Oni and the Great Bird Quickwrite p. 698

Superheroes in comic books are different from real-life heroes in many ways. Many superheroes are very famous and have many people stare at their powers, speed, strength, and courage and are dressed in fancy costumes and seem to be showing off in some ways. However, many real-life heroes do not seek adulation after they accomplish something big such as taking down a robbery of a drugstore. Those people, unlike fictional heroes, have to face true death and make a choice whether to risk their life or allow someone else’s life to be taken by the hand of Death. A true hero is one that has a normal life and when he/she sees a crime, will find a way to comfort them and bring out true courage to actually confront the criminals. Also, fictional superheroes seem to have super human qualities already and whereas normal people simply use what they have to adapt to their situation. Super heroes, in my opinion, are just fake cowards with undeserved super human qualities but true real life heroes are people that are faced with a moral choice of their own happy life with the chance of a family and happiness against risking all that happiness and life to try and safe another one’s. The true courage is the courage of standing up in the face of death when it is drawn out from your heart instead of having super powers which allow you to be invincible or invisible. 

The Flight of Icarus Quickwrite p. 675

I long to fly like a seagull because I get to feel the air blowing against me and  I get to look at things from a different perspective. I could see things that I probably never noticed but only from the air. Near the ocean, I could easily feel the cold air and wind cooling me. We could find a way to feel and see the world from a different view. I would want to fly because it conveys feeling of freedom and from that different view up there, it deludes and gives me a feeling as if I am the king and the people below are ants.  People would be like THAT GUY IS SO COOL! Mostly, we want to fly because we can’t. 

Quickwrite p.664-Orpheus, the Great Musician

I believe that music can touch your heart and also make you feel happy and sad and give you a variety of feelings. It can drag your whole mind into sadness and fear and pessimism and negativeness or it can cheer you up and make you feel glad. I had a very heavy experience with music before but it didn’t really touch my heart. Instead, it made me feel depressed. The songs were from Halo and the songs made me feel so sad and depressed that I didn’t know why, but made me feel like there was no more hope for me and the world and that I wanted to die. I felt that everyday was another day of hell and I was about to crash into hell. However, I listened to some Classic Rock and Pop and it profoundly increased my spirits and brought me hope and inspiration into my mind. I also had other experiences with music. For instance, many times after I get scolded by my mom and can’t think properly, I reach for my violin and soon after 3 or 4 times of playing my mind begins to calm down and I begin to understand what I did wrong and accept my failure and change. And to this day on, I do not underestimate the powers of music. 

The Origin of Seasons Quickwrite p.654

Seasons are sections of a year that are indicated by their weather and light amounts. They depend on the time of year and the location of the planet and its angle to the sun to determine what season it is. The northern and southern hemisphere have exact opposite seasons at same times. For instance, while in the northern hemisphere we might have summer, down there in New Zealand for instance, it is probably winter. Our seasons are also split into 4 parts, each taking 3 months. The seasons in my area are basically rainy in the spring, typhoons and slightly rainy but most of the time hot in summer, slightly cold and windy in winter and somewhat cool in autumn. There is in fact one thing I don’t really know why about seasons which is why they are split into 4 seasons, not 6 or even 7. 

TED Talk 1-Billy Collins 5 Poem Animations

The poem animations by Billy Collins were not what I expected. I expected them to be like anime style and programmed with actions like CGI I still think it’s cool. With the narrator’s words and the pictures combined together, the imagery from the poems have been doubled or even tripled. The poem created a vivid image in my mind and it seemed very real. The animations seem very entertaining and changed the idea that poetry is very boring. His style seems very unique. For some reason, I liked all of his poem animations. They helped me visualize and understand the author’s point of view. His poem about the dead made me wonder if it was and it was the same with the mice about the country poem. The Budapest poem allowed me to see what the troubles were with writing and how the pen seemed to “dance” from the author’s hands. However, my favorite was ForgetFullNess because I could easily relate to it. 

Fame

Advantages	Disadvantages
Gets a lot of money	At an extremely slight risk of being targeted by a murderer
Can possibly get more money from ads.	You have no privacy.
Get special priorities: (special restaurants, hotels, etc.)	People comment on every tiny thing you do. (You get judged by every action and those actions can be subject to extreme scrutiny.
Get to meet other very famous or special people.	Is harder than before to get back to old friends since everywhere you go you’re being followed.

Haiku

Haiku is a type of poem that was adapted by the Japanese. Haiku is supposed to be invented in the 17th century by a Zen Buddhist. It is normally very short and is strictly constructed upon on the seventeen syllables of the poem. There are three lines and it goes with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the next, and five in the last or third line again. They’re normally written in present tense and include extremely vivid details and explain about nature or about normal and daily situations. Haiku topics are generally uncomplicated and easy to understand. They normally don’t use metaphors and similes.

Here is a normal Haiku talking about a computer crashing:
Windows XP crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Here is another Haiku poem but about nature:
An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
This poem was by Bashu Matsuo, one of the first great poets of Haiku.