Anderson's Blog

 

We have already asked a few restaurants and we decided to work with two restaurants, as mentioned previously, we realized from talking to these restaurants that they seemed reluctant to cooperate with us and did not see the translated menu as a necessity in their restaurants, but still some restaurants were willing to have a translated version. We took a picture of their Chinese menu and began working on the product. I was responsible for designing the menu, I designed the PAPAMAMA private hot pot as well as the 面子館 menu. Throughout this experience, I realized that menu translation may not be the “problem solver” since some restaurants may see foreigners as burdensome, and we encountered a lot of problems when doing translation because the translated version often becomes somewhat confusing or less appetizing in english, and sometimes, the restaurants owner would like to make specific references to elements in Chinese culture or Chinese legends, while the mandarin speaker can look at the title and understand what the dish is about, foreigners can’t, so when we translate this kind of dish names, we often just research about the main ingredients of that dish and think of a completely different english name based on the main ingredients of that dish. It was interesting to see how cultural differences was actually harder to bridge than we thought, first it’s the language barriers, but we shouldn’t forget about the barriers on a psychological level, our TOK advisor once mentioned how many restauraunts owners refused to serve him or intentionally serve him last so that they didn’t need to spend extra efforts to communicate with a foreigner.

Version 1

Version 2

I focused on categorizing the dishes and making the arrangment of each block of aesthetically pleasing and understandable as well. I also made a easy design to fit the theme of the menu. I thought the woman holding an umbrella under the rain would give the costumer a warm feeling eating in this restaurant since the title of the restaurant is: “father and mother’s restaurant”.

The Things They Carried

In this unit, we studied the things they carried by Tim O’Brien, with several guiding prompts to lead us throughout the unit:

1-How does war shape identity and change people? How do people cope with and survive war?

2-In what ways does war affect non-combatants?

3-To what extent is war ever justifiable?

As we go through the unit, we’re asked to think about these prompts and make connections. In Things They Carried, I thought the book covered a lot of the aspects about war, such as the character development of a single individual, meantime, it also conveys big picture concepts such as the absurdism of war, and ultimately, these messages led me to think about the third question, to what extent is war ever justifiable? Throughout the unit, I found the book giving me a collar roaster ride, at times, it was really fun to read, other times, the author could make intentional changes to his writing style and technique which is intriguing if I consider it as a metaphorical or symbolic purpose, but it can be quite tedious to read. In order to foster more spontaneous discussions, our teacher decided to let the students to lead the discussion everyday and each one of us would prepare for different parts of the story. The one I chose was The Dentist, a small fragment of the novel that focuses on the character development of the war combatants, for my discussion, I decided to offer everyone a few prompts, such as What’s the role of readers? How does Curt Lemon’s character reflecting happening truth in the society at the time? I asked everyone to think about the role of readers specifically because prior to my discussion we talked about another story: On the Rainy River, and my classmate pointed out how the narrator in the story is justifying his act of escaping war even to the readers, so it feels like readers are not so omniscient, but rather we are receiving a story from an unreliable narrator. But in The Dentist, the narrator is opening up to the readers, spilling out his truest thoughts. The Second question was How does Curt Lemon’s character reflect happening truths, this one was a connection to the concept of toxic masculinity as studied in previous units in Year 1, we studied Things Fall Apart and I had very deep impressions on this topic because I really enjoyed it. I thought about how does war created an environment that culture this concept of masculinity and how it is different from Things Fall Apart. Curt Lemon’s character was portrayed to an extent that it was hilarious and somehow absurd and ridiculous, his determination to demonstrate his ability to endure suffering through having a toothe picked for no reason reflected the masculinity in the society at the time.

Szymborska’s Poetry 

In the next unit, we began to study Szymborska’s poems, we were asked to select a poem and make a presentation to analyze the poems in Paper 1 Style, we were also asked to create a prompt for the paper 1. We also listened to other people’s analysis of other poems and I personally really enjoyed one group particularly, one group talked about her poem Nothing Twice, and I thought their analysis was really on point and the structure for paper 1 was really worth learning. I myself with another partner made a presentation on her poem True Love, the poem was quite intuitive.

Here’s the slide show we made:

Here is my speaker note for the first slide

Before I begin, I will go over the poem once.

