As I progressed deeper into the text of this story, the lone protagonist, with his awareness of him being killed by his own demise, he then was never killed. With this “supposably-this-would-help-my-life-plan”, the protagonist forgets about his fate of death whilst in a coffee shop where he intended to be assassinated. Soon after I discovered he had this huge relief, more of a success, that he seemed to escape death. Satirically, the protagonist escapes his planned death area and goes home and sleeps with a unknown woman. The next day, his relief was followed by a aesthetic for the bright side of life and in a particular moment this unknown woman. However, at this point of the novel then became all about him going to cafés drinking various coffees, in a hipster-vintage cliché fashion. Furthermore I would love to see a unexpected change later on in this subtle yet awkward story.
Passion Project
For my passion project I’m doing a new design of the school uniform, a T shirt with new print. Since a lot of people are having “issues” with the uniform at our school and the look of it is a bit bland, a new design would be interesting for a change. What the design looks like is just a plain T-shirt but with either a vintage print, school mascot, or a piece of art from a student. Initially what the design is going to be our school mascot, a red panda, on a white t-shirt with an exquisite and casual look; what I’m hoping for something that interests the people in the school. I am passionate about doing this because it’s something I’ve never done, although somebody tried doing this in the past but haven’t “started” so I’ll be the one to carry it on. Another reason why I want to do this project is that it’s ‘artsy’ and experimental and I’m interested to try doing this.
This project is being independently done, with the design. Although I need help with gaining the materials I need in order to complete this task. The goals I have for doing this project is:
- Think and design the apparel in a blueprint
- Obtaining necessary materials
- Physically designing the project
For now I’ve finished achieving no. 1 and the next step is getting the stuff I need. The initiative this project gives that it resolves the problem with uniform “look”, where students can enjoy the ‘fashion’ of the uniform at the same time being ‘wearable’ at school. What I thought when I’ll ‘finish’ this project is that further accomplishments to it can kick-start, possibly, a fashion inspiration to our school.
Reading Journal: A Matter of Death and Life, Andrei Kurkov
I’ve started to read through this book a little bit and I think it’s quite sincere and dark. What I got so far was that the protagonist is `set in a depressing background and he wanted to try something new, I guess he was bored of life. He talks about wanting to hire a contract killer, I think this is the part where the dark comedy comes in, hiring a contract killer to kill him. I’m starting to see such irony in this book, but I don’t know honestly why would he do that. I’m inferring that he is a masochist but in the book he says he isn’t. Honestly, the story by far seems really unusual in the beginning but it gets better later on a bit because it gets deeper into the protagonist’s feelings, which I don’t really know about in-depth. The themes in this book I’ve seen are that it’s darkly comedic, adult themed, ironic, and a bit depressing. I hope to see more as I go further into the novel.
My Reflection on the Unit Human Rights and Responsibilities
In Language Arts class we have been discussing a lot about effective research and analysis on Human Rights and responsibilities, which was our unit. In the beginning Ms. Taynton helped us learn about how to research and talk about different sources on the Internet. Later on we went on exploring and learning the basic human rights by finding them on the Internet and putting them on a Wikispace. What I did in this unit on the Wikispace was making a wiki about ‘Right to Education’ and it was new to me and interesting so I then engaged on finding some information about it. I had a really good start off looking at some bits of information and summarised them to generalise the beginning of my Wikispace. The hard part in this unit was that I always skipped and kept progressing on my wiki so I don’t get stuck on one thing but to really maintain that was difficult. It seemed easy at first at properly gathering and making information more clear on my Wiki was fairly ‘all-over’ the place but soon after I got the hang of it. My in-depth research on my information I got was great in my opinion, but I sometimes thought of it as a bit generalised.
What I thought about researching this right came in mind to me was that education could help someone in conflict, in poverty, or famine could be smart to know what to do to stop or survive in these situations. Overall in my opinion, about education has changed wherever I go in the world because some people are unfortunate who couldn’t learn something they never really knew. Next time when I research human rights I would make a better organised planning of what to research about different sources and opinions.
