Music Review

The first thing that popped into my mind was the original work on Youtube that I'd come across. It was pretty difficult choosing which song I wanted share, because there's so much good stuff that people come up with!!!

In the beginning I was going to talk about a medley that I found by Sam Tsui and Kurt Schneider (found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoNdr0AbttI They've got a few others you should check out too.) of some of Lady Gaga's big hits. (For those who don't know, a medley is pretty much just a mix up of songs -- yes, I have talked to people about this who didn't know what it was.) But then I remembered a girl I found a while back and how much I loved the messages and simplicity of her songs.

I might be my love for really good acoustic guitar playing, her voice or lyrics with meaning and creative  and clever wording, but this song really stuck out to me when I first heard it. The song is called "Common, Simple, Beautiful Ways" by Jennifer Chung. You can easily tell it was written and sung beautifully from her heart.

I read a little about her on her website. She grew up in the bay area in Korea and was raised by a single mother, a Korean dancer, who took care of her and her brother. Because of her situation, she was really close to her mom who still a big influence in her life. This song pretty much tells her story and expresses how much her home and her roots mean to her.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. :)

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eg3l79KR4U&feature=related

Jay Gatsby and Nick Carroway

Yes, actually I do think their relationship is pretty fraudulent. I bet it if weren't for Nick's connections to Daisy, Gatsby would never have gone out of his way to officially invite Nick over to one his extravagant parties. After all, the whole purpose of his everyone-is-welcome parties are in hope of seeing Daisy among the unfamiliar crowd. He tries so hard to make Nick comfortable around him and like him so that he'd do him that favor of inviting Daisy over for tea too.....it just seems like the kind of effort you'd put into someone you aren't very close to, to put up a good image. With others like friends and family, usually people are much more relaxed and unguarded around them. (At least that's the case with me.) The fact that Gatsby constantly calls Nick "old sport" makes it even more like he's really trying hard to create maybe even a temporary "relationship" to use his relations for his own benefit. Now that I think about it, Nick is always calling him Gatsby in the book, years after they'd known each other. They aren't very far apart in age, so it's not that much of a respect issue. That might actually be the reason why I keep calling him Gatsby myself. At first when I heard the topic of the week, I had no idea who Jay was for the longest time. Anyway that's that.

A Winter Poem

The year's first snow fall

Starts with a single, lonely snowflake

Dancing on its own, the sky its ballroom and 

The wind its music.

Then a companion of his soon follows, and then many more

Make their way to the already wet ground to

Finish their performance and leave their audience

With an enormous white blanket,

Speechless and awe-struck.

-Happy Winter!

Thankful for A Classmate

Thanksgiving is the time of the year when Americans get together with their familes and stuff themselves with homemade goodness, then afterwards make the New Year's resolution to lose the weight they gained from all that turkey, which of course, we all know, never happens. I did nothing of the sort, with the exception of stuffing myself. My grandmother wasn't home, and my parents were too lazy to cook, so we went out to eat in Chinatown for both brunch and dinner, their excuse being that the only open restaurants on Thanksgiving were in Chinatown. (I don't know how true it really is but I know they only went because they're not too open to new foods.)

This being an American holiday, I felt that it was only right to do at least something American to observe it. That is where this blog comes in, a little "tribute" (would that be a good word?) to my good friend Kennedy Baldwin. 
I met her in seventh grade, when we first became academic center students (also referred to as "ackies" within the school). It wasn't until our second year as ackies that we started to talk. And now that we have more classes together, we got to spend much more time with each other this year. She's great to talk to about pretty much anything, and her sense of humor is amazing. Hanging out after school with a girl like Kennedy is especially fun. :D
There are others that I am thankful for to be in the same American Literature class as me (like Mia) however I was only allowed to mention one person (too late :P). There are people outside of the class I am really thankful for too, but I suppose they're just going to have to figure it out without me directly telling them, "I am thankful for you." 
Have a nice holiday everyone!

I Am a Plow

This is the first time that I am truly lost when I start a blog. When I first heard the topic, I pictured a tractor, which I suppose is the modern version of the classic plow. I actually had to look it up on google to make sure I knew what it was and its purpose. So here it goes:

I am a plow, a simple machine with a great purpose. I am under-appreciated by all the mouths I've fed, erased from the image of a farmer working with his land, and replaced by the oh-so-mighty tractor. The dust continues to collect on my hundred-year-old painted surface, the metallic red lacking its prior luster. I'm always kept in the dark of the very back of the farmhouse, only rarely catching a glimpse of the faded outside world of my imagination when my owner searches through the pile of abandoned junk (such as myself) at the far, rear end of the cramped room. I miss the everday feel of my owner's hands, and the sigh of satisfaction at the end of a good day's work. 

I am a plow, and I miss the days. 

A Direction the Class Needs

First quarter of the 2010-2011 school year had just come to an end, so I guess that would be the reason for this topic and its amazing timing.
For any class in general, I believe that it should do these few things at the least, such as give the students a general idea of basics, help students decide whether they'd like to work in a profession that involves that kind of work, and teach them something they can use in life one way or another (speaking skills, simple math when shopping, etc).
I'd also like to point out: Why is it we focus so much on the past? Is it perhaps because we don't really know what's in store for the future? I can understand the whole "learning from your mistakes" thing, but it feels like it's all we do in school, just learn about history, the past. In order to keep moving on, we're going to have to stop sticking to what already happened that we can't change, and maybe apply what we learn from history to what we can shape to our liking, the future. 
In this class...I actually quite like the way it's going. The discussions are great, and there's not usually too much homework, but I think it can work more on the moving forward thing. The books we read are all pretty old and are set several hundred years ago. However the weekly blogging assignments is definitely an interesting way to teach, and in way, it does move us forward, or at least keeps us up to date, since nowadays everything goes around through the internet. I just wish school didn't always make us read old books.

Modern Day Slavery

Yeah, actually it does exist. In other parts of the world, especially the developing regions, slavery still affects many lives, more than I think most of us can imagine. Don't get me wrong though. It happens in the U.S. too. Ha, you probably thought the Civil War all those years ago was the end of it. Not true. In fact, in all of human history, it is now that we have the most slaves.

Just google it. Slaves today aren't in situations too different from those long ago. They're put through forced, hard labor and mental, physical and emotional abuse with little or no pay at all. Specifically in the U.S., most slaves are domestic or sex slaves, and a significant number of them are very young. I think the only real differences between slavery then and now is the curtain modern society provides to the overwhelming majority of us from this, the culture (of not having ownership of a slave to be normal and morally correct) and the race factor that is not incorporated.

Another form of modern day slavery, that's not too obvious, but still, in my opinion, slavery, is our parents' control of our lives. I feel their presence in our lives is pretty forceful sometimes. But that's more of a personal thing, a story for another time :)