So in this poem we can see how the author is quite skeptical about true love, we are looking at couples from a more alienated perspective,  it’s a mixed feelings of envy and disbelief or perhaps even disgust, So true love it is broken into several stanzas and it is written in free verse, so there’s no strict poetic meter, it’s more informal and conversational compared to some of her other works we looked at yesterdayAnd now we will begin analyzing each stanza and at the end we will provide a prompt question.In the first stanza, We can see a repetition of questions rhetorical questions, which creates a mood of skepticism, Szymborska calls into question the significance of true love. Which is something people attribute a lot of meaning to. Juxtaposition: comments on how people assign meaning to things that the envious narrator believe are meaningless things. Create tone of mocking to those that believe in true love. I think the pedestal also have some symbolic meanings, as it provides a sense that their love is placed above others, it’s so special that they are placed on a pedestal. this creates a sense that they are completely immersed in their world with each other, This stanza seems to ask what makes people’s love so special, and since the two people are drawn from millions of people, what makes them a perfect match? At the end of the second stanza, szymborska gives a firm answer with a more resolute tone: firm stance, negative connotation from the word nothing, The overall tone of the narrator in this first part is kind of cynical as she basically denies the meaning of true love. But I don’t think the author intended to actually completely falsify true love, first of all, this is in a perspective of an envious person and that may not represent the author, and despite the tone of the poem, by looking at some of her poems, like nothing twice, I think szymborska spreads a lot of positivity in her poem, so I thought this envious perspective was kind of brought out in a humorous way, like However cynical or skeptical someone maybe about true love, it is something we all strive for at one time or another in our lifetime and perhaps what she is saying is does it really matter whether if they understand the meaning of true love if they just immerse themselves in that short enjoyable moments. 

Activity 

I started to do some mild exercise recently because I felt like my eyesight were degrading faster if I don’t workout, so I decided to run around Kaohsiung art museum park (or treadmill at home) I usually go to a cafe after school so I would run after i finished the work. I would do it once to twice a week just to keep my body healthy and functioning because I think right now the exam is the top priority to me. My brain feels more refreshing and

Service

This saturday janet jonathan and I went out together to ask restaurants whether they needed translation service, which is for our CAS project, we asked about 10 restaurants and eventually we got three restaurants to work with. I thought this experience was intriguing because this project is focused on a really small thing that needs change, and some restaurants owners were really surprised when we told them about this project. Besides this, communication was also really important factor, I felt that we were not used to communicating with adults as a “partner” so this is something we needs to further work on. Another thing I noticed is that the some owners didn’t really care about having an english translation, perhaps because they don’t really care about losing foreigner customers since they already have a solid foundation of customer base from local community, so what I offered was helping them to redesign the menu, which they accepted with more willingness.

Creativity: 

We finished our valentine’s event project, this time, we have sucessfully got 150 students participate in this event, throughout this #AnotherME2.0 event, my main role was to lead Vicky and Tatjana and teach them how to plan and lead the executive team, and most importantly, how to communicate effectively to everyone, both the executives and other students. Lastly, I wanted to use this event to evaluate how well can they adapt the role of the president so we will get an understanding of who to choose as the leader next year. Elaina and I first set up a meeting with Vicky and Tatjana and we informed them about their roles as the future leader of the club, Through our observation, I pointed out the strengths of each person and wanted Vicky and Tatjana to collaborate with each other by utilizing their strengths, for example, I talked about how Vicky was a really strong organizer but Tatjana was more effective in her communications, so she could lead the designing and social media team while Vicky could lead the Activity Coordinator team. I also told them some very important points to keep note of when leading the club, such as observing the strengths of each executive for better identity their roles in the future, I also emphasized on using messenger to constantly update things in the group chat and they also needed to communicate with each executive individually through dms. Overall, I think the event went really well and the team executed the plans given by Vicky and Tatjana really well, In fact, I thought some people also overachieved a lot of things. I was really happy about how everyone really took this club seriously and would be willing to prioritize the tasks. I also believed that through the course of many events and collaboration, many executives have gradually becoming “leader materials” and are beginning to adapt the values we set when we recruited the executives, which was “independent thinking rather than just doing the tasks assigned” For example, everyone was very eager to give different opinions and they were not afraid to put a completely unusual idea in front of the table.

In February, I went explore Kaohsiung by myself and took some photos as I travelled to places, it was more like a self-relief mechanism before mock, I always through traveling alone and documenting my journey is really fun.

In this CAS project, I teamed up with Jonathan, Janet and Adeline, we are going to serve the community by helping local restaurants to translate their physical and online menu to create a more foreigner friendly environment. We will also do some promotions on the restaurants through our own media or online instagram food blog to inform people that the restaurants are now foreigner friendly because we recognize that most foreigners such as my teachers often go to the same restaurants that already have a reputation for being able to speak english, such as FOSTER, and this would often lead to a phenomena in which most foreigners in the town going to the same place.

Our plan is listed in the following:

1. Find a number of restaurants, approach them and communicate with them to see if them need this assistance.
2. We will receive a Chinese copy of of the menu and will do the translating process, we are aware that the wording for the Chinese menu can be very hard to translate and often times the connotations after translation can be twisted or not so appetizing anymore. Therefore, if necessary, we will also do some designs on the menu.
3. Create physical copy of the menu and return to the restaurants.

Service

In january, we went to ZuoXin library to decorate for them, around 25-30 cac members went to the event and they were assigned to decorate a specific area. I really enjoyed this event because this event makes me feel the unity of this club because everyone was so excited throughout the event and we also did a lot of fun stuff such as eating 酸菜白肉鍋 (cabbage hotpot), ordering a lot drinks and listening to music as we decorated the library. This event marked an end to the first semester of my senior year and I think from this event I see how this club has improved so much comparing to what we did in the previous year. The overall atmosphere has gotten so much better and I can see that people are actually beginning to care about the club.

