Reading Diary A： King Dasaratha

I have finished reading part A of the reading assignment for this week. I chose to read online version of the Ramayana because it is very easy to access.

The King Dasaratha is my favorite character during my reading. He is the origin of the whole epic since he is the father of the mighty Ramayana.

The King was not happy even though he has a strong country and a gorgeous palace. Dasaratha does not have a son, which made him in sorrow all day long. One of his three wives ate the sacrificial food and finally became a mother of four. The most beautiful child of the four children is the Ramayana, the future legend. However, Rama must to be banished for his father’s vow. And Rama accepted it calmly, so the Ramayana’s legendary story starts from here.

The fate of the King Dasaratha is already sealed; he will face his inevitable death. At last, he died in the predetermined sorrow emotions with the company of Kaushalya.

I hope I could change the story because the original story is full of sorrow.

Public Domain Ramayana

Ramayana's Leaving

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Week 1 Review

Map of the Internet Source

Back up is pretty easy; I downloaded my blog file and save it into my Dropbox. And I created a new folder for it. I do not think Google and the Dropbox will be down simultaneously, so my blog should be super safe now.

Check-up is easy as well because I did the Declaration right after I finished every topic. If I do not miss a Declaration, I cannot miss a topic.

MY favorite item from the current announcements is the Map of the Internet. On the map, Google, Microsoft, and the Apple are very large areas. What is very funny for me is the giant information ocean contains couple areas of the spam ocean. This really gets me.

Taking a nap Source

Famous Last Words of Week 1

I read the first two chapters of Financial Institutions Management and Bank Management & Financial Service this weekend.  They are required by my professor. I understand reading boring stuffs is painful, but I finished reading them and I did have a better view of banking system.

My best writing for this week is in this class. A main reason for this is my other courses are focusing on problems solving or logic thinking; they have little writing requirement but a lot of critical thinking and analysis practices. I think my best writing is the Introduction post. I introduced myself and my home country. Moreover, I write about my favorite city and my favorite food (a lot!). This introduction actually gives me another view of myself; I found I changed a lot during 3 years’ study in the US. My culture background allows me to think about things in at least two different ways. A mixed experience from two cultures can generate various results. This is my treasure.

The rest of my classes are all running smoothly. The Intermediate Accounting II is still a challenge for me since I am not good at accounting, but I will practice a lot and try to get an A. This is the last accounting course that I am required to take; I am so happy about this. Another under control course is the Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory. I am very good at economic courses though I am not an economy major guy. I have the ability to refine the given information and transfer it into models, which can help people to solve real life problem much more easily. The International Financial Management is a very informative class; I found it can be hard to keep up with professor’s thought. I am currently working on the first assignment. One very hard course is the Commercial Banking; our professor wants us the do a very real simulation and the textbooks are somewhat deep for me. But I think I can make efforts to get it through. The Social Media Marketing and the Epics of India courses are two very interesting courses. I use the time between my courses to finish Epics of India course homework. I really learned a lot from the posts. The Social Media Marketing is fantastic as well; we keep discussing during class time; as a new course, we are like testers, so we explored a lot with our professor.

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I am currently applying for a job in the Housing and Food Services. This will be a busy but engaged semester. Challenge accepted!

Google Timer Tech Tip:Use It via Google.am

A timer is a great tool for time management. You can use it to make your study more efficient.

The very first problem is you cannot use the timer when you are not using your country's first level domain. The solution is here. That is, you must use this google search engine to make the timer work. The "am" means the America region.

The only problem I found is this. This a great small management tool.

Week 1 Curation

I have been using Chrome browser for over 5 years though Google does not exist in mainland of China; I used VPN to access Google and I felt no difference after the Great Firewall launched. As an old user, I have mastered how to use Chrome’s bookmark systems. I always bookmarked the sites that interested me. Folders are very important for classified management; I generally created a lot of subfolders to make my bookmarks neat. One important folder is the folder named expired; I did not deleted my collections because I wanted to know what I have done in the past years, so I moved all bookmarks that were no longer interest for me to the expired folder as memories.

My bookmark; Self-made pic

In this modern world, sharing is becoming more and more in the digital form because it is convenient, cheap, efficient, fast, and environmental friendly. One simple click on social media website can share thousands people the information they may interested in. This process takes only one second. And no trees need to be cut down and made into paper. I think traditional sharing ways, such as newspaper and magazines, are facing a war that they could not win.

One recommendation is Google Scholar search engine. This one is more focusing on academic resources, which is very useful for essay writing. Furthermore, citations are already done in the search engine; no more tricky citation rules need to be worried about.

Growth Mindset: Never Give Up

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When look at the word mindset, I do not understand it. I looked it up in dictionary; the dictionary told me a mindset is a person’s attitude about something. After viewing the videos, I knew that the growth mindset is a process that people can develop a strong brain and a solid confidence.

