether they are eligible for something or if they understand something. In schools, we are given many tests and the objective of the test is to see if we understand materials we learned from class or if we are eligible to pass the course or skip the course.Tests are also given when you graduate to see where your level is and which college you can attend. We also have test in life to see if you are fit for the job. There are also tests that test your characteristic, whether you're brave, stupid, or any other quality. Tests in movies are such tests that characters go through to test their qualities, braveness, stupidity, etc. A test is usually faced by the protagonist, the main character, of the story and they must overcome the test to reach their happy place. The happy place is the protagonist's goal, desire and want and the test is an invisible wall, commonly referred to as conflicts, problems that the main character face that blocks him off the path to the happy place. In the Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket, the protagonist faced the conflict of working too hard. He is drowned in work all day and had no time with his wife or recreation. Then his note flew out the window containing all his hard work. He then intended to retrieve it so he climbed out the window and was standing 11 floors above on a side of the apartment. For a split-second during his time outside his house, he realized that family and enjoyment for life must not come second because he realized how fragile life is.

Proving One's Self

Young people feel the need to prove their strength, endurance, or maturity because they are trying to prove tat they are worthy to live among the pack. People live in a pack, a community, if you fail at proving your self-worthiness you will be devoured literally or metaphorically. Once a man is left out of the pack, one of three things might happen: a lost of sanity, extreme gain of weight, or death. Meaning, proving one's self is vital to survival and young people have the natural instinct of survival. Another reason for proving self-worthy is that survival is not the only reason to prove worthiness, but also reproduction. Everything about an living thing, it's behavior, appearance, whether it's camouflage or sharp claws, are all to do one of two things, survive or reproduce. People must at young ages prove their self-worthiness or it could endanger it's possibility of surviving or reproducing offspring to continue on the DNA because school is the most friendly environment a young person can ever get in competing. The reason for that is because of the teacher, which stands as a referee for fouls such as maiming others so that they are out of the game. In the adult world, the police act as the referee, but because it is a much greater environment, you can not expect a referee constantly looking out for you. That's why young people have the instinct that they must use their youth as a training ground.

Symbols

Symbols may refer to illustrations or words. The words we are saying really are just nonsense sounds because we have a universal understanding of what the sound represents it is a symbol for what it represents. For example, the word 'dog' is a symbol for a four legged mammal with a tail that barks. 'dog' is meaningless to people that doesn't know English because they only recognize it as a sound. A symbol of a picture is like a heart. When people see heart, they think of love because it is generally taught that heart is a symbol of love. Someone that have never learned this concept would interpret it to other things and would often be different than what we think. Symbols come both naturally and artificially. When a country shows other countries its national flag, the flag automatically becomes a symbol for the country and people would understands this would see the flag and know it represent the country. Symbols also occur naturally, when you see a elephant stomping a man to death with absolute strength and brutality, you will find that when you see an elephant again you will think it represents strength and power. Symbols are what we see the symbol represents and it doesn't matter what the speaker or author wants the symbol to represent but to make the audience understand the symbol the same way the author did because symbols without understanding or recognition is just a concept without any meaning except for itself.

Choices

Every choice we make is very important. Even a simple choice of vegetable or chocolate, or, HBO or movie theater, can show who you are because the choice is made by you. Our choices reflect who we are because it is who we are, our personality and intelligence that decide what to do and what choices to make. Eating broccoli rather than chocolate can reflect on you as a person that you care about your weight and since chocolate has higher calories, you decide not to eat them. It might also lead to false interpretation and this is inevitable because there are too many ways and points of view to view a simple decision as choosing between a broccoli or a chocolate bar. Maybe you just feel like eating broccoli because it tastes better, which in common understanding would not be the case and so this would lead to false interpretation. Choices are important because sooner or later everyone needs to make one or more choices and usually more than one. The only people that don't make choices are either influenced by physical disorder that prevents him from making any decisions, influenced by mental disorder that does not have the ability to make decision, or dead. These are uncommon and so we should all be prepared to make decisions in our lives. Every decision has consequences. Everything you decide is going to have an impact, whether small or huge, on you or the people around you. Shooting Lincoln was a decision made by John Wilkes Booth, so we are led to believe, is a very major choice to make because it affected thousands of people and he himself. It is also important because choices are judged by other people and because of this decision, he is considered a bad person. It is also led to believe that a small decision of being an actor would result in that he was the most suitable person to assassinate Lincoln.

Welcome Back

I love my winter vacation because I went to Japan and see snow for the first time in my life. The Monday after I got back from Japan, I watched a movie with Eddy Tsao and Jimmy Chuang. The movie we watched was Tron: Legacy. I found the movie entertaining and good so I liked the day. I also saw 4 red cars passing down the road in front of Fe21 where we watched the movie so I knew that the day would be a Good Day. During Christmas me and my mother, my father, and my sister went to a Chinese restaurant with my aunt, another aunt, uncle, and a cousin for dinner to celebrate Christmas. We chose a Chinese Restaurant instead of a Western restaurant because it is easier to get a reservation in a Chinese restaurant and because it was a holiday, most Western restaurant would be full and we couldn't dine there. Another reason we dine there might be because my two aunt and my uncle prefer Chinese food over Western food. We had many food there and had dessert at the restaurant. One bad thing about it was that we didn't have drinks so after the meal I was thirsty. After the dinner, we headed back home and do homework. I have to do homework everyday of the vacation doesn't matter if there is homework to do or not. After doing homework, I watched a movie with my parents and I forgot what movie we watched but I think I enjoyed it. The rest of my break wasn't that excited compared to the first half of the break. I didn't go out and stayed at home during December 31, 2010 to January 1, 2011 because I was too lazy to go out.