Reflection of Romeo and Juliet

I think I personally did a pretty good job on memorizing what I needed to and I was a bit more relaxed than some other people who weren't able to act or move freely around on stage, even though I was obviously quite nervous and wasn't able to act the way I've expected, and wasn't able to act freely like Angela was able to. To me, it's just awkward to be on stage like that. I think too much, and don't want people to be laughing at me. I just wanted to be more like all the other people and didn't want to stand out too much. I did my best on acting not too awkwardly and added a bit more drama in the end, unlike other people. It was, hopefully, a bit more entertaining than some other groups. I hope that everyone had their lines memorized more though since it got a bit boring when people were only afraid of being unable to remember the lines and aren't able to do what they really could have done. It was kind of disappointing but overall, it was still fun. I think that next time, if I could redo it,  I would try my best to be feeling not as awkward on stage and collaborate with my classmates more. 

Absent From Home

If a person leaves home from many years and I think that they'd feel really nervous and scared, yet excited about coming back home. They'd be nervous and scared because they don't know how much their home has changed and whether people still remember them or not, or whether they are welcomed or not. It's like a huge mystery about what will happen later on. And they would be excited, since "there is no place like home" and "home, sweet home" are true statements. Home is the best place to be at, and when one leaves it for a long time, when they come home, they'd be excited to see the things that they were familiar with and see what differences has been made. Some people might resist to go back home because there always are those bad reasons that people left home and they resist to go back because they are afraid to face the consequences that they have done, just like some criminals. They've acted against the laws, and when the government punishes them, they would then resist to come back home. But I think that most people's reaction would be nervous and scared or excited. 

05/13/2012

Today is Mothers Day and we first went to Taipei to celebrate it with my grandparents and of course, my mother. We had lunch together in a pretty high class restaurant though I don't know the English name of it. We accidentally ordered too much food because we thought that we could order more food than usual since there were more people that went than before. But just because there were more people than usual, we didn't know how much would be suitable for all of us and not too much. Obviously, we ordered too much so after we ate, we were all stuffed and went to rest for a while in our Taipei home. We then decided to go the new department store, "Big City" and watch The Avengers. Even though I've watched it with my friends already, i decided to go again with my family since I've never been to Big City. We went shopping first, and as usual, no one but me, bought new things. It's not a good thing to be spending all the time, but it's just really hard to stop the eagerness to buy new shoes when they're all so beautiful and shouting at you to buy them. I bought one pair of heels that are 11.3 cm tall, and I nearly tripped. :P And The Avengers is still an awesome movie even when watching it for the second time! 

Differences between movie and book

After watching the movie of "The Odyssey" and reading the version in the book, the four main differences that I saw were the time of the death of the Cyclops, the way Odysseus and his people escaped the Cyclops cave, the process of them escaping, and what happened to the sheep. In the book, the Cyclops was blinded at night, but in the movie, when Odysseus and his people blinded him with the sharpened big log of wood, and pushed the big rock that blocked the entrance of the cave away, it was bright, meaning that it was in the day. The second thing is how in the book they hid hanging under the sheep while they escaped out of the cave, and in the movie, they they hid under the sheep fur. And also, in the book, everyone escaped alive together while in the movie, people were killed on the way, like the one who was playing the instrument and was still in the cave after everyone else left. The last thing that's different is that in the book, the people didn't load the sheep onto the ship afterwards, but in the movie, they did. This is a really small and unimportant detail, but it's one that I've found too, so I've decided to put it in also. 

Hero

How do you define a "Hero"? Everyone has their own interpretation of a "hero", but to me, a hero has to have these three qualities, and they are 1) being willing to sacrifice themselves for other people, 2) never betraying people on his/ her side, and 3) physically or mentally strong and intelligent. The most important one is the first one. If you aren't willing to sacrifice yourself, how are you going to help other people without not being afraid to get hurt or lose something of your own? The second thing is that if you ever betray some one who's on your side, you'll immediately lose the identity of being a hero because all heroes need alliances. Once you break and ruin your reputation, no one would want to help you anymore, and no one would trust you. All heroes are trusted and people give them their full support, so if you betray the people on your side, you aren't a hero. The last thing is that a hero has to be physically or mentally strong. One doesn't have to be physically strong always to be a hero. He or she can be really smart and lead people out of the harm, while the people that are physically strong can use their force to destroy all the obstacles. 

