Debarkation

At breakfast, we sat with our tablemates and said goodbye to them. We debarked the ship and went and got the rental car. We went shopping at the Sawgrass Mills Mall, before driving to Miami. After our nap, we went to Sonny's BBQ for dinner. Mom loves their Peach Cobbler.

Fourth Day at Sea

After breakfast, we went to the Towel Folding class, where Dad made a dog, an elephant, and a seal. For lunch, they had American food again. After our nap, we went to the Holiday show where they sing Christmas songs. I watched Clash of the Titans in our room.





For dinner, I had Fettucini with Chicken and Mushrooms, Mango soup, Panko crusted shrimp, and Orange Vanilla Souffle. We saw the comedy of Mike Lukas.

Third Day at Sea

After breakfast we walked around decks 2 and 3, because it was very sunny. I watched Gossip Girl on my ipod. For lunch, we had American food.

It was our second formal night. For dinner, I had bing cherry soup, spinach salad with berries, Chateaubriand, and Baked Alaska, We saw a comedian, named Mike P. The main show was Ticket to Ride, which is all Beatles music. They gave us a glow stick for the last part of the show to wave during the songs.

St. Kitts

After breakfast, we got off the boat in St. Kitts. We took the Scenic Railway Tour, where they gave us local fruit punch and sugar cane cookies. We saw pig farmers, a rock quarry, 4 bridges, sugar cane cars, 3 churches, breadfruit trees, a sugar mille, monkeys, donkeys, and sheep. From the train, we could see St. Barth's and St. Eustasis nearby and the train had a choir come on each car and sing carols to us. After we got off the train, we went shopping in the Port and used the internet cafe to check up on what was going on at home.







For lunch, Horatio's was serving Italian food again and my favorite dessert, Chocolate Raspberry pie. For dinner I had Penne Mariscos and a Chicken Quesadilla as starters, I had a steak as the main course, and the warm chocolate melting cake again. After dinner, we saw karaoke again. The main show was a ventriloquist, who wasn't very funny. We saw him last year on the Glory and we left his show early.

St. Lucia

After breakfast, we got off the boat and went on the The Best Views of St. Lucia tour. They took us to Stoney Hill, Caribella Batik, the community college, and a road stand for shopping. After the tour, we went shopping in the port shops. Dad bought some Banana Ketchup and bought Mom a Tanzanite ring for Christmas and I got a poster of St. Lucia. For lunch, we had Caribbean food in Horatio's.






For dinner, I had a fruit plate, chilled cream of peaches, Farfalle with turkey and peas in Alfredo sauce, and the Bitter and Blanc bread pudding. We went and saw the guy sitting at our table perform karaoke. The show in the Phantom Lounge, was Singin' with the Big Band starring Christopher Alan Graves, who sang the songs of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

St. Maarten

After we ate breakfast, we got off the boat in St. Maarten and walked downtown to Phillipsburg to do some shopping. I got some pins at the Hard Rock Cafe, and Mom got a t-shirt. Mom bought a Christmas lace tablecloth and we stopped at a Belgian chocolate shop and tried some of their milk chocolate bars. Dad was supposed to go snorkeling, but it was cancelled due to the rain. For lunch, Horatio's was serving French food.





After our nap, we watched sports trivia while waiting for the dining room to open. For dinner, I had fried shrimps, a caesar salad, turkey with cranberry and stuffing, and a Chocolate, Raspberry, Vanilla Cream Cake for dessert. After dinner, we went upstairs to the lido deck to get some hot chocolate and strawberry ice cream. I read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer before going to bed.

Second Day at Sea

We ate breakfast in Horatio's and walked through the shops. I watched Extraordinary Measures and read Santa Cruise by Mary Higgins Clark. We went to the Shopping Talk and then ate lunch in Horatio's. It was very windy and rainy again and they had to close off the upper decks.




After our nap, Dad and Mom went and tried Sushi at the Sushi bar and they both didn't like it. For dinner, I had crepes with spinach and ricotta cheese, a fruit plate, Lasagne Bolognese, and White Chocolate Bread Pudding. After dinner, We went and saw Jason Blanchard perform his comedy again.