Unit Reflection, “Culture”
In Language Arts we took a deep plunge of culture. However some of us knew what culture was before this unit. What I knew about culture before was that people had traditions and celebrations when I thought of it when I was young in Indonesia. I’ve experienced 2 cultures growing up, Australian and Indonesian. A topic came to me from this experience related to this unit was that people could feel like outsiders to their own culture because when I was young I didn’t learn Indonesian first and English was my mother tongue. I felt like an outsider to my society because I didn’t know the language. Soon later the same topic came back when I was In language arts in grade 9 and wrote how people can feel like outsiders to their own culture when they haven’t experienced it.
What extended me in this unit was that I showed more understanding to different cultures and finding similarities to what I’ve experienced in my childhood but also overcoming culture shock. My knowledge about culture before was really vague and misunderstood which led me feeling alienated, an outsider, to most things that were new to me in different culture. So this unit really opened up my mind to culture through exploring different kinds of text with the same topic. I felt empathetic towards different kinds of culture and trying to respect them as well. An example of me showing empathy was we had a trip to Hei Shui in the Sichuan-Tibetan plateau. I’ve experienced Tibetan culture and saw what it was like for the people who were living there. Most of the people during the trip felt like outsiders to Tibetan things (ex. the food) but me I just pushed away feeling alienated and just ate what they had even though some of it I didn’t like I still had a little of everything. The most part that extended my knowledge of culture Is that to understand it you have to experience it and even though if you feel like an outsider try to overcome the problems and look for something new.
The challenge in this unit was to find the main idea in the various texts with different concepts of culture. It changed my thinking but I tried to connect the idea of culture to my experience, which helped me build empathy and understanding to different ideas about culture. I used to think that people were never outsiders and they never feel like they are welcomed but that changed when I was influenced by various authors text with this idea. Overall I think this was a great unit and to end this we are eating food from different cultures and that’s another good way to experience some culture.
Unit 1 “Culture”, – Thoughts on Writing my essay
In language arts, we had a lot of sources and text about culture. We explored through various novels, short stories, and poems that show examples of the topic culture. We came up with opinions what makes culture something vast and big, everyone had different viewpoints; taking aspects in from culture and providing evidence from different resources.
Coming up with my thesis wasn’t hard, I thought on the essay on a single idea and built on it making my thesis. But the thing that makes it hard to write the essay was keeping the idea straight to the point without putting too much stuff in or not vaguely explaining it, making it clear. What was hard for me was I was confused a lot on the narrow focus and what to do with the evidence. I connected my text to my thesis without saying the same thing just varied the different points throughout my writing. What I really found out when I was writing my essay was that I realised I should’ve put more points in the body paragraphs. What thought about the essay I needed more detail although I need to build my analysis that will support my thesis; more quotations more depth into my writing.
My concerns on writing this essay are how to provide quotations and a deeper analysis to connect my thesis. I do have great ideas but to use them I need to try using it in the relation to resources.
Unit 1 “Culture”, Assessment Task Language Arts
In Language Arts, we looked into the topic of culture. We were assigned a novel to read and to look into the author’s biography of how his or hers writing is affected by their interpretation of culture. I chose the “The Serpent’s Children” by Laurence Yep which made me think of mostly about Chinese culture; the book was set in China, since I’m in school in China I may have a better connection of what Chinese culture is. In this assessment we then questioned and made a format of how culture relates to the novel and author. I chose a poster because I think it’s more creative and I can visually think where to put information on the format.
The first week of this assessment I focused solely on the research question then I came up with one 4 days later which was: to what extent does a person’s place in society is affected by his or her culture. I focused on the idea of culture in this book to be a big topic of it affects how I understand culture in this way. The author gave me another idea of how I thought about why he wrote the story, which came to the conclusion of why Chinese culture supported my research question. I then concluded to my idea saying that a person’s place in Chinese culture is changed by the fact of modern vs. traditional ways, either if a person keeps their cultural background/traits or change.
