High Fidelity by Nick Hornby- Lit Circle Project

How can conflict lead to change?

High fidelity by Nick Hornby is written as a middle-aged man’s voice in the mid-90s in London. A story follows memory, love, and music.

High Fidelity by Hornby, Nick: Very Good Paperback | WorldofBooksAt the beginning of the book, Rob Is hit by his breakup with his girlfriend, Laura. And he begins to trace back to his top five breakups in order to find why he’s always unlucky in relationships. Rob Fleming, a thirty-six years old man who is going through a middle-life period and owns a record shop. Rob has no specific orientation in life, and he doesn’t set goals for his future. At his age, he supposed to work hard to build on his own financial stability. Yet, he chooses to live in the moment, even he is not satisfied with his current situation. Rob runs a small record shop without actually getting much profit; he borrows a large sum of money from Laura and has not yet repaid any of it. After their split-up, he blames Laura for its genesis, and he keeps aimed at Ian as who Laura leaves him for. Rob can’t bear to be the rejected man, while stupidly redeeming and harassing her with phone calls.  And Ian is just someone that helps Laura getting out of the frustration. However, the basic cause of the separation is just Rob never face up to the reality; he chooses to ignore to plan for the future; he chooses not to develop his potentials; he chooses not to work hard; he chooses not to make any commitment to Laura. Rob clearly knows what he does to Laura; He confessed: “I slept with somebody else while she was pregnant.” “My affair contributed directly to her terminating the pregnancy.” (Pg.46) After the conflict, he doesn’t make up for any of his mistakes, instead, he keeps entangle with Laura and the Ian thing. Therefore, Rob realizes: if he has no plans for his own future, how can he plan for his and Laura’s future? Somehow, he starts to sort through his top five breakups, he starts to think and reflect on himself. It all happens after Laura dump him, so he starts to reorganize his feeling to Laura. On Pg48 from the book, Rob claimed: “I’m not going to tell her that all this is a way of regaining control, that I don’t know if I love Laura.” His feelings for Laura are ambiguous. But in my opinion, if Laura does not mean that important to him, he wouldn’t start to seek why he always fails on relationship after breaking up with Laura; Rob wants to change at this point. Rob gets to feel the pressure when he met Charlie (one of his top five breakups) after their breakup for years. Rob compares himself with Charlie’s friend, he views them through sheer envy, and he questions: “Why isn’t my life like this?” Charlie and her friends are successful. And he knew success is all based on hard work and commitments.

When Laura’s dad dies, Laura asks Rob to go to the funeral. Eventually, they realize they want to get back together but only on the condition that Rob changes his ways and focuses on his top five dream jobs. At the moment when Rob and Laura finally decided to get back together, Rob understands the importance of commitment to himself and his lover, also he decides to contribute sincere love to Laura. He realizes the plan for future and dreams is to be responsible for himself while turning plans into commitments is to be responsible for his love and their relationship. Before experiencing the conflict, Rob doesn’t leave himself space to think about the future, because he is used to staying in his comfort zone, a non-outstanding comfort zone. And his conflict with Laura gives him time to reflect, reorganize, and plan independently. Just because Laura’s rejection leads him out of his comfort zone, when he first steps out of it, Laura guides him to a new starting point in his life. In Rob’s case, setbacks from relationships made him a better man.

 

 

Reflection on Characterization Assignment

My Mind Map: https://coggle.it/diagram/XrmR9WJblPKR57ek/t/-/568a8d244cfe32303669998ed83c52acd223f6e5c2744c5523377650994d5cd2

For this assignment, I chose to use Coogle.com as my learning tool. But those shortcut keys made me confuse in the first place. Therefore, I only need a few of the shortcut keys to complete the map, it was an interesting process though. But I do like how simple the design of the mind map is, especially branches with various colours that help me to better state the competencies and characteristics of the character in a more straightforward and easy way. During the process of making, I was not having any struggle, which I think it relates to my habit of using technology that even at school I am already used at working with technologies. And I enjoy using technologies most of the time. In addition, creating a digital mind map helps me to structure information of the character and increase my creativity and productivity in a clean and organized way. Well, I would use coogle.com again if a similar assignment is assigned, and I am pretty satisfied with Coogle.com so far. During the process of the creation of mind map, it let the flow of ideas go freely, and I can see my growth mindset and brainstorm by creating one after another branch.

To conclude my experience, it has been growing in my opinion as a learning process. First off, I perceive the difficulties to play around with the site. Yet after I spent time to learn the system and merge my idea within the mind map, I can see how my ideas were interspersed, and it contributed a better orientation for me.

 

16 Personalities Reflection-Lucy C

  1. My personality type is mediator
  2. idealist, creative, open-minded(Three words I think that’s pretty accurate)
  3. To have a strong personal awareness helps me understand myself and others easily, plus to see my weaknesses and strengths, in order to make better decisions for my career, relationship, etc……. in the future. And I always struggle with my own identity, which is hard for me to see who I truly am, so this test surely helps me to know myself better.
  4. At first, I don’t think I am a mediator at all, but after reading what a true mediator is, I found out it’s incredibly true. But the thing that doesn’t accord with my personality is I prefer thinking instead of feeling. Therefore, I care more about to be rational, and calm when comes to an emergency or critical situation.