Here is my personal experience about growth mindset. I do not have any learning experience of high school, middle school, and elementary school because I did not grow up in the US. However, my very first feeling of the US college education system was comfortable; actually I think it was way too comfortable. During the general education period, some courses are easy-A courses. I absolutely joined in the comfortable army; I spent no time outside the classroom, and I think most people did the same. However, I found situations changed very fast when I reached the junior level in the Price College of Business. I need to finish a degree candidacy to be admitted to take upper level courses; the application did require a stronger GPA, which some careless students might not have. As a result, when I went to Price, I did not see some familiar faces. Class grading changed as well; most of the upper level courses were graded based on where your grade was ranked in a class. An average B grades was the most popular way, but some professors DO NOT adjust grades, which was the reason I failed in the Legal Study of Business course. Such frustration was a valuable experience for me; I re-take the course and I started to learn very hard and I got A’s from some hard courses like Investment. I am currently thinking about taking an MIS major since it is very challenge major and has a great job secure. I can make it for sure if I keep working hard on it.

In China, students learn from frustrations, but almost nobody encourages us. In the US, encouragements and rewards are very common, but frustrations are rare. If frustrations and encouragements could be combined together, I think educations in both countries can be much better. Carol Dweck has a really good foresight on this. 

Storybook Favorites

The first story I read is the Shadows of the Ishvara. This story is about the Vikrama’s journey to find four ancient gods. Vikrama did this because he wanted to know the truth, the truth why those gods disappeared and left cities to ruin. He firstly visited Brahma, the creation god of Hindu. However, Brahma made him lose consciousness after telling him the conflicts among gods. When the author woke up, his next target was Vishnu. Vishnu told Vikrama about his story before his disappearance. After that, Vishnu just vanished in the air and Vikrama was heading to the lord of death, Yama. Yama said that it was not he who decided life or death; he thought he was just a guide who led souls to their resting places. Vikrama left without a word since he understood Yama’s important work. His final target is Shiva, the Supreme Being. Shiva told Vikrama about god’s limit and encouraged him to tell people that they were actually supporting themselves. Finally, Shiva sent him back to where he came.

My second favorite story is the Yama's Souls. Maricha chooses to fight with Rama to finish his unavoidable death, which is inevitable. He finally chooses to be defeated by Rama since it will be a glory to die in Rama’s hand. Rama then freed Jatayu’s soul. As a result, Jatayu transformed into a bird; Jatayu was actually reborn.  Bhishma, child of Santanu and Ganga, was unable to meet Yama because of Santanu’s blessing to him. At last, Lord Yama meted all the souls he wanted to meet and did everything necessary to them.

The third story is the Ganga the River Goddess. I like it since it mentioned sacrifice action, which is a noble thing. Ganga helps people to wash away their sins and keep kindness. In the story, Ganga’s birth was unusual; she was created by Vamana, Bali, and Lord Brahma. When she came to earth, she was worry about if she cursed the water on the earth. Luckily, Shiva helped her to avoid damaging the river. And Shiva purified Ganga, so Ganga’s sins of her soul were gone. After that, Ganga saved millions of souls and Bhagiratha was moved with such noble action. Ganga got married with Santanus. She drowned her seven children in pain; however, Santanus would not let her drown the eighth child. Hence, Ganga had to leave her husband and the child, who would be known as Bhishma in the future.

Artwork by: MoonElf

Course Overview: Epics of India

Although my home country, China, is beside India, I knew very little about India. In the previous semesters, I took the Human Geology course; it is also an interesting course, but it did not tell me detailed information about India and other non-western countries because class time is limited.   I believe I can learn this country from its culture, which is the reason I enrolled in this course.

I knew very little about Ramayana; when I was in elementary school, my teacher told couple stories, probably edited story for small kids, from the Ramayana. And I did not know it is an epic of India, though the name Ramayana was kind of weird for me. They were like mythology for me at that time.

When I think about “mythology”, the first thing come to my mind is the Journey to the West, a Chinese novel published in the 16^th century. I think it might have the same influence on China as Ramayana does in India. They are all great book from the ancient.

The Human Geology class mentioned some religions and their factors, but they were very rough knowledge. The Hinduism is very rare in China; I did not meet anyone who said he was a Hinduism. However, I did meet a lot of Islam. We went to school together and play together, but we eat different food. I LOVE Islam food so much, so I quite often dined in Islam restaurant.

I do not listen to India music, but I watched few India movies. One interesting thing is dance in the movie is not predictable, but the Indians are really good at dancing. The dance is organized very well and they looks really enjoying.

The picture that I am interest in is the Rama confronts Kabandha. It looks like a fight with a monster like man with wolf head and twenty arms. I recognized a similar character in the picture; multiple arms is also in Chinese mythology. See picture below.

Rama confronts Kabandha Source

Similar character in Chinese mythology Source

I have never been to India, but I am planning to visit this neighbor country after finishing my master degree. 