First Day at Sea

We ate breakfast in the Bacchus dining room and the service was really bad. After breakfast we went to the $10 at 10 sale in the shops and then to the Fun Ashore and Fun Aboard talk hosted by the cruise director, Malcolm Burns. This is our second cruise with Malcolm, as he was the assistant cruise director when we went on the Carnival Inspiration.




After our nap, we went and ate lunch at the Grille. They have the best chicken tenders. It was a first formal night so we had our pictures taken. For dinner I had strawberry bisque, spaghetti carbonara as a starter, prime rib, and the warm chocolate melting cake (which is delicious). We went and saw the comedians, Phat Kat and Jason Blanchard perform their family shows. The show in the Phantom Theatre was Generations, featuring the music of 1940's to 1970's. I had a Raspberry Peach smoothie during the show.

Embarkation

Yesterday, we flew to Miami, via Atlanta. I read Christmas with the Prophets and played the Delta trivia. We were at the airport in Atlanta for four hours due to the weather. It was snowing and raining when we got there. When we got to the rental car terminal, Mom lost her neck pillow. After we got the car, we drove to Ft. Lauderdale.

This morning, we ate breakfast at the hotel and then went to get soda at KMart and CVS. We turned in our rental car and took the shuttle to the ship, The Carnival Miracle. We had to wait a while to get into our room, so we just explored the ship for a couple of hours. We ate lunch in Horatio's, where they were having Italian and Asian food. After a nap, we went to the Muster Drill, where we sat in Gatsby's Garden. While we sailed away from Ft. Lauderdale, I listened to Tenant of Wildfell Hall on my ipod, wearing my snuggie because it was windy and freezing.




We had early sitting in the Bacchus dining room, where we sat at a table of six with a family from Texas. I had a fruit plate, a caesar salad, sweet and sour shrimp, and creme brulee with berries. After dinner we walked through the shops and unpacked. Then we heading to the Phantom Theatre to watch a swing dance class, big screen movie trivia, and game show mania.

Extreme Communication

There is a generational gap in communication in every family and every culture. The older generations looks down on the younger and the children don't respect the parents, because we are stubborn and we think we know everything and they can't possibly have anything to say of importance. We are ignorant and don't listen to each other's advice, and there in lies the conflict of never getting along. We fight over everything from religion and politics, from who should be president to what restaurant we should go to. When we are not arguing, we are silent towards each other, not knowing how to communicate in soft voices. If we as members of a family want to live peacefully, we need to learn how to communicate successfully.

As members of a family or culture, we all have different viewpoints. In "My Son The Fanatic" by Hanif Kureishi, a father and son cannot agree on religion or cultural issues, taking their arguments to the extreme. Parvez, the father, is a taxi driver and avid drinker and gambler who is best friends with a prostitute. Ali, his teenage son, has found the religion Parvez has escaped from, trying to live the Islamic way of life to the strictest enforcement. Parvez describes their relationship when Ali was younger as them being "brothers," but since Ali has grown up, he thinks his son is "torturing" him (Kureishi 1013-1014). I believe Parvez takes Ali's formation of his own mind, apart from Parvez's, too personally. Parvez views change and uniqueness as terrifying, without embracing Ali's differences.

Since we don't know how to communicate with our relatives, we come up with other methods to find out what is going on with the other, without asking them directly. Instead of asking Ali why he is throwing out his things, Parvez chooses to spy on his son, going through his things and listening at his door, assuming the worst. Parvez chooses to talk about his son's actions to his friends, rather than talking to his son directly. It doesn't help that Ali is moody and quiet and probably feeling isolated because of his new path. They choose to only speak to each other in moments of anger, showing us they don't trust each other.

