Blog Reflection

This project helped me open my mind and understand more the concept of blogging and the concept of a journey. Before the blog, It was hard for me to analyze simple things like watching a movie or analyzing a book, but thanks to this blog , I have found that creating a personal blog is no a difficult task. The blog adapts to everyone and in some way reflects who that person is since most of the time it includes personal opinion of the author. A blog is an excellent way to express a message to a large audience and to simply write about things that happen in daily life. Thanks to the blog I find it easier to understand the books that I read and the movies that I write especially the ones who include a journey. That journey being preferably external since, in my opinion, internal journeys are more common than external journeys and almost every book or movie includes an internal journey whether it is to the readers or to the characters in the movie or book. I think that creating a blog is an excellent way of social networking since it helps communicate with other people about specifics. Since it is customizable, it brings to me that feeling that I got when I used to do social networking in MySpace. The feeling was that it brought back the originality that has been lost with Facebook but it also adds a more professional atmosphere and at the same time it gives me the freedom to simply express my opinion about anything in particular. This blog was a great experience and I personally would like to create more blogs related to my field of study and I believe it should be integrate more to the social networking and t the education system.

Fermat's room

I remember I once had a journey because of the movie called Fermat’s room. It tells the story of four persons that are trapped in a room and must solve riddles to survive. The riddles took me on a journey especially one that said: In the false land everybody lies, in the true land everybody tells the truth. You are on a room trapped and there are two door one leads to salvation and the other does not. One door is guarded by a guard from the false land and the other is guarded by a guard from the true land but you do not know which guard if from the false land. You are allowed to ask one question and then you must choose a door. What do you ask? This riddle was given to me in twelve grade and I could not solve it. This time I went on a mental journey imagining myself in the room until I found the solution which was ask what door the other guard would tell me to pick and then choose the other door. The one from the false land was going to lie and tell me the wrong door while the one from the true land was also going to tell me the wrong door. Every character in this movie is taken through an internal journey while solving the riddles and finding out how closed each other are related. Also it puts the audience through an internal journey if you take personal like myself and try to solve the riddles on your own. The same time happened with Einsteins zebra puzzle which only 1% of the population can solved it. It took me 2 hours to solve that puzzle but at the end, the journey was worth it.

Student Conference

On April 10, 2013, the class of INGL-3135 reunited in the amphitheater of natural science for a student conference where eight of my fellow classmates read the essays which had to do with evaluating the concept of a tourist versus the concept of a traveler as well as the concept of an internal journey versus an external journey. The essays use the books: Holy Cow by Sarah Macdonald, Down on the Island by Jim Cooper, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid and the movie A Room With a View. Most of the essays persuade the audience to explore the world, to journey into other places. They discuss the topic of a tourist versus a traveler and they advices us to be traveler’s instead of tourist. I think this is because a tourist is a person who has never gone to the place he is visiting and is going to be lost in that land. He is going to be seen as an outsider and is going to depend on other people in order to go around. If we compared it to a traveler, a traveler is a person that knows the lands he is visiting and knows more how to fit in. I believe that what they meant by saying to travel the world as a traveler instead of a tourist is that a traveler was originally a tourist which means that if a person is a traveler he or she was already a tourist and therefore has travelled and has had to experience of having a journey to a place she has is not from and has had the experience of being an outsider before. So in conclusion I agree with what they say which was that everyone should become more of a traveler and less of a tourist.

When a tourist travels to the unknown (the karate kid)

The Karate Kid is the story of Dre Parker, An American boy who moves from United States to China because of his mother’s job. His mother is a traveler and is quick in adapting to the change, but Dre is more of a tourist since he has little experience as a traveler and it is lost at China. It is made Difficult for him to adapt to China and is seen making some fools mistake like wearing the uniform on causal day and not knowing how the bathtub in China works. Throughout the story he is able to turn his life in China to more of a traveler life and begins to learn martial arts in order to defend himself from some bullies and understand more the culture in China. At the ends he becomes an outsider who has fit perfectly into Chinas lifestyle.

                12-year-old Dre Parker  and his mother, Sherry arrive in Beijing from West Detroit to start a new life since Sherry got a job at China. Dre develops a crush on a young violinist, Mei Ying , who enjoys his company, but Cheng,  a kung fu prodigy, attempts to keep them apart by beating Dre, and later bullying him. During a particularly brutal beating by Cheng and his friends, the maintenance man of Dre's building, Mr. Han, comes to Dre's aid, revealing himself as a kung fu master who adeptly dispatches Cheng and his friends.

After Han mends Dre's injuries using fire cupping, they go to Cheng's teacher, Master Li, to attempt to make peace, but the brutal Li, challenges Dre to a fight with Cheng. When Han declines, Li threatens him, saying that they will not be allowed to leave his school unless either Dre or Han himself fights. Han acquiesces, but insists the fight take place at an upcoming tournament, and that Li's students leave Dre alone until the tournament. The amused Li agrees.

Han begins training Dre, but Dre is frustrated that Han merely has Dre spend hours taking off his jacket, hanging it up, dropping it, and then putting it back on again. After days of this, Dre refuses to continue, until Han demonstrates to him that the repetitive arm movements in question were Han's method of teaching Dre defensive block and strike techniques, which Dre is now able to display instinctively when prompted by Han's mock attacks. Han emphasizes that the movements use in life are also used in martial arts, and that serenity and maturity, not punches and power, are the true keys to mastering the martial arts. During one lesson in the Mountains, Dre notices a female kung fu practitioner  apparently copying the movements of a cobra before her, but Han informs him that it was the cobra that was imitating the woman, as in a mirror reflection. Dre wants Han to teach him this technique, which includes linking Han's hand and feet to Dre's via bamboo shafts while practicing their forms, but Dre's subsequent attempt to use this reflection technique on his mother is unsuccessful.

