Internet

Finally out of the hospital as of Monday! Such a relief. Back to your bed, your couch, your place… and my computer (ok I’m a nerd. That’s why I’m a Computer Engineer major lol). Is it only me or are we not dependant with our technology?? I was seriously dying at the hospital because of the unstable internet connection! By looking at The Matrix and all of these movies that technology takes over the world, I can seriously believe that is going to happen eventually. It’s coming to the point that, when I don’t have I feel like I’m cut off from society. Is this only me?

Back in the Hospital

So my fiancé’s condition flips again and I had to go back to the hospital couch. Seems to be her diabetes and her pregnancy is conflicting a whole lot. It’s rather obvious that her body is getting weaker as the pregnancy progress. As her partner, this is rather painful because I just feel so powerless about the situation. I really hope her condition picks up before next April (which Is the due date). But yea, we decided to rent some movies and watch it again at the hospital. Oh my gosh, I know we have so much time we need to kill but, watching 5,6 movies back to back is such a painful thing to go through! We watched “Orphan” (which was a horrible movie), GI-Joe, Star Trek, Babylon A.D., and some other movies that I totally slept through.

Tuesday’s game

…was fun. Of course the activity was fun but, more than that, I enjoyed listening to others made up story. Honestly, I have zero creativity so my story was very much straight forward and did not have much of a twist in it. My group member had a more in-depth story. One had the whole zombie theme, another had the “Law and Order” idea, I had the literal school teacher biting a student’s ear off idea. So at the end, we just decided to combine all of our stories together and made our finished product. The process of making the story was as we were taught in class. Ingredients, Process, and finished Product. This activity effectively taught us the process of making up a story.

2012

Couple of my friends and I decided to go see the new movie, “2012”, at the opening night, Friday. Unbelievably, we were studying rather late so we barely made it to the last showing of the day (yes we were studying at Friday night). Anyhow, the movie was stunning! I was literally on edge of my seat the whole movie. I won’t go into details but I can promise, it’s one of the best natural disaster movies. Originally, my all time favorite was “Armageddon” but this movie tops it easily. But also I will warn that this is probably one of those movies you need so see it at the theater or you will not get the full quality of it.

A Worn Path – POV

The story, “A Worn Path” – Eudora Welty, was told in a third person point of view but the narrator was learning about the story as it was being told. He/she did not know what was waiting in the path of Phoenix Jackson (i.e. the hunter).

In the movie, the story was told in more of a first person point of view, through Phoenix Jackson’s view. More than the story, I feel connected with Phoenix because of this.

I remember we talked about perspective difference from a story and a movie. After comparing two movies with the original story, it is obvious that it is easier to be connected with the characters through movies more because most of the time, the story is told from a single character perspective.

Flag

The other day, after the Fort Hood shooting, I noticed that our flag was flying at half mast. I understand that the flags are at half mast on special occasion such as Memorial Day, Patriot Day, and death of president and other leaders, etc. But this occasion was a shooting within the military base, because of a psychological breakdown (some media persuade us by saying it’s more of a terrorist attack because Major Malik Nadal Hasan is said to have connection with a terrorist group, and also he agreed to suicide bombing). My concern is, though I understand that the half mast was due to the shooting, but couple month ago, similar situation happened at Afghanistan, where our soldier was being under treatment by a military psychologist and went crazy; shot the psychologist and 2 other soldiers. When this happened the United States did not half-mast. If the half-mast is to show respect to the one that died or fought for our country, wouldn’t it be appropriate to do so then and even throughout the war? Considering our soldier, more or less, are dying every day.

Goodbye work?

