personal response to TED talk "Memory and Experience"

I enjoyed the talk very much and I liked the idea of "remembering self" and "experiecing self". In my own experience, I think sometimes I can not have a good balance of those two selves. In other words, sometimes I don't feel happy in the present, but my remembering self will turn to be a happy one and keep the beautiful memory. When I am suffering, I think of those happy times and will have hope as I know I have had some happy memory.

I am especially impressed by the colonoscope experiment in the talk. For me, it is the same too. I sometimes have a very good time in the present and suddenly have an extremely bad moment right after; in that case, although I have had some pleasant time, I still think I had a terrible time because of the "pain" in the end.

Thinking and experiencing happiness is difficult and painful; however, if we follow the rythm of life, hopefully we will eventually become able to feel some happiness and joy in life.

Personal Reaction on "Beowulf"

The old English poem is very difficult for me. However, silimilar to many other modern poems, we can see some figurative language used in this poem as well. For example, there is the same vowel sound in "dole" and " abode", and it's assonance. We can find alliteration as well in "dole" and "dark", which is also similar to modern poems that we read nowadays. There is also repetition of the word "too" in "too cruel", "too long" and "too loathsome".

Although I didn't see clear rhyming scheme in this poem, I enjoyed the rythm of it very much.

Personal Reaction to "2001 a Space Odyssey"

 I like this movie as there is little conversation in it. First, I enjoyed the background music at the beginning and the end of the movie; it is very peaceful to me although some people think that it is scary and makes people nervous. The movie is devided to several different parts--from chimpanzees to modern technology. Throughout all the different parts in the movie, there is always something that makes people think of a monolith.

In the beginning of the movie, there is a bone of a dead animal, which symbolizes the early progress made by chimpanzees of using tools. The tool is the bone of a dead animal, and chimpanzees get the bone due to the sacifice of the animal. However it means the significant progress during human evolution. Also, when I noticed that in the seond part, the flying pen in the spaceship was leaking red ink, I thought of the bone in the first part and imagined blood from killing. In order to achieve more, human use modern technology; I though it is also a kind of cruel "killing" when I saw Frank being killed by HAL9000.

In my opinion, the bone, the pen that is leaking red ink and the death of Frank all indicate that in order to survive, there must be killing and cruel competetions.

Time goes by so quickly. I feel everything valuable is like sand; the more I grab it, the more it drops from my hand. I like my life in Canada as I have much more time here to do things that I want to. Today, when I was walking to the school, I saw "UBC bookstore". It was written in English, and I suddenly realised that I am in Canada. I felt a bit happy as I am not in the city where I didn't feel comfortable. The next moment, I felt anxious and weak. I looked at the time, and it said "8:29"; I was going to be late, but I couldn't walk fast. I was happy about going to my reading class, but I knew it would have an end, and it wouldn't be so far. I tried my best to reach the class--to something that I truly enjoy. I like that class as I can be myself; or, for most of the time, I can see who I used to be a few years ago.

I didn't expect that I woud like here this much. I didn't even check where Vancouver is on the map until I was on the plane a few hours before it landed in this city. I was confident that I wouldn't get lost as I knew the plane could take me there if I was on the right flight to Vancouver. No expectation, no hope, no emotions  when the planed landed at YVR airport.

I have done everything that a student must do here. I also send a piece of paper to my university every month to tell them what I did in the previous month. I briefly summerize my life only in a few words, but I always think that there are much more meanings in my life here that can't be expressed only by words; it scares me.

I am going back in a few weeks, and I just hope that I can remember that my life wasn't all about ordeals; there was something valuable that I can treasure.