Turbulent Time

Gogol had quite turbulent time in chapter seven and eight. After Gogol is throwing a party, he is told from Sonia that his father died due to the heart attack. This causes and reminds that Sonia and Gogol hadn't been meeting with their parents because they were too busy with their independence. He now feels bad because he didn't came when their parents invited them for thanksgiving party. He now mistakes that random guy outside the street is his father. Gogol and Sonia now feel what their parent had felt when their parents died in Calcutta. Gogol rides the train for the nostalgic experience, remembering about his father standing on this platform until the train disappeared with his son going to Yale.

                After Gogol’s father’s death, Gogol is taking a test to be licensed architect, Maxine is now dating with someone else, and Sonia lives with her mother. He also have this weird relationship with women named Bridget, making him to be in awkward and guilty affair. Ashima advices Gogol to call one of the people from his young age, Moushumi. Moushumi is a girl from a family who were close to Gogol’s family. Gogol founds that he has that secret bond with Moushumi because she remembers Gogol with his original name not Nikhil. She calls him Nikhil, but she is the only one knowing that his original name is Gogol. They start doing something couple would do, such as buying a hat and eating together. Gogol finds out the past of Moushumi. She was actually going to have marriage in few weeks, but Graham talked negatively about her family causing the wedding to be canceled. She now plans to stay in NYU to study furiously. This part of the book explains about the new start for Gogol. He starts a new relationship with Moushumi, who also recently broke up with her fiancé.

Good Childhood

                After reading Namesake for one week, I think that book is bragging about Gogol’s childhood and knowledge. One of the example is that he have two party for his birthday. I think that is little bit too much. I mean one for his friend and other one for with parents?  I mean I do have a party with friends but not big with parents. Also, they go to trip to India and visit many monuments, like a Taj Mahal. Except, they heard that passenger in train was robbed and murdered. That is not good memory. After that he graduates from the high school and goes to university. He parties there and he gets to do a first kiss. After that, he earns his graduate degree in architecture and goes to Yale.

  The paragraph up there briefly summarizes his early life and to be honest, I think he have a great childhood. I think there are rare amount of people who had two major party for his birthday. Also, going to a famous landmark in India and having a good vacation. Except that part about knowing that Indian train system is very dangerous. Also, he went to really good college, Yale. I mean I am jealous of his intelligence. Not to forget, he also had some relationships with girls. So far, the book explains about Gogol’s good life. But this fact annoys me because I really don’t the reason of this book. Is it a biography or some type of bragging story? I believe the book will explain more but for now namesake is only telling me about Gogol’s wonderful childhood, except that murder during his vacation.

Confusing, yet Many Curiosity

            Beginning of the book Namesake shows a women giving a birth who moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ashima is the women doing a labor while Ashoke, her husband, goes to hospital to aid her. This was kind of escalating event in the beginning of the book because in my personal experience, I don’t see a big event going on at the beginning of the book, so it was kind of hard to trying to understand the beginning of the book. Eventually baby is born and named Gogol.

The introduction of the book is really confusing. Actually not confusing, but more like making the reader to give curiosity. It like one of those movie cliché where lots of explosion is going on and you don’t know your plot until you reach the middle of the story. Its like a movie where you see them in third perspective, while not knowing what is going on.  I think that this book has an introduction of a sudden thriller movie. This also tells the reader that if you read the book than you will get more answer. It just provokes your mind to be curious. Why did they named him Gogol, why did they move to the Cambridge, why was his name based on author in train crash in India? It draws many question and makes the reader to uncover the answers that brief introduction with sudden events. This story makes us feels like a person standing next to them, while characters can’t see us.

