Reflective Essay: my dynamic life in KMLA

I am a new student who joined Korean Minjok Leadership Academy in the second semester. It was my first time to encounter a dormitory school, so I was really worried. I had hard times trying to adjust to the dormitory school life such as following the rules, staying away from my parents, etc. Now as I look back, I can see that I have had a lot of experiences, and through those experiences, I grew older.

            As people say, experiences are mistakes, and from mistakes we change. That is exactly what happened to me when I first joined KMLA. I learnt how to control my own demerit points after getting a lot in the first month of the second semester. In September, my friends and I decided to order chickens to our dormitory room as we did not want to eat our school lunch. We ordered three chickens, all different kinds, to the gym and we told the  delivery guy that we were going to pick them up there.

            When we got caught after eating all and my friends and I received 10 demerit points each, that was the start of my downfall. After getting 10 points, I received another two points after forgetting to go for Shin-Sung. Another two points for being late for school, one point for cleaning violation, and another point for self-study violation. I desperately tried to stop going to the court, but I could not handle it; no matter how studious I became, I kept going to the court for some anonimous reason. My total penalty points exceeded those of my friends excluding some, and my advisor teacher started to worry about me.

            But that was the end of my penalty-points era. After receiving so many demerit points, I began to understand how the demerit point system works. It became easy not to get any penalty points, and Now, I have not been to the court for quite a long time. For cleaning, I learnt to clean on the day before the cleaning checking day, so that I am not late for school on the next day. This is like killing two birds with one stone as I can abide by both the cleaning regulation and be not late for school. Secondly, I decided to study during self-study periods which are between 7-9pm and 10-12pm instead of spending my time meaninglessly. Only after Honjung till 10pm, I talk to my friends, share jokes, and fool around with them.

            Lastly, I do not eat food from outside anymore. Whenever my friends talk about ordering chickens, pizzas or eating instant noodle, I refuse to listen. I just stay away from all this kind of food as I know that they are not allowed inside school. My parents told me that they will still consider instant noodles, but I decided to stick to school meals as they are the healthiest, even though not the most delicious.

            Therefore, my life in Korean Minjok Leadership Academy is good, and I am getting any more penalty points.

Reading Journal #3: The Body Final

This is my third reading journal after reading King’s stories. I have finished reading ‘The Body’, and I was deeply impressed at how Stephen King mixed different themes together to form this masterpiece.

           Four boys keep mentioning in the book that friends drag others down. What does this mean? This means that if you hang around with wrong friends, the community might downgrade you. That is what happened to Gordon in ‘The Body’. As Gordon always hung around with Chris, Teddy, and Vern who all have notorious family backgrounds, the community views him as a lower class.

           Chris comes from an illiterate family, so the townspeople scoff at him whenever he talks about going to college. People believe that, because Chris’s family received poor education, Chris should also remain illiterate. In addition, Chris is regarded as a thief by people including Gordon’s dad, because he took the milk money from school and tried to use it for his own good. Even though he returned it, the old lady Simons used it to buy her own skirt and Chris was blamed. For Vern, his elder brothers are real juvenile delinquents, so they expect the same from Vern. Teddy’s dad is a looney, and he almost burned Teddy’s ears off and made him deaf.

           As Gordie always hangs around with ‘a thief and two feebs’ according to Gordie’s father, even his own parents refuse him. Gordie is always compared with his elder brother Dennis who passed away, because Dennis had proper friends and even went to college. After Dennis died, Gordon’s mom pretends that Gordon is invisible; she pretends not to see him, and acts as if Gordie does not exist.

           I think this kind of phenomenon happened to me many times before too. When I was in the elementary school, there were some outsiders who did not have a single friend. People pushed them away, casting them out in every way they could. And whenever someone accosted them and started talking, even that guy’s best friends turned his back on him. Then, he becomes an outsider too. No one dared to approach these outsiders, afraid that they might be left out too from the group too.

           After reading ‘The Body’, I began to realize how sheepish, how cowardly I was. For Gordon, he decides to hang around with Chris, Teddy and Vern no matter what the townspeople says as he is not afraid of them. For me, I cared more about the eyes of the society rather than my own will, and that is what stopped me from hanging around with these friends.

           My overall comment for this story is that it made me reflect my childhood. However, I think I am still too young to embrace the left-out members of the society. I still see this kind of people, but I always push them away. I guess I have to learn to forgive and respect them slowly.

