Monday, May 28, 2007

I'm back, but only for a moment..:-)

After 25 days, finally I have the chance to post. I've been quite busy this past few weeks. Well, I've sold my soul to the devil..:-)..long story guys. maybe next week I'll tell you about it.
Earlier today I took a slow ride to Tempe Town Lake., wanna catch the sunset and doing some birds viewing. This is some of my shot. I didn't get lucky for the bird but I do have some beautiful sunset pics.
As soon as the sun starting to set, I begin to complain (to myself) about my camera. I took about 80 shots, but mostly blurred, even shots that I thought good turned out to be out of focus when I transfer them to my laptop. In the tele-end around 300-380mm, my camera really struggles to find the focus, and when it finally did, it focused on the wrong object or false focus. Yeah, I kept saying to myself, "It's the person who takes the picture not the camera". So I guess I have yet to learn to use it.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

On “I Just Wanna Be Average”

I've just finished reading Mike Rose's “I just wanna be average”. I know from a brief googling that he was anything but average. He is a professor in the School of Education, UCLA with many awards, a successful writer and teacher. But somehow I can relate to his story, his personal experience during high school that he was misplaced into a Vocational Education due to test result confusion. His test result was apparently got mixed up with another guy named Tommy Rose, who didn't do well in the test. Starting from that point, he was labeled “slow student” and be located in a special class for students who did not perform well academically.
I'm not really familiar with Vocational Education in United States, but I do know that in my country we have similar school. After graduating from junior high, students are then continue to senior high and then university. However, there is other path, after finishing junior high, student can take vocational school. A school which I believe prepares the student for employment right after graduation without having to continue to higher education. Vocational school gives the student basic level of skills for getting a job.
Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about. During the formal education period, I always placed (due to my below average performance) in the lower achievement tier. I never dream of being a top ten students in class, let alone in school. My objective was merely to pass the class and go to the next level. I've had my share of failure, I stayed for 2 years in 4th grade of elementary school. Fortunately, my parent took it well. I had no problem, I was too young (or too ignorant) to even realize that I had wasted 1 year of my life, my parents money and lost almost all of my friends.
Life goes on, I graduated elementary school, breezed through junior high and senior high. Although I feel that I didn't actually breeze, I muddled. I was always just a few grade points more from not passing the class. So, I was really an average student (if not below average). I strifed to be average, I learned, read, memorized, I did everything what I had to do, but half-heartedly. Chemistry classes confused me, Physics made me dizzy, Math frightened me and Economics gave me a headache. I really agree with Rose about how curriculum does not liberate the students, but occupies them. It really does occupied me.
University life was a bit different. I ended up in some private university in my hometown, taking English major. I like English, I like reading and even though I despise public attention, I at least can speak in front of my friends. There I learned that English was not that easy, it was not simple. All these years studying English in public school really deteriorate my English. That was the moment where I meet my most hideous foe in English, in my own term “the math of language”. Grammar, I hate grammar, I cannot stress enough that I don't like grammar. Why? Because I'm bad in grammar, just as I'm bad in math and in many other subjects. I'm lost, even analyzing the simplest sentence left me puzzled. But I still like English, I still read books and poems, listens to songs. I tried to speak English as much as I can. But still, even in University, studying a major which I really like, I'm still an average student. A label that i cannot get off from...

About Writing

I'm not sure if I like to write. I just feel that I can express myself (and thoughts) easily in written forms. When speaking I tend to mixed up, little bit stuttering, and say the wrong words at the right time, the right words at a wrong time, and even say the wrong words at the wrong time (doubles the humiliation :-). With writing, situations are different. I believe that during the process of writing, I (accidentally) rearrange my jumbled, unsystematic thinking into a little bit organized form, a skill which probably comes from instinct (I believe instinct is not exclusive for animal :-)
I've spent 18 years of formal education, which most of the years includes teaching me how to write. Since the first grade of elementary school, junior high, senior high, through the last months of my university time, they (teachers and lecturers) told me to write and write and write. The ultimate achievement (to my caliber) was my bachelor degree thesis. I wrote about 80 pages of bullshit (doesn't necessarily meant that what I wrote there was not true), I did it with all my might, all heart and soul, 100 percent effort (I wasn't born with sparkling mind) and I was satisfied, very satisfied indeed. After having spent 4.5 years in learning theory (which at that time and sometimes up till now I believe has little or no contribution to my successful or unsuccessful working life), this thesis writing was the gate to get me off this circle of formal study, the long and winding road to working life. I finished my thesis in about 4 months but it took me two academic terms. To be honest, I saw it merely as a means to graduate and get a diploma. I wrote about linguistic, about grammar, but do I really care about grammar, do I? I know, that's a question with a big question mark that I should ask myself. I didn't care, though I know pretty well that actually I should (or must) care, at least for my own sake. Nonetheless. I passed, and graduated somnambulantly (a word that I create :-). But even after the ultimate achievement, I did not pick up any writing skill at all. I'm bad in almost all aspect of writing. Accuracy (grammar), clarity, developing and organizing ideas, I totally flunked.
Apart from that, I have to be grateful that I like to read. I haven't read a lot, but I read quite a lot of good writing. I read the works of people with excellent writing skills, witty (in written form), sharp and yet fun to read. I envied those people, having the ability to use the perfect words at the perfect time, sometime with ease. While I even still struggling with the monstrous Academic Writing that my wife confronts me with.
I'm tired of my incompetence, inability to speak and write clearly, systematically and accurately. So, few hours ago, I picked up a very thick book about writing that I bought for my wife months ago. I start to read about writing. What it is all about, the skills, the talent and the effort. I also polish up or to be exact, re-build my accuracy.
I cannot promise anyone, not even myself that my writings will be good, no. But hopefully, I will at least improve and that, I think my friend, should be just around the corner..^_^