Old Man Puberty with Tenet of Scientific Free Will

The first thing I noticed about Note from the Underground was that the book was written in the style of first person. During class some people thought this book was also similar to Catcher in the Rye. It is similar, yet the character is different. The narrator is a low rank government worker in Russia during late 1800s. The men is super depressed, hates humanity, and has really low self-esteem. He seems to be really pessimistic. When I noticed that the narrator was grumpy, I thought that this must have something to do with a corrupt society or talking about “human nature”. This main character is extremely self-conscious. Most people can understand the justice and revenge, but the narrator can’t because he has too much complexity in his brain which forces his mind to go underground. He also groups the population into two division. One is dishonest while other one is active. He believes that dishonest people are less conscious than Underground men since they can barely even think about the choice that he or she made. While the other group are most likely same as Underground Men having consciousness. I agree this statement. There are people who makes wrong decision and causing them to lie because they don’t want to be punished for consequence and this making them not candid. Also, more you are being dishonest, you are going to be feel more anxious and cannot plan the future decision one is going to make. I also like his idea of that everything can be explained that free will can be explained by science. I kind of like that because I saw Bill Nye debate with a Christian. I am not saying I oppose Christian, but I was motivated by it. Anyway I thought this book is going to be fun to read since it was written by Russian author, but it is really hard to analyze since the narrator’s mind is complex and deep. 

Acehbe Essay

Hunted by the Western Technology

            Africa and Koreans are both being hunted throughout history. They were both invaded

and controlled by foreign states with higher technology. They were occupied by cultures they didn't know. It did not feel good. Also, both groups had part of their population taken away to benefit the Empires that colonized them. Africans were taken away to work for growing cotton farm and Koreans were taken away to Japan for working in factories to reduce the production cost. It was horrible time for them and we felt as if we were hunted by lions. Some of these experiences caused both of the occupied cultures to have misconceptions forced on them by the colonizers. They felt as if they were unable to handle themselves, they were uncivilized, and technologically behind. It was impossible for us to go up against countries such as the United States and various European colonizers.

            Most Asian are known to be less diverse. The reason is because most of them don't want to become separate from their culture. They usually live together and barely learn foreign languages in places where they live. Koreans, however, adapt to certain regional areas and become part of that culture. That is why Korean town did not form until long after Chinese or Japanese towns formed in the United States. Another stereotype is that they are genius. Well Asians are known to be geniuses, but not all of them are. They are not geniuses because of their high IQ or having a better brain, but having an extreme after-school program. “The ‘studious’ stereotype has no doubt emerged from Korean exchange students that pour into the West. These students are from very wealthy families. The average income in South Korea is $2300 a month. Many parents of multiple children cannot afford the additional costs of private education.” shows that it is not the person who is smart but because of harsh studying condition. After school, parents of Korea send their children to private tutoring center to make their kids be successful in future. This academic madness started because of competitive environment. Each parent wanted their children to be better than others. Koreans are known as a small country between major powers. Even though Koreans were invaded, they held off invasion forces for 500 years until neighboring countries learned about western weapon technology. Koreans also had some great military technology. One was a ship called Turtle ship. It can shoot a cannon ball or shoot flame from its dragon head. It had iron spikes and iron armor on the top so the crew was protected. The country was shown as a tiny, weak country, but it was not as tiny and weak as it seemed.

            Africa was mainly hunted by the Europeans and when the Europeans left, most of Africa’s culture had influence from the western people. The old western people’s story about Africa forced stereotypes on African people. There were many misconceptions about Africa. Most people think that Africans are uneducated, unintelligent, uncivilized and many other un-adjectives. Achebe’s story fills the missing or lost stories of Africa. It shows many different perceptions of Africans than common stereotypes. On page 108, Ekwefi was crying when she was showing the sign of gratitude: “Ekwefi did not answer. Tears of gratitude filled her eyes. She knew her daughter was safe.” This proves or shows that African’s are not savage people. It shows that they care about their family and they are just like us. Also, another example is Okonkwo’s angry speech. He asks if people ever felt sad after losing all their children and yams. The speech shows how much grief that Okonkwo was in and his seriousness which proved that Africans are just a normal people like us with different culture and technology.