Appearances can be Deceiving 2

From the post yesterday, I've talked about the example of being a new student in school, and another example would be, "Organized Fraud Gangs". I'm not sure about whether this is the correct translation, but this is the direct translation. These people often fake their identities and fool people to giving them thousands of dollars. For example, they might fake as an old lady that has a very serious disease and is almost dying, but she doesn't have any money to pay to go to the doctor and she needs to borrow money from you. Her pitiful appearance might make people really give them money, and believing in her on how she'll pay back. This is how the appearances can be deceiving. This organizations have a lot of new strategies of fooling people into giving them money. Another time is when they say that they're from what company and that you haven't paid your bills for the electricity. And the people that believe in it will really go pay money to the account number that the organization told them to. These can be some reasons how appearance can be deceiving. So whenever some stranger comes up to ask for money, think carefully about it then decide. 

05/02/2012

Today, because I had to email a picture of my passport to someone, and Annie has my Canadian passport's picture. The picture on my Canadian passport last year, the one that hasn't been updated, was me when I was a little kid. That picture is HORRIBLE now that I look at it. Annie said she's been laughing about it for a long time, and when she showed me the picture, I almost died laughing too. And also when I showed some of my other friends, Kara, Quincy, and Jasper, they all had a good laugh about it too. Although I think that I was only in grade 3 at that time, I look like i am 80 years old, according to Jasper. In that picture, I was wearing a white jacket and my hair was cut like a mushroom and because it was for my passport, I had to push the sides of my hair behind my ear, which made me look super ugly. And also, my face was super chubby, even chubbier than it is right now, and so when I looked at it, I kind of felt that I'm really pretty now and I laughed a bit about it. I'm actually not afraid of letting people know about it, because it shows how much better looking I am right now, which makes me quite happy :D!!

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

I totally agree to the fact that "Appearance Can Be Deceiving". For example, every time there is a new student in school, people judge them by their looks before they really get to know them in person. A lot of people say that they don't care about what people look like to decide whether they should be friends with them or not, but to be honest, it's a lot easier for someone pretty to make friends with people than those that aren't as good looking. But then, of course, appearance doesn't mean everything about a person. Beautiful people can have a bad personality whereas not good looking people can have amazingly great personalities and be totally awesome. Beauty often makes people feel too proud of themselves, and may treat other people in a more rude manner because they think that the world might revolve around them, whereas those that aren't as good looking know more about how reality is and how it feels like to be mistreated. In order to find out that you've mistaken the people from their appearances, the only way is just realizing about it yourself. It'll be pretty obvious on how they treat others and other sorts of ways that they interact with others. 

Memorable Events

I've only lived for 15 years so far, but there are events that I will never ever forget. I remember when I was a kid, at only around the age of 2 years old, I came back to Taiwan for a brief visit for my grandparents since i was living in Canada at that time. It was 9/21 that night, when I was watching TV, wide awake, because of the jet lag. Then suddenly everything started to shake. At first, I thought I was just dizzy due to the lack of sleep I was getting, but when the paintings that were hanging on the wall started to fall off, I figured that it was an earthquake, and it was quite big. At that time, the building that we were living in weren't as stable as the modern ones, so when we tried to run out of the door, some of the doors have already changed their shape because of the earthquake and we couldn't open it. I was so scared and kept crying because things were falling everywhere but we couldn't get out of the building. Finally after my father kept throwing himself onto the door, the door fell off and we all ran out. I would never ever forget that. The other memory that I would never forget is when the most important person in my life at that time has left me and all the promises that person gave me was broken in only a short little week. I guess that it was because that person didn't put me as the most important person while I already did. Although that made me really sad for a long time, I then later on learned a lot of lessons like to not trust people's promises since anyone can say those promises and beautiful words to make you happy, but barely anyone can fulfill their promises. I will never forget this because it hurt me a lot, yet let me grow up a lot within a small time period. Another event that I'll never forget is how when our previous president got sent into jail because of stealing a lot of money from Taiwan citizens. So many of my family members were so angry that they went to go to Taipei for the protesting. My brother and I of course got dragged there too. There's actually nothing special about it but I won't forget about it since it was really annoying but I met many funny people that hated him a lot. Some people even make balloons that looked like him and others were hitting and popping them. These fun things made this even memorable. 

