Book Response: Thirst No. 1

Sita, the ancient vampire

Thirst No. 1 is a volume of three books: The Last Vampire, Black Blood, and Red Dice. It is about Sita, who is an ancient vampire that is around three thousands years old. She is supposedly the last vampire on Earth and her creator, Yaksha, is supposed to kill off all the vampires on Earth. Sita is on the run when she runs into another group of vampires that are lead by Eddie Fender. He has been creating vampires to have an army and take over the world. So Sita has to try to kill Eddie and the rest of his minions.

This book is full of lots of action and gruesome details. If you can't handle envisioning blood and the way to kills her victims, then this wouldn't be the book for you. It is quite a thrill and I enjoyed it very much. I am working on the second volume right now and A LOT has happened since the first and the author is good at keeping you captivated.

The author has a lot of great quotes in this book. It was really hard for me to pick one, but I did. The quote that I picked was,

“Mortals have always exaggerated the difference between hate and love. Both come from the heart. You can never hate strongly unless you have loved strongly.”

Sita falls in love with, who she believes, is the reincarnation of her husband when she was changed. And she is stuck in a predicament of possibly having to let him go. I liked this quote because I find it very true. You can only hate someone as much as you love them. That's why when you get into an argument with your significant lover, it's way more exaggerated because you care and don't want to lose them. So there wouldn't be so much hate if there wasn't as much love.

Multi-Genre Proposal

The type of project that I am doing is Cultural Interest. I want to know what other religions believe in the supernatural world and what cultures don't find any interest in it. My topic is the supernatural world and things about spirits. I want to look into the depth of the meaning behind certain interactions. The people I would interview would be my mom because she grew up in a a haunted house. I would also interview a Catholic priest that is a family friend and see how the go about doing things with spirits if they run into a problem like that.

I don't know much of anything about my topic. That's why I wanted to do research on it. I have had personal experiences and wanted to look into it more. I want to know all the differences between the spirits and how certain religions view them. I know some religions view spirits as bad and some view them as good. As well as both sides.

I plan on looking at different articles and documents to learn about the religions in Europe because of the exorcism movies that always take place in Rome or something. I plan to also look at the databases and find resources that way. I find this topic personally meaningful because I've had a lot of paranormal experiences happen to me in the houses that I've lived in.

Multi-Genre Topic

Something that I am really interesting in that I want to find out more about is the paranormal world. Not a lot of people believe in spirits or ghost and find people who do naive. Well I didn't believe in ghost for a long time until it started to happen to me. I want to find out how many people think they don't exist. I decided to do my project on the spiritual world and look more into religions that support them.

I'm especially interested in this topic because I have had personal experiences for half of my life with every house that I have lived in so far. I've just gotten used to have a "presence" in my house. My family believes that something followed my mother from her house in California to our house in Missouri. My brother and I also played with a Ouija board when we were little and have had experiences ever since.

Reading Response #1

The article that I chose to read was "Better grammar means better jobs"and it talked about how creators of a software program conducted a study of grammar linked to people's status' in their job rankings. It was found that people with fewer grammar issues ascended to higher positions and got more jobs. Therefore better grammar correlates to greater success. Although not enough data has been collected to know how strong that correlation is.

Something that caught my attention while reading the passage was its touch on apostrophes. It states, "Apostrophe confusion plagues a lot of business writers. " I agree with this one hundred precent. Although I am not a business writer I do struggle with apostrophes. I always have to read out "it's" as "it is" to make sure it is the right one to use in what I am stating. I always forget that with the word "it" it is a contraction and not showing possession. The last line of the article is "When in doubt, trust you ear." I couldn't agree more with this statement. If I didn't say something out loud to myself, I wouldn't know that it sounded wrong and that I needed to change the wording.

Start Something that Matters

One organization that I was reading about was the OAK (Ordinary Acts of Kindness) Lifestyle. This organization was started when the founders adopted two kids that were going into the second and third grade. The founders realized that these kids didn't have the same education as other kids from the United States. They missed out on all the learning opportunities when growing up in a family household. So the founders decided they were going to start an organization that would give back tot he education to these children and many more. So they created a store to if you bought a backpack you would also be buying a backpack and school supplies for a child in need in the United States or Rwanda. Find more information on the OAK Lifestyle organization here.

The second organization that I found interesting is Sanitation Creation. Sanitation Creations is an organization that is creating a more clean and sanitized port-a-potty. They call it the Dungaroo. It is supposed to be built like a regular port-a-potty but with have a mechanical lever for after you do your business. The toilet is a bag that you go to the bathroom in and afterwards you step on the lever to seal the bag and it goes down into the waste. The bag is sealed off from pathogens and will have no odor. The company could then take the bags and convert them into energy through waste energy. This concept was provided by Liz Morris and was her masters project. You can learn more about the Dungaroo by following this link.

