Reflection On Romeo and Juliet Soliloquy

Today in class we did this Soliloquy on Romeo and Juliet. I felt that I did not do too well on it but I have some reasons why. First off, it is old English and I have problems with it since I am not familiar with it. It is harder to memorize due to many words not ever being used in today's world. I was sick that weekend and I had added pressure from musical. I have to perfect and mantain my lines. I have quite a big role because I am the great and powful wizard of Oz. He has many lines when he is found out and I have to keep memorizing it. If I had  a bit more time or did not have musical, I think I could have done better. Oh well.

Make the Connection - Odyssey, Part Two

Someone that has been away for many years would most often lead to tears and hugging when they see a loved one again. Majority of the time, the person returning would have the thoughts of not ever leaving again and staying forever.

Possible reactions:
Hugging, kiss
Love
Over-excitment
Faint
Even disbelif

Though, sometimes after not seeing a person for a long time might lead to mixed feelings. Due to the person changing too much and not as like before. Odysseus is lucky to have a wife that still loves him even after 20 years. 20 years is a long time, im not even 20 years old!

The Odyessy Comparison of the Cyclops Scene

Both the movie and story are very similar in many ways but  both have distinctive differences. First off, in the story, it talks about how they were in the cave of the Cyclops. Apparntly, the plan to stab the Cyclops took another day and more men were eaten. After stabing the Cyclops, the men escaped. They would grab the undersides of the sheep (they are bigger than normal) and they were purple too. This is so the Cyclops would think that he was just grabbing his own sheep. The men escaped and they left. In the movie however, after offering the Cyclops wine and fell asleep, they stabbed him right away. Instead of grabbing the undersides of the sheep and clinging on, they just put on sheep fur and crawl out. The music player was eaten in the movie while he was not mentioned in the story. These are about all the comparrisons.

Quickwrite - Make the Connection

What makes a hero? A hero could be anyone just doing things for others. A list of heroes that I could come up would be:

The Chosen One (Patapon 2/3)
Jedis in Starwars
Master Chief (Halo)
The Dragon Born (Skyrim)
SuperMan
Batman
Spiderman
Hulk
Ironman
etc,etc

Techincally anyone could be a hero just as long they are fighting for someone or something. Even if someone was doing evil deeds, techinically he or she is a hero too because that person is fighting for something. Heroes do not only have to be people with magnifacent powers and abilities, they could just be everyday normal people. Police officers, firemen, doctors are all people who just know knowledge in thier profession and can save many lives. They are risking themselves for others. Some traits a hero would have would be:

Kindness
Will to fight
Brave

These are the most universal and common traits a hero would have. Heroes appear everywhere in normal daily life.

Hoax - Packaged Frozen Foods

Very often, the common shopper is often decieved by the colourful packaging and the serious amounts of detail into frozen food. For example, Totino's is a brand of frozen pizza with a cover of a delicious lookin pizza with every hint of deliciousness. Companies decieve shoppers by adding various colourful pictures and colours, or use lighting when they take photos. It is a way to lure shopppers into thinking, "Oh this frozen food looks so fresh and delicious looking, I have to buy it." Shoppers often picture a warm, delicious, and fresh-tasting dinner until when they open it. It ends up as a frozen brick. For example in my experiences, I found a package of microwavable Macaroni and Cheese and it looked delicious on the cover. So I got lured in and bought a package. However I was decieved by the lighting and colourful background that when I prepared it, instead of a golden rich sauce with pasta, it ended up as a white mush covered in this white and unappetizing sauce. From then on, I did not trust frozen food too often unless I had previous good experienes with it. There are few frozen foods that taste very nice such as Pilsbury's mini pizzas, Pogos, and a few others but they do not live up to the cover on the package. In my experiences I find that Taiwan has even worse frozen food, maybe most likely that people eat fresh everyday or eat outside because of the convience. In Canada and the United States, there aren't 7-11's and shops every street like in Taiwan or Asia in general.

