first ever blog
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
I am really looking forward to the feast tomorrow in class. My group (Vietnamese) is getting food from one of my favorite restraints. I’ve been eating their since I was fifteen. The food is always really good. I also managed to find a review of the restaurant in the Canadian Newsstand data base at the Carleton library. Last week Janet and Robyn and I went in search of a good Vietnamese location. The restaurant would be wonderful except that it is tiny and usually busy at lunch time. The three of went in to pick the menu for this tomorrow and from there we asked about the Vietnamese community. He said that there was a video store is down the street. I also noticed that he had Vietnamese magazines when I asked about them he said that they came from Montreal. The three of us then walked down the street. There seemed to be a lot of mixture in the stores carrying various Asian products not pinned to one location. We then found the video store that the Cam Kong owner had told us about. We went in. The first thing I felt was that I did not belong. The videos were all in Vietnamese but had some really cool covers. They seemed almost styled like the old fashioned movies with men bending women backwards while kissing them. Their were also catalogues to other Vietnamese merchandise. The owner was not overly friendly, but she reluctantly agreed to have us in two weeks time.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
After the last class I left thinking about the emotion that is tied up in language. The loaded word used in the article upset the presenter. The word was ghetto. Maybe I was wrong but I thought of it as probably being correct. The fact that black people are in ghettos in New York is probably true. This does not make the author a racist, it instead points to the racial discrimination that is systematic in US and Canadian institution. How is it that across class there is correlation to race? It cannot be that one race chooses to be poor. There are barriers in place that suppress various races, and the achievement of certain goals. Perhaps they stay together in a neighborhood because that increases their chance of paid work servicing each other. Of course it is important to shop at the stores that are serviced by your own group. This can be seen on a national level buy products made within the country. As well if racism is rampant their may not be a huge clientele outside of the “Racial enclave”. The author seemed only to be noting that the ghetto which denotes poverty is delineated by race. Not that the races chose or created the ghetto with or through their race.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
This is a really cool link. It shows how public art can be used to yank the average down town worker out of the monotony of thier day!
I just wanted to take this blog to think/write about my upcoming project. I’m still really undecided. I wanted to do something with a camera since I just got a new one. When I talked to Prof. Sheilds he suggested a now and then piece on Ottawa in which I would find older photographs and try to photograph the same piece of land now note the differences and similarities. However after learning that I would probably have to pay for photographs from the National Archives I been trying to think of something new. I have had two ideas; both involve pictures if not photographs. My first idea is a look at public art in a urban space. I could look into who chooses it why it there, the purpose that it serves while tying in the history and culture of the city and nation. For this I would have to pick maybe 5 or 6 pieces of public art from around the city and focus on them. My second idea is to take a look at the changing face of suburbia in Ottawa. Alta vista in the past was suburbia and was fairly homogeneous. In the Hunt Club park area and out in Orleans there has been a conscious effort on the city planners to mix income levels. This also affects the racial make up of a neighborhood. This could involve pictures if I wanted it too. Any way liked my first idea the best I have come across some theory on it in the library but nothing extensive.
http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/wava/alex/abstract.pdf
This is one web site that brought up some issues that I would be able to deal with.
About the group project, I totally lucked out. I randomly got put in a group that had chosen Vietnamese and my favorite restaurant in all of Ottawa happens to be Vietnamese. My group is planning a trip there. I also have found that Carleton has a Vietnamese society group and I have their contact information. I need to find out more about the Vietnamese community within Ottawa as well.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
The class on Thursday got me thinking about globalization a little differently. Globalization is such a huge concept. In all societies there are good and bad points that affect the people. In a global society the same is true. In all the classes I have been to I have learnt about the problems with globalization. I spent a lot of time studying how countries in a position of power use globalization as a way to dominate. I have always thought of the word as a euphemism. After the class on Thursday I began to see it slightly differently. It seems to me that capitalism is being played out on a bigger stage now. Tied to capitalism there will always be domination, exploitation and poverty. But along with the Capitalism is the progress in a scientific sense and the global village that is communication around the world. There are great things that could come from increased communication around the world. Then we have to ask ourselves who is doing the communication. Generally most people in the developed countries have access to the internet. In the LDC that is quite different, generally it is only the privileged that have that kind of access. So once again it is the poorest that get left out of the loop. They seem to be voiceless even on something that is considered universal in the west. I think the idea of scapes sounds interesting. I also think that it makes the ideas sound separate, on different plains. The scapes however are all connected and interactive with each other. What happens on the political impacts on the technological and both affect community and human relations. I’m seeing the scapes horizontally when in fact I think they are three dimensional.
