Julie and Julia is a blog turned into a book turned into a film. The story revloves around cooking and blogging. It starts when Julie Powell, an office cubicle worker gets tired of her job and experience an identity crsis. She embarked on a Julie/Julia project as a mean to bring some colour back to her life. Cooking has always been her passion, hence she decided to blog on the process of her learning journey for every dish she picks up from a famous cookbook published by Julia Child.
From the film, it is evident that Julie idolizes Julia and percieves her to be a perfect and mystical figure. In comparison, Julie is seemingly a total opposite of Julia. To Julie's mother, her daughter is merely a self-centered blogger who is too absorbed in her own impossible-to-complete project and neglects the other aspects of her life.
Things were rough during the initial stage of Julie Powell's mission, however, she managed to attract a whole lot of readers after a while and in my opinion, her primary ingredient was her good writing. She spills her innermost thoughts and feelings and links them to the dishes that she was learning to cook. Slowly and gradually, she developed a loyal readership. In Julie's case, blogging proved to be a good way for her to express herself. It became a platform for her to organize her thoughts and build up her self-esteem. By winning a group of audience who appreciates her, it boost her confidence and ascertain her self-worth. Sadly, Julie got too obsessed with her challenge and her husband finally lost his temper and walked away.
This movie can easily be related to writing as it shows the power of writing to inspire and change lives. Julia's famous recipies could reach out to a wider group of audience with the help of her book's publication. Similiarly, blog writing changed Julie's life. There was not much anonymity in Julie's blog as she was pretty self-disclosing with her posts. However, it will not do good if she did publish every single detail of her life story online. She made a wise decision by not blogging about the tiffs she had with her husband he would be displeased knowing that she announces their problems to everyone.
This leaves me with a nagging feeling towards blogging. How is one to decide the amount of information to disclose then? If bloggers are completely honest in a blog, they would place themselves in a dangerous position as their whole identity is literally exposed to the whole wide world. Besides, people who knows the blogger personally may be upset if the blogger mentions their interaction ever too often in details. On the other hand, by hiding too much information, the blog seems insincere and impersonal. A whole list of positives and negatives can easily be link to the idea of blogging. But for now, to cut things short, what I find most inspiring is the way Julie managed to find her personal writing voice and interact with her readers in a virtual world of blogging.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Dispute...
Recently, I had a dispute with a team member whilst doing a group project. There were some heated exchange and a short period of time where we ignored each other. However, after cooling down, I realized the root of our problem. It all boils down to communication breakdown. Trouble brewed from miscommunication.
We were doing a project in a group of four. We worked hard doing the report and power point slides for the presentation. Work was divided equally among us and things went on smoothly. However, nearing the presentation day, one of our group members had an eye infection. She texted us saying that she may not be presenting because eye infection is contagious and did not want to infect us. Seeing that she mentioned the word ‘may’, we assumed that she will update us on her final decision. In this case, it is evident that symbols are ambiguous for we eventually learnt that she meant it as absolutely not presenting, while we understood it as just a possibility that she is not presenting.
Moreover, from our misunderstanding, I have also fully understood what it meant by meanings are contextual and that meanings are in people, not in words. When my team member updated us on her condition, she stated that she wanted to come to school but did not want to go ahead with the presentation. I was bewildered as I did not see the rationale of coming to school but not present on the actual day for the moment she steps out of house, there is already the possibility of infecting others. She insisted that it was for our good that she comes to school but not do the presentation because by presenting, she will infect the audience. Apparently we did not see eye to eye on this aspect and misunderstandings occurred. On hindsight, we could have resolved this by using extensional orientations instead of intensional orientation. As we interpreted each others’ words based on what’s inside of us, there were assumptions about meaning.
Reflecting on myself, I admit I did not engage in both feedback and feedforward. Firstly, I did not confirm if she was indeed coming to school or not, of if she was going to be presenting whatsoever. I did not make the effort to do the last clarification and get feedback from her. Secondly, I did not feedforward, anticipate her reactions and understand her feelings when I took it upon myself and decide to divide her parts to us, the remaining three members.
