This class has given us the knowledge to pursue blogging in a serious capacity. We’ve learned how to incorporate multimedia into our personal blog posts using different platforms such as flickr, youtube and dropbox. We’ve explored the ethics concerning blogging and the importance of citing sources and reporting accurately. In this class we have also found our individual voices and learned to stay true to them while staying true to the facts. We hope to use the skills that we have gained here to communicate effectively and professionally on social platforms. THANK YOU PROFESSOR DAVIS!
The after math of Hurricane Sandy struck a cord with me even though I was not affected as much as others. It struck a cord because after leaving my house– after being trapped and being unable to communicate with the outside world– I got beaned in the head with all of the destruction. It was like coming out of a shock and finally waking up to reality. Watching the houses cracked in half on the news as well as the many homeless people in shelters and the people without electricity or heat weeks after the storm, really made me see that Sandy was catastrophic for New York City. My coworkers were affected by it and as I listened to their stories I began to understand the damage the hurricane caused.
Roxmin Lopez, a mother of two, parked her car near the FDR drive and found her car a few blocks away. “My husband tried to look for the car and found it floating blocks away from where he left it. The insurance company says they will give us the book price so now we’re just waiting.” Lopez says that her car was flooded and completely irreparable. She was not the only one who lost her car, another coworker Barbara Suggs also lost her car and as a Coney Island resident, still has no light or heat.
Yet, residents were not the only ones affected. Leslie Dungee the director of the Lower East Side girls club can no longer bake cookies due to flooding. When asked why she could not bake at home she said that she needs a licensed kitchen in order to sell the goods in the Essex Street Market. There are many stories like these just in my neighborhood and is sobering how mother nature could one day seem so beautiful and miraculous and the next it could come crashing down on your head and swallow you up.
It is 11:04 p.m. The election is in full swing and the map feature on the new York times website spells bad news for democrats. As the states on the map slowly turn pink (Mitt Romney is in the lead) or red (Romney won in that state) my stomach fills with dread. Yet, strangely people are optimistic. While buying groceries in a bodega a Dominican man yells that Obama will win while lamenting that Romney is a thief who wants to steal his social security money. Even after i told him about the people’s desire for “new blood”, he was adamant that Obama will win.
On twitter it seemed there was the same type of sentiment. Women’s World magazine tweeted, “I hope you have better luck finding an election night make-out buddy than Romney does of winning the election.”
As the night goes on my breathing gets better. It is now 11:30p.m. And Obama has won Ohio and Idaho and now has 250 votes compared to Romney’s 200 votes. The map is still filled with the republican red but I guess that does not matter much. The popular vote still belongs to Romney and the people on twitter as well as everyone else in the country still just want a president that is looking out for their best interest. On the other side is people who just want to be snarky and are resigned to a crappy reality so do not care who wins with Obama being the lesser of two evils.
Some snarky ones:
Rob Tannenbaum from Rolling Stones magazine says, “Fox News now says Romney can still win election by carrying Atlantis, Valhalla, and Whoville. #election2012 #FoxNews”
Random, High School Life tweeted, “Plot twist: Kanye West interrupts the election and nobody becomes President.”
The Atlantic tweets their article, “The Sad Faces of Fox News on Election Night”
All the while I’m asking, can I vote for Bill Clinton?
Hurricane Sandy has made me realize how much we depend on technology but it also made me realize how utterly boring life is without it.
Since I was born in the Dominican Republic, I have been through hurricanes and cyclones so it is safe to say that this storm was nothing to me. However, unlike those days back in my country I was not this addicted to technology or Korean dramas. This is why I had a fully charged iPad and iPod full of my Korean dramas to weather the storm.
Although, my devices put up the good fight they eventually died and this is when I knew I had to escape. There was no water or electricity but now there was no more entertainment. There were only so many Korean actors I could draw before dying of boredom. So I packed a bag and escaped to the Bronx in a cab. Though, not before seeing my neighbors climbing 15 floors with a bucket of water in the pitch black staircase. At this point I was grateful that I had somewhere to escape to.
Seeing the people around my neighborhood walk around aimlessly, searching for water and ways to escape brought home how unprepared the city was for this disaster. Getting an email from the school that people had actually died is an even greater cause for concern.