TED Review:

After watching the video of Keith Barry marvelously fooling the audience, I was fascinated how human brains work. He successfully managed to prove that our brains are often tricked, and these cryptic tricks remain as unexplained enigmas. After watching this video, I became a zealous fanatic of neuroscience.

           So, how did he demonstrate that our brains are much more fascinating and exciting to explore than we think? He asked for two volunteers, and he showed the audience how he can fool one of them using the other. After covering one of the volunteers’ eyes, Keith Barry manipulated her sensations, and when he touched the other volunteer’s body, the first volunteer reacted. Even though it looked amateurish and fallacious, it was true; Keith Barry was able to fool the first volunteer’s brain. After watching the first volunteer saying how Keith touched her back when he only touched the second volunteer’s, I started to doubt: maybe, the things we see, hear, smell, and touch around us are all hallucinations our brains engendered. Maybe, there is someone out there who is controlling all of our sensations so that we believe this world to be real.

           Not only that, Keith demonstrated psychokinesis too. The volunteer was able to break a glass bottle using a single glass shard without exerting any force in it. According to Keith, the volunteer transmitted all the negative forces and sensations into the shard, granting it force that can break the bottle. Even though seeming impossible, the glass bottle, which did not break when dropped, separated into pieces by the shard. At first, I was full of disdain when Keith talked about psychokinesis. I mean, who would not be dubious when someone talks about brain power which is neither tangible nor visible? According to the internet, psychokinesis is power that is generated by the brain; it cannot be explained by physics as it is not a matter. It does not have any mass, and it I am highly skeptical whether it can be explained by neuroscience either. 

Keith was not just being pretentious; he did not just try to be extolled with his saccharine voice. This neuroscience experience was not just an ephemeral demonstration that can be condoned. His exemplary experiments proved that neuroscience is not just a hypothetical, tentative idea. This video was a revolution. It was a novel idea that was just too esoteric.

Review: Defense of the Ancient [DOTA]

Welcome to DOTA, or Defense of the Ancient. It is a game one can either enjoy alone, or with teammates. More accurately describing, it is a map of Warcraft, the game created by Blizzard.  

           What is this game called DOTA? It is a game that is categorized under tower defense, where one chooses a hero and defends his base. If one of the bases is destroyed by the opposing team, then that team loses. One team consists of five people, and you can also play against computers, or bots.

           DOTA is unbelievably famous and notorious in foreign countries, especially in Chinese provinces. It is extremely addictive that people, mostly teenagers, just get soaked in. In Singapore where I used to stay, high school students all know how to play DOTA as if it is a kind of sport that they enjoy. It is impossible to stop playing when you learn how to play.

           How is the game played? Firstly, you choose a hero you want to play with. There are three types of heroes: strength, agility, and intelligence. For a hero that is categorized under strength, HP is the most important; that is, per one strength point, the hero gets its maximum HP increased. An agility hero has its advantage in attacking speed, movement speed, and armor. An intelligence hero is able to use strong spells. Then you have to earn gold by killing the minions. You have to make sure that you whack the minion with the last hit; otherwise, you do not get the gold for that particular minion. Using the gold earned, the hero is able to equip items he bought in item shops in his own base. These items strengthen the hero, allowing it to destroy towers and kill other heroes with ease.

           This game requires an accurate fingering skill. You can only receive gold when you whack the minion for the last time, so you have to be always clicking the mouse. You have to make sure that your timing is accurate, in order to earn gold necessary to get stronger. For me, I took a very long time adjusting to only whacking the minion with the last hit. It might take you a year to master this skill.

          

           Teamwork is also necessary in this game. In DOTA, you are unable to solo-play throughout the whole game. You need your teammates to back you up, and you have to specialize in one particular job. A tanker should build on his armor and HP, and be the shield when fighting. A carry has to build damage and attacking speed so that he can deal the most damage to the opponents. In order to gang the opponents, you need to team up with your companions. Sometimes you will fail to coordinate with your teammates, and the opponent might try to use that chance to counter-attack you. If there is no teamwork present in your team when you are involved in a mass fight, the chance of you losing is extremely high.


           However, in order to play with your friends, you need to use a program called 'Garena', where you can meet a lot of people around the world. Battle.Net does not work, because everyone has different pirated versions of Warcraft. You can play alone with computers, or bots, but you will soon realize that you can easily out-level them. Then, you will have to play with other players who are much better than bots. 