Besides, after we went ahead with the presentation without her, we resented the fact that she threw her tantrum on us when it was clearly her fault for not confirming with us or not making sense with her reasons. There we went on and on about saying how irresponsible and unreasonable she was. However, we failed to use indexes. We did not take into consideration the times where she responsibly handled situations and completed her work to perfection.
All in all, just a single dispute between my team member and I showed that misunderstandings do occur if we make assumption about the things we hear from others and it is important that we learn to prevent them rather than trying to find redemptions when things happen.
We were doing a project in a group of four. We worked hard doing the report and power point slides for the presentation. Work was divided equally among us and things went on smoothly. However, nearing the presentation day, one of our group members had an eye infection. She texted us saying that she may not be presenting because eye infection is contagious and did not want to infect us. Seeing that she mentioned the word ‘may’, we assumed that she will update us on her final decision. In this case, it is evident that symbols are ambiguous for we eventually learnt that she meant it as absolutely not presenting, while we understood it as just a possibility that she is not presenting.
Moreover, from our misunderstanding, I have also fully understood what it meant by meanings are contextual and that meanings are in people, not in words. When my team member updated us on her condition, she stated that she wanted to come to school but did not want to go ahead with the presentation. I was bewildered as I did not see the rationale of coming to school but not present on the actual day for the moment she steps out of house, there is already the possibility of infecting others. She insisted that it was for our good that she comes to school but not do the presentation because by presenting, she will infect the audience. Apparently we did not see eye to eye on this aspect and misunderstandings occurred. On hindsight, we could have resolved this by using extensional orientations instead of intensional orientation. As we interpreted each others’ words based on what’s inside of us, there were assumptions about meaning.
Reflecting on myself, I admit I did not engage in both feedback and feedforward. Firstly, I did not confirm if she was indeed coming to school or not, of if she was going to be presenting whatsoever. I did not make the effort to do the last clarification and get feedback from her. Secondly, I did not feedforward, anticipate her reactions and understand her feelings when I took it upon myself and decide to divide her parts to us, the remaining three members.
Besides, after we went ahead with the presentation without her, we resented the fact that she threw her tantrum on us when it was clearly her fault for not confirming with us or not making sense with her reasons. There we went on and on about saying how irresponsible and unreasonable she was. However, we failed to use indexes. We did not take into consideration the times where she responsibly handled situations and completed her work to perfection.
All in all, just a single dispute between my team member and I showed that misunderstandings do occur if we make assumption about the things we hear from others and it is important that we learn to prevent them rather than trying to find redemptions when things happen.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Home visit
On 26th September 2009, I went over to my boyfriend's place for dinner. It was the first time I paid a visit to his parents. The reason why I chose to blog about this incident because I am amazed by the fact that I was able to apply multiple communication theories to it.
7:20pm, my boyfriend and I were on the way to his home. I was feeling very nervous and could feel my heart beating real fast. It was then intrapersonal communication took place. I engaged myself in self-talk and there were continual conversations going through my head. Saying to myself, "Don't worry, It's okay. I'll do fine and nothing will go wrong. Just as long as I am careful, I will not make any mistakes." With my new found confidence, I strutted down the corridors, hand in hand with him all the way to his home.
He fumbled for his keys and opened the door. I took off my shoes and carefully stepped into the house. Saying a meek hello to all who were present, I handed over a box of mooncakes to his parents. Just this act alone communicates a great deal as in communication, symbols are representative. In a chinese culture, gift giving from the younger generation to the older generation denotes respect. Mooncakes is also significant for a time period such as this for it is in line with the upcoming Mid-Autumn festival celebration.
His mother thanked me and led me to the dinner table. I sat down, picked up the untensils placed in front of me and watched the surroundings to be right before I started eating. I was on my vigilance throughout dinner as I had to constantly self-monitor in order to not blunder. I observed and managed my own actions as I reminded myself not to talk while eating or make too much noise with the untensils.
