The Lottery – Summary & Thoughts

The Lottery is a short story written by Shirley Jackson in 1948. It's about a tradition of a village to draw a lottery every June for the villagers. So, the head of the family chose the paper from the black box kept by a man named Joe Summers. It turned out the family who won was the Hutchinsons, a family consisting of Bill, Tessie, and their three children. Each of them drew a paper again from the sacred black box. Tessie got the paper with black dot in the middle, which meant she won. The villagers took stones and began throwing them at her until the sacrifice died.

For me, the Lottery is a weird short story, because I still don't understand why people are willing to do the stoning only for sacrifice for good crops. But the story is well-written with a lot of descriptive words, making the story interesting to read.

War Horse Movie Review

‘War Horse’ is a movie based on the novel with the same name by Michael Morpurgo. Steven Spielberg, an Oscar winning director, directs the movie. The characters include Joey, a miraculous horse, Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine), a young, innocent boy from Devon, and Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan), Albert’s father. In the beginning of the movie, their tense relationship causes Albert and his father to have a lot of disagreements. This movie is set in World War I and is a family movie.

            The film begins with a young boy witnessing a half-thoroughbred foal being born on a neighboring farm. The foal grows into a strong, remarkable colt and lives in the farm unbroken-in until a man brings him to an auction, where Ted Narracott, a drunken veteran from the Boer war, buys the colt. His son, Albert or Albie, feels so excited about the new horse, but his wife, Rose, is not pleased because they need a plough horse. Albie names the horse Joey. But the Narracott family needs to pay debt, so when the war comes, Ted decides to sell Joey to Captain James Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston), a gentle captain who is well respected by his comrades. From that point, Joey goes in the war between England, France and Germany. After what happened to Joey, will he and Albie meet once more?

            There are many sound effects included in this movie, which add to the atmosphere of war, such as galloping horses and whizzing bullets. Gary Rydstorm, an Oscar winning sound designer, recorded different sounds with several techniques to make dazzling sound effects. Different sound effects can make a movie very authentic. The setting is also perfect; it creates believable images because the places in the scenes are true and seem very real. In the movie, the places are England, France and Germany, which were involved in World War I. Between England and Germany territories lies no man’s land, and it’s very authentic to the eyes of the audience because it looks very hopeless and lifeless; it’s full of barbed wires that can cut people with no mercy.

            This epic movie will change the way you see war. Most people think that the cause of war is because one country is trying to invade other countries, so that country is bad, but after you watch this movie, you will  understand the insightful message delivered throughout the movie; the true reason behind a war. So don’t miss it!

Reflection – Argumentative Essay & Debates

This unit, I learned about argumentative essay and debate. For argumentative essay, I learned about topic sentence, format, thesis statement, APA referencing, introduction and counter arguments. For topic sentence, we brainstormed the topics together. I chose public transportation issue because it’s a very common problem in Jakarta but it’s also infuriating. I think I have used the correct format, which was either pro-pro-cons or cons-cons-pro. I used pro-pro-cons format and I used it clearly so my essay was well structured. For the thesis statement, I put it in the last sentence of introduction. My thesis statement was clear and straight to the point because it consisted of the claim followed by two supporting reasons. I didn’t do the APA referencing well. Although I have followed the structure of the APA referencing, I didn’t put the source on a separate page. For the next assignments, I will do the APA referencing correctly by following the structure and putting the source on a different page. For the introduction, I put the background information of what the essay about by giving a brief explanation about the real condition in real life according to the topic chosen. For counter arguments, I disproved the cons side, not agreed with them.

           

            In the debate, I was in the affirmative side of “will globalization lead to a better future”. I was the third speaker in my group, with Kein being the first, Idham the second and Shania became the rebuttal of the group. Our arguments were supporting the positive side of globalization. My argument was about the positive impact of globalization on economy. I think I have stated my argument expressively but I need to work on the arguments. I could have done better if I included the statistics of economic growth in Indonesia and other facts for the argument. And also, I have to improve the collaboration in the group.

Chief Report: "Slip or Trip?"

To the honorable Chief

Ms Megan Hoddinott

On the 12th of August, 1973, we received a call from a woman named Mrs Queenie Volupides. She called us to report her husband, Mr Arthur Volupides’ possible death. We arrived at around 2 a.m.