All in all, Hurricane Sandy did not do me any irreparable damage and I have seen much worse. It’s hard for me to take this very seriously after seeing my grandmother walk a few miles in such a hurricane but I hope that next time we are all adequately prepared even if it turns out to be nothing. Better safe than sorry, I always say.
After watching many Korean dramas, cooking my own food at a restaurant was always something that I wanted to try and I’m glad that I finally did it. While there were some things I was not satisfied with, I got a great enough experience to want to try this at other restaurants.
The restaurant was called Emperor Japanese Tapas Shabu Restaurant and it was located in Chinatown. There were a lot of people in the restaurant and it looked like people were enjoying themselves. The first thing you see when you sit down is a piece of paper where you write down the quantities of the type of meat, soup and vegetables you want. You place the soup on top of the table, which has an integrated hot plate to heat the soup. As the meat is brought to the table, customers dump everything in the soup to cook and then place them on a small plate to eat.
The food was okay, really nothing to write home about. The beef slices were good but somewhat muffled by the taste of the miso soup I was dumping it in. After putting the beef slice in my mouth, I not only got the taste of the soup but also the taste of the juicy meat, which reminded me of pork fat.
The King Prawns on the other hand was something to write home about. While they looked like gray slugs on the plate, they came out looking beautifully pink and delicious out of the hot pot. The feel of them in my mouth gave me a mixed feeling of bliss and disgust. Bliss, because they were succulent and juicy. Disgust, because I could feel the small legs of the prawns while I was chewing them. However, it is that typical disgust that can be put aside if the food tastes good. Like when i’m told I’m eating rats when I eat rib tips from Chinese restaurants and I roll my eyes and say, “but they taste so good!”. Sorry prawns, but I have to eat you.
However, the smell of the food is a huge part of the reason this restaurant is just “okay.”
The smell is overwhelming. It somehow rubs off on your clothes so that I could still smell the food on me when I got home. While I loved the prawns and the chicken slices, I don’t want to walk around smelling like them. I also thought that the restaurant had very limited space, which made it uncomfortable to cook our food. I was reluctant to try most of the sauce that my classmates made because I was afraid of reaching over and spilling something. Given the nature of this restaurant and how much people have to move around, space should have been the first priority. However, eating with my classmates and being distracted by our conversation, diluted this experience…until i got traumatized.
As it always happens when I try something new, I got traumatized. After cooking and taking out a chicken dumpling–which my classmate claimed was delicious and actually told me that it was cooked— I discovered that it was not cooked at all after putting it in my mouth and tasting the raw ingredients inside. The taste was so disgusting and cold that it felt like I was tasting raw chicken with blood and everything. I cannot emphasize to readers enough, let the food cook for awhile. This was a horrendous experience and after that I only ate the meat and rice. However, do not let my classmate’s mistake and the consequences, put you off this place.
Overall, the atmosphere of the restaurant was one of busy energy, which I loved. What made this restaurant great for me was not so much the food but the experience of trying something new. While I was ecstatic about everything in the moment, looking back the food was good but not anything special. The service was great and efficient but they didn’t even take credit cards. Yet, it felt like I was home cooking with friends which is just as important as discovering new exotic tastes.
I think I just got shot…in my mouth. The sweet flavor of delicious cocoa from my Mocha Frappuccino has hit the inside of my mouth with the force of a bullet to the heart. The delicious cold beverage may just look like a chocolate milkshake but it is very different. Somehow, the cold hits your mouth first and then one second later the mocha hits you with a sweet surprise that sends immediate shivers down your spine. Starbucks, hit me one more time.
Worms…I mean onions on the table Source: http://www.melaniecooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/sauteed-red- onions.jpg
As a little girl my mother fed me some eggplant and cooked slimy onions…at the same time. Needless to say, I was traumatized. The slimy taste of the onions combined with the disgusting smell of the eggplant scarred me for life. It did not help when a boy from next door tricked me into eating a burnt onion which looked like meat to me. While he had a laugh I was once again shaking in disgust over the slimy onion sliding down my throat. This all happened when I was six.
Of course, I was a disgrace to my Dominican mother who can eat anything and everything. She always tells me I should eat everything that is available, including onions, in order to survive. Personally, I’d rather die.