Favorite Food

My absolute favorite food would be spaghetti. It's the best meal that I could ever imagine. The best moment is when seeing the read sauce turn the white red and knowing that the next second, the noodles will be swallowed by me. The second best feeling is when the slippery noodles run down my throat. The well-cooked noodles flow inside my mouth and slip into my throat without being worried about having small objects that will get stuck inside my throat, choking me. The smell of the sauce is also absolutely mouth-watering. Whenever I smell the cooked meat being mixed with a smell of tomato, my mouth waters, being desperate to shove all the noodles inside my mouth. It’s been a tradition for my family already, to eat spaghetti for every Saturday dinner. We’ve had this tradition for around 13 years, and it’s surprising how we never get sick of eating spaghetti. I think that I already know to cook it myself too. It's impressive I'm someone that struggles with cracking eggs. I believe that when I go to the states for college in the future, I would think about my family and this tradition whenever I eat or see spaghetti. 

Billy Collin's Poem

After watching all five animated poems of Billy Collins, I think that actually making poems into animations is a really smart and cool idea. Nowadays, most teenagers don't like poetry and normally wouldn't want to "waste" the energy and time to try to understand a poem. When making an animation about the poem, watchers can have an easier way of understanding the poem and form the images more easier. But I think the con of making these animated poems is that even though it forms the images in the watchers/ readers mind more easily, it might not be a good thing because the purpose of reading a poem might sometimes be to form the image in the reader's own way, not by looking at the way other people interpret it. The favorite one of the five would be "The Dead". I think that this poem by itself isn't really that hard to understand, and with the animation, which was done in a really cute and simple way. The ending of the poem kind of scared me though, having dead spirits look at us when we're sleeping? That would totally freak me out if it were true and I found out about it. It's nice to have people caring about you, but having them stare at you when you sleep is kind of over the line. 

Narrative Poem Research

The poem I chose is "The Broken-Legg'd Man" by John Mackey Shaw. The length of this poem is relatively short compared to almost all other narrative poems. To be honest, that is one of the reasons why I chose this poem. This poem is organized into five stanzas with five lines in each. The last sentence of all the stanzas are the same, and the first two lines rhyme, while the third and fourth rhyme too. In the third stanza, the third and fourth lines used slant rhyme, while all others used end rhyme. I personally admire all the poets that can make perfect rhyming lines because I almost never can do it. I spend so much time going through all the vocabulary in my brain, but often still can't find the right vocabulary to use to make the poem rhyme. There wasn't a controlled meter used in this poem. And the style of this poem is more of a casual tone, like it was purposely designed for children, using easy diction. I don't think that it used good imagery nor figures of speech. The best imagery I could find would be in the last stanza when it talked about how he lost his foot. 

The Broken-Legg'd Man- John Mackey Shaw

I saw the other day when I went shopping in the store

A man I hadn't ever, ever seen in there before,

A man whose leg was broken and who leaned upon a crutch-

I asked him very kindly if it hurt him very much.

"Not at all!" said the broken-legg'd man.

I ran around behind him for I thought that I would see

The broken leg all bandaged up and bent back at the knee;

But I didn't see the leg at all, there wasn't any there,

So I asked him very kindly if he had it hid somewhere.

"Not at all!" said the broken-legg'd man.

"Then where," I asked him, "is it? Did a tiger bite it off?

Or did you get your foot wet when you had a nasty cough?

Did someone jump down on your leg when it was very new?

Or did you simply cut it off because you wanted to?"

"Not at all!" said the broken-legg'd man.  