As Dre's friendship with Mei Ying continues, she agrees to attend Dre's tournament, as does Dre her upcoming recital. Dre and Mei Ying  cut school for a day of fun, this cause her to almost arrive late fr her violin recital, her parents deemed him as bad influence, and forbid her from spending any more time with him. Later, when Dre finds Mr. Han despondent, he learns of his wife and son's deaths, which occurred years ago when he lost control of his car while arguing with his wife. Dre reminds Han that one of his lessons was in perseverance, and that Han needs to heal from his loss, and tries to help him do so. Han then assists Dre in reading a note, in Chinese, of apology to Mei Ying's father, who, impressed, allows Mei to attend the tournament.

 At the tournament, Dre is slow to achieve parity with his opponents, but soon begins to beat them, and advances to the semifinals, as does Cheng, who violently finishes off his opponents. Dre eventually comes up against Liang, another of Master Li's students, who breaks his leg although it causes him to be disqualified.

Despite Han's insistence that he has earned respect for his performance in the tournament, Dre convinces Han to use his fire cupping technique to mend his leg, in order to see the tournament to the end. Dre returns to the arena, where he confronts Cheng. Dre delivers impressive blows, but Cheng counters with a debilitating strike to Dre's already injured leg. Dre struggles to get up, and adopts the one-legged form he first learned from the woman on the mountain, attempting to use the reflection technique to manipulate Cheng's movements. Cheng charges Dre, but Dre flips, and catches Cheng with a kick to his head, winning the tournament, along with the respect of Cheng and his classmates, both for himself and Mr. Han.

Transformation

The journey of transformation of bacteria. This transformation is an amazing journey in biology. I had a journey while experimenting with a plasmid in the laboratory of class in the natural science campus called general Biology. I had to make an experiment which involved transforming the plasmid in order to find out if it gave the bacteria a resistance to antibiotics and manage to activate B-galactosidasa. In this journey I had to prove that we can use plasmid like vectors to facilitate the transmission and expression of a gen in a bacteria. This is made via heat shock procedure which consists in inducting a bacteria to a dramatic change in temperature in order to weaken the membrane. This was proven thanks to the D N A this making the whole process possible. Of course we also needed the puc which contains the gene lac Z which codifies the enzyme B galactosidasa and in turn catalyzes the degradation of lactose and its analogues in presence of an inductor. At the end the bacteria turned blue. The control group also exhibit growth in the form of colonies of bacteria’s but that means that there was an error in the handling of the control group because it was not supposed to exhibit anything at all. The experimental group was made correct because it turned the color that it was supposed to turn. The manipulation of a gene in a bacteria using a plasmid and heat shock was an amazing experience for me and an amazing journey in the process of DNA extraction which has revolutionize science. I look forward to having more experience like this in the field of Biology and in the field of medical science.

The tragedy of Daisy Miller

Daisy miller is a story of a man named Winterbourne who on a trip to Vevey, Switzerland, meets a young woman named Daisy miller. Since the moments he meets her, he feels attracted to her and is then undergoing a type of internal journey in trying to understand what type of girl Daisy Miller is. While on Switzerland, he visits a castle with Daisy Miller and they seem to be enjoying themselves until he tells her that he has to leave the next day. Daisy miller doesn’t like this but he promises that he will visit her in Rome.

                When Winterbourne goes to see Daisy Miller, He notices that she is not in love with him as he is with her. She begins to spend most of her time with another man named Giovanelli and people begin to see bad things about her, much like the ones Mrs. Costello said about her at the hotel. At the end it is that very same feeling of freedom and of being a tourist that daisy Miller felt, that kills her because she got a fever one night when she was spending some time with Giovanelli. At the end, Winterbourne feels bad because of her dead and comes to the conclusion that she simply did not want to be romantically involved with anyone, he understands that he was never going to understand her thus leave his internal journey unsolved.

                In my opinion Daisy Miller had a attitude of a free person simply enjoying life and no wanting to be engaged to anyone. An attitude which can be compare to that of a tourist. Winterbourne was more of a traveler since he travelled to other places to visit families and he had already travelled to the places before like for example the castle which he took Daisy Miller. The book really shocked me at the ending and was a very interesting story to read with a good interpretation to how life was at that era.

Written Journey's

My journal is decorated, on the cover, with pictures that have different meanings to me. Among these is a picture of the Mona Lisa, a picture of Niagara Falls and a picture of the mind and psychology. The Mona Lisa to me represent a journey because the paintings itself is a journey. The background doesn’t match and I can’t even tell if the painting is happy or sad. Niagara falls represent the longest journey I’ve ever had which took seven hours to get there from New Jersey. It was worth it since being able to go inside the Falls was a unique experience. The third picture represents the internal journey that everyone experiences which it involves psychology and it is something that is felt by one person inside of their minds.

In the journal I noticed that at first my writing was very simple but as time passed, I kept developing more ways of writing and understanding the journeys I had every day and I began to open myself more to writing and I was able to write about that one thing that I had been trying to avoid. Thanks to the journal I was able to overcome that and I finally accepted the truth and faced reality, something that I didn’t want to do when I started the journal.

The journal of the class has changed the way I look at journeys. It helped me open my mind and understand the concept of a journey whether it is an external journey or an internal journey. I know understand that a journey is practically everything to we do in life since we wake up until we go to sleep. The journal help me realized that every day we are all travelers since every  day we experience a different journey even if we don’t realized it.