            Most people think Africa is uncivilized and probably live on the floor. However, they are not. The passage from page 14 shows how much knowledge they have about how to protect themselves: “The barn was built against one end of the red walls, and long stacks of the compound was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment to her hut for the hens. Near the barn was a small house, the medicine house or shrine where Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal god and of his ancestral spirits. He worshipped them with sacrifices of kola nuts, food and palm-wine, and offered prayers to them on behalf of himself, his three wives and eight children.” This shows how complicated the lives of African people really are. They live in a completely protected house and even have medicine house for the gods. This shows how much culture they are and that they not savages who live like a caveman like westerners would like to believe.

            African people and Korean people were both hunted. They both got invaded and got their culture influenced by it. Most people think Korea is just like any Asian country but it is not. We try to adapt with other people and they are not stubborn and made no contact with foreigners. Also, Africans are known for this stereotype of being uncivilized, but they know how to build strong houses and grow crops to take care of their family. Our stories were told by Hunters, but the Lion will always tell the true story.

Bibliography

Cassels, James V. "Top 10 Misconceptions About South Korea." Listverse. Listverse.com, 20 Dec. 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.

Lee, Grace. "Opinion: Koreans Are 'good,' 'bad' and Everything in between." In America RSS. CNN.COM, 22 Apr. 2013. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.

Paul. "Top 10 Misconceptions of Koreans." Teaching Kimchi. TeachingKimchi.com, 1 Apr. 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.

The Power

In my opinion, I think Africa is a place where diverse culture is created, but Mostly those culture is heavily focused on the Male power. I am not saying this is fact but I am just saying this, so no intended offence. So here is the explanation.  Africa is a place where heat rises at day and cold comes at night. In this harsh environment, person must be able to withstand this quick temperature change. It not only the temperature, but also those hostile environment. You can barely grow any crops if you don't have enough water or nutrition in the soil. In all these disadvantages, Africans tribes flourish through the harsh, desert continent. In these tribes, most male take the lead. They usually lead a group for better life and lead them for the war between tribe. To be in the lead you must be powerful and respectable. This example shows that most male lead the group. In Africa, lions have a thing called Alpha male. It is the leader of that group and the most powerful. To be one you need to win the fight and show your power. This also shows in the book Things Fall Apart. In the book, Okonkwo shows the extreme measure of masculinity. His father was not ambitious and powerful. Because of that childhood, Okonkwo now heavily focuses on constructing powerful family. The question is why does African tribe choose man as the leader? In my knowledge, I learned that actually women were the powerful people because they are the one who are able to form family. That all changed when people start growing crops. Since male is the one growing the crops, women had to feed him and take care of him because he was the source of the food. So, there was a transition of power. After that men became the power since he supported his family with food.  So reason why Okonkwo believes at this power of masculinity is because Africa is harsher environment than other continent, so power is heavily focused on the male since they are the one responsible to grow or gather food.

Reason of Thinking

The person who talks in this Ted video is one of my favorite Youtube video maker. His name is Michael and he makes various video about science. The topic is not just a normal science like making substance or explaining some type of organism, but science in space, psychology, and object that are uncommon to us. It is interesting to watch his video because it makes the object around us very interesting. For example, he recently made a video about why butt is called bottom when they are actually in middle. Its fun to watch since it amuses variety of the audience. His characteristic is that he asks many questions and he reveals why he does that in this Ted talk. He talks why he question ideas and certain object and discuss those thinking by seeing it in different perspective. He told us about he made a video about rainbow. Mostly people thinks that rainbow is an idea that is positive, colorful, and content. But he talks about the perspective about people who hates rainbows. These idea made by him interests me. Sometime you get bored in your life and start to think a lot, like I mean a lot. If I get bored, I somehow unconsciously enters into some world that creates scenarios for me. It sounds crazy, but it does happen to me, except it can distract me in class. This make me kind of think outside the box, I think about ideas that can maybe help humanity by technology. One of the weird result was having TV screen attached to the Baseball hat or any similar looking hat. Michael shows me that there are people like me or people like him. He likes to think differently in unique way. So unique that not even normal person can think about it. Like again, people who hates rainbow. In my opinion that sounds very unique to me.