"What was it then?" I asked him, and this is what he said:

"I crossed a busy crossing when the traffic light was red;

A big black car came whizzing by and knocked me off my feet."

"Of course you looked both ways," I said, "before you crossed the street."

"Not at all!" said the broken-legg'd man.  

"They rushed me to the hospital right quickly, "he went on,

"And when I woke in nice white sheets I saw my leg was gone;

That's why you see me walking now on nothing but a crutch."

"I'm glad," said I, "you told me, and I thank you very much!"

"Not at all!" said the broken-legg'd man.

Life

To most people, they must've compared life to things more optimistically. Normally, I am a optimistic person and believes that life is good no matter how bad things go. I didn't know that one incident of having someone important to you leaving would change the way I look at life this much. From being optimistic normally, I am actually comparing life to hell. I admit that hell is probably a little too exaggerated, since there are those times when you are happy, but I can't think of anything else to describe the feeling that I have towards life now. I think that life is hell because living is always a torture. Look at how hard people are trying to have themselves survive, no matter in their social status, academically, or economically...etc. And no matter how hard some people try, they won't be able to achieve the goal. And even when one does get to the level that they're satisfied with already, it doesn't mean that someone else doesn't have the exact same goal as them, and would try to bring them down no matter what. Look at how many people there are on the world. Having similar goals means to have to fight among each other. Having people trying to drag each other down is like hell. Also, in life, there are those times when you think that you've found your real best friends. And of course, in those moments, you'd feel really happy. But afterwards, when they backstab you, the contrast of the happiness you've had and the pain of knowing that it was all fake would hurt so much, just like in hell. Another thing is how the earth is way too big, and when people leave, it would hurt so bad. Life is so cruel and violent, dragging two people away from each other for hundreds of thousands miles. So, I think that even though there are the happy moments in life, they might not last forever and may be fake. These miserable things of human nature makes me think that life should be compared to hell. 

Seven Ages of Man

Throughout life, people go through many stages. Life isn't long enough to considered as "long", yet normally isn't short enough to be considered "short". In normal people's lives, I think that it can be divided into the seven following stages: Birth, Student, Work, Marriage, Parenting, Retirement, and Death. The first and last one would be birth and death for sure. They mark the beginning and end of a person's life, from being given birth to earth till the day they leave the world, which is death. The second stage is being a student. This takes up a whole lot of a person's life. In life, people learn new things all the time, so this stage actually overlaps with all the other stages other than birth and death. The stage of working is after a student graduates and becomes an adult, having to learn to handle things themselves without having to have their parents backup everything for them. At this stage, they'll grow up and learn  how to earn money themselves and save themselves from being killed by the cruelty of reality. Marriage is the next stage. People in life will fall in love with someone and the majority of people get married. And of course, after marrying is to have a baby to have a feeling of a home. So, it then will be parenting. Retirement goes after parenting, even though it overlaps later on. When parenting a child, you would need income of course to raise the children. And later on, when the child went to the working stage of their lives too, the parents can retire and enjoy the rest of their life, waiting until the last stage, Death, comes. 

Disrespect

I believe that every single person has had the feeling of being disrespected sometime somehow in their life. I remember when I was really little, during summer my parents had work so they sent both my brother and me to a sports camp. In that camp, they focused on basketball. And in case you don't know, the only sport I'm good at is swimming. I'm really not good at any on-land sports, especially those that involve balls. When people pass them to me, I can't catch them, because I close my eyes, feeling afraid that the ball will hurt me. Because when I was little, I was a lot chubbier than I am right now, and I didn't know how to play basketball, unlike my brother and all the other people that went to the camp, the students and teachers didn't respect me. When picking teams, they all tried not the pick me, excluding me, and one person, I remember, even made this "tsktsk" noise when she knew that I was in her team. I really felt disrespected. I know that I have bad basketball skills, and I know that people want skilled people in their teams, but making sounds like that really hurt my feelings and I got angry too. The bad thing, was that I didn't have the guts to say anything to the people that hurt me. I was very angry, and also sad about how I was excluded and embarrassed by my bad basketball skills. 