Introduction

Hello All,

My name is Youhao Wang; call me Youhao is fine. It reads exactly the same as U-haul, the moving and storage provider. I am currently majoring in finance, and I am a senior.

I am from Kaifeng, Henan, China, which was the capital city of China in Song Dynasty. The location is shown below. 

Self-made photo by Google Earth

I traveled back to China in this summer. The city had changed a lot in the past two years. I could see new buildings, new transportation, and new smiling faces almost anywhere.

I am supposed to graduate in the next summer, but I am planning to add the second major. I want to study the management information system since it is very interesting and it is very easy to find a job. The modern business world is becoming more and more relying on powering tools. I think paper works will be ending soon and documents will all become digital. However, MIS is also a very difficult major. I will accept the challenge confidently because I believe I can do it.

I love cooking Chinese food. Generally I cook for myself on weekends. My favorite spice is chili; I use chili to cook Szechwan cuisine. Moreover, I am learning how to cook Cantonese cuisines. Cantonese cuisines are not as hot as Szechwan cuisine; the food focuses on flavors. There are hundreds of Cantonese cuisines I can learn to cook. When I am lazy or busy, I will go to the Fang’s Kitchen located in OKC on weekends; they really make delicious dim-sum.Dim-sum picture is shown below. 

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I played pool a lot in my childhood. My pool skill really helped me to win a lot of pocket money during my middle school time and high school time, which was an epic experience for me. Another hobby is video games; I did not play video games now because they are too time-consuming. I had played the World of Warcraft for over 8 years. Now I am a casual player who may log into the game once a week to see how this game changed. I play Hearthstone couple times a week; I think it fits my schedule better and it is a game with a lot of fun.

Anyway, this is me. I hope everyone can have a wonderful semester and enjoy your life!

Week 1 Storytelling: The Tortoise and the Hare: Round Two

After the first race the hare went to the tortoise and challenge him again.

“I lost it just because I was not careful. Would you dare to race with me one more time? I will not take snap again. ” The tortoise agreed. The dare said “Great! See you tomorrow morning.”

The dare woke up very early in the morning because it felt excited to the incoming win. The tortoise was still in its steady slow speed to the race’s starting point. The dare ran at a lighting speed right after the referee announced that the game was beginning. The tortoise fell far behind like the first race, but the dare would not take nap anymore.

When the dare reached at a river, a tiger was asking for help because the tiger accidently dropped its rubber ball into the river. The dare rejected the tiger’s request because the dare did not want to waste time on it; the dare wanted to make sure it can win this game.

After a while, the tortoise was also at the river. The tiger asked the tortoise for help as well. Although the tortoise knew helping the tiger would lower its chance to win this game, the tortoise swam into the river and helped the tiger get his rubber ball. The tiger was very happy, but he noticed that the tortoise was not that happy. He asked the tortoise why, and the tortoise told the tiger about the game. The tiger responded: “Let me take you to the finish line.” In the middle of the race way, the tiger and the tortoise overtook the dare and reached the end much earlier than the dare did. As a result, the tortoise won the second Tortoise and the Hare Race again.

“Thank you for your help, Mr. Tiger,” said tortoise, “I could not win this one without you.”

“No worries, it was not me but you kindness helped you.” The tiger said.

           

Do well and have well.

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Author's Note

The hare wants to race with the tortoise again. At this time, the hare would not take nap again and the tortoise seems to have no chance to win again. However, the tortoise’s kindness helps it win again.

The change I made is very big. I created a new race story which is a subsequent storyline of the first race.

The idea came from “The Serpent and the Eagle” and “The Tortoise and the Hare”. In the first race, the hare stopping running during the race because he thought the tortoise had no opportunity to win. The hare decided to take a nap before the tortoise caught up with him. However, the hare’s oversleeping and the tortoise’s unremitting efforts made the tortoise win that race.

The image I selected was from the first race, but it matter little. In both races the hare was very confidence at the starting point; and the tortoise was always patient.

I choose this story because it is a well-known story, so my readers do not have to read the original story to know what has happened in the past. I want my readers know that kindness is also a good personality to help us succeed.

This storytelling is not related to my project, but it is the very beginning of my blogging.

Bibliography

Book: The Æsop for Children With pictures by Milo Winter

Author: Æsop

Year Published: December 2, 2006 [EBook #19994]

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Xi'an, My Favorite Place

Xi'an is the capital city of Shanxi Province, China. Source

I did not grow up in Xi'an, but I visited Xi'an very often and very enjoyed the city.What I liked most was its delicious food. Source Source

Also, it is a city had a very long history. The Terracotta is here. They may look small in picture; only can you feel the epic when you stand in front of the excavation site. Tips: Do not travel to Xi'an during general holiday time! Source

Comment Wall

Welcome to leave comments here! :)

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