Discover Top Posts Tagged with #com317

The Twilight Saga is Over

After five years the Twilight Saga has finally come to an end. I may not be a huge huge fan but I was still super excited. I had read the book and I had looked forward to all of the movies and attended all of the midnight premiers.

The books were obliviously different than the movies and as I had learned with Harry Potter, I never wen in to any of the movies expecting perfection. The first movie, I liked because although it deviated a little from the book it was still really exciting to see these characters come to life on the screen.

New Moon was probably the most depressing of the five movies. That was okay though because the book was equally depressing. I really liked Eclipse because there was finally some action.

Breaking Dawn Part 1 was one of my favorites because it stuck pretty closely to the book and it left off an a good part for part 2.

So last night, I was obviously at the midnight premiere of Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2. All I have to say is that it was amazing and I cant wait until the dvd comes out.

Near the end there was a surprise that I was not expecting. I totally threw me but I still loved it.

#COM317 #CPPCOM317 #com 317

my family has a product design student

Walking out of my room today, I heard the sound of a functioning sewing machine. My sister was using it. As I walked near her wanting to see what she was working on, I saw her sewing two pieces of paper together.

It was not the first time I encountered such a weird moment of her using machines the ways that they are not meant for. I even saw her heating up plastic with a hair dryer once (she was trying to fold the plastic into a chair). She claims that it is to fully utilize every machine we have.

I am not suggesting that I do not feel proud of my sister being a product designer. She is, in fact, a pretty outstanding one at school. It is just that I realized living with one is so much more than seeing her working on her Mac coming out with the next big idea.

Thinking back, I have been under my sister’s influence and have started changing my mindset toward awkward activities unknowingly. However, she thinks that those activities are just things she must do or experience to improve her designs. Living with her exposes me to a wide variety of surprises, some of them make me laugh while some make me mad.

I would go home one day and see my sister wrapped with newspaper on her joints just to experience being a handicapped. I would also wake up one day and see the Swiffer Wet Jet we had being decomposed because she wanted to know its parts. Our kitchen would be stocked with different kinds of scrub sponges and our toilets with different kinds of cleaning cloths just because she wanted to know which one works best.

It is true that sometimes she brings back her own designs that we can actually use, but they are minimal.

I don’t know how people usually think of having a product designer in their family, but I certainly don’t think it is as cool as it seems when you live with one. After all, aren’t things always different from what we think they are?

#com317 #CPPCOM317

won't let bad timing doom my work

Of course, writing an article needs the basic writing skills and an AP style book. However, finishing this field assignment made me realize that investing a good amount of time for the interview is necessary. It was not that I needed to interview a lot of people; it was that I needed to reach out for possible interviewees step by step, and it consumed more time than I had expected.

My article is about exchange students. It was not hard for me to reach and interview the Study Abroad/Exchange Coordinator in my school since his contact information is put online. The hardest part was to reach out for the exchange students. I did not expect myself to spend so many times just to find them. They are just so scarce. I would have been in a better shape if I attended their regular meeting the Thursday before, but I was in a bad shape of going to school as I had to visit the doctor for my allergy. Thinking back, if I had just attended the meeting first and visited the doctor the next day, it would have been relaxing in the past few days.

Those were regrets that could not change anything. So I started to find people that may know those exchange students. I first contracted for the Exchange Coordinator and he was willing to offer me help. I knew that was not enough for my article, so I started making connections though the people I know. I was lucky to have a friend working in the International Office, who was able to help me in reaching my possible interviewees. Although it sounds like everything went fluently, I was worried for over a week because none of my sources had gotten back to me. I was lucky that both of them replied me with good news afterward. I finally found three very helpful German exchange students who were willing to be interviewed. It turned out that both of my sources referred me back to the same group of German students.

Told you. Exchange students are scarce.

#cppcom317 #com317

"be dead," said assignments.

Seeing this photo in the busiest week of the quarter makes you feel something. This is, in fact, so true!

I do not like complaining about classes since doing so can only make me realize how bad things truly are, but the flame of anger is burning inside me and slowing down my work efficiency. Therefore, I am here to release my anger and hopefully this will stop the voice in my brain from telling me how I should be relaxing now instead of sitting in front of the computer. I have found pretty much all the classes I took and am taking having the same issue throughout my college/university life: things never go as scheduled.

Just like the 12 quarters I had before, I was hoping (praying wholeheartedly to be exact) that everything go as scheduled, thinking to myself that not having a week with everything important cramped together can slightly ease my hatred toward the messy schedule.

But school has, once again, failed me on this.

As scheduled, I would have finished my midterms last week, submitted my field assignment and another big assignment yesterday, working on a Photoshop project now and would be brainstorming/writing my next blog post while sipping coffee sometime this weekend. However, as time went by, the planned due dates were changed again and again, new assignments filled in eating up my available time, and now I am left with everything listed above all due in this week. All aside from sipping coffee!

You may now want to question me: when assignments are being postponed, you have more time to work on them and submit a better assignment, so you should not be complaining at all. To answer this as straight forward as I can: we are not living in Utopia. The idea of perfect time management is a simple concept and almost everyone understands it, but most people, including me, just don’t have that in them to make use of the available time bettering their assignments. Only people in Utopia, I believe, have the secret gene that makes them hardworking enough to put extra time in working on assignments.

It is true that I may just have wasted your five minutes complaining about things I should not be complaining about, but I do not necessarily have the time to apologize since by the time you finished reading this, I should be drown in the dreadful world of assignment.

