Durdane of Istanbul!

Information

Durdane is a woman who lives in the city of Istanbul, which is the capital city of Turkey.

She lives alone in a small apartment building.

Her 7 siblings live in Germany.

Her parents went to Germany when Durdane was young and died very early there. They were buried in Istanbul again

In her house, there are lots of stuffs by which she can recall her childhood, such as plates, kettle, etc.

Her apartment building is not completely finished yet, since no buyer wants to pay for it. Even though Istanbul is located upon an active fault line, the apartment is not earthquake-proof.

When she was young, she lived in a small house, with 10 people in it. There was electricity in her house, but there was no WATER in her house. People in Istanbul started apartmentization by building one floor themselves.


Feeling

 

     The appearance of Istanbul in the Highrise video was like the  80s of Korean Society. In the 80s of Korea, the life of common people were not able to maintain a prosperous life. Korea was still a developing country at that period, so the welfare and the quality of the life was ignored to achieve more economic devleopment. The life of public was not a pleasant one. There weren't many families which could have enough water, food and electricity in their houses. The houses of them were not well constructed, too. They were temporal buildings which were primarily focused on a temporary habitation. It lacked basic supply of electricity and water. Personal hygiene wasn't even considered important to the people at that time. What they focused on was to live everyday life, eating three meals a day and sleep in a warm blanket. Most of the people couldn't eat more than 2 meals a day, and even the food was not nutritious. Water they had to bring from common well or stream was not clean, since all the houseworks were done there. However Koreans bore all the ordeals and achieved a great success.

     When I think of my hometown, Mokpo, I sometimes come up with the place where there are many illegal temporary buildings. It is located on the slope of a mountain. There aren't many facilities near there and not many people even go through there. People living there mostly are so poor that their income is far below the poverty line. It is also said that the government of Mokpo has decided to get rid of the village since they have to build new apartment buildings to provide wealthier citizens with more houses. Since those temporary
houses are illegal, the government won't pay them much money. Residents would fight against the city for their life, however, the odd is not favorable for them.

     Istanbul is a city where 80s and modern Korean societies coexist. Istanbul is a city which is developing but cannot be developed. Mokpo is a developed city but is not developing. What I want to focus on my Highrise essay is the difference and the similarity of Mokpo and Istanbul.

About Satire!!

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructivesocial criticism, using wit as a weapon.                                       

                                                                                

                                                                                           from Wikipedia

There was a big earthquake in Japan on March 11th. The magnitude of th earthquake was 9.0, which is the sixth largest earthquake that has ever been measured. It was a total disaster. Several hundred thousands of people lost their home, more than 20 thousand people were dead and about 30 thousand people were lost. 

Korea, as the closest nation, tried to help Japan as much as possible. Korean people voluntarily gathered money and provided Japan with diverse helps such as medical care, food support and rescuing. However, Japanese government betrayed the help. Japanese government kept claiming Dokdo, the island located in East Sea, which definitely infuriated Koreans. 

The picture above is a satirical cartoon of which the background is showing the imperialism that is left in Japan and describes Japan as a nation that is engaged in diverse territorial conflicts. For satire, I am going to write about the hypocrisy and insincerity of Japan.

Chain Writing-started by Youngwook+Story within a story

     I am now in GLPS(Global Leadership Program for Students) camp as a TA for summer. I am in the 1st grade in college and I worked in the camp to earn money for my flight fee.     
     Today was a hard they for me, since I had to check and evaluate 30 plus essays. After doing all the works, I came back to my room and started writing my Cyworld diary. Since I wanted to feel better, I opened my drawer and took out a bottle of beer. After drinking some of the beer, I felt too much depressed and suddenly came up with an idea about how can I achieve success. I started writing..........


      Success is something we achieve. Some people claim that the only thing we need for success is luck. It's true that we need some luck to complete our success, but we need more than that.The most important thing we need is passion. With passion, we can keep working when we face hardships. History gives examples of those who had great amounts of passion, for instance, Napoleon, in his urge and passion to conquer the cast land of Russia, ventured on an expedition which eventually led him to his death, In the Chinese tales of the Three nations, numerous characters venture on actions led by their passions and end up in mortal peril.


     Then, is passion really a good thing? Well, similar to many things in the world, it depends. passion can be a good fuel when people want to achieve something. However, if the person is so enthusiastic that the passion blinds one's rational thinking, then that person will act ruthlessly solely based on his or her instinct. In that case, something terrible can happen. The perfect example can be German's in World War II. At that time, Germans had excessive passion to make a powerful country, so they chased Hitler as their leader, and that brought a terrible result.


