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February 07, 2006

Tony, You Rock!

It's an understatement if I say i like my English 106 classes. I love it. I founf that i didn't enjoy my past English lessons in Malaysia as much as I do here. For one thing, English was taught as a second language back home. It was less flexible and more authoritarian. I like the way the classes are carried out here. All the sessions (2 classrooms, 1 lab and 1 conference) are fun and engaging. We spend more time talking and discussing rather than having the teacher painfully maintaining a one-way communication in front of the class, a scenario so prevalent in my past experiences. For example, we discussed about archetypes used in movies, and I participated enthusiastically about the symbols of lightsaber colors in Start Wars (yes, there's much deeper meaning to the red laser emitted from Darth Vader's saber than just being pure evil sith). Secondly, literature is no longer reading 'Baby Steps' to The Pearl or Jungle of Hope (which was awfully mundane, and the discussions after that were cursory and non-responsive); real literature articles from Dickens, DeLillo and the likes as well as academic writings by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Plato are perused and discussed in the deepest level possible. Furthermore, the assignments are stress-free. The first assignment I had was a creative-writing, in which I added elements from Sin City and Mystic River to create my own blend of murder story. Words like 'ain't' and 'damn' can be used (or even f***, with discretion and relevant to context, of course). I can guarantee no teacher in Malaysia would accept this kind of language freedom in creative writing. They might mark down your score for bad language lol. We even have movie sessions. The first movie that we are going to review is, to my surprise, a Hongkie production. "Chung King Express" by Wong Kar-Wai. Original canto version, with English subtitle.

Tony Russell, you rock!

Posted by peixin at 04:04 AM | Comments (0)

Lost Forever

I lost my tower today. It is gone forever. If you see this Alvin, I'm sorry :(

Posted by peixin at 03:37 AM | Comments (0)