First Impression

I have totally different impression of what to expect from this class. At first, the one word that I could think about is essay, essay, and essay…..But that thought vanished when I heard the word “Blog” coming out of the professor’s mouth. I am going to write a blog for this class? Is this a dream? Certainly not because I am writing one now. I like the professor’s idea of turning this class into a fun class by writing a weekly blog and at the same time maintain the level of sophistication of writing skills. I also like how he drags the class with stories and support for participation from the audience. This class is much more entertaining and brain stimulating compared to the other English classes that I have taken so far that is monotone and boring.
I have learned a lot from this first week of class because of the idea that each group clusters have to come up with a keyword for the blogs. So far the keywords that we have discussed are culture, technology, and deconstruction. My favorite among those three is culture, since most of my blog revolves around the world culture. As Raymond Williams said, “I’ve wished that I’ve never heard the damned word” (R. Williams, 1979: 154), explaining the complexity of the words because there are a lot of subdivision of cultures that we already have encountered. It is interesting to learn about the word culture because from there, even though not directly, at least I got the idea that culture plays an important part of creating a persona for each society.
In conclusion, the professor’s idea of experimenting with online blogs certainly are effective because as one of the student have said in the class, now we all can read, compare and comment on each other’s blog.

CULTURE

I like to travel, that is why I went to study abroad in Japan the summer on my first year in college. Being in Japan certainly has its good and bad moments. I stayed in Japan for three months and took Japanese classes. Even though I read some books on Japanese culture, I still didn’t know the actual meaning of why Japanese act that particular way. For instance, every time I went to stores or restaurants, it is customary for the waitresses or the staff to say out loud the word “irrashai-mase,” which means welcome to our store or restaurant. At first, it sounds very refreshing because as we all know, Japanese people is very polite. But then, it started to annoy me. Every single time I met with a staff including the ones that I have met before, they quickly shout the word “irrashai-mase.” I responded in my mind, “Back of people!!!!! you don’t need to say welcome more than once, that is so annoying!!!!” I ended up walking away outside the store in less than 5 minutes from the frustration.
After that experience, I ask my instructor why Japanese does that kind of behavior. The instructor responded that every culture has different ways of expressing their appreciation to the customers. In Japan, it is customary to say it because the staff is deeply honored for my time and my kindness to walk and visit into their stores or restaurants. After that explanation I was so ashamed of my behavior and was impressed of their level of appreciation because I have never thought about it that way. In the end, I realized one thing that matters most, I am a tourist. Of course I will have strange reaction of other people’s culture that is different than mine because they could say the same thing to my culture. Who am I to judge that one’s culture is better than the other one? What really matters is the way we act, so that we as an individual can be accepted in today’s society

E-books

I would like to dedicate my first blog to inform other students the alternate way that is faster and more efficient for purchasing our class text, New Keywords. When the class ended, I’m still surprised there were a lot of students who were very concerned about not getting the book on time. Sure there is reserved one on the library, but I doubt people are going to borrow it since there is only one book available. The alternate way that I talked about is by downloading it from a website. The file is called “E-book” which stands for electronic book because we download it from a website and will be read from our personal computers. The E-book is less expensive because it contains a text file rather than papers and hardcover materials from physical book that I buy. Below are some information about E-book if anyone is interested, “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebook,” and the site for downloading E-book, “http://www.ebooks.com.” My experiences using E-book are positive so far because I could save time from going to the bookstore and waiting in line, and is more space convenient because it uses less physical. Hopefully, when other people are more familiar with E-book, they will look forward to read more books in the future.