As relatives, we have high expectations for our parents and our children, whether they want to agree to them or not. All Parvez wants for his son is for him to "get a good job now, marry the right girl, and start a family" (Kureishi 1013). Parvez escaped to England so his family would have a better life and more freedom, free of strict religious enforcement and to be able to have any opportunity they want. Did he ever ask his son if he wanted the same things for himself? What he expected from his son and what his son actually wants are two separate entities. It's frustrating for Parvez, that Ali has fully embraced the strong religious faith Parvez is trying to get away from. Ali is trying to get his dad to give up his vices and join him in "paradise" when their lives are over, but Parvez would rather enjoy his life and his new freedom to the fullest (Kureishi 1016). They are both doing what they think is right in their hearts, based on their experiences with their cultures, and are angered over the one they care about, choosing a different way of living.

When we argue, we don't always think about where the other person is coming from, tending to only see things from our one side. Ali and Parvez disrespect each other's lifestyles and are very judgmental. Ali clearly hates the culture of England, telling Parvez, he is "too implicated in Western Civilization" and "Western education cultivates an anti-religious attitude," making him seem like an obnoxious opinionated teenager (Kureishi 1016). He also tells his father the problem with England is that the law will "let you do almost anything. . .," which Parvez clearly has no problem with (Kureishi 1016). Parvez clearly is upset by his son telling him he is "going to hell" and his response is to want to tell Ali "to pick up his prayer mat and get out" of his house (Kureishi 1016-1017). They both believe it is their way of life or nothing at all. As long as this hierarchy of attitude and resentment continues, it will continue to be tense in their household.

When we firmly believe in our causes and try to get our points across, we sometimes use violence to try to forcefully change the other person's mind. Parvez crosses the line when he beats Ali for disrespecting him and shows us readers that force and violence are not the answer. Ali crosses the line when he is very judgmental of his father's actions as well as saying disrespectful things to his father's friend, Bettina. They can't agree to disagree, because they are always trying to change the other person. With Ali being a teenager, there is hope he will grow out of his judgmental ways. If Parvez and Ali continue to act this way, treating each other with malice, there's no hope for peace between them.

We are humans with sensitive feelings. As readers, we can sympathize with both Parvez and Ali at times, because we all have been in their situations. Parvez is only a dad trying to get his son back, wanting to reconnect with him, and the son won't compromise. Ali is only a growing son whose dad won't accept the new him, calling his son's new behavior an "injustice" (Kureishi 1013). When we say negative comments about how the opposing side lives, we should expect them to be defensive and try to hurt the other person with insults.

We can view Max's family of pimps and prostitutes in "The Homecoming" by Harold Pinter, as an extreme case of what to expect if people in a family never learn to get along, since Max's children are all grown up and still living at home being pimps like their dad. Like Parvez and Ali, there seems to be little hope for change in the future for these characters as well.

When our feelings have been hurt, we don't let the past go and are not quick to forgive. Max tells Ruth to "live in the present... Who can afford to live in the past?," which would be good advice, coming from another source who doesn't seem to still be stuck in his past (Pinter 752). Max is the one who has led his family on the path of destruction, making his sons recruit other pimps and prostitutes for their monetary gain. Lenny wants to know "the real facts" about his "background," but Max is dismissive, so Lenny becomes very antagonistic to his father based on their past conflicts and taunts his father with questions he knows will upset Max (Pinter 747). If we live in the past and keep bringing up past issues, they will never be forgotten or free of pain.

As relatives, we choose to fight over trivial things instead of what we really want to fight about. In this story, we really never know what the characters are actually fighting about, because the author tries to distract us with line breaks and pauses, with the characters asking about random things with very little meaning. Lenny responds to Max's questions about the location of his scissors, saying, "Why don't you shut up, you daft prat?" (Pinter 735). This fight clearly isn't about scissors. It's about years of pent up anger over Max's ignorance of his son's hard to bear questions. If they can't express their feelings as clear as possible, there will always be confusion about what they are really trying to say.

These communication theories based on family dynamics can be applied to society as a whole. We need to treat everyone as if they are our dearest relatives, caring about them for who they are. We also need to respectfully communicate with them at every opportunity, by trying to get our opinions across as peacefully as possible. Like Salman Rushdie says in his speech, "Is Nothing Sacred?," we as society should respond to each other's differences, "not by an attack, but by a declaration of love" (Rushdie 983).

