#18 Public Spaces

I don’t really recall I have a time when I felt as if I altered public space. But I do have some experience when someone alters the public space in this way. I guess this is fairly common in Pacific American School. Whenever the lunch bell rang, everyone will rush out of their class room and dash to the cafeteria to be the first one to get lunch and avoid the long queue. Lunch time is probably the most fabulous time during school day. Everyone would use that precious 30 to 45 minutes to enjoy their café food, whether they are like it or not, and have the social time to exchange gossips, people’s feeling toward a test, teacher or the overall school activities. I guess all of our conversations are all quite normal, except once in a while boys will talk about some inappropriate jokes. However, most of our conversation will be in mandarin. This comes into a problem. Whenever our headmaster Ms Pamela walks into the cafeteria, immediately, table to table, people will stop their chats. It seems like she is some kind of mute button that whenever Ms Pamela enters, people will start whispering “Ms Pamela is here, English, English.” Although people do sometimes immediately change their Mandarin conversation into an English one, most people just stop their talk and focus on their food. It is exceptionally funny that our noisy cafeteria will be immediately silence just by the appearance of one individual.

#17 Brother and Sister

In my case, I have a older sister, who is only a year older than me. When we were small, we fought a lot. Back in those days, I was always trying to fight for any toys that my sister has in her hand. I never thought of the idea of “sharing.” I will always say “This is brother’s” in Taiwanese to whatever thing I have my index finger pointed at, either a pencil, cookie or a car. My sister was always so gullible and easily teased. Often times I would trick my sister and divert her attention to the TV or other things to steal away her toys. We would get in a lot of conflict for the toy issue. From what my mom recall, we were like bunch of little monsters. We fought with our teeth that instead of punching each other, we would bite. This is kind of hilarious that often times my mom would find bite marks on my sister’s back when she help her take showers. Then I would get in trouble to being such a naughty brother. Unlike Krull, most of the time it is me who teased my sister and plays pranks on her. Now she is off to college, I rarely have time to tease with her again. She is such a fun sister to hang around with.

#16 School tardiness policy

To me, I believe the current school tardiness policy is too extreme and counterproductive. It is true that this locking door policy when you are late for school in the morning is effective that it uses fear to force people to be on time for school. However, it sacrifices students’ chance for academic education. Although the school may argue that by locking people out for a whole day just for being late for school in the morning is super effective, it takes away school time. This kind of discipline issue should be taught to the student outside of school time. Instead of the locking door policy, I propose to have a stricter detention that should serve as an enough fear factor for people to learn to be punctual. In the past years, our detention system is never strict enough that people don’t really suffer and learn from such after school community service. However, if we impose a stricter detention system, we wouldn’t need a locking door policy. For every 3 tardiness to school in the morning, the student will have to spend a week of detention. It accumulates that way that if you have 6 tardiness, you will have 2 weeks of detention. In detention, students will be forced to clean classrooms and clean the school environment. They will need to write an essay everyday in detention for 30 min on various topic that the teacher choose to pick. The initiative of the policy is well established and reasonable. There is indeed a dilatory issue for students in our school. However, to correct student’s behavior, we shouldn’t sacrifice student’s class time and education.

#15 Controversial symbol

Does UFO really exist in this world? In the picture above, I choose a symbol of UFO to give an example of a controversial symbol. As depicted in many movies and science fiction novel, we are constantly visited and surrounded by alien that may take forms which we may hardly notice. In the movie series Transformers, alien can hide around us by camouflaging into vehicles and heavy machineries. In movie like Men in Black, these aliens may take human forms and blend into our world and society. So do UFO and aliens really exist? If they do, what kind of impacts will they bring to society? Will aliens invade our world like in the transformers movie and enslave humankinds? Or will they instead try to live peacefully around us? Or will alien be instead like refugees as shown in the movie District 9? I believe people may have controversial view over this symbol and how people respond to the issue raise by this symbol. Are these all science fiction created by people? Or are they based on some facts that there are indeed evidences that these extraterrestrial beings has visited us and left behind some trace of their existence on earth?