When we arrived at the scene, Mrs Volupides was standing next to her husband’s body. We entered her house and proceeded with the investigation. We saw Mr Volupides lying on his back on the floor, his feet on the stairs, facing up, and the back of his head was on the carpet, facing up as well. The next thing we noticed was that the banister is on his left side going down the stairs, and he is holding his glass in his left hand as well. The glass wasn’t broken. At the time, we noticed that there were no emergency respondents present. The carpet and the ornaments by the staircase have not been disturbed. And lastly, there was a frying pan, on the stove, cooking.

We had a short interrogation with Mrs Volupides. She admitted that she had an argument with her husband, and ran out to the country club, where a party was going on. She left the country club shortly before one in the morning, and invited a few friends to follow her home and have one more drink.  They got to the Volupides house about ten minutes after Mrs Volupides, where she greeted them and said, “Something terrible happened.  Arthur slipped and fell on the stairs.  He was coming down for another drink-he still had the glass in his hand-and I think he’s dead.  Oh, my God-what shall I do?” We came with Mrs Volupides to the hospital to have the victim autopsied. The autopsy conducted later concluded that Arthur died from a wound on the head and confirmed that he’d been drunk.

We later investigated the evidences and compared them with Mrs Volupides’ testimony. First of all, Mrs Volupides said that her husband fell on the way down to get another drink, and he still had the glass in his hand. However, the glass wasn’t broken. As a rule, when people fall downstairs usually they will let go objects they’re holding and it will be broken, especially some kind of glasswares. The glass was in Mr Volupides’ left hand where the banister is also in Mr Volupides’ left side going down. We found this odd because usually, people hold the banister while going down the stairs. Next, the position of Mr Volupides’ body was peculiar. Mrs Volupides said that his husband slipped and fell down the stairs. We found this odd, because people usually fall face first, but Mr Volupides’ face was facing up. We also found it odd that someone’s cooking during that hour, because usually people cook at reasonable time, such as for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We also noticed how there were no emergency respondents present. Usually, when people noticed someone unconscious, they would immediately call for an ambulance. The last thing that seemed odd was that the carpet on the stairs and the items on the wall remained undisturbed. When people slip downstairs, the staples holding the carpet will be detached due to the force given by feet as they try to stop falling. The same rule applies to the items on the wall. Some of the objects should have fallen or changed in position because people usually try to stop themselves from falling by seizing the nearest object, in this case, ornaments on the wall, such as the lamps, mirrors, and candle stands.

With evidences unsupporting Mrs Volupides’ testimony, we concluded that she was lying. We recommend further and deeper interrogation session with Mrs Volupides, informing her that her claims are controversial towards our evidence. Therefore, we need to taker her into custody on suspicion of manslaughter. This is what we think might have happened based on the evidences: Mrs Volupides had a fight with her husband while they were planning to go out together, because her husband got drunk. Mr Volupides tried to hurt her due to his angry, drunk state, so she hit her husband with a frying pan in defense. Then, she went to the club because she felt guilty. There, she thought of ways to cover for her crime. After coming up with a plan, she went home to initiate the plan. She set it up to look like he fell, and used the frying pan to cook to get rid of traces of blood. Then, she called her friends so that she would have some people who support her alibi.

What I Have Learned

In this unit, I learned about blogging. Blogging could be really fun for those who are creative, but it could be boring too. Honestly, for me, blogging is pretty boring because when you have zero idea about what to post it could be really exasperating, because you want your blog to be up-to-date or your followers will be decreased because they think you are inactive and will not post other things. But, I really like to choose the templates to make my blog interesting and some widgets that help enhancing the look of the blog. It really depends on your creativity anyway. 

By blogging, I knew other new information, expanding my connection to others. We can comment on the posts and make a useful conversation, express our voice or opinions to the world by posts from our own blog. For the first comment, it would be much better if we post a quality comment, which includes compliment, additional information, relate with the topic in the post, ask a question and finally proofreading your own comment! It will help us to understand more of the post and we could get online friends that are also interested in our comments.

Posts on blogs are actually viral, so everyone who has the connection can easily know read our thoughts and it’d be spread to the whole world. The problem is it would be really dangerous for us if our true identity such as full name, address or telephone number are given in our blog. There's an incident happens when a girl actually posted her self portraits and gadgets and she thoughtlessly wrote her full address, so one day someone broke into her house and stole all her gadgets. That's why we have to monitor our blog recently. This way, it also helps us to make sure that no one will comment or do bad things to us through our blog or information posted.