Works Cited
Kureishi, Hanif. "My Son the Fanatic." The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. By Joseph Black. Vol. 6. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2006. 1013-018.
Pinter, Harold. "The Homecoming." The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. By Joseph Laurence Black. Vol. 6. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2006. 735-64.

Rushdie. "Is Nothing Sacred?" The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. By Joseph Laurence Black. Vol. 6. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2006. 983.

Fall Semester Finals

For Anthro, I had a take home final and read 4 articles on Human evolution. For Brit Lit, I gave a presentation on Zadie Smith and read Lives of Saints by Jeanette Winterson. For Design 3D, I turned in my toy project and my paper on Zaha Hadid. For Song Lyrics, I wrote a Christmas song and gave a presentation on Eric Clapton. I also had a staple went through my thumb and my backpack strap broke on the last day of class. I turned in my take home final for Anthro and my essay for Brit Lit and sold my books back today.

Toy Sculpture

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1950 and has degrees in mathematics and architecture from the American University of Beirut and London's Architectural Association School of Architecture. Hadid became a partner at Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1977 and established her own practice in 1980. She has taught architecture at her former school, Architectural Association, Harvard, Yale, Ohio State, Columbia, and is currently teaching at Austria's University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Hadid won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for "services to architecture." She also won the Stirling Prize in 2010 for her "MAXXI: National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome". At her architecture firm, they are currently developing projects such as, "the Fiera di Milano tower, the Aquatics Centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games, High-Speed Train Stations in Naples and Durango, the CMA CGM Head Office tower in Marseille and urban master-plans in Beijing, Bilbao, Istanbul, Singapore and the Middle East."

As a pioneer for successful and award-winning female architects, Hadid said, "As a woman, I'm expected to want everything to be nice, and to be nice myself. A very English thing. I don't design nice buildings - I don't like them. I like architecture to have some raw, vital, earthy quality." Hadid describes her style as "contemporary, organic and innovative." Her practice works to develop a "rigorous interface between architecture, landscape, and geology" while integrating the "natural topography and human-made systems that lead to experimentation" with new technology. Her projects demonstrate "complex, dynamic space' and "bold, visionary forms." In addition to architecture, Hadid also paints "Russian constructivist-inspired" paintings, designs furniture, and makes interior objects such as bowls and chandeliers.

Witold Rybczynski, a writer for Slate magazine, when he describes Hadid as a "visionary artist," saying her projects contain various "images of The Future: streamlined shapes, free-flowing forms, silhouettes that suggest an intergalactic space station." Hadid's "Spittelau Viaducts Housing Project" (1994-2005) is an abstract example of defying gravity through balancing large formed modules on seven poles. She uses a repetition of small square windows in each of the modules as well as curved arched bridges through the middle of the piece. Along with this work, She also uses squared forms to make spatial spirals in her "Urban Nebula" (2007) piece. In this outdoor piece, she uses a repetition of stacked blocks with shiny metal surfaces in a curved form to reflect the lights from street and the building. In her "Monsoon Restaurant" (1989-1990) she uses warm colors in her focal points to harmonize and reflect upon the darkness of the ceilings and floor. There is a repetition of curved lines in various directions to create gestures of enlivening the crowded space, with lots of smooth texture and surfaces.

Sources

"About" Zaha Hadid Architects. 26 November 2010.

Glancey, Jonathan. "I Don't Do Nice." Guardian. 9 October 2006.

Rybczynski, Witold. "Zaha's World." Slate. 21 June 2006.

"Zaha Hadid." Wikipedia. 26 November 2010. .
"Zaha Hadid Architects : Architecture Information + Images." E- Architect. 26 November 2010.