Beware of the Dog - Quickwrite

There's an old saying, "Appearances can be deceiving." I have heard of of this quote and I do agree that it can happen in many situations. For example, a innocent person might have some deep and vicious thoughts deep inside but on the oustide is all happy. Another example is that a video game character named Kirby looks like a pink marshmellow. I used to think he was really cute and all and he still is but when I learned out his power, I was a bit shocked. Kirby may look cute on the outside, but in reality, he devours livings things or objects and uses the power of the object. A real life person would be Susan Boyle. She is not beautiful woman but in reality, she is one of the best opera singers. Looks can be deciving as you know. People are often misled by the outside like juding a book from its front cover.

American History - Make the Connection

Three moments in my life that I would always remember would be the first time going to Taiwan, first time going to school, and first time eating a toasted marshemllow. The first time visting Taiwan is quite important because that is where my blood was originally from and the rest of my extended family. I went there pretty young like about grade 1 and I was in such a strange hostile territory. It was quite an experience seeing so many of my relatives. Another experience was the first day of school. As a kid, I always have thought that I could live my life non-busy everday untill I learned about this thing called school. I wasn't happay about it at first however I was really happy after going. I made so many new friends. The first time eating a toasted marshmellow was quite unique. I've eaten plenty of nontoasted ones but never a toasted one. So on a semi snowing day, my brother went outside and lit a fire. We had marshmellows and toasted em. It was soo good. I felt like Nyan Cat flying through the sky. Even to this day whenever I have the chance to toast a marshmellow and eat it, I feel like Nyan Cat.

How to Eat a Guava- Make the Connection

What is my absolutely favourite food? I think oranges are one of my favourite foods. You can eat them as it it as a sweet fruit or you can squeeze them into a juice, or make it go with other foods as a sauce. I associate the orange in my life as a peeling or opening up. Long time ago, I was a really shy and quiet person. Until I went to school, I peeled open and showed my sweetness just like an orange. You have to open up the orange then you will get the sweet side. There were not many experiences but a few. Another time with oranges it that you have to go through trouble in order to achieve something. This goes on my daily life even today. Doing tests, projects, etc doing something hard to achieve something. As for an orange, peeling it can be annoying and when a person has finished going through the trouble, he is awarded.

Poems in Motion

My favourite is the Country. It really makes me have to think deeply about the poem. It talks about matches and saying about how careful you have to be about them. You can not lay a box around in the countryside or a mouse might pick up a match. While you are sleeping or any unexpected time, the mouse might go to a corner and strike the match. After lighting it, the mice friends were like cheering as if he inveted how to make fire but the mouse dropped the torch and lit the house on fire. I watched it several times trying to understand it but it seems that this poem has some sort of deeper connection. I think it has moral to not leave anything dangerous lying around in the open. Anyone or anything can use it and cause danger.

Narrative Poem Research

Find a narrative poem and write in your blog about its characteristics. Examine and comment about its length, rhyme scheme, meter and style and whether or not you think it makes good use of imagery and figures of speech.

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
After reading this poem by Robert Frost, I kind of understood what he was talking about. In the begining, I found some rhymes with the words like "When" and "bend". The "e" sounds. While I was reading it, it was quite rytmetic and fluent. It is like constant stream of pleasent sounds like water going down the stream. It is quite discriptive and it talks about the ice storm very clearer. After, it talks about a sunny winter morning and then rain. This is quite a long narrative poem and it uses descriptive imagery quite clearly. I can picture the glistening fragments as pieces of something shiny. It then talks about birch and the description makes me understand more about the tree and about the wood. That is about it I can get from this poem. It was a nice a fluent long poem.

Extended Metaphor

In class we described what life could be as a metaphor. For example, Life is like Skyrim, or Life is like Angry Birds. However, I am not comparing it to video games, but to wind. Life is like Wind. It is like wind because wind can blow slowly and peacefully or violently. When it blows violently your life is on fire and moving fast-paced. While peacefully, is the happy moments in life where everything is peaceful and quiet. Life is also unpredicted just like the wind. Though there are several instruments in the modern world to predict it, it is always not perfect. Just like fortune telling to predicts our lives. It may happen, or it might not. Life and wind both have ways of predicting it and both can be random at times. It can change drastically ruining your umbrella and day, or your life.