#14 Crush

Who exactly was my first love? I don’t think writing this kind of topic is particularly comfortable for me since I am quite reserved in sharing my personal history, especially in topics like romance. Well I will say it must be in my kindergarten that I met my first love. I wouldn’t really say it’s “love” since it maybe just an act of admiration and good camaraderie between the girl and me. It’s been so long that I have long since forgotten how exactly she looks like and her name. I only remember that I teased a lot with this girl that we become good friend. In kindergarten, I think I am just too young to understand the concept of young. I may just treat the girl like my sister that I would play pranks around her. She responded pretty well to my jokes that she would also play along. From the adults’ perspective, they may see this as some sort of romance. Back then, I wouldn’t be extremely embarrassed to admit that I like the girl. However, reflecting back, it must be funny for me to not feel embarrassed by this kind of statement. Anyway, since I graduated from elementary school, I have never seen her again and contacted her. She seems to slowly fade away from my memory that someday I guess I will totally forget about this fraction of my childhood memory.

#13 Response to "My Face"

        I don’t really know how people usually see me. However, based on how they react and interact with me daily, I guessed most of them have some relatively positive impression of me. I am often seen as a nerd who I find those people to be extremely foolish that they often fail to see my athletic ability. Regarding to my physical appearance, I would say I’m pretty normal or average. I am neither too ugly nor handsome. Although people say I look a lot better without my glasses, I tend to find them similar that I am who I am. Although when I take off my glasses, my eyes tend to be bigger that it is not framed by the glasses. To some people, they find my chin to be extremely funny that it is somehow too extended out. I find it kind of ugly, especially with my glasses on that my face seem to be extremely flat with a long chin. Like Benchley, when I look at the mirror in the morning, I often find myself to be a different person with a unique hair style every morning. Sometimes my hair will pop up like a maw hawk. Sometimes my fair will be extremely flat that I felt I have transformed into a 3^rd grader. Sometime my hair will just go so messy that it seems like a tornado has swept through my hair during my sleep.  

#13 Response to "Orange Crush"

Like Yiyun Li, I guess I have a food or drink that holds a special place in my childhood memories. I remember that when I first transfer from a Taiwanese local school to an American system school in Hsinchu International School, I was introduced to a type of candy that I have never seen before: Fruit Rolls. Fruit Rolls is a type of candy that rolls up on a thin piece of waxed paper with distinct fruit flavor on it. Whenever one eats it, the food dye of the candy will stain on your tongue, making it red, yellow, green and all types of fabulous colors. During 3^rd grade, fruit roll will seem to be label as the sign of popularity. Whoever has fruit rolls for snack, that kid will become the most popular one in the class that everyone seems to begging and pleasing that individual in order to have just a tiny piece of the fruit rolls. Since I was a new kid to the class and a pretty shy individual, I didn’t quite have the courage to ask for a piece of the candy. Instead, seeing such magical appeals that fruit rolls give, I decided to go to COSTCO and buy a huge box of it. Once I got it back home, I can’t wait to get a taste of it. However, the first bite of it immediately throws me off. It has such a strong fruity flavor that in a sense it just tastes unnatural like chemical. I have never tried any candy that is this strong in its sweetness. After just a few bite of it, I decided not to attempt to finish the roll that I just got fed up with its artificial chemically taste. However, as expected, I became popular in the class by generously giving out these fruit rolls to my classmates who helped me finish over 90% of the fruit rolls in the box. Now whenever I see a fruit roll, I appreciated the candy for helping me blend into the new school despite its awful taste.  

# 12 Response to "Shooting Dad"

Probably due to the fact I’m a guy, I would love to have Vowell’s so called eccentric and even obsessive father to be my own father. I love mechanics and anything that is related to weapons. Although his dad maybe sometimes too obsessed with the use of gun that he uses BB gun to scare away crows on the lawn, I can sympathize him with his hobby. I am not sure if this is a hobby or a job he had, but I will for sure want to learn something from this dad and enjoy the fun with him. In my life, my mom has a quirky behavior that sometimes I find funny yet a bit annoying in some occasions. My mom is basically like a big girl. She loves stuff animals. Even till this age, she has a teddy bear next to her pillow every day when she sleeps. This obsession began to overwhelm me when she acts as if the teddy bear was alive and began to make him talk to me. When we are small, I guess everyone once have their favorite stuff animal to play with and talk with. However, this habit didn’t seem to disappear from my mom. Every time when we pass by a store with cute stuffed animals in it, she would definitely go into the store and come out of it carrying a new “friend” with her. I would always say to my mom, “You already have a lot of stuffed animal! Stop buying them!” “But it is so cute! It’s a keeper,” my mom would act as if she is still 5 years old. This obsession may sometimes embarrass me that I have such an immature mom. However, I guess this is the nature of girls that I shouldn’t have too much comment on.

