Entry 17, Favorite Stories

 When I was young, I read a book called the Lord of the Flies. In my opinion, that is the greatest book I have ever read so far. I believe it was the plot and the characters that most appealed to me. My favorite character was Piggy, the guy that got killed at at last. There was just something about him, he was one of those people that got picked on alot throughout the whole book. He was always the nice guy providing good ideas and solutions to things but was always shot down because he was fat or just because they had no respect for him. I believe that the plot of the story, how the kids are the ones that kills themselves and screws up the island, that is really interesting to me because I feel like if this was actually going to happen in real life, that is exactly how it would end. The plot was very interesting to me at the time, I kept reading the book over and over again even if it was not assigned by a teacher. I really enjoyed the book in general, how every single character has his own traits, the more important ones like Ralph and Piggy. I chose Piggy because I thought even if he wasn't a main character, he held crucial parts of the conflicts and he was always the one that either started it or tried to resolve it. I really enjoy reading this book and I will be reading this for the rest of my life.

Entry 15, Characters

  I am sure everyone had encountered with some sort of story in their life. Within a story, there will always be different types of characters and there are always the good characters which are normally the main characters, or the villain, which is the bad character. For me, I find villains much more interesting because they always have this quality within them that makes them unique, makes them stand out from the rest of the characters. From all my previous experiences, all villains have be brave, unique from all the other characters, and they must have this soft, humane side that does not show up infront of everybody. I believe that all the main characters are always very boring, they are always the good guys, the ones that gets all the ladies, the one that will win at the end of the story. That is why villains are such interesting characters because they are always different, they always have different qualities within them that makes them bad guys. In Popeye the Sailor man, a cartoon from the 1960s, Pluto, this mean, buff, arrogant guy that always tries to take Popeye's girlfriend, Oliver. Pluto to me has alot more interesting qualities, he always comes up with new was to steal Oliver away, he always has some way of taking all of Popeye's things, and make it his. I love villains in the story, they are normally my favorite character due to their unique personal background, bravery and the soft side they all have within them.

Entry 14, Heritage

  In my dictionary, heritage is something that is passed down to you, from your parents genetically or not. I believe things like, personal traits such as height and looks, culture, habits, moral values and even religion can be considered a heritage. Things like habits and money or religion is somethings that can get rid of. By that I mean that these things can be changed over time, you may lose all the money you inherited from your parents, you may change a religion and stop a bad habit from going on. Things like looks and height will not be changeable, these things are genetically passed down and as an offspring, you cannot avoid the fate of being tall or short, skinny face or fat face. I believe things like culture and religion is more important than any other traits. I believe culture will be something that each generation needs to keep supporting and following the principles, without your own culture, if these cultural values and beliefs vanish, then eventually we will all become the same, every race, every ethnicity, we will all believe in the same things and perform the same tasks. Things like religion shaped my beliefs and some moral values today. I believe that just be a good person, something good will happen to you. Even if something bad happens to me, I take it as an experience, learn and move on from it. Things like this will not be in your school text books, things like moral values and religion will have to be passed down, passed on to your kids and let them know that this is how society works.

Entry 13, Unpredictable Characters

  Unpredictability is never really my thing. I was never the unpredictable one. In all my relationships, friendships, or just how people see me in general, I was never the unpredictable one. People always think, "oh he's Brandon" so many things are expected of me, or many things are unexpected of me. Things like being really loud in class, challenging Mr. Jacoby with the tiniest things would be what was expected of me. Being neat, being organized on the other hand would not be something that is so called "predictable" of me. I had a girlfriend last year, in alot of people's minds, unpredictability is something very important in a guy. If you lose all of it, then you lose all your charisma, your charm. That is exactly what happened to me, and what can I say? I am just this type of person. I believe that this is good, being predictable is just simply saying that you are yourself and you continue to be yourself. I have infact tried to be unpredictable one time to my ex girlfriend, and I had challenged her beliefs which I never use to, then it ended up in a raging war between me and her. I think unpredictability in real life is not that great, compared to being in a story or a movie. In a movie, a character being unpredictable will just further complicate and excite the story with all its complications and the difficulty for the main character to achieve what it wanted. On the other hand in real life, when a person is unpredictable, sometimes people will just think he is hard to get close to, as friends or as lovers. Sometimes these things just don't work out in real life, these things may be good in stories, but it does not mean it is always great in real life.