The third item I found pretty neat was the Momba. The Momba is a vending machine for college students fro hygiene and other dorm essentials. The Momba (short for mom robot) helps students get those essentials without having to go on a long drive to the nearest store or during a weather storm. 10% of the profits go to the education system to help pay for financial aid. Some items in the Momba include air freshners, extension cords, trash bags, laundry detergent and many other helpful items. You check out all the cool items that they have by going to their blog and going to the MomBox tab. Currently the only schools that have a Momba are Harvard, Westfield State University, Boston University, and UMASS Amherst. Check out their great progress and reviews on the Momba website and learn more about the foundation here.

1. If I didn't have to worry about money I would lend and help a lot of organizations. I've always told myself if I ever got a hold of a ton of money that I would give away some of it to good causes.
2. Work that I've always been interested in doing was help suicide survivors.The pain and process of recovery is a difficult task to accomplish by yourself and some people don't every get through it. I was lucky enough to be strong enough to get myself out but I do sometimes wish I had someone there to help. Someone not grieving for the same loss. Your family can only do so much before you need outside help.
3. One organization that I would serve is the Alliance for Hope, which is a national organization for suicide survivors to share their stories and get help with counseling. Another organization is AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) and they hold walks and awareness events. They also have help sources and ways to help whatever you're going through.

PechaKucha Response

I watched a PechaKucha called Music Moves Me. It was about a girl who lost her dad at the age of twenty because of suicide. She went through a really deep depression and decided to take guitar lessons because that's what her dad use to do. She described a memory of him sitting at the edge of his bed, watching a VHS tape and teaching himself how to play the guitar. So she learned and got good at it. Three years after her dad's passing her younger brother was killed in a car accident because a guy fell asleep at the wheel and was going fifty-eight mph when he hit him. She got through his death by writing songs and continuing to play the guitar.

I thought her pictures were really well. They were personal pictures and were pictures of her dad and her brother. When she was describing a song that she wrote for her brother she had a picture of a grave with four roses on it. It's nice just listening to the presentation and just let the words flow along with the pictures that she had presented. The only downfall of her presentation was she spoke very quickly and would stumble on her words and get tongue twisted. It might have been because she was speaking in front of an audience but she is use to performing in front of people. She mentioned that she performs on stage at least once a week. So I think she stumbled because she was talking a bit too fast and that could be because she was trying to keep up with the twenty second slides.

I think it is going to be difficult to present my PechaKucha because I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up with my slides. I think it will be hard to find pictures to go along with my topic as well but I'll find a way to make it work. Overall I'm excited and can't wait to see what everyone else has.

Chinese Weddings

My correspondence from China, Emma Li, is going to be attending a wedding soon! Her brother is going to be getting married and while I was reading her autobiography I was intrigued on how their weddings were like. I found out a lot from Emma and did a little research based off of the things that she told me. I've always liked weddings and was very pleased to have someone that could tell me more about it.

I found out that Chinese weddings aren't as different from American weddings if their modern weddings. Traditional Chinese wedding are very different from American weddings. The type of music they play at their weddings is a little different as well. Emma said, "The instruments were often suona, erhu, drum, etc." She sent along an attachment with pictures of these instruments.

The suona is is an important instrument in the folk music of northern China. The erhu is a two-stringed bowed musical instrument, more specifically a spike fiddle, which may also be called a "southern fiddle", and sometimes known in the Western world as the "Chinese violin" or a "Chinese two-stringed fiddle". And then a drum, which us self-explanatory. They’ll play this while the bride is walking down the aisle. Emma also said, “Brides usually wore red dresses to show the pleased celebrate of atmosphere. When a couple was holding their wedding, they would kowtow to the world and their parents. The next day the bride should serve tea to her parents in law to show her respect.

I found it very cool that the bride would have tea with the parent in laws the next morning after the wedding. It just put in perspective the old traditions and how much they valued their relationships with their in-laws. The bride would typically wear a red dress in a traditional wedding. Although it’s not like the types of dresses that we think of. They’re silkier and robe like. Nothing like the dresses that we wear at our weddings in America. Although they are quite different, I do find them very beautiful.

“Nowadays, people won’t hold the traditional weddings. Some will go to the church but most will hold the weddings in restaurants. Brides usually wear white or red wedding dresses. They do not need to kowtow to anyone,” Emma Li writes to me in the email. She then attached two more photos of what people would typically wear and what the wedding would look like. I’m not sure what type of wedding her brother will have but I think they’ll have a more modern wedding like most people. I will probably end up asking and finding out for sure. There’s one thing to remember though, “But either traditional weddings or modern weddings, they all mean true love of couples.” –Emma Li-