# 11 Response to "Arm Wrestling with My Father"

In the story “Arm Wrestling with My Father” by Brad Manning, he talks about how he realized a change about his perspective about his dad that his dad is no longer the strong, physical man he wanted to compete with. He is kind of sad and guilty for wining his dad in arm wrestling that a perplexed feeling of not wanting to destroy an undefeatable legend began to pop out in his mind instead of enjoying the glorious victory. I think I have this kind of ideas and feeling with my father too. When I was small, I would constantly want to beat my dad in basketball. Like Manning’s dad, my father was extremely athletic and exceptionally good at basketball in my point of view when I was small. He would teach me how to dribble, layup, pump fakes, shoot the ball into the basket and all kinds of basketball moves. I would eagerly want to master these moves and challenge him on the court. However, every single game, like Manning’s experience, I would lose to my dad. My dad would win easily and beat me without even sweating while I was sweating, breathing hardly, and lying on the ground accepting my defeat. However, as I began to grow taller and physically stronger, I started to find that I was able to beat my dad easily. There is a sense of guilt in me that my once legendary nemesis whom I wanted to defeat so badly was too easily beaten now. I felt like I have destroyed some legendary characteristics of my dad. Now, whenever I challenge him to the game, he would say that I will definitely win in the end. This disheartened me that I felt like I have taken away some confidence in my dad.

# 10 The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

What is some of my ritual in which i participated in that is repeated and traditional to my family? There are tons of good examples in Taiwanese culture during the Chinese New Year and various holidays. One of my most favorite traditions was the moon festival BBQ. Every year on moon festival, Taiwanese people will become fanatic about BBQ. It seems like the only day in the year where everyone in Taiwan will gather with their friend or family to have BBQ dinner. This may puzzled many North Americans who basically can have BBQ any time they want in the year. In Taiwan, this seems like the tradition people have for a long time. On moon festival, people will head out to the supermarket or traditional market to buy foods for the BBQ. People will usually buy tons of meat and lots of chicken. After a whole morning of shopping, at night, people will began to start the fest and set up the grill and the fire. Kids and adults alike will happily put foods on the grill and cover them with tons of BBQ sauce. After the fest, following the Taiwanese customs, people will eat moon cakes with tons of teas to level out the sweetness of the sweet. Staring at the big and round moon, people would then eat pomelo for desert.

# 9 Grade A: The Market for a Yale Woman's Egg

In the short prose by Cohen, she talked about the market for egg donation and the ethic issue behind these donations. If I also see the ad of wanting a male Yale student sperms, I don’t really think I would consider offering my egg to a complete stranger. Although I might pity the man for being infertile and unable to have kids after so many years, I don’t think I would be sympathetic enough to donate my own genetic information to the man. The compensation may be extremely high. However, I still won’t take it because I know the risk behind these donations. Unlike women, I wouldn’t have to suffer taking birth control pills and inject hormones in my body to produce enough egg for donation. I can simply donate my sperm in probably less than 20 minutes without taking any drugs or prodding a needle in my body to retrieve the egg. I understand that if infertile couples want an egg or sperm, they would prefer to have the best egg and sperm they can find that might bring promising future to their kids. However, I still think the screening process of wanting a Yale student’s egg or sperm may be excessive and unnecessary. Students in Yale and Ivy Leagues tend to have high academic performances. However, as we know, our intelligence is not entirely based on genetics. Instead, it is most likely that nurture plays a bigger role in making someone smart and performing well in academics. In my opinion, sperm and egg donation is some dangerous business that may result in major ethic issue in the future.

# 8 Feeding Properity by Feeding Monkeys- Journal

People from all over the world have their own unique tradition, like Harold Taw’s tradition of feeding monkeys every year on his birthday in order to ensure prosperity to his family. Similarly, in my Taiwanese culture, before any big important test or competition, I shouldn’t get a haircut. It is believed that if I were to get a haircut, all of my experiences and luck will be cut away along with my hair. It is said that as our hair grows, the experience and training we go through, either in studying academic materials or training in any sports, will remain in our hair. This may sound superstitious. However, after following the tradition for several times, I find it to be quite helpful. Although this tradition never helps me win any tennis competition or get 2400 on my SAT, I felt that if I never follow this tradition, I would have performed worse. I guess this is just a psychological relief for many people that although they may realized that some of the tradition are just superstitious that will never have any physical affect on anything, people just do them for the sake of it. I decide that I will probably follow this tradition in the future.