I understood that as symbol users, we actively interpret events, situations, experiences, and relationships. Moreover, because individuals have different life situations, we interpret communication in varying ways. His mum spoke to me in Mandarin, and as I come from a family who dominatly speaks in English, there was an internal struggle within myself as I tried my very best to speak as fluently as I could in Mandarin. She asked if my family had any plans for the upcoming Mid-Autumn festival celebration and I replied no. It was then that I understood the differing perceptions both mine and my boyfriend's family had on the this festival. My family never really placed much importance on this festival as opposed to the significance my boyfriend's family had attached to it.
Moving on the opposing views of human nature; From this little home visit, it is pretty evident that I strongly adhere to the belief that humans have free will and that they make choices about how to act. Indeed, our choices are not entirely free and there are limitations of biological and social forces which affect what we do. I was constrained by my throwness as the society I live in (especially for chinese culture) emphasizes on respect. As for saturday's home visit, I controlled the choices I made within my throwness. Seeing that my aim was to present the most positive side of myself, I had to portray the image that I was respectful to elderlys while still be able to be myself and act naturally.
In essence, communication is all around. It really fascinates me that just within a couple hours, I could generate so many links with the theories I've learnt in class. It goes to show that never once a second goes by without any form of communication. It really is a very amazing art and I'm more then ready to master it all!
7:20pm, my boyfriend and I were on the way to his home. I was feeling very nervous and could feel my heart beating real fast. It was then intrapersonal communication took place. I engaged myself in self-talk and there were continual conversations going through my head. Saying to myself, "Don't worry, It's okay. I'll do fine and nothing will go wrong. Just as long as I am careful, I will not make any mistakes." With my new found confidence, I strutted down the corridors, hand in hand with him all the way to his home.
He fumbled for his keys and opened the door. I took off my shoes and carefully stepped into the house. Saying a meek hello to all who were present, I handed over a box of mooncakes to his parents. Just this act alone communicates a great deal as in communication, symbols are representative. In a chinese culture, gift giving from the younger generation to the older generation denotes respect. Mooncakes is also significant for a time period such as this for it is in line with the upcoming Mid-Autumn festival celebration.
His mother thanked me and led me to the dinner table. I sat down, picked up the untensils placed in front of me and watched the surroundings to be right before I started eating. I was on my vigilance throughout dinner as I had to constantly self-monitor in order to not blunder. I observed and managed my own actions as I reminded myself not to talk while eating or make too much noise with the untensils.
I understood that as symbol users, we actively interpret events, situations, experiences, and relationships. Moreover, because individuals have different life situations, we interpret communication in varying ways. His mum spoke to me in Mandarin, and as I come from a family who dominatly speaks in English, there was an internal struggle within myself as I tried my very best to speak as fluently as I could in Mandarin. She asked if my family had any plans for the upcoming Mid-Autumn festival celebration and I replied no. It was then that I understood the differing perceptions both mine and my boyfriend's family had on the this festival. My family never really placed much importance on this festival as opposed to the significance my boyfriend's family had attached to it.
Moving on the opposing views of human nature; From this little home visit, it is pretty evident that I strongly adhere to the belief that humans have free will and that they make choices about how to act. Indeed, our choices are not entirely free and there are limitations of biological and social forces which affect what we do. I was constrained by my throwness as the society I live in (especially for chinese culture) emphasizes on respect. As for saturday's home visit, I controlled the choices I made within my throwness. Seeing that my aim was to present the most positive side of myself, I had to portray the image that I was respectful to elderlys while still be able to be myself and act naturally.
In essence, communication is all around. It really fascinates me that just within a couple hours, I could generate so many links with the theories I've learnt in class. It goes to show that never once a second goes by without any form of communication. It really is a very amazing art and I'm more then ready to master it all!
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