     However, excessive passion of Germans sometimes led positive results. Their passion for beer made German beer as one of the finest beer in the world. But I have never had a chance to drink German beer. Have you? You should one day.


     When it comes to a topic of beer, I always think of two Companies: Heineken and Asahi. Those two firms are two major beer-making companies that are really famous worldwide, and they also are my favorite companies. I once got a chance to taste beer of those 2 companies. At first, I thought they were simply the same. However, there was a slight difference in two beers. I preferred Heineken to Asahi for its freshness.


     Anyway, the most important thing you should know is that success can only be achieved when your luck and passion are combined. Though excessive passion and enthusiasm can lead to side effects, still passion is needed to achieve success. There is an old saying "Luck only comes to those who try their best." Devote yourself into something that you desire. Put your all efforts into what you want. That's how you can make a success.

I have a dream-2nd draft

           When I went to middle school, I had a fantasy that I would become a totally different person with abundant knowledge and talent if I entered Korean Minjok Leadership Academy, which is one of the best high schools in Korea. Maybe that’s the reason why I always kept studying so hard. But know that I'm actually here, the truth, in fact, is far different from what I , and most of society, expects it to be. KMLA is as same as other school. Students suffer from the burden of education, but still enjoy playing with friends and getting through the daily routine. The only difference is that the school certainly has a very good reputation among Korean society.

             Unlike the reality that all the students of so called specialized schools are doing the same thing as the students are doing in normal schools, people of our society, especially the students and their parents, certainly have a bias upon selective school system. They believe that only the children of  affluent family can go to those special schools since the cost of education, they think that they should spend, to make students reach certain level of scholastic achievement is high. Furthermore, they think that just entering to those schools will guarantee the success of their life.  

     Last semester, I had a chance to go to a small middle school in the town near my school to provide the students with educational help. The girl I had to teach was 15-year-old girl who had interest in studying. She was friendly to people whom she'd never met before, always behaved brightly; she treated me as if I were her true friend. 

    After few minutes of teaching, I asked her the reason why she takes the after-school education program, and the answer for that reckless question was so shocking to me. The bright and lively girl said to me that she couldn't keep studying in her house because she had to do the housework and take care of her younger brother before her mom came home. If she didn't take the class, she'd miss opportunities to hopefully study in schools like KMLA-the place, she believed could make her life change. 

          After listening to that, I couldn’t keep teaching her due to the shock she gave me. I knew that some overly eager parents wanted their children to go to so-called prestigious schools because they thought that it could make their child’s life better, but hearing the same idea from a girl who lives in the  countryside in poor family environment made me think of how our society should be.

             Social mobility, which is a term referring to the degree to which an individual's or group's status is able to change in terms of position in the social hierarchy, was once much more conceivable in Korean society. It was possible for common people to succeed in any field of our society such as law, finance, politics, and economy. As Korean society developed so rapidly, however, the social mobility decreased at such a rapid speed. In the 1980s, people from lower society could succeed by studying hard and showing their own ability. In current society, it is almost impossible for poor people to have their child receive proper and sufficient education, since the cost of has dramatically increased. Furthermore, nepotism, a term referring to favoritism granted to relatives or friends regardless of merit, prevails far too strongly in our society. It forbids the unprivileged from achieving high positions based on their abilities, and I think it should be abolished. For these reasons, I've sadly become skeptical of Korean society

      In KMLA school motto, there is a phrase which says, “Let us study not for the sake of personal advance, but for the sake of learning itself. Let us not choose a career in thoughts of personal gain, but choose a career based on talents and aptitude.” If anyone hears this motto, they will think it is so ideal; that if it is kept, that the ultimate goal of public education can then be accomplished. Nevertheless, it is obvious that domestic field students want to go to Seoul National University because it’s the most prestigious university in Korea. Likewise, international field students want to go to so-called HYPS(Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford) because they think those schools can guarantee their success. I ask myself why this is the case.

 Is it because people from such schools primarily succeed and preferentially provide favors to their juniors, which will prohibit fair competition. Due to this kind of culture, there are some victims who are victimized not because they are "inferior" - but because they haven’t had the same level of from their parents. By definition, is this not unjust?