 

 

This winter break I went to Taipei for 4 days with my friends for Christmas, I went to Taipei to take photos, but I also helped to take photos for my friends if we could meet. At Taipei, I realized that their lighting was really vibrant everywhere, so I improvised as I took pictures for my friends. Using neon lights on the streets or using lighting in museum, i improvised a lot of different settings when taking photos for friends. Besides photography, I did 2 sessions of drawing in winter break, I found it really hard to manage everything in winter break and I felt really stressed, so these two short sessions were just helping me to alleviate some stress. I have to admit that this winter break I didn’t engage in any activity or service, because I had to put all my focus on academics.. 🙁 IB LIFE.

Before winter break, us the seniors played the last game of our high school career because we decided to quit basketball team. this is considered activity but I didn’t learn anything at that “moment” rather, I learned lessons after. Even though balance is important, I realized that sometimes I cannot want everything and I must choose the priority to move forward in life.

Activity

For October, despite being a very busy month, I had to squeeze out some time to practice basketball. I began with conditioning myself on daily basis and did shooting and dribbling drills every other day. Everyday basketball would take around 2 hours until 5. This experience taught me about “balance”, back then, I felt like being balanced is fairly simple and easy, and I felt like I was a balanced person because I participated in different activities, I was filling my time with different things so I felt good. but moving into senior year, being balanced is also finding that inner peace and not let that sense of anxious urgency disrupt your flow, for example, during this month, I found it difficult to not think about grades and all the due assignments when playing basketball, I found it extremely hard to just give 100% on the court because it feels like something more important is still there. I asked my coach for advice because I really felt like struggling and even considered to stop training for the tryout and quit basketball team, but after a short conversation, he and I both believed that this would be good experience for me to learn how to actually be balanced so eventually I decided to continue. I’m still not really good at doing this because sometimes I will just give up a task to priotize the more important one, and I think that’s when a lot of problems will start occuring.

 

 

 

Service and Creativity

What I learned

This month CAC finished our installation artwork, it was presented in the lobby. The instllation art project went really smoothly,  we had a total of 7 artwork sessions for the members. and throughout these 7 sessions, many changes were implemented to reach the ideal goal. My primary goal for these drawing sessions were to let make members take initiative, and make them come to the session every other week naturally without feeling being forced. To make the environment better, we rearranged the seats, played lofi music, brough snacks. For the executives, they must be involved in the artwork session as well so it makes the members feel like the executives are with them, they are not just coming to the session and doing their own stuff. I understood that usually, the number of members coming to the meeting will decrease as time goes by, so we tried really hard to prevent this from happening, from email to social media, the announcements, and initiating “side events” such as hoodies, CAC monthly artwork competition, I belelive we made the members feel like the club is very active and thus they would be willing to participate. These changes and attempts eventually yielded a pretty good result, inthe first 2 meetings, we had almost 30 people, in the last meeting, we had around 20-25 people, and the rest who did not come all priotized the artwork and completed on time. This experience taught me that if I want something to demonstrate “maintenance” and “consistency” I need to actually put efforts into these little things, we cannot just run the drills every other week afterschool. In the executive meeting, I would tell the executives about my experience as the president of the club and many psycological effects I “discovered” as I went through this journey, the main thing I would tell them is to always close your eyes and imagine what things will look like if you were a member.

 

Among all Amichai’s poems, one of the most memorable ones is Wildpeace. Compared to other poems he wrote, Wildpeace, in my opinion is the most powerful one. Throughout this course, I really struggled intepreting the poems and comprehending its meanings quickly compared to other people. Wildpeace was the same, at first, I didn’t really grasp the meanings of this poem, its details, its imagery were quite meaningless, but as I discussed with other people and anlayzed it word by word, I began to think that this poem was extremely well written. Especially the author’s attention to details like imagery, the visual imagery and auditory imagery both served a really important functions to help me feel the sense of irony, for example, in line 10, the author wrote: “A peace, without the big noise of beint swords into ploughshares, withhout words, without the thud of heaavy rubber stamp.” I found this part really interesting and ironic because the author used details to create the scene when governments are negotiating “peace” with “big noise.”

Here’s the full poem

Wildpeace

Yehuda Amichai (1971)

Not the peace of a cease-fire,

not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,

but rather

as in the heart when the excitement is over

and you can talk only about a great weariness.

I know that I know how to kill,

that makes me an adult.

And my son plays with a toy gun that knows

how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.

A peace

without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,

without words, without

the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be

light, floating, like lazy white foam.

A little rest for the wounds—

who speaks of healing?

(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation

to the next, as in a relay race:

the baton never falls.)

 

Let it come

like wildflowers,

suddenly, because the field

must have it: wildpeace.

We also learned a lot of literary devices, although some are too rare to be used on a test, the table was helpful to me overall as it finally helped me find literary devices that I had been searching for.