Entry 12, Animals v.s Humans

  People always argue that animals are just as intelligent as humans, animals are capable of alot more things than we expect. I believe this is not true. I am a skeptic, I won't tend to believe something unless there is scientific facts backing up the idea. I think there are many intelligent animals, I do believe that these dogs and cats are very smart and they can do alot of things, but i just don't really think that these animals are capable of what we are capable of in our brains, not even remotely close. There are examples such as dogs trying to hang up the phone as they hear it ring because they simply do not like the noise, or see dogs walk, or things like this. Personally I have seen a dog walk infront of me and even dance to music, even then, I just believe that these dogs are just trained to do so. They got use to the fact that, dancing will equal to food offered by its owner. These dogs belonged to my friend back in Shanghai, they were just home pets, and they were capable of doing such things. These dogs have tried to even shake hands with us, these are just basic greets for the people. Like I said, to me, these are just the dogs thinking that the owner would offer it food when it performs something like this. I believe animals are no where near being like humans, they are alot less complicated in every single way possible.  

Entry 11, Conflicts

  In the story of "Water of the Babylon", the main character John faced many different conflicts. John had faced many internal and external conflicts which delayed his completion of the journey. One example of an external conflict would be the panther which attacked him when he was walking towards East. He was battling the creature when he could've been walking, which then stalled time for him. An example of an internal conflict would the conquering the fear of going through the river to the Land of the Gods. When he stepped onto the raft, he had conquered his fear, his fear of the other side and the river the night before, and all the stories the holy book told him. He had conquered his fear and decided to go on to search for answers no one ever knows. I have had many conflicts in my life. The most recent and the most severe one would be me telling my friend that I actually like the girl he has been liking for a long time. This was the biggest and most difficult internal conflict I ever had to overcome. I had to tell him face to face, man to man, about the story of the girl and I. I had been thinking about how to tell that guy for a while about my feelings but it was very hard for me to think of a way of telling him. When I overcame the fear, I ended up telling him. Nothing really happened, our friendship didn't really change. I still feel sorry everyday for having to do this to him. I know he has lost trust in me, but what can I do? This conflict was very hard to overcome considering that he was one of my best friends, and I had to decide how to tell him and overcoming the fear of telling him. The most recent external conflict I had was all the way back in Shanghai when I was fighting with my parents about coming back to Taiwan. That conflicted lasted a while, I was childish and I did not want to move back at all. I had a fight with them, a long dispute which lasted many weeks and bittered our whole family relationship. I overcame that by just simply growing up, accepting the truth, telling myself that I have to move back no matter what. I think conflicts are what makes life interesting, although many of them are very hard to overcome and solve, but without conflicts, life would be as stale and boring as a wet carrot.

Entry 10, Taboo

  There are many things in the Asian culture that is considered a "taboo". I believe that in the Asian culture, we have alot more cultural rules than any other ethnicity. We have all these rules about not to disobey the elders, and from something very general like this, you could branch off into more rules about the elders. Things like you cannot reach for food first unless you're the oldest one at the table. You would even have to reject gifts at least twice to show politeness and respect to the others. These things in our culture, to traditional Taiwanese people would be considered very important. I think these rules are here because over time, many people started to develop ideas to respect the elders, and then after all these years, it eventually became a rule, for everyone to follow. There are also things that are more considered taboo in all cultures, things like you don't have sexual relationships with your family members. These things are considered very disgusting and one of the most "taboo" things I could think about. I think taboos are just rules and ideas people develop over a long period of time, after observing many disturbing things, they would consider all these things a "taboo."

Entry 9, Analyzing a Folk Tale

  Folk tales are very common in ancient stories. Many ancient stories always told how something works and why something is the way it is today. I believe especially the ancient Greeks have many different types of folk tales. I once heard this folk tale about why people weep at things when they get sad. It was about an Eskimo family and the dad tries to hunt for seals. He never and couldn't ever catch a seal, as each seal slips away, he began to feel water drops down his cheeks. He felt the strange feeling and burst into tears. The wife and the son came looking for the man, and they heard the story and all began to start crying. That is when people first started to weep for something they really care about. The story of Coyote kills a Giant was about why a wood tick is flat. It was about how everyone was trapped inside the Giants stomach and as the Coyote was cutting his heart to try to kill him, they all ran out when the giant took his last breath. Coyote grabbed the wood tick and he came out of the tiny holes of his mouth. That is why the wood ticks are flat. I personally do not enjoy folk tales. I find it boring, and just absolutely ridiculous when there are some strange origin of certain things. 