           I am writing a review on this game, because I was really impressed how perfect the balance among the heroes was. One hero cannot overpower other heroes with its skills, and all heroes require some techniques to play. For me, as I have tried all kinds of different heroes, I usually played 'random', where I randomly get a hero assigned. That proved the other team that I knew how to play all heroes well, and it was always exciting to guess what hero I would be selected. 

           For me, I am going to give DOTA 10 stars, as I really enjoyed playing it in Singapore with my friends. It was the only game I played, the only game I became addicted to.

Mr. Moon's assignment: 3 words

Zealous, meticulous, ant

           What do ants do? They work in summer time so that they have enough to eat in winter, when they cannot go out to gather food. Like always prepared ants, I can endure whatever hardship that I face. Like a zealous ant which prepared for winter with passion, I complete my assignments with ardor. Like a meticulous ant which cares about every step it takes and every piece of bread it picked up, I always make sure I take the right step, and follow the correct route.

Reading Journal #2: after reading "The Body"

This is the second reading journal of Stephen King’s “Different Seasons.” I have read the first 30 pages of “The Body”, and I have to tell you in truth that I was indeed confused. King’s writing style for “The Body” was quite, I have to say, unique. As the story progresses from the perspective of the narrator who is a teenager, the way he writes sounds like so. Therefore, there are some slangs included that are quite hard to comprehend unless you have grown up in the United States.

           The plot is as interesting as “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”. However, “The Body” is quite different from King’s style of writing. Instead of a horror story, it is about four boys who venture into the woods where they find life, death, and clues of human mortality. I am quite sure “The Body” is one of the few stories King wrote that is not based on horror. Even though the first 30 pages do not reveal much, I can tell that the story is not going to continue onto that King’s typical theme; instead, I believe “The Body” will focus more on themes that are related to intimations of human mortality.

            I can say that “The Body” is as impactful as his other horror stories; in fact, it is even scarier. As the main theme is death which all of us are afraid and unknown of, readers might find it more closely related to. The fact that King chose boys as the protagonists also adds up to form a better developed storyline as teenagers are more ignorant about such ideas. They are too young to understand and accept such concepts as death seems, to them, very distant. These boys are also quite illiterate, which shows that they do not understand the concept of human mortality. They are also playful about finding the dead body of the boy from another town, which shows that they consider death lightly. I think this also introduces another theme King wants to talk about: human ignorance.

           When I was reading the part about two teenagers having a sexual intercourse, I basically freaked out. The description was too detailed, and it was indeed shocking when I realized that Mr. Garrioch wanted us to read this. The way King penned it down was so realistic, so horrifying, and so weird.

           I cannot really say that I have enjoyed “The Body” so far, maybe because the story has not progressed much. However, it approached me in a new sense that I have never read before, and I am glad to continue reading it.

Reading Journal #1

First of all, I apologize for posting this reading journal so late. I should have written this before the mid-term exam to organize my thoughts about “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”. However, I still need to write about it, and therefore in this piece of work, I will tell you how I felt while, and after reading this story.

           Just to give you a brief summary regarding the story outline, Andy moves into prison where the narrator stays. The narrator was arrested for accidental murders, and Andy was wrongly accused. Andy, who does not want to be powerless in jail, refuses to obey to the Sisters. Then a man who really killed Andy’s wife and her lover gets arrested, and Andy desperately begs for retrial. However, his implore is cruelly rejected, and he plans to escape. He buys a tool to dig out the ground and a Rita Hayworth poster to hide the hole from the narrator. He slowly begins, and eventually escapes, leaving the narrator a message. After the narrator is freed, he goes to visit Andy.

           The plot was indeed interesting. Even though some parts were quite disgusting to read such as the Sisters trying to rape Andy, those parts made the prison life more realistic, and the suspense when Andy planned to escape from prison, the friction caused between the Sisters and Andy etc. were all important components of the story. It is known that Stephen King visited the real prison to write this story, which can be shown in the realistic description of prison life.

           Another interesting fact is that Andy is the main protagonist. Even though the narrator is also there, the story progresses as Andy makes a move. The narrator is observing Andy, so the perspective is third person observer. I am quite sure that if the story focused on the narrator instead of Andy, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” I know would not have been this much fun to read. . Andy is a dynamic character and his actions get the readers nervous, cheerful, and even bring them on feet. .

           This story, unlike other stories of Stephen King, is not really a typical King novel; it does not contain any horror or gore. Instead, it focuses more on adventure, on how Andy carries out his plans. Therefore, it is much more interesting to read as King broke the stereotype and wrote a story that is considered novel.