Seven Acts

The seven acts of life in a person's life in my opinion would be quite similar with William's Shakespeare's. At first you are born from your mother and an infant. You live as a baby and then soon you are going to elementary school as a young child. After elementry school, you will become more responsible for you life and start thinking about the future. After that step, you will graduate and go to University to continue your education. After graduating with your parents seeing you and showing their pride, you will soon get a job. Then you will make a choice of your life and get married and have children. You will then retire from your job as an older person and your children may have had kids by now. You die peacefully and knowing you have had a great life. I really liked this poem.

Disrespect

There are many situations in my life where I feel disrespected by others. I feel that I can do it but the people do not. The most common situation is that my parents do not respect my right to make choices. My parents make all my choices even when  there are times I do not want a decesion from them. Sometimes I try to persuade them but it usually ends up as a long talk or quarrel over the matter. I feel that my parents to do not appreciate my age to make my own decisions for myself. It is maybe because I am untrustworthy or maybe because I am too young. However, I think I am at the age to make these decisions for my own. I usually feel quite sad inside and angry becauset they don't see that I have the potential to do all things by myself. However, it is slightly different now. I am starting to make my own decisions.

A Blessing

When I closed my eyes, I visualized something nice in nature. I saw some very beautiful things. They sky was bright and coloured lightly in blue. There was music playing like something from bambi. There we flowers bright with colours and sunflowers facing their faces to the bright yellow smiling sun. There was plenty of wildlife. No carnivorus creatures in my mind. Kind of like the movie Bambi, kind of weird. Maybe Disney influences me way too much. Anyways there were many cute and small animals. Fluffy, to furry, and rough on the skin. Like rabbits, deer, friendly bears, squriels, chipmunks, birds, all those sort of wildlife in a forest and in a nice wildlife place. It makes me feel peaceful and makes my heart feel calm. It make me want to dance and hum music while skipping through the flowers and petting the animals. What a vivid happy imagination I have.

The Road Not Taken Quickwrite

I had a turning point in my life before. It was trying out for a sports team. A long time ago, I was not really confident in taking up sports. I was not a really fit child for playing sports like soccer or basketball. However, when I was young, there was this sports team for soccer. I thought to myself, I mind as well try it but I knew I would not make it. I joined, played around and kicked the ball. I actually passed and got on to the team, I was considered their best golee. I was quite amazed with myself and it gave me the confidence to start trying out other teams. Because of that choice I made a long time ago, I now join sports teams. In elementary school, I joined volley-ball and badminton. And at my current school in Taiwan, I joined badminton again to improve my skills at it. If I never had made that choice, I could be my old unconfident self with sports and not have any after school sport activites. I might be even more unfit and lazy without the encouragment and effort to put into exercise.

The Lady, or the Tiger "Make the Connection"

Have I ever made a choice between something that was good for me and something that was good for someone I cared about? Nope, I actually have never done something like this. However, I have done something like choosing between something that was good for me or something that was hurt me in the long run. I had to choose between to drink a can a coke. It might taste good and quench my thirst but in the long run rot my teeth and gain calories. I could not choose it to make a healthier choice but not get the drink. Kind of weird how I talked about this. It is just that I have never done something of the caliber choosing between doing something good for someone I cared about, but I have done it for myself. Ah well, not much more to talk about in this quickwrite.
"edit"
After thinking about it more I helped a friend a long time ago about a video game. He was my best friend but he had a terrible addiction to it. It was making him kind of depressing and unsociable so in order to save him, I changed his account password so he could not play. After a month, I told the truth and he thanked me. He got over that game and wanted to do other things or at least another game. That game was called World of Warcraft. I myself never was interested in it but there are many people who do actually have the major addiction problem with just about any game. More common in online games.

Comparrison Between the Two Christmas Carols

There are a few differences between the Two Christmas Carols. A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart) is very similar to the book. When I read the book. I imagined it just like this movie. Anyways, straight off in the beginning, both of these movies have a few differneces. One of them is obviously newer, and uses animation. The older one with Patrick Stewart uses real life actors instead of animation and just voices. Both Scrooges are both similar in ways but the animated one is not fully bald. The animated version was much scarier in my opinion. The live-action one was just people glowing but the animated one truely freaked me out. I would be really scared if I was Scrooge. But in both movies many scenes are the same, like the ghosts flying in the town when he looks outside, the sad family, and many more. The ghosts look differently, the past ghost in the animated one looks like a candle stick instead of a guy in a robe. Present ghost looks much familar in both movies. Overall, in similarity it would be 9.5/10. Many of the scenes look familar and recognizable. Except for the few moments of the scary ghosts.