# 7 Response to "Getting In" by Malcolm Gladwell

After reading “Getting In” by Malcolm Gladwell, I was deeply amazed and totally agreed with what he had said about those Ivies league school and Havard. It is funny to see how a Canadian like Gladwell who attended and applied for the University of Toronto with relatively eased was shocked to see why people who went to Harvard were so proud of their university. For Gladwell, he just felt that it is not which college people attended determines their pride, but it is the fact they attended colleges and had the most experience out of it. I find it surprising that the reason why Ivy leagues school decided to look at their applicants with their personality, extracurricular activities and family background beside their academic performances was to reduce the number of Jews in their school. Like Gladwell said, these elite schools wouldn’t just want the intelligent people in their school. Instead they are like luxury brand who wants students that can be a superstar alumnus in the future who can keep the school’s reputation high.

        Contrary to what most parents think, these elite school are not like a treatment-effect institution like the Marine Corps that can trained individuals to become motivated students and get a degree with powerful name that can give them advantages in the future. Instead, they are more like modeling agency, a selection-effect agency that you don’t become beautiful by signing into it. You get selected because you are beautiful already. This make Gladwell argued that we shouldn’t be comparing that a student who went to Penn will earn more money in the future than those who went to Penn state. Instead, we should conclude that regardless of which school you attended, it is the inner quality and motivation one has that allow them to have great success in the future. By going to elite school won’t necessary give you advantage. Instead it is because you have those superstar quality that you will be admitted to those elite school, thus making the elite school to produce successful alumni.  

# 6The chase- Annie Dillard

The Chase, by Annie Dillard, is rather a fascinating prose that vividly describes one of her childhood experience. Her chase with an adult is extremely vivid and describe perfectly from a child’s perspective. I suppose this chase was rather a significance experience for her because she had never got so scared in life for the prank she did at adult. Normally, she treated the prank of throwing snowballs at passing car as a pure recreation at winter which rarely she would get any reaction from the driver. However, the driver instead stops the car and started to chase them persistently.

        Reflecting back, I remember a moment in my childhood that seems momentous even now. It is also about a chase, yet it was more of a serious chase that may eventually inflict some physical pain on me. I remember once visiting my uncle’s warehouse where it is filled with mountains of instant noodles boxes and drinks. There, I encounter a dog called little flower because of her brown spots over her back. Despite such a feminine name, with her first glance at me, for no reason she began to chase me. Extremely terrified at her speedy run, I also began to take off and started to run around the warehouse. I remember that I was quite stupid that I started to run around in a circle.  Screaming and crying with fear, the chase seems to last for hours with the dog closely behind my back despite how fast i run. I was screaming for help and urging the adult to stop the dog.  However, all I hear from the adults who were watching the "funny" chase were laughters filled with voices “Stop running, she simply wants to play with you.” However, in my perspective, she simply wanted to bite me and tare me into pieces for an afternoon snack. I couldn’t recount what happen after the chase that somehow I was saved and the dog was pulled aside away from me. That chase forever imprinted in my mind.

# 5 Characteristic

What is one of my prominent trait or personality? I will definitely say a hasty and impatient personality toward something. As a small kid, I always love to know the easiest method toward a certain goal such as solving a math questions. What I meant by the easiest method doesn’t necessary mean method that will be the most efficient and quickest to the solution, but a method that may take a long process yet each of the step is easier to comprehend and solve. It is sometimes hard for me to fully accept a new idea or method completely without actually fully understand the reasons behind it and how people came up with such ideas. When things become so intricate to comprehend that people will just tell you to accept it as a fact, I will usually reject such idea and stick on to my old beliefs. In a way people can say I am stubborn toward some idea or method. Also, I tend to make a judgment too early that I treat many things like cause and effect relationship. For example, I use to always think that the only reason why people get sick is due to virus infection. However, I tend to forget that many other factors such as bacterial infection, tumor, and other problems in our body may contribute to a common symptom. I tend to think things in a linear fashion without considering it may instead act like a web.