Poetry project 2020 – English 11

Plastic bag

I cover myself

Beneath layers of plastic

I tear down a small corner of it

Yet

I can’t breathe

 

I bump my body against it

Yet

they are like a guard

But to hide my scars

It tries to suffocate me

It tries to build a border to

block me against the outside world

 

I don’t have the right to breath

I don’t have the right to live

Layers and layers covered me

 

Yet I can take off my guard and show you my scars

No need to be decisive

And I don’t want to be afraid anymore

 

My scars bleed,

My coats ripped

Yet I am on the way

To find the true me

Composition:

The poem Plastic bag by Lucy Cai described the journey of seeking one’s true “me”. And the poem describes that layers of plastic bag hide her scars. Which normally, people can only see the figure and colour, a blurry image of the object through plastic bag, therefore it is difficult to observe the details of an object through it. The poet metaphorized self-discovery and self-identify as a plastic bag to breakthrough.

Nowadays, sometimes we hide and lost our “true self”, and in a sort of way, we reject to bring back our “true self”, which usually caused by the peer pressure from the people surround us every day. Therefore, “plastic bag” can protect us somehow from the external pressure, but gradually, we are bound by others instead of ourselves. Hyperbole was also being used in the poem, that the poet described the life in the plastic bags into an extremely despair situation.

Poem analysis:

The poem Ozymandias a sonnet, which was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1818. The poem narrates the story of a traveler that saw pieces of a broken sculpture of Ozymandias. The sculptor perfectly portrays the arrogance, the emotion of Ozymandias, but these passions turned into a statue without a breath of life. Ozymandias’ used to be absolutely powerful, the king of kings, which described in a third person’s speech in the poem. But when the traveler found the sculpture of Ozymandias, it was split into pieces, and almost submerged in the sand. I think this poem states the theme of no one’s power lasts forever, power is temporary. All the arrogance and power back then will turn into pieces of stone that will never awake again.

Personification was being used in the poem, when the traveler said, “And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command”, which informs us that Is the head of the statue, by using referring to a real person. Also, at the end of the poem, it used irony to contrast between Ozymandias’ and his power that is no longer exist referred to, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” and contrast with “Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare”, shows the irony of a great, powerful king but in a lifeless statue.

Connecting the story of Macbeth, Macbeth’s corruption is caused by his greed toward power, and having complete control over people and rules. Macbeth is an example of power corruption like Ozymandias.

Hobbies can boost confident at work-Blog log#2

https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/hobbies

The title of the article attracted me in the first place. Normally, in our daily life, it is hard to connect work and hobbies together, but it is interesting how this article proves hobbies can really help us at work. This article is written by Matthew warren, i like how he helps the readers feel related to the article. Although, his style’s of writing is fluent, and easy to read. Generally, there are huge differences between student and worker, but there are also somethings that they both have in common. As a student, i always feel unsure while i am doing my work, sometimes, this kind of unsureness can always stress me out. So, having a hobby can always shift our tension at work to something that we are confident at or interest in, and it could strength our confident, and help us to relieve stress.

Blog log #1 Tea bag release billions of micro-plastic reflection – Lucy C

Link: https://bigthink.com/plastic-tea-bags

The title of the article caught my eyes in the first place.I am a tea person, drink from  grocery-store tea bag is almost a quotidian thing to me. But, i never thought about tea bag would generate billions of microplastic into every cup.  I like how the author demonstrate the article in a quite clearly form, which makes me easy to get the content. The article depicts how tea bag produce billions of microplastic. Basically, the effect that plastic brings to our earth is extremely harmful, but nobody thought that silk tea bag can also release plastic. And so, experiment that proves the fact of tea bag can always prevent and remind tea drinkers.

 

Canadian studies-Lucy

I learned how strong are these online streaming services, and many Canadian are not watching kind of ” Canadian content” people don’t need TV right now we can watch everything online. Internet starts to beat other media services. Also, the government wants to keep Canadian content continued.

Movie reflection-Lucy

I really enjoy the movie, I think this movie really touched me, and I felt really heartwarming. When Chris finally pass the test I felt life is so hard, and if you work so hard for your life, one day you will meet happiness. In the movie, I learn that life is not easy, the people who are successful and live in happiness, they work so hard, and they went through a hard time before, no one’s life is sail with the wind, you must pay then you get payback. The second lesson that I learned is don’t give up something easy, if you work on something for a long time and you want to give up, just keep do it, maybe you can work a little bit harder, you can get there. The last lesson I learned is, in the movie, Chris always wear the suit when he doing his job, he thinks the first impression is an important thing. even his broke and he still wore the suit really tidily. The most thing I love about this movie is the actor who acted Chris anChristopherer, are will smith and his son, so the movie shows the father’s love really reality, and the movie shows really natural. “The pursuit of happiness” is a really good movie and it is an awesome movie for whatever age level, I think everyone could learn different things from this movie.  And this is the second time that I watched this movie, I think I learn something new.