A Blessing

The poem "A Blessing" by James Wright, talks about the lover of the speaker to two Indian ponies that he saw off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota. The ponies welcomed both the speaker and his / her friend by coming out of the willows and played with them. The speaker described them as they love each other a lot. And one of them, the black and white one, seemed to really like the speaker. Some of the examples of imagery that are used in the poem are "they bow shyly as wet swans". This description shows the way of the ponies bowing and how they love each other. The part that says "She is black and white", this is a very direct description of imagery, directly saying the physical appearance of the pony. Also, "Her mane falls wild on her forehead", shows even more details of the ponies other than simply how she is black and white. The sentences of "And the light breeze moves me to cress her long ear", makes the readers know that there's light wind and the feeling of the pony's ears is soft like the skin of a girl's wrist. 

Turning Point

In my whole life, there wasn't really a big change. I live my own life everyday and enjoy it. The biggest change that I would've done probably was to decide to become a person that would be more "under radar", unlike what I usually am. Before, I socialize and chat too much with many people, but after I've known that our school is actually a "dangerous" place, and if you act too conspicuously in this school, you'll either get backstabbed by people that are "supposed" to be your friends, but secretly dislike you, or unless you have strong supporters behind you, you would be taken down by others. I've realized it early enough since something similar to what I've described happened to me. Even though in a way it's kind of a bad thing that it happened to me, but since I realized early enough, I'm now leaving that role of being conspicuous to the new people that came into our school and knowing that it's better to have little friends, but all of them true, other than having a lot of "friends" that secretly says bad things about you when you don't realize. The turning point would obviously be when I got backstabbed by one of the people that I thought was my best friend. I used to tell her all my secrets, but when she backstabbed me, I realized how scary this place is. If I didn't realize it when that incident happened, I guess I'd be in a very bad condition right now. Probably not having the true friends that I have right now and not even the "friends" that fake a smile in front of you and says bad things about me behind. 

Selfless- Sacrifice

Throughout life, people have to make choices that would either be good for themselves or to others, but not good for both of them at the same time.  A choice I made could probably be when I was spending a lot of time with one of my friends in local school that I met in my cram school. His girlfriend just cheated on him, and since he is a very important friend to me, I had to make this hard decision of whether I should or shouldn't go to yell at the girl since the boy wouldn't do it and the girl didn't think that she did anything wrong. It would benefit the boy, because being cheated on while the girl doesn't even think that she did anything wrong would be totally insulting. If I were him, I wouldn't just hold it down and just say that he's going to let it go just like that. If I really went to go to the girl and list out what bad things she'd done, I would be pretty sure that she'd think that I was being too nosy, poking my head into other people's business, and I might even get misunderstood by other people that I like the guy. But because of how much the boy helped me when I was sad, I couldn't stand someone hurting such a good friend of mine like that. In the end, I didn't care about other people thinking that I'm being nosy or what, I called the girl and yelled at her about what she'd done to my friend. I don't regret making this decision, even though the friends of the girl really are thinking about me the way I've expected, nosy and that I like the boy, but I didn't care. To me, the boy was a very important friend and I wouldn't change how close we are just because of some other people saying things about us behind us. True friends are hard to find, and I'm really glad that I've met one. 

Why do we have universal education

The reason why we have universal education is because, in order for people to improve, they have to be educated in many ways, like communicating or in specific, unique talents and skills. The only way the people improve is to be communicating with others, sharing ideas and thoughts to make some differences in life. If people can't communicate, then even the smallest and easiest thing, like passing the spoon across the table might not be even possible to happen. And so for developing the unique skills, everything that exists in the world now has been invented by people. The only way that people can invent things is to have skills of some sort and have talent in making things like that. WIthout education being universal, the world might be so much more different than now. Even when some people are able to make things for themselves, other people from other places won't have the capability to learn it and spread it around to make more people learn about it and make life more advanced. The first education with universities started in the late 11th century in England which evolved from older Christians priesting in churches. 