             Jooyoung Jung, the founder of Hyundai Group, went to elementary school only. Daejoong Kim, the 15^th president of Korea, and the first and only Korean recipient of the Noble Peace Prize, had gone to commercial high school and hadn’t graduated from any university. The question raised is: could they meet today's new standards of success?

     Myself, and those like me, are fortunate to be on the chosen path. I do believe that it is our duty to share what we have, what we enjoy, what think about what we potentially squander.  I also regret not being responsible of all the privileges I enjoy just because I was born in a family where I can do what I want to do. I think that it's ours, and my duty to make this society fair, so that all the people as well as the girl I mentioned before can achieve their dreams not being thwarted by some obstacles they didn't deserve. I have a dream that one day, on the high summit of Nam Mountain, the sons of common people and the sons of the "haves" will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

Essay posting

     When I see my younger relatives, they sometimes enjoy making fun of small creatures near them. They throw stones at the birds, throw bugs into the sky, and even simply kill them. It is very hard for adults to teach them not to belittle the preciousness of life. Since they just can't understand what animals will feel if attacked and tortured. In fact, I even don't yet understand perfectly what the value of life is.
     In the film "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring", there's a boy living with a monk in a small temple located in the middle of a lake. One day, when playing in the mountain, the boy came up with a idea that it would be fun to tie animals with stone. He actually tied a fish, a frog and a snake with stone so that the animals couldn't move their body freely. The monk, who is like a father of that boy, was watching all the misdemeanors the boy had done. So, the monk, with the idea of teaching the boy a lesson, did exactly same thing to the boy while he was sleeping. The boy woke up in the morning and found himself tied up. He begged to the monk to free him, but the monk replied to him that he will untie him if he untie all the animals which he bounded yesterday. The boy went to the mountain again to free the animals, however, he could have saved the frog only.
     When I was watching the film, the memory of my childhood suddenly haunted. The memory of seeing my friends dropping a baby chicken from the roof of a high apartment building. Although what I was a short moment of falling, I was really shocked at the moment of sudden elimination of a life. I felt uncomfortable at the fact the I might also have done the very same thing that my friends did. Just like the boy in the movie, I cried alone in the room after watching the scenery of the death regretting all my mistakes. The lesson of the experience was that the value of life is the most sacred thing, so it cannot be invaded in whatever situation. Also, I think that the monk's lesson to the boy isn't limited only to the nature, but also related to the human society. The lesson I found from the monk is that since all entities in the nature are all same in their preciousness, nobody can torment or torture others just because of the difference of physical power.
     It is impossible for humans to measure the value of life due to its enormousness, so it's meaningless to compare it. I hope that all the people in the world figure out that our duty as humans, who can think wisely and make wise decisions, is to fully understand the worthiness of life and to respect all other creatures in the nature and the society with their deepest hearts.

30 things that you should know about me!

1. I love eating chocolate


2. I love listening to music


3. I want to have a pet but I cannot have one


4. I love playing the violin.


5. I'm pretty talkative


6. I was born in mokpo.


7. I love French


8. I want to be a lawyer in the future


9. I have an older brother


10. My older brother and I have a same birthday.


11. I love singing but not good at it.


12. My favorite pop artist is Beyonce


13. I like writing in Korean and I think I'm a little good at it


14. My favorite subject is Chemistry and P.E


15. I'm not good at English.


16. I have been to Sierra Leone for volunteer work


17. I love teaching children.


18. I don't play computer game since I'm not good at it.


19. Reading news paper every morning was once my habit.


20. I used to be a person always excited.


21. I love online chatting with my friends


22. I like to plan for a trip abroad and are planning for a trip to Europe.


23. I hate going to Kendo class every morning.


24. My favorite teachers in KMLA are 정선희 tr and Mr. Garrioch.


25. I like playing badminton


26. Watching movies is my hobby


27. I want to live in Swiss after I retire.


28. I think that the most important virtue that should be in between friends is to be honest and tell everything what he or she is concerning about.


29. I love doing Facebook since I can have chances to meet my seniors, friends and juniors.


30. What I mostly like in my school is that I can compete, cooperate, play and enjoy our life.

Diamante Poem

This is my Diamant Poems

Morning Exercise

Cold, Tiring

Sleeping, Moving, Sweating

kendo, Taekwondo, Stab, Punch

Piercing, Hitting, Shooting

Bleeding, Painful

Killing

Math

Difficult, Abstruse

Thinking, Calculating, Solving

Equations, Figures, Strategy, Pokerface 

Faking, Selecting, Competing

Fun, Addictive

Game