Grand Torino

A couple weeks ago my class watched the movie Grand Torino. Unfortunately I was sick that day, but I managed to watch the movie at home and I’m very glad I did. The American drama came out in 2008, and is directed by Clint Eastwood, who also plays the leading role in the movie, Walt Kowalski. Walt is an aggressive man, filled with hatred he takes out on everyone around him. After his wife past away he doesn’t want to talk to anyone, and even kicks his own family out the door.  The street Walt lives on is dominated by poor Asian immigrants, and gang violence happens regularly. His next door neighbors, the Hmong family, Vang Lor are not welcomed by Walt at all, rather despised. Nevertheless the relationship they are to develop throughout the movie will be Walts eye opener.

The escalation starts when Thao, the boy next door is urged and dared by his older cousins to steal Walts beloved 1976 Grand Torino. They want to include Thao in their gang, and although this is against Thaos will, he accepts the dare and tries stealing the car without any success. To pay for what he did, Thao is forced by his mother to work for Walt, and although Walt doesn’t want anything to do with the boy he puts him to work. To everyone’s surprise it turns out Thao is a hardworking boy who doesn’t give up. Throughout the next weeks Walt is also introduced to Thaos sister, Sue, who understands Walt and tries to include and talk to him. Despite the haterid for other people and inner exclusion Walt takes Thao under his wing and teaches him everything from fixing cars to how to talk to girls.

During the movie Walt has occasional coughing fits, and soon begins to spit up blood. Although it is never explicitly stated it is implied he is dying of lung cancer. As Walt is a very enclosed man, he doesn’t tell anyone about his diagnose, and denies anything is wrong when others discover the blood. Nevertheless, he knows he doesn’t have much time left.

One day Thao is beaten up by his cousins gang on the way home from work, because the attachment Walt has grown to him and his family, he decides to deal with it himself and confronts on of the gang members with a gun, threatening him to stay away. Unfortuantaly this only agrivates the other gang members and they retaliate with a drive-by shooting on the Vang Lor home, and beat and rape Sue.

Grand torino gives a good impression of both sides of hmong people. It is said that the womens place is at home, while the men go to collage and work. This is the same gender roles as we could see in the western world  years ago. In this case Thao was more comfortable working at home, in the garden and the kitchen. Because of this his cousins were even more eager to “toughen” him up, and make him into what they would refer to as a real hmong man. Sadly the story takes a rapid turn as the gang violence takes off.

The ending of Grand Torino is one of the most powerful scenes I have ever seen in a movie. Instead of acting like the selfish man he used to be, Walt was brave and sacrificed his life to save others.

In the beginning of the movie I’m not very fond of Walt. He’s both rude and selfish, but as the movie reached a turningpoint and it became clear to Walt he needed to change the way he behaved, I suddenly realized the reason for past behavior, and I felt sorry for him, The movie deals with a lot of issues very close to our own reality today. One of them is cultural differences and the challenges around this. Another important topic in the movie is the relationships between the young and old generation, and how they show respect for each other. Walt. As many other older people has made an idea that there is no hope for the young generation, this because the lack of both respect and manners for others.

Varieties of English - Philippine English

English is the most spoken language in the world, and is also the language with most width. The reason for this is not because it is the most international language, but because of the enormous numbers of second and third language speakers of English.

Philippin English is one of the many forms of English in the world. Philippin English is a collective term used to denote the various varieties of English spoken by the Philippines and overseas. When one says Philippine English, one is usually talking about the varieties used in the National Capital Region, reflected in the media and in schools.

In written form, Philippine English follows American standards, nevertheless there are some exceptions when it comes to punctuation as well as date notations. An example is that dates are orally said with the day as a cardinal number instead of as a ordinal number (ex. “January one” instead of the “January first”) even if the written form is the same.

Some other distinct characters of the language is that it does not contain the [f] phoneme. Therefore some Filipinos substitute [p] for [f] in words that contain [f].  The [v] sound is also virtually non-existent in most major languages of the Philippines. Somewhat because the sounds [v

The fact that English is taught as a major subject in the Philippines from grade one till college, most of them master the language and grammar well.

I find it interesting how one language can be so different, in so many ways. In one part of the world to another, the same language may sound so incredibly different, even though it developed from the same place. Allthough I think the variety is incredible, I also find it amazing that we have this worldwide language, and even though it might be an awful lot different in the philippins than in Britain, they still understand eachother and can communicate. There has been a number of language debates going on for years and years, discussing weather or not English will take over, and become the only language of the world. Norwegian are one of those languages that is in danger of disappearing, but if you ask me I think it would be amazing if everyone in the world could speak the same language. Time will tell.

GHOST HEART – Cecilia Samartin

I have chosen to read the book Ghost Heart by Cecilia Samartin. The book had got wonderfull critics, and I had been recommended it several times. I have also read Samartians Senor Peregrino witch I enjoyed a lot, so I must say I was excited to get started on Ghost Heart. I have read almost half the book now, and am liking it a lot so far.

The time is set back to 1955 in Cuba. We are introduced to Nora, her cousin Alicia and the rest of their family. The first chapters of the book describe the two cousins growing up in beautiful Cuba. Samartian describes the place in a magical way. While reading you can picture everything in your mind, all the smells, the warmth, You can picture the turquoise water sparkling in the bright sun, and the warm sand under your feet. Suddenly this harmonic and wonderfull place is turned around, and so are the lives of Nora and Alicias families. Castro comes to power and a revolution is on its way. The entire life on Cuba changes more or less over night. Banks are closed, food is shortened and religion outlawed. Life as they knew it is washed away. Nora and her family emigrate to California, while Alicia and hers stay in Cuba. But even though Nora is thousands of miles away, she left her heart in Cuba.