Compare and Contrast two versions of A Christmas Carol

To be honest, after watching the two movies, I think that the newer one with Jim Carrey in it is a lot more appealing to me than the one that’s produced a while ago. It’s probably just because I’m still a child and still like cartoon over movies that are filmed with real people as the characters. The cartoon was more entertaining and because it could make a lot more thing more possible. For example, the effects of the ghosts. In the older film, the effects weren’t as good. The ghosts were just human that were more transparent, but in the cartoon one, the ghosts could fly around, and the visual images would make me more excited and the sound effects made me like the movie a lot more. When I was watching the older version of this movie, I nearly fell asleep. Also, a big difference was to figure out which character is who. Even though through the speech, it was obvious about who was who, but it was still quite hard to find out who was who by simply looking at them in the older version of the movie, but in the cartoon version, the way the characters were drawn was showing the characteristics of the characters, which made it of course, a lot easier to find out who is who. 

My most coveted possession

"What's your most coveted possession?" The same as most other teenagers, I would probably say that it's my computer or my phone. They're things that I can't live without. But, if I can't choose one of those electronic devices, I would say that my most coveted possession would be my oboe. Even though I've learned the piano far longer than I've learned the oboe, I have so much more feeling towards the oboe than towards the piano. To me, playing the piano is quite boring, while playing the oboe makes me feel different and I'm more willing to practice the oboe than to practice the piano. It would be my most coveted possession, because it is obviously very expensive, and other than that, it had been through a lot with me. I've met many of my best friends because of it. I've been to different orchestras in different places, and of course, met many new and different people. In every orchestra, the people that I meet are all unique and funny, which made me make a lot of new friends. Since we also have the same hobbies, we often can chat a lot for a long time. With my oboe, I've been through many different kinds of emotions and so it of course would be my most coveted possession. 

The Victorian Workhouses

Victorian Workhouses were where the poor poeple who had no job or no home to live in stayed. The poor had to work to support themselves with food and clothings etc. Orphans and abandoned children, the physically or mentally disabled people and elderlies were also people that live in workhouses. The poor and old feared the workhouses because the government purposely did so, scared that it would encourage people to become lazy and would try to keep out of it. Even though it was a place where those people could live in, it wasn’t absolutely a bad place because families were split, and they could even be punished if they tried to talk to each other. Also, the education that the children were getting didn’t include reading and writing. Also, the poor people had to wear uniforms so that people knew that they were poor and lives in the workhouse. And also, the food was tasteless are repeated everyday. 

Which ghost influenced Scrooge the most?

In the book "A Christmas Carol", I think that the third ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, influenced Scrooge the most by what it showed him. I think this way because it was the one that Scrooge feared the most. I think that in order to change a person's way of thinking, making them like you won't do much. Making them afraid of you though, would make a bigger difference. In my opinion, I think that if it were me, I would pay more attention to a person if I'm afraid of them instead of listening to someone that I think is happy all the time or someone that I like. The first two Spirits were more friendly-looking and weren't as mysterious as the third one. When I'm with a person that's friendly-looking, I wouldn't believe that they would hurt me or do any harm to me, so I wouldn't be paying as much attention as I would with the person that scares me. Even though I think that the third ghost made the most influence, but I believe that actually all the ghosts, not including Marley though, influenced him bit by bit with every scene that they show to him. 

Theme for Liberty/ Exile

To me, I think that the theme for the story "Liberty" would be how in order to get something you want a lot, you will have to sacrifice something. In the story, the family of the narrator wanted liberty in the definition of freedom a lot and even though the narrator wanted the dog Liberty to go with them when they were on the way to America, she had to sacrifice it, in order to stay with her family and to let them go to America safely. And for the theme for the poem "Exile", I think that the theme is how leaving the place where you've been raised is hard. In the poem, it expressed a mood that even though they've successfully immigrated to the States, they weren't as happy as they've expected, because they've left the place that they've grown up in. In the poem, there was a part when the father, Papi, was staring at the horizon, trying to find a distant swimmer when they just landed and arrived at America. It showed how they were missing their homeland even though they've finally reached the place they wanted to be in, and get their dream, "liberty".