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
This was suppose to be a link to the madonna inn tour. The inn is mentioned in the readings. The themed room are like those of the West edmonton mall. Each room is a different world (kind of). Not at all the linear decor of most places
This a summary of the most intestesting part of the West Edmonton Mall reading.The west edmonton mall (WEM) has been described as “a tangible manifestation of the relations of production and dominant ideologies.”p5
the center lacks a community identity it is based on mass tourism, consumption, and sensationalistic media. The mall is a play space in which our modern day rationality does not apply.“One begins to feel as if one were in a story which switches from place to place and ranges across centuries in a kind of spatiotemporal haze.”(5)
The mall bring the center to the peripheries i.e. Europe to Edmonton, tourists to Canada. This destroys the geographical barriers. The replication is offered instead of the original, to abolish the need for the original. The WEM destroys the cultural sense of collective identity, and the relationship between the community and the individual
The community is harnessed for consumption and the mall hides this stark reality.
“The flattening of new real commodities against fake historical settings betrays nonchalance for authenticity, despite the accuracy of the reconstructions” (10).
The idea that I like best is that because the area is fanatasy there is no norms as to what it should be like. Fake and real, church and commerce anything seems to go.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
The idea of the spatialization of culture to me seems obvious. There always seems to be a particular place attached specifically to every culture. I know that culture is a discourse but it seems that local is part of the discourse. We travel to experience different cultures. One country may have a culture, a state/province can have a culture a city can have a culture all of them can be completely unique. One thing that has been eating up North American space is the consumer cultures. I think that the large box stores are an example of that. There was a new Loblaws that was built in my area at south keys. The walk through it seemed to spell consumerism. Now after a couple of years I gotten used to it. The store isn’t any ordinary grocery store, this thing has everything wine to baby clothes photo labs. The mall is huge and it represents the consumer culture that we live in.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
This blog is about the sea side resort of Brighton. It seems to me that there is a similarity to the historical Brighton and the Modern day Las Vegas. There is the same allure to the gaudy and risqué person of the place. Brighton is also a place were the royalty could blend in. There are many stars (which are like the modern day monarchy) that are in Las Vegas. It to seems to draw the idle rich and the opportunist hope to make some money of them. There is no historical connection to the health in Las Vegas like there is in Brighton. There is how ever a draw to a notion that all your problems will be solved in Las Vegas. People go there in hopes of winning big. How many movies are there about Las Vegas where the main Character only has to get there to solve his/her problems. There is also the sexual aspect about it. All the Las Vegas dancers in their scanty costume everything is over the top. There is the whole dip into the underworld with the whole city being situated in the middle of the desert. The highway scenes in Fear in loathing in Las Vegas are among the scariest. That also brings me the drug and mafia culture that Las Vegas is notorious for. There are so many movies out there about Las Vegas it seems like there are countless narratives about going to, being in, and leave the city. It is the city where both glamour and tacky meet and mingle. That is why I see it as a good comparison to Brighton
here is a cool link
http://www.ci.las-vegas.nv.us/
I can't seem to turn this into a link.
This blog is about the sea side resort of Brighton. It seems to me that there is a similarity to the historical Brighton and the Modern day Las Vegas. There is the same allure to the gaudy and risqué person of the place. Brighton is also a place were the royalty could blend in. There are many stars (which are like the modern day monarchy) that are in Las Vegas. It to seems to draw the idle rich and the opportunist hope to make some money of them. There is no historical connection to the health in Las Vegas like there is in Brighton. There is how ever a draw to a notion that all your problems will be solved in Las Vegas. People go there in hopes of winning big. How many movies are there about Las Vegas where the main Character only has to get there to solve his/her problems. There is also the sexual aspect about it. All the Las Vegas dancers in their scanty costume everything is over the top. There is the whole dip into the underworld with the whole city being situated in the middle of the desert. The highway scenes in Fear in loathing in Las Vegas are among the scariest. That also brings me the drug and mafia culture that Las Vegas is notorious for. There are so many movies out there about Las Vegas it seems like there are countless narratives about going to, being in, and leave the city. It is the city where both glamour and tacky meet and mingle. That is why I see it as a good comparison to Brighton.
here is a cool cite
