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.