Let’s talk about the onion. First of all, sometimes they’re purple, sometimes they’re white, sometimes they make you cry? Maybe i’m thinking about it too much but why would I cook with something that brings tears to my eyes? Second of all, is the feel of onions. If they are crunchy, the taster bursts out of it like a lemon right in your mouth. It is the most bitter taste on this earth. Followed by the smell, it is completely unbearable.
I should make something very clear, I do like onion flavored chips because the smell and the taste are very subtle. However, I have a problem with onion rings. Why are these restaurants trying to trick me? You give me a deep fried onion that is supposed to taste better but inside is the usual slimy onion? It’s like that boy from my neighborhood all over again, except this time I feel betrayed because I actually paid for this experience.
In conclusion, onions do not make sense. I don’t understand why they are useful or why people eat them. They physically seek to repel any human from eating them. They make you cry, they give you bad breath and they feel like worms slowly dragging themselves down your throat and out to lay eggs on your unsuspecting stomach. How many signs must the universe give to human beings to alert them to the predator that is the onion?
Logan Lerman actually visited the movie theater and we got to see him up close and personal. Surprise!
Today, As I sat watching Perks of Being a Wallflower I had no idea my view of coming of age films would change so radically. In short, I hate these types of movies because it always contains some whiny teen depressed about not fitting in. However, the surprisingly complex Perks of Being a Wallflower delivered so much more than I was expecting.
The film, set in the 1990’s, tells the story of Charlie (Logan Lerman, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lighting Thief), a passive aggressive, lonely high school freshman who has just gotten out of the hospital for crazy people and hopes to make a change this year. At this point I became interested in why such a normal, nice looking boy was coming out of the Cuckoo’s nest. The movie lets the audience see, in flashbacks, Charlie’s relationship with his aunt as a small boy and how in a horrific accident her car was crushed by a truck right after telling him that she will be right back with his Christmas present. Already, there is this tragedy and guilt in Charlie’s life that makes the audience understand his watery eyes, his trip to the mental hospital and his longing for acceptance.
His blackouts and bouts of violence also brings a dark element to the film not seen in typical teen movies. The fact that the film doesn’t shy away from this darkness is incredibly appealing and is surely the reason this small independent film has become so popular.
In the film, Charlie goes on to befriend Patrick (Ezra Miller), a flamboyant gay senior, and Sam (Emma Watson, Harry Potter), Patrick’s step-sister who has a reputation for being “easy.” Of course, Charlie falls in love with Sam at first sight but she’s dating a college guy and so he loves her from afar. It is comforting to know that this is not the main point of this story. However, like a typical teen movie they do get high and go to parties. However, in between the normality of teen life is the dark past of Charlie who while intoxicated casually tells Sam that his best friend blew his brains out while in the same breath asking her where the bathroom is. Sadly, I was the only one that laughed at this scene due to how casually he mentioned this little fact. On the other hand is the amazing performance of Miller as Patrick who has his own issues with the jock he is in love with, who just recently learned to love him without being drunk. But it is not all dark as we also get to see colorful characters a la Breakfast Club such as Mary Elizabeth(Mae Whitman,Avatar and the Last Airbender), a goth girl who recently became a Buddhist.
Ultimately, the charm of this movie is the darkness of the characters and the twist of the story which throws the audience an impressive curve ball never seen before in a coming of age film.
If you mixed the emotional elements of Karate Kid with the futuristic technology of Gamer, what you would get is the short film Turbo by Jarret Lee Conaway. In the film, Hugo Park (Justin Chon) tries to follow his handicapped older brother’s footsteps by becoming the best virtual game fighter. In typical Karate Kid fashion, his brother teaches him to fight with the wise words, “If you’re gonna replace me. You gotta learn to fight like me.”
Like with every action film I already felt the anticipation of the good guy’s triumph over the bully. The emotional aspect increases as we see Hugo make his virtual fighter’s face that of his brother. The fact that he seeks to still have that image of the brother that was not in a wheelchair tugs at my heartstrings and reinforces my love for action movies. The short, like every great action film, had all the elements; Romance, action, emotion and most importantly, motivation. Hugo’s motivation was to have the stronger version of his older brother exist, even if it was only in a virtual world. The love that the audience could see between the brothers in a twenty-minute film is nothing short of incredible. Not to mention that the action blew me away with the glowing balls of energy and the bodies flying about. What makes this a great short action film aside from the stunts, is the special effects which were very professional and it made me feel that ninety minutes is not necessary to produce a great movie.