Accidental Discoveries

Dugger, Celia W. and John Noble Wilford. " New Hominid Species Discovered in South Africa." The New York Times April 8 2010

Celia W. Dugger and John Nobel Wilford describe a nine-year-old boy named Matthew Berger in Johannesburg, South Africa, who "tripped over a log" after chasing his dog on August 15, 2008 and found the bones of "a new hominid species that lived almost two million years ago during the fateful, still mysterious period spanning the emergence of the human family." It was lucky for this boy to find these, since his dad is Paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger. Lee R. Berger had been searching the same area for the past twenty years, finding very little, so Matthew must have known this was exactly what his dad wanted to find. Sometimes it takes an accident or not looking to discover great things.
The hominid Matthew discovered was a "4-foot-2 boy who had been just a few years older than Matthew himself," buried along with three other individuals and several animals close by. This new hominid species has been named "Australopithecus sediba. " Dugger and Wilford say, "Geologists estimated that the individuals lived 1.78 million to 1.95 million years ago," descending from "Australopithecus africanus," and they believe they are a possible "immediate" ancestor to Homo erectus.
In class we learned about several species and how they are connected to the modern humans. I bet it is very exciting to discover new clues on how we are connected to other species, as scientists who spend their entire lives trying to create a timeline and family trees. I figure finding a new species is like finding piece to a puzzle you're trying to complete, but sometimes discoveries leads to even more questions instead of answers. Hopefully one day, we will be able to put the entire puzzle together.

Zadie Smith

Timeline
• Born "Sadie Smith" in North London on October 25, 1975.
• Studied English at Cambridge and graduated in 1997.
• In 2000, she won two Ethnic and Multicultural Media Awards (EMMA's) for White Teeth
• In 2001, she won Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book) for White Teeth
• In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors
• In 2003, she was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.
• Married Nick Laird in 2004.
• In 2009 her daughter Katherine was born.
• She taught at Columbia and is currently a professor at NYU.

Bibliography
• White Teeth 2000
• Piece of Flesh (editor) 2001
• The May Anthologies (editor) 2001
• The Autograph Man 2002
• Hanwell in Hell (The New Yorker) 2004.
• On Beauty 2005
• Hanwell Sr. (The New Yorker) 2007.

Themes & Subjects
• Ethnically diverse families
• Feminism
• Humor
• Identity
• Immigration
• Racism
• Religion
• Sexuality

Quotes
"Generally, an English Lit degree trains you to be a useless member of the modern world and that's what I'm being in the only way I know how."

"I went to University to study English Literature. I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy. The best, the only real training you can get is from reading other people's books."

“I think [list making] is a slightly depressing English habit. We’d much rather have somebody else’s taste to follow rather than having to take any time finding something new; discovering new writers or going to a bookshop without instruction. It is depressing.”

"Stop worrying about your identity and concern yourself with the people you care about, ideas that matter to you, beliefs you can stand by, tickets you can run on. Intelligent humans make those choices with their brain and hearts and they make them alone. The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful...and decide what you want and need and must do. It’s a tough, unimaginably lonely and complicated way to be in the world. But that’s the deal: you have to live; you can’t live by slogans, dead ideas, clichés, or national flags. Finding an identity is easy. It’s the easy way out."- On Beauty

"If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made."- White Teeth

Links

Zadie Smith Reads from On Beauty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZcnvLCVec

The TV Movie Version of White Teeth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqyULdCQr-o&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadie_Smith

Christmas in Utah

There is nothing like Christmas in Utah.
Outside we're nearly freezing,
While we're singing, fa-la-la-la-la-la,
There is nothing like Christmas in Utah.

Scenes from a Christmas card.
Colored lights shine from Temple Square to Layton Park,
Brightening up the drive in the dark.
A state perfect for a Christmas card.

Farr's peppermint ice cream,
Lil Smokies, and deviled eggs for eating,
While we wrap presents with red bows.
Sugar plums invading our dreams.
A warm state surrounded by mountains of snow.

There is nothing like Christmas in Utah,
With snow and the spirit, blessing our land,
Walking while hand in hand.
There is nothing like Christmas in Utah,
With snow and the spirit, blessing our land,
Walking while hand in hand.
There is nothing like Christmas,
There is nothing like Christmas,
There is nothing like Christmas in Utah.

A state inspiring our souls
Music dancing in our radios,
And playing the church pianos.
A state inspiring our souls.

Shopping for others,
Skiing, sledding, and snowboarding,
Lots of fun places to roam.
Holding all children, fathers, and mothers,
This is our heavenly home.