Universal Education in England

In the past, only the rich could afford tutors that could teach students various subjects and topics. Eventually, public education was a law and children of every age must attend school to become educated. Without education, people cannot better jobs and have to work in low wage jobs. In 1870, it became compulsory to attend school in England. The state pays for the education of children from the age of 5 to 16. However, before the government set up rules for mandatory education, churches would teach children education and about the bible. A typical factory worker works 6 days a week, and has Sunday off. On that day, many children go to church to have an education. This was also true even during the medieval ages. The church would teach kids in the medieval ages about religion, writing, reading, math, and many more subjects. I think it is good for the population to have education. Even with a basic level of education, it raises the standard for future generations of children.

Cherished Item

If you could save just one item from a disaster-a fire, a flood, an earthquake-what would it be? In a few sentences, describe your most cherished possession, and tell why you treasure it. Was it a gift? If so, how does that make it especially important to you?
If I could save only one item from a disaster, may it be a fire, a flood, an earthquake, an alien invasion, or even giant cows from outer space, it would be my red blanket/ towel. This blanket has been with me for way too many years. Maybe 10 years or more and it is still in great condition. It would kind of count as a blanket, but it is quite small. It could also be used as a towel or anything that covers something. This red blanket, I actually know very little about it. I asked my parents and they said that this blanket, is older than me. I was actually surprised when my parents said that. I cherish it, because it has kept me warm, and I have spent way too many years with it. I get attached to things that I have been with for a long time. I do not think it was a gift, but I thank my parents for giving this blanket to me and for me to keep.

The Victorian Workhouse

I have never heard of this term before. From first looks, it seems like a building where you work. After researching it on several websites, I now know what it is. It is a place where families that can not support themselves go there to work. At first, it seems nice that the government is helping with poor people's lives and nessicties, but after further research, the conditions turned to be horrifying. It even reminds me of concentration camps (not as bad though) after reading about the schedule. People are made to work in hard conditions for hours straight only resting for eating breaks. The workers work in many categories like chopping wood, mining, or in factories. From looking at their paychecks, it seems that they would have to stay forever. The Nazis did this too to people in their occupied countries. They forced them to work in bad conditions. However, at least the government is doing it for their own good instead of killing them off like the Jews. They are at least properly fed, which is maybe one of the few beneficial things about working in a work house. I do not Scrooge knows what actually goes on in a work house because he has not been in one before. He can not say for others if he has not been in one before.

Which Ghost Affected Scrooge the Most?

In my opinion, I thought all the ghosts were effective in changing Scrooge's attitude. However, in my opionion, I thought that the third ghost changed him the most out of all four including Marley. The Present Ghost and Past Ghost both showed some scary things in his past and sad things, but the third one was more like a fear tactic. It shocked and scared Scrooge so much that he decided to be merry and cheerful. In the future, he dies lonely and nobody to care for him. Nobody goes to his funeral and people plan to take his money after he has died. This tactic kind of reminds me of the Nazi tactic in World War 2. For example, the Nazis used their weapons and tanks to scare civilians in countries so they would not fight. They gave out speeches of terror which scared people to rebel. So in conclusion, the Third Ghost has done the biggest part of all.

Theme of "Liberty" and "Exile"

The theme of "Liberty" and "Exile" are quite similar. They are both about going to America to acheive freedom and their dream life. Most people see America as a land of oppurtinity and somewhere to prosper. The theme of Liberty is sacrafice, dream, and danger. The theme of Exile is danger and quick. In Liberty the family has to put up with patience. They had to wait many weeks to get their Visa's to go to America. Without them, they can not enter. The family in Libery dreams about what will happen in the land of oppertunity. There is also danger because some mysterious people are tracking down the family and even broke into their home ruining their things. In Exile, the family must move quickly if they want to reach America. Their are gangs tracking them down so they have to move quickly to the airport so the can leave. Both of these stories are very similar in theme.