What this assignment made me think is that the idea of culture is so big that there are a lot of ideas and things to do to explain this idea which made me think a lot about my research question. I researched my question more into that idea in the book that led me to keep it. When I finished my research I didn’t want it to be too confusing so I deleted a lot of pages and concluded into main points that supported my idea. At last my final thoughts of this assessment just makes me think only that culture in a way I never knew really before.
Language Arts Unit “Culture” Research question
My research question at them moment which I thought of it (with the help of Mrs. Taynton) is, to what extent does a person’s culture affect his or her place in society? How I came up with this is during Language Arts we were assigned to read specific books for this unit, culture, I chose The Serpent’s Children by Laurence Yep which gave me a boost for my research question. As I was reading the book I came across little segments where the main character, Cassia, is surrounded with culture and her place in society whether she wants to be accepted or not. This hinted me an idea for my research question.
My inquiry is that looking through this question I need to understand the depth of cultures around the world of how they show this idea of culture affecting people’s place in society; I chose Chinese culture, makes sense because the book is based on it. What I want to find for answering or providing support for my research question is that I need to think of different areas of my idea in order to fully understand the concept I thought of. I’ve done some brainstorming, a bit of researching, and putting down key words: family system, cultural background, roles in society, etc… But although it’s been half a week developing my research question so really I haven’t fully boosted of what I really need to accomplish in this unit but it’s a great start.
Now what I need to do is keep researching and putting connections to the book and the concepts so my research question can be concluded. At this time I haven’t quite know what to do with my research question yet and this is only an embarkment to the beginning to the rest of the unit which I fully haven’t went through it yet.
The Serpent’s Children in correlation between Author and culture
In Language Arts we are beginning to dig into culture in unit 1. As we go through it we began discussing about culture and aspects about it. We went to get books; I chose a book and what it has to do is that we are assigned to read it and understand author-writing styles of different cultural ideas that maybe affected by author. So I chose a book, The Serpent’s Children by Laurence Yep, and I find it interesting to read. Authors who are influenced by culture or history can give what the writer is thinking.
Laurence Yep, a Chinese-American writer born in San Francisco, California. He is an author for young children more than sixty books . His parents are migrants from China who moved to California. Although born in China town San Francisco, he grew up in a black neighbourhood. During elementary to middle school, Yep went to a bilingual school and didn’t come face to face to white American culture. He discovered writing science fiction in high school and wrote his first short story, Sweetwater. He went to the University of California and got his undergraduate degree in 1970 before getting a doctorate in English from the University of New York at in 1975.
The influences of writing that affects stories from the author is that Yep mixes his culture and the events that happened. He published Dragonwings a book that has flying machines, the Chinese immigrant background, and the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco . Yep’s work is deeply influenced and expressed by his Chinese American background, he sees regular life closely, and his willingness to do ample research in local libraries for his works.
With this it shows that the author’s writing is affected which gives an impression in that culture and history can give ideas to stories where it gives the reader the correlation between story and ideas.
Language Arts Assignment Project Presentation
In Language Arts we’ve been taking a a deep understanding on shakespeare’s play, “Romeo and Juliet”. This project assignment sums up what we’ve done with our interpretations of the story.
My progress is going great although I started a bit late due to my absence I did what I needed to do and got my information done so all I need is to make the presentation which for me is a poster.
The poster didn’t start till the weekend but the planing for it is just finished and what I need to do is practice what I need to say (I will practice on the bus). I don’t think My poster may look epic but it will be amazing how much effort of my idea of the assignment has been put into.
The only problem I think to this assignment is my time since I started late (due to: absence) but I did put priorities down to finish in class so I have no stress. What I’ve learned in doing this that there was so much information that I could think and to brainstorm for the first time with a good idea made it so easy for me to get it done right in time even if I started late.