Chorus

*** Synopsis: A song about Christmas in Utah.

Real Alarms Don't Beep

San Francisco, California,
A hotel tangled in the trees.
Cookie crumbs on our pillows at eleven,
Beep, beep, beeping at three.
Groans, walks, and evacuations,
Hundreds yawning in the street,
Out in the parking lot in pajamas,
Waiting for the false alarm's defeat.

Miami, Florida,
Suite next to a moon river.
Sandwich wrappers on the coffee table.
Beep, beep, beeping on our floor,
The only room in the whole hotel.
Waiting for the false alarm's silencer,
Repairman's away, driving the shuttle bus
We sit, watching the aquarium, in lobby chairs.

No false machine's beeping
Can compare to real alarm,
Smoke monsters invading oxygen,
Glowing fire down the mountain,
Yards away from my backyard.
The most real alarms don't beep.

Math building,
Writing puzzles on a test.
Beep, beep, beeping in the middle,
A pause to build up false stress,
Unplanned field trip on the last day.
A pesky student trying to create a jest.
Guess he wasn't prepared,
Needing extra time to rest.

Art building,
Projecting paint on mask.
Beep, beep, beeping
Twice in same class.
My brush drying in water,
Sitting uphill on the grass,
Here comes the fire truck again.
How long will this false alarm last?

Chorus

*** Synopsis: A song about how fires are the scariest when there is no beeping alarms.

Monograph

In the first verse, I took out one of the "beeps" in the fourth line and I changed "And parking lot in our pajamas" to "Out in the parking lot in pajamas." Wherever the word "alarm" appears in a verse, I added the word "false" in front of it, to make the point of the song more evident. In the second verse, I changed "The repairman away on the shuttle bus" to "Repairman's away, driving the shuttle bus," to make it less confusing. I also changed "Watching aquariums in lobby chairs" to "We sit, watching the aquarium, in lobby chairs."

In the chorus, I omitted "alarms' in "No false machine alarm's beeping" to make it "No false machine's beeping." I changed "Can compare to my eyes" to "Can compare to real alarm," to add further emphasis on the difference between false and real alarms. I changed "Smoke monsters invading my patio" to "Smoke monsters invading my oxygen," because I thought smoke ruining air would be a more fitting metaphor.

In my Layton neighborhood in 2007, one of my neighbors from up the street decided to burn bush in her backyard and started a huge fire that burned most of the mountain between two neighborhoods. Luckily for her, it started raining and put out most of the fire before it burned down any houses. Seeing fire on the mountain and tons of black smoke in my backyard was way more scary experience than hearing a smoke alarm or detector go off. I changed "Glowing runners down the mountain," to "Glowing fire down the mountain," because I thought the word fire need to be added to show more evidence of the point I am trying to make. I changed the last line of the chorus and the title from "The most alarming, alarms are silent" to "The most real alarms don't beep."

I didn't add anything or subtract anything from the third verse. In the fourth verse, I changed the line from "My brush dying in water," to "My brush drying in water," to emphasize the time I had been away from the building, waiting for the alarm to go off. I also added the false to make it say, "How long will this false alarm last?"

Random Lines

I gave you everything
You gave me nothing

They started out in the same airport
She took off while he just landed
Money and power mean more than love
She's off in the clouds leaving him grounded

I'd be sitting pretty, I'd be feeling fine

If I had a dust pan and laundry matt
If I had a dust pan and laundry matt
I'm sure my love would come back

He wants love, she don't.
She wants change, he won't.

Now in this moment
Our hearts are bent
We're feeling blue

We've been down this road before
Had our hearts broken in two
Here you are walking through my door
Thoughts clearing into few
I can't take it anymore
We need a different view

You've been buying presents
And sending them away to mail
Hoping to please,
But none of them are for me

Give me another chance
Before you strike a match

So if your life is troubled
And you can't sing along
Listen to another lyric
So you can clear the static

You dumped me and I feel sad

I hold your door
I gave you a key
Please move in already
You're the lock for me

Hope leaves us and doesn't say goodbye

Cotton candy clouds

The heart of my life needs a transplant

On the road of life, there are no rest stops

The music pulled me into the room
Full of melody and a tune
Harmony starts to flow
Rhythm tells me not to go
But I have obligations at home
I don't want to leave the beauty
I like music more than reality