This December, I am officially graduating and start working! This is an excitement for me because I’ve been offered a job at Hino Motors (a department of Toyota) as an interpreter/translator. Fortunately, because I worked for a Professor here, I had several experience in this field and from that, had confidence. The job starts at December 15th. But there’s one obstacle. I have to quiet my current part-time job. Why this is such a problem? Well, one of my job, I’ve been working for 5 years and another for 3 years. Unfortunately, throughout these long years, I’ve developed an emotional attachment to them. My co-workers are almost like my family and my bosses are like my fathers. It’s just such a burden to have to tell them that I am going to be quitting my current job here for another. But life is harsh and soon or later I have to confess. But I’m definitely not looking forward to that…. sigh

Perspective

So aforementioned, my fiancé is being tutored because she is on bed rest and still had to attend school for insurance reason, which I think is pretty impressive because I really can’t learn outside of class. But more surprising is the tutor. This boy is working on his PhD. Boy? Yes boy. He just turned 18 recently and he is, again, working on this PhD on Mathematics. But he has a great personality and great sense of humor. But listening to his past, to be honest, I really felt bad for him. He was home schooled and pretty much was stuck with his mother until now. Even now, his mother drives him around and why not. I, as someone that went independent since graduated from High School financially, wouldn’t be able to handle being with my parents all the time. Don’t get me wrong though, I love my parents. I just didn’t want to be a financial burden on them. But again, he is working on his PhD at 18. He’s definitely a successor in life. But I guess, this is a perspective difference in life.

Peaceful Sunday Afternoon

I thought summer changed to winter really quick, leaving fall out of the group but I was wrong. Sunday was the best day to spend outside of the house, on the patio, reading book or even sleeping. Well, my fiancé, because of her condition, had to meet with a tutor (since she is on bed rest). So 9 o’clock Sunday morning at starbucks, I was watching the car pass on Germantown Parkway in front of the Wolfchase mall. It’s so funny because I rarely spend time without doing anything, but this day was different. I was just watching people drive by, people going to bestbuy and coming out of it. Very peaceful indeed. There was actually a couple that was yelling and screaming at the parking lot, which got my attention. The driver lady totally pushed the guy out and drove off, guy left in fury. That was definitely entertaining. Anyhow, so my Sunday pretty much consist of me being there, meeting with my friend at Sonics (again outside) and talking to my friend ‘til dinner, forgetting that I have to study for my tests for this week.

Another Hospital Visit

So Halloween was supposed to be fun and why not… well that could have been the case if my fiancé didn’t have to go in the hospital again that exact day. Unfortunately her diabetes decided to act up on her while she was out and next thing you know I got a call from a paramedic officer saying she is going to be admitted to Baptist East. Great, so within this 1 year, I have almost conquered the big hospitals in the Memphis area because of her diabetes. St. Francis, Methodist Germantown, Downtown, Baptist Bartlett and now East. Let me tell you though, out of all those hospitals, Baptist East had the best facility. Anyhow, we weren’t in there for long this time around, which is awesome because I have about 3 tests this week and honestly sleeping on those hospital guest bed (well, chair I guess) is not the most comfortable feeling. During this visit, though, I was thinking about the oddest things I ever thought of. The only one that I can really tie to something literature related was the religion of the hospital. So, all these major hospitals in the area are under some sort of Christian branch. So for those that are Buddhist or Muslim or whatever other religions, I wondered where they go for delivering babies (since my fiancé is 4months into it). But again, we do live in the Bible belt; I guess this is really not much of a concern in this area. So for some odd reason, I was thinking about O’Connor, probably because of her Christian views and her grotesque writing we talked in class. Then again, I tied the grotesque to horror, and from there start thinking about recent horror movies I watched that was… grotesque. So great, Halloween, in the hospital, dark, random nurses coming at random times, thinking about O’Connor and horror stories. Thank you for a great horrorific Halloween.

Paranormal Activity

So the day before Halloween, my fiancé and I decided to go watch, the current number one movie, “Paranormal Activity”. There may be people that haven’t seen it and are planning to, so I will do my best not to spoil it. Basically the story is told in one location and 2 characters, boyfriend and girlfriend. The girlfriend experiences some weird stuff and the boyfriend is trying to solve the problem. The boyfriend does some stupid stuff to stimulate this unnatural thing and ends up not being able to do much about the situation. (It’s really hard to explain the movie without spoiling it). Anyhow, this may or may not be because of the analyzing practice of literature we do in class but, as I was driving back and that whole night, I started thinking, “Why did he do that at that moment”, “What did the author really wanted to say”, “Was it suppose to be scary or was there some other moral hidden to it”. But because of all this thinking, I replayed the movie in my head over and over and over, the movie that I thought was not really scary at all turned into a horror by the end of the night. So some literature, it’s best to not think too deeply. lol