Justin Chon is also one of my favorite Asian actors and the fact that he is Eric from Twilight and I got to see his wicked tattoo across his naked chest, well that’s just the cherry on top of an already very delicious cake.
Won Bin in The Man From Nowhere Source:http://www.imfdb.org/images/c/c4/TMFNWGlock17.jpg
“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/quotes)
These are the famous words of Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA operative who mercilessly rips through kidnappers and human traffickers to save his daughter, in the action film, Taken. This type of film is one of the many reasons my favorite movie genre is action.
There is something so cold and deadly about a man with a gun and revenge on his mind and I am such a sucker for father/daughter relationships. I especially love how Bryan (Liam Neeson), in the movie Taken, put on his cape of ruthlessness like I would imagine the Cape Crusader puts on his cape to fight injustice in the dark of night: Effortlessly. Yet, what makes Bryan so amazing in this particular action film is that he is able to be a desperate father as well as an ice cold machine that could torture a human being and leave it for dead. This dynamic is unique, I feel, to action films and this is why it is my favorite genre of film. It is interesting that a desperate human being could put that desperation and pain aside and focus on the goal in order to take care of a situation. It is fascinating that out of pain can come anger and such targeted ice cold hatred.
Action films also depict what a human being is capable of when cornered. When a human being is cornered, it usually fights until it dies. It becomes a ferocious animal who has nothing to lose. And a man who has nothing to lose can cause untold chaos. This is the type of man seen in the Korean film, The Man from Nowhere.In the film, an ex-Black ops officer, Cha Tae-Sik, turns into a depressed hermit after his wife and unborn child are crushed by a truck driven by one of his enemies. He is only able to watch as this tragic event happens and it is befitting that as he watches he gets shot twice in the chest.
It is a credit to actor Won Bin (Cha Tae-Sik) that he was able to, in that moment in the film, portray utter devastation after realizing and accepting what had just happened. With only his eyes he was able to portray how dead inside he instantly became after witnessing the death of his beautiful, pregnant wife. For the rest of the film, his eyes were so unfeeling that one could feel through the screen that a part of him had been ripped out forever.
After a few years of solitude, Tae-Sik comes alive for a little girl, So-mi(Kim Sae Ron). Her mother is a cocaine addict and a prostitute. So-mi takes comfort from Tae-Sik who reluctantly but lovingly makes her food after school. So-mi is then kidnapped by the drug dealers who provided the cocaine for her mother. After she is kidnapped right in front of Tae-Sik, he goes through a transformation. He cuts his hair, dusts off his gun and he goes after So-mi.
Tae-Sik becomes an animal with dead eyes who just kills with cold precision. The moment when he turns into a ferocious animal is when he is led to believe that So-mi is dead after the head honcho throws her eyeballs at him. In that moment he does not allow himself to break down. Using a gun and a small knife to defend himself, he easily discards the minions and fights his last opponent, who just happens to be the only challenge he encounters in the film. In the battle, Tae-Sik is cold and precise. Yet, as he stabs, claws and bites down on his opponent he looks as fierce as a lion with a gazelle in his mouth. And he never stops, not until his enemy’s eyes finally glaze over with death.
The final moment that made this the most amazing action film is when Tae-Sik realizes he killed everyone but realizes it does not matter as he once again failed to protect his loved one. He then gets down on his knees and puts the gun to his head ready to kill himself. But then he hears So-mi’s voice. He turns around and there she is safe and sound and he cries in relief. No scene in a movie, not even Rocky reaching the top of the stairs, has ever produced such a passionate jubilation in me.
These types of feelings are rare. I find I can only experience this type of emotion from action films. In these particular films the transformation from a loving, protective father to a cold vindictive killer was very fast and seamless. I like this exploration of what a cornered, desperate human being is fully capable of. The motivation for the actions of Bryan and Tae-Sik in their respective action film is very noble but it is how easily they can flip the switch and suddenly become a ruthless monster that really sets these films apart for me.
I cannot think of any other genre of film that delivers edge-of-your-seat excitement while at the same time providing an insightful look at the human psyche. Can you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9xT73R0bL8
Image found on imfdb.org. No copyright infringement is intended.