Entry 8, Buddhist Doctrine

 I have grown up in a Buddhist household. My dad's side, both my grandparents worships and practices the Buddhist religion very often. They would visit temples atleast three times a month, just to give prayers and give thanks to the great things in life. My mom's side, my grandmother owns a temple, everytime we go down to PingTung to visit her before, we would spend a month or so in the temple. This makes my whole family, my mom and my dad, my grandparents and everyone related to me, a pretty superstitious Buddhist. The Buddhist religion in Taiwan practiced by many people, is quite different than the hardcore, intense beliefs and rituals Siddartha performs. All these Buddhist Doctrines are very respectable, these will definitely purify your soul and empty all your thoughts, and achieve the goal of Siddartha, which is to no longer have these urges or desire or opinion, you are no longer yourself. I believe that these doctrines tend to be a little bit too extreme and would not work in societies like today. In our society today, religion doesn't take as big of a role than before, therefore sometimes people would just think you're mad with such extreme beliefs.  Although I am a Buddhist myself, I believe these doctrines are not very practical and I do not believe in it. I don't believe that Life is suffering and I don't believe suffering is always caused by ignorance and attachment. I believe these are just the way some people sees life, but for me, especially in the society today, I would not believe and adapt any of these Doctrines to my life no matter how devoted of a Buddhist I am.

Entry 7, Taking Risks

  There are alot of people that had came across my life, and took risks to help me achieve a certain goal. The most often and the most obvious one are my parents. They took risks for me when they decided to have another child after my sister. Risks such as the possibility of not being able to financially support two babies when my dad's career had yet stabilize. The risks of wasting alot of their time on taking care of a child rather than their hobbies, or something they loved. Instead of living a less pressureful life, my dad has to work harder just to keep all of us well fed. These are the types of sacrifices parents have to make for their children. These are the bigger risks and sacrifices people can actually take in life. In everyday life, everyone takes risks.  In life, everyday on the street you can see people taking risks or making sacrifices. For example, if you were driving, and you let a pedestrian go first, then you made a sacrifice of wasting your time. On the other hand if you were flying through the traffic on your moped, from car to car, buses to buses, then you are taking a risk, a very serious risk of risking your life. Even I make sacrifices, wether it is helping a group do more work than everyone else, or letting someone have the last piece of potato chips. I think for me, the biggest sacrifice, i will make, will be for family, and for love. Regardless of what risks and sacrifices I make, the biggest sacrifice I think, and a very respectable sacrifice, would be fighting to the death for your country. When you fight in a war and you die to save millions, you are making a huge sacrifice no one can ever measure up to. These sacrifices and risks are bigger and has a more serious effect to it. Life is full of risks, what is life without some intense, risky situations?

Entry 6, New Place

   People travel all over the world, from country to country, moving from city to city. In a life time, people will encounter countless places. Some places may only be one time, but some places could be their second home. To me, after moving to Hsinchu, over the course of the past three years, I have found a pool hall down town to be my second home. We would be there after school, on weekends, or just whenever we have the time to shoot pool, we would be there. At first, when I first walked into the pool hall, the tables were organized like a brick wall, side by side and one after the other. The blue and green cloth of the table was eye catching, and people always picked the one that looked new and unused. Cue sticks were arranged neatly on a rack infront of every table on the wall.The cigarette fumes numb my nose as I walk in, the smell of beetle nuts and cigarettes let you know this is not a place for kids. The people all gaze upon their game as you walk through them, carefully examining you in every way. That feeling does not feel good, it feels like I would get killed or mugged in there. The loud music in the background and the sounds of the pool balls smacking one another from table to table was deafening. To speak, we would have to raise our voice by quite alot. To be honest, I was a bit scared the very first time we went shooting pool.  After a whole summer of nearly every day shooting pool, the store clerks had got to know us, the common visitors of the stores got to know us as well, at last, it wasn't such a scary place after all. Even after such a long time, the excitement of walking into the pool hall gets me every time, the happiness was spawned by not just the game of pool, but just the fact that friends were all there. The pool hall is truly our second home.