I fight a lot with you

To think you could be tame

Stars melt in the sky

I taste your lips
I hug your fingertips
You are a wonderful sight

Lives of the Saints by Jeannette Winterson

In "Lives of the Saints" by Jeannette Winterson, there are four intertwining stories of the narrator, the narrator with the woman, the Jews and their pasta machine, and the woman's impregnated affair with her handyman. I believe the narrator of all the stories is one person, who interacted with all these people in his or her world. It could be the story of his or her life, from one decade or life to next, and him processing it beyond death.

The title comes from a quote from Saint Teresa of Ávila, who says, "In the lives of saints I look for confirmation of excess. . .They know there is no passion without pain." I believe she is saying this, because everybody must hurt in order to know joy and every saint has sinned. I wondered if the author was saying that just because someone might sin, that doesn't make them ineligible to be a saint? I believe these stories show a degree of righteousness on all levels and how they can become saints if they repent.

I believe the title is a reference to modern day people being compared to the saints of the past. There are references from the Bible such as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the "desert," "black coats and black hats," and Saint Teresa of Ávila, as examples of saintly figures and locations of stories of the past. I was unfamiliar to most of these people, so I'm glad the footnotes summarized their stories. There is also two references to Leonardo Da Vinci, which I took as symbol for people who view the world and make designs based on it.

I looked at the "we" of the story, as trinity of God, death, and/or guardian angels watching these people, especially since the woman was "oblivious" to the narrator, but slowly began to see and hear more from her obsessed follower. Maybe she wasn't saintly enough to see him at first, but then slowly became righteous. I believe her telling the narrator about her affair is a confession of her sins. As I was reading these stories, they felt like they had familiar resemblances to the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the story of the Virgin Mary. I don't know if the author was trying to emulate those stories or not.

The magic realism in the story is the distance between heaven and earth. There is a dream like quality to these stories, and even the narrator says, "Time is not constant" and "we walked through the hours," making me wonder if time for the narrator moves faster than the living people he interacts with in these stories. The narrator says, "The sun also diminishes the pupils to pinpricks, letting the light in less," making it seem like we are blinded by the light. He or she also says, "When we can hardly see we are most like to fall in love," as if when we are farther from God, we follow our passions.

There are references to "moats," the sky, a "magic kingdom," candles, which makes me think of Gothicism, magic, and fairy tales. The narrator says, "The world itself with roll up like a scroll taking time and space away," making the world seem temporary like a dream. I wondered if the narrator is telling us, we can be a saint or a sinner, but it won't matter anyway once we're dead.

The Office (UK)

While watching "Pilot" episode of The Office, I thought it was very similar to the American version. I have seen every episode of the American version, but haven't watched the British one before. I think the American producers did a pretty good job adapting and casting the pilot to make the characters, setting, and premise seem similar. It would be interesting to see how much all the other versions throughout the world relate to the original as well.

There were similar jokes such as putting staplers into jell-o and David fake firing Dawn for stealing post-it notes. There is a lot of unprofessional behavior coming from the employees, but mostly it is Brent that reminds us a "real bosses." David seeks validation from his co-workers, looking to be friends instead of a boss.

I noticed that David Brent comes up with funny nicknames for himself, like "Brent Master General" and makes up puns for other people's names like Michael Scott does. I find both Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell both hysterical and they both make both their characters outrageous and goofy. Sometimes they make me cringe, but other times I find them loveable.

Like Are You Being Served? and Fawlty Towers, The Office also has humor based on awkward situations and workplace behavior. They all feature bosses with narcissistic personalities who try either to befriend or annoy their coworkers. This episode dealt with themes such as middle class, identity, and gender roles in the office with a woman as a receptionist and as a corporate boss.

There were references to downsizing, Ali G, calling people "mental," the singing fish on the wall and the "wassup?" and the show being set up like a mockumentary reality show are pop culture references to the 2000's. The only British reference I really picked up on was the characters calling jell-o, "jelly."