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.