Well actually, blogging is only a way to share new information to others. In the past, newspapers and magazines are used to deliver facts and information, but now it all goes digitally through the Internet. From tips and tricks, facts, opinions and etc., we can easily spot them in Internet. Websites are similar to blogs, but the difference is blogs are not that accurate because most bloggers post unapproved information or things we don't know the truth. Probably in ten years, people are still using blogs as tools to deliver information and stuffs, but not as much as these days. People could effortlessly spread all information  and media (photos, videos, music, files, etc.) through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, or MySpace or sending files through websites like sendspace or mediafire. These examples do not have complicated procedure to sign up (not as complicated as making blogs) and the templates used in those media actually have smaller size of templates so when the connection is slow, they upload faster than in our blogs. They do have limitations, because they templates used do not show our creativity, since we couldn't add widgets or changing the cursor of our own page.

I could see my blog is actually good, with nice templates and various posts and also I voice my thoughts, but actually I do want to have a specific theme or topic for the blog, because not all people really fond to random posts. And that way, we could be more organized in managing our blogs. And also I have to improve my grammar A LOT and build a wider vocabulary to write my posts. I should cite the sources where I got the information or pictures or at least giving them credits, which I didn't do in all of my posts and try to comment more in others' blogs and be more active. I think that will be the way to improve my blogging skills.

I don't spend but I have

Hey guys~! In this post I'm going to tell you how to save money. Yes, I'm suggesting you not to spend your money on unnecessary things such as bracelet, cute accessories, etc., but at the same time you CAN have it! You can own it. And presumably, you can gain something from it. What is it? It's Do-It-Yourself, abbreviated as DIY. From nothing into something. From used things into new things. It actually depends on your own creativity.

Here are some great examples of DIY!

Want a stylish bracelet? Try to turn old zipper into this kind of cool bracelet.

From a raw , used tennis ball into holding device. You can use this
cute little thing and maybe, gain some money!

Save trees. Save trees. Heard that a lot? Instead of wasting more papers
from used magazine, why don't make a beautiful bag like this?

Tick-tock-tick-tock. The clock keeps ticking, and you may reuse
these used discs into some cool clocks!

Be the famous painter Pablo Picasso! Repaint old clothes
into decorating paint to beautify your wall of fame.

I WANT MORE DOLLS~ sure you can, 

Movie Review #1: Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

-sorry, this poster is in Spanish version-

-The Movie Trailer-

Hey~! I'm sure most of you have watched this movie, starring the most adorable and handsome guy ever lived in universe (girls, scream!), Logan Lerman and his beautiful co-star, Alexandra Daddario. The last two weeks, I watched Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, a movie adaption based on the second book of Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, which has the same title. This film is the sequel to Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (I've watched that too ;)).

Generally, the story begins with the everyday activities that demigods do in a camp called Camp-Half Blood; competitions, trainings and stuffs, until one day the barrier that protects the camp is destroyed and a Colchis bull attacks the campers. They soon realize Thalia's tree, which has been protecting them from monsters and other sinister creatures, is poisoned. And so a quest is made to find the remedy for the tree. You could guess what happens next. 

The movie itself is actually rather invigorating, with cool sound effects, music and advanced Computer-generated Imaginary (CGI). But for me, the story plot is kind of weird, because it's quite different with the original story (except for the MAIN characters). And I think the director cut too many action-packed scenes from the book. Well, it is understood they want to make the movie less longer, but I don't agree if they 'edit' almost all. I mean, couldn't they depict every single motion and notion of the characters and places in clarity? To be honest, I didn't really enjoy it. But for my parents, especially my dad, he thinks the movie was really cool and suitable for my age so he recommends my sister to start reading the same novel I did. In the end, I reflect that you'd better WATCH the movie first before getting into disappointments after you read the book. 

Well, I did stay inside the cinema for listen to the credit song. I'll say the song really gives the real atmosphere. Here is the soundtrack:

The title is 'To Feel Alive' by IAMEVE. I have to acknowledge her soft, beautiful voice kind of inspires me, driving me deep into the world of imagination.

That's it! Hope you guys enjoy reading this review. P.S. I didn't say the movie was bad, it was just -sigh- different.

Please comment below~

"You shall sail the ship with warriors of bone

You shall find what you seek and make it your own

But despair for your life entombed within stone

And fail without friends, to fly home alone"

–The Prophecy