#4 Responses to Ken Robinson's Schools Kills Creativity

According to Ken Robinson, the core of our education system is made on the basis of industrial, mass production assembly line. He described how kids are like producst in factory that we went through stages of acquiring knowledge in school, using standardize test to eliminate the defects and comparing kids according to their age. He argued that with standardize test, it strongly misinterpreted and differntiate the genius among people. People achieve great things with divergent thinking, which is the ability to form multiples idea and act upon at the same time. He suggested that our education system kills people's divergent thinking that people are forced to conform to the standard and disregard any room for creativity. I agree with Ken Robinson that with the increasing number of standardizing test to determine one’s intelligence at the early age is truly unfair. People shouldn’t just be judge on how successful they will be in the future based on test result. However, I do not see any other efficient alternative to differentiate people, for instance, to go into colleges, without standardize test. It is true that in American colleges, besides standardize test and GPA, collage admission staffs also look at applicants extracurricular activities or essay to accept people into their school. However, standardize test will always be the first line to washout people they don’t think will be suitable in their school. If school were to go over each and every applicant’s extracurricular activities, there will be too much biased within the selection process and eventually caused chaos. Our education system is indeed flawed. However, it is impossible to get rid of standardize test that only through these tests can the selection process be fair and unbiased.  

# 3 Tone and Purpose of "Disability"

Disability, by Nancy Mairs, described how Nancy felt about people with disability that she thought there the public should better understand these people and know their stories. The tone of the passage is rather melancholy that she described how people are mistreated or treated differently due to their disability. For example, she narrated an occasion that a local advertiser refused to let disable people advertising commercial product because it would discourage sells. Nancy felt pretty sad yet perplex that the real reason disabled people aren’t in the advertisement is not because people would think products are specially made for disabled but people would associate disability with ordinary life. Yet she was optimistic that everything would turn out right if the public were able to understand and treated disabled naturally into our common scene of daily life. She believed that disabled people were suffering because they felt isolated and discouraged for being different from others. However, through public awareness and integration of disabled into our common scene of daily lives, we would eventually treated disabled equally.

As said earlier in the passage, the main purpose of the passage is to encourage the public or advertiser to integrate the images of disabled into our common scenes of our ordinary lives. By seeing these people daily in our lives, we would eventually get used to them and would no longer seem them as disabled and treated them as a different category of individuals. When people have disabilities, they began to not only feel the sense of isolation but also throw away their any sense of existence that they would lose their self- confidence. People began to self-alienating themselves and draw them into a virtuous cycle of depression that they would just fall deeper into the depth of disparity. She also wanted to make people to accept disability more easily psychologically if they were to get one in the future. If people are used to seeing disabled and realized that one can still live an ordinary life with it, people are able to associate it as normal characteristic, one that complicates people physically but wouldn’t take away our human existence. Therefore, people would be more confidence and optimistic that there are still hopes in the future.

# 2 What is Freedom?

What exactly is freedom? Well, for Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of freedom is the quality or state of being free as the absence of necessity, or constraint in choice or restraint from the power of another. For me, the definition of freedom starts with the principle of sovereignty, or known as self control. Free people are able to make decision for themselves without any restraint from any others or authority. They are protected from many civil liberties and allow to have legal control of themselves. However, I believe that there should always be some limitations to freedom that people should not abuse their rights. It is not people’s freedom to cause and infringe other’s interest by causing destruction to society and impulsively making decision that may cause huge impact to people around them. For example, it is not kid’s freedom at the age of 5 to be smoking and playing with guns. First of all, these things can be live threatening that smoking is bad for health and playing with guns may lead of casualties. Second, kids wouldn’t have the power to make wise decision for them yet that they are easily lured by traps and motivated to do crazy things. Freedom should only be granted when one is mature enough to make decision without abusing the power of it.

#1 Responses to Amy Chua's book

Amy Chua, author of the book Battle Hymn of Tiger Mother, posted a controversial post on the Wall Street Journal titling 'Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior?" After reading the post, i personally felt that there are some certain truth in it that Asian parents tend to treat their kids the same way as that of Amy Chua. When we are small, our parents tend to let force us to learn instruments such as piano. Unlike western parents, Asian parents tend to expect children to get good grades that it is never the school or teachers fault if kids have a bad score. I agree with Amy that only through these kinds of Spartan education can we arm our children with skill and confidence to deal with future adult life. However, I find that the only way to really prepare our children with the future is to balance both western and eastern style of education. We need to prepare kids with both the diligent working habit and passions to find stuff that they will find motivated in the future.