#com317 #CPPCOM317 #assignment

future possibilities: not something you should be concerned of

There is a simple concept of doing things to me: if you want something, you start doing it, then you reach your goal (or not). However, I have come to realize that this simple concept is often being complicated. There are no perfect plans of doing things. People can think of how to do it, but wanting a perfect plan oftentimes pull them back from doing anything. They often end up thinking too much, or being afraid to make the move than actually start doing anything.

Lately, my friend was concerned about whether she should to do grad school or not. I understood her concerns, but she had started annoying me of being afraid to make a choice that she may regret. To me, put aside all the practical concerns of money and time, there should be nothing holding her back from doing what she wants to do. However, a girl being a girl, she is afraid of choosing a major that she likes it now, but may find it boring then regret of choosing such major in the future.

It pushed my button of insanity.

I had always been a very good listener to her, but I could not help start fighting back. I understand there are always a few things to think over before making a decision, but thinking of the future possibilities is just not necessary. In my friend’s case, all that matters is what she wants now. Future has too many possibilities that she can actually care about (or even try to control). Also, there are always things we like and dislike about one thing. We may like something now, then we can find out the bad side of it and change our perception a bit, but there is no right or wrong in doing one thing, nor should anyone regret making their decisions. Don’t put yourself in ten years from now. All you need to think about is the present time.

After all, doing something is way better than doing nothing at all.

#com317 #CPPCOM317

Runway Event at Ontario Mills

This week has not been as bad as I expected it to be. I am guessing it is going to be the weekend that stresses me out because I have two huge midterms next week. My communication classes are not that difficult. But there is still a lot of information I have to consume in order to do well. After this upcoming week, I will feel relieved until finals come into play.

I really do not know what to write about for this blog because today has been pretty busy. I have to edit a video that covered a runway event. I guess I can talk about that because it ended up being very interesting. GiulianaRancic was hosting a runway event for young models that were showing off outfits that were going to be in this winter. Rancic was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She has been an inspiration for many women because she is very down to earth and has shown her dedication towards finding a cure for breast cancer by creating many fundraisers to help out for research.

During the event, I was able to set up the camera very close to the runway. The film team actually let me get some footage from the center of after the show ended. I was able to capture around 30 minutes of footage, including interviews, models and scenery. I did not know what to expect from the event because I have never been to a fashion show. But it ended up being a lot of fun. I was able to get footage of Rancic. But my partner and I were not able to get an interview with her because she ended up leaving right after the show ended. Luckily, we only waited less than ten minutes to hear the news of her not coming out for pictures or interviews.

#com317 #dougspoon

amanda todd: the world that doesn't care

Never had I truly thought about the problem of bullying. The high school I attended seldom has such problem. Of course, seldom doesn’t mean that was none.

Yesterday when I was surfing on Facebook as usual, I saw my friend liked a page called “R.I.P. Amada Todd.”

At that moment, I thought it was just another page of a girl who was sick yet she had faced life bravely before she died. I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but I still clicked into that page to have a look.

I was stunned when I saw the video of her explaining how her life was in a mess just because of one mistake on the internet.

This is just wrong. Everyone makes mistake somewhere in their lives: they correct it, others accept it or grow tired of it, and they movie on.

Apparently, this simple concept just doesn’t work on the internet or children nowadays. It is just like when a mistake is being made, someone can just decide that he or she wants you to be dead, and it can somehow works out. Some may gradually become bored of it and leave you alone, but at the same time there are more people who find it interesting and do the same thing to you.

Of course I also agree with some people saying that she may not have tried hard enough to ignore it or move on, but she was just a kid after all. She was naïve when she did what she did, but then she learnt her lesson and corrected her mistake (even though it is impossible to take down the photo on the net), but people just don’t forgive.

There were comments saying that people die every day, we don’t care how people die in the third world, so there is no reason we should care about this one. I know there is not much we can do to the people in third world, we donate sometimes, but it is just impossible to help all of them. But she, Amanda Todd, is not someone who committed suicide; she is a reflection of what is happening nowadays. When such horrible thing can happen to her, it means that it is happening to many other people and people you love may be the next one.

It may seem that I realized a lot of things watching the video, but all I could do was to like the page. I would have written a comment or shared the video, but nothing I do now can change the fact that people don’t care what he or she does can kill someone inside out.

#CPPCOM317 #com317

stop finding reasons for yourself to do things. you don't need one.

Bored of doing my assignments, I walked away from my working desk and stood in front of my bookshelf. Looking at all the different things I put on it, a book caught my attention. There are things if you don’t do now, you’ll never do them. Content of the book is, obviously, a list of things that people usually don’t do because they can’t find the reason of doing them.

I went across some interesting points while I was reading it: “put a joke book beside the toilet”, “write a letter for your future children”, and “find a friend that you lose contact with”; there were also some that put me in deep thoughts: “when was the last time you hold your mother’s hand” and “have a walk with your dad”.

The last two points had definitely stunned me at first, and as I kept reading the paragraphs underneath, I felt that I was the worst daughter ever: Living our busy lives, we always forget or ignore things we ought to remember and pay attention to. As grownups, we are always overwhelmed with works we need to do and decisions we ought to make, but how many of us actually stop for a while and hold the wrinkled hands that raised us and gave us warmth as we needed them?

Not to mention when was the last time I hold my mother’s hand and had a walk with my dad, I found myself asking “when was the last time I have a conversation with my parents that last more than 10 minutes?”

Three months ago.

Thinking back those three months, I had had times when I was busy studying for the upcoming exam, working on the assignment that was due the next day; there were also times when I was bored doing nothing and was too crazy forcing my friend to drink the next shot.

Why didn’t I call them? Because I didn’t find myself reasons I should call them? Why do I even need a single reason to call them?

Exactly. I don’t need a reason to call them, or if I need one: they are my parents.

I then put down the book, picked up my phone and dialed the number that echoed in my head.