This is as far as I’ve come now, and I must say it’s really getting to me.

Megacities

“Megacity” is a term used for a city with more than 10 million inhabitants. There is estimated to be around 26 megacityes in the world in 10 years, seeing that they are developing this second. It wasn’t many years ago that the majority were living in rual areas, but in 2006, the first time ever in human history, there were more peple living in urban areas.

Megacities usually occur in developing countries, and of the 26 megacities that are guessed to be in 10 years, 22 of them will be in developing countries.

One of the graphs in the book shows that the biggest megacity in the world is Tokyo, Japan with 33.4 million inhabitants, followed by New York City, U.S.A. with 24.1. million and Mexico City, Mexico with 21.7 million. These statistics are from Population.data.net, and are from 2006. Nevertheless, new statistics from 2011, show that there has been a drastic change of the list of the 10 biggest megacities in the world. Tokyo is the still the biggest of them all, but the number of inhabitants is now 36.7 million, which is 6.3 million more people living in the same area, than when it were less people. New York City is no longer number two; New Dehli, India has taken over  with 22.2 million people. This means that New York City has less inhabitants in 2011 than in 2006, and has dropped to number six on the list. Now New York City only has 19.4 million inhabitants.

The list of the 10 largest megacities in the world in 2011:

1.Toyko, japan - 36,7 - 2011
2. Dehli, India - 22.2 - 2011 - 28.6 i 2025
3. Sao Paolo, Brazil - 20.3 - 2011
4. Mumbai, india - 20.0 - 2011 - 25.8 i 2025
5. Mexico City, Mexico - 19.7 - 2011
6. New York City, USA - 19.4 - 2011
7. Shanghai, China - 16.6 mill - 20 mill i 2025
8. Calcutta, India - 15.6 mill - 20.1 mill i 2025
9. Dhaka, Bangladesh - 14.6 - 20.9 mill i 2025
10. Karachi, Pakistan - 13,1 mill - 18,1 mill i 2025

Of all the megacities in the world, Dhaka in Bangladesh is the fastest growing. In 2006 it wasn’t even on the list of largest megacities, but I 2011 it made it’s way to a ninth place.  In 2025 it is supposed to have as many inhabitants as 20.9 million, which is an 6.3 million increase in 14 years. Other fast growing megacities are Mumbai with a supposed 25.8 million inhabitants in 2025, Shanghai with 20 million in 2025 and Calcutta with 20.1 million. India is definitely a country with a number of megacities under development. Dehli is already a large megacity, and both Mumbai and Calcutta are climbing their way up.

The urban population is consistently growing, and more rapidly every year, while the rual population however, is sinking. In Europe for instance, there was 209 million people in 1995 who were a part of the rural population, and only 518 million of the urban. In 2015 statistics estimate the number to be around 188 million of the real population, and 532 million of the urban. But this isn’t occurring only in Europe. Other parts of the word show the same statistics. Urban populations are too  increase rapidly the years to come.

It looks as if the world will be dominated by megacities and urban populations in the future. They are both growing very fast, and therefore we can ask ourselves if some day  it will be the end of all rural populations?

9/11

Last English class we watched a documentary about the terrible event of 9/11. In my opinion, it was the best film ever made of the incident. The two brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet were behind the film, and had no idea what they were about to create until they were done.

The documentary was originally supposed to be about a young firefighter, and his life as a trainee. The ironic part about the story is that this young boy was so excited about his job, and all he wanted to do was help people. So he waited for his first big fire, but it didn’t come, not until September 11 2001.

Suddenly the story takes a whole new turn. What had just happened? No one knew. All they had seen were the planes hit the towers and shortly after fell one after the other.  People were running around the streets, crying, shouting, most people in utter shock. The one brother, Julian, who was at the time filming was inside the towers after the plane had hit. When it came rushing down, him and some of the other firefighters managed to get under the building and were not killed. There were unfortunately many people who were not as lucky, and a number of shockingly 2759 were killed as a result of the terrorist attacks.

The most amazing parts about the film was the amount of credibility. This was it, this was exactly how it had been, how people had reacted, and how it all happened. They actually filmed as the plans hit the towers and when they came crashing down, they were inside the towers as the fell, and all the reactions all the people, it was all real.

The fact that this documentary happened on such random terms, makes it even more intriguing. It’s so extremely strong and vivid. Everything is caught on tape, and it gave me an entirely new perspective and insight of 9/11.

Narnia

Before Christmas we watched the movie Narnia in class. The movie is based on the book The lion, the witch and the wardrobe, and is written by C.S. Lewis.

The movie is very good, and the story is well written. Even so, it’s not really my kind of movie, probably because I’m not really a fan of the “fantasy” genre.

The story is set to the 1900s during World war 1, all children are therefore forced to move to safer places in the mean time. The 4 main characters and siblings Peter, Lucy Susan and Edmund are put on a train with all the other children and sent to live with Professor Kirke. Already the first nigh while playing hide and seek, Lucy, the youngest, finds a closet to hide in. She goes further and further into the closet, and suddenly she steps into an entirely different world, Narnia.

Continuing throughout the story, all four siblings finds themselves in the magical world of Narnia. They are apparently the “chosen ones” and the entire country is counting on them to defeat the white witch and set them free from their misery.  The movie has a happy ending and the children are crowned kings and queens of Narnia.

Although I don’t like the movie particularly well, I think the story is pretty good, and how Lewis has managed to create this magical land, and all the aspects to it. I also find it fascinating how the war near the end of the movie, has certain similarities with world war 1, going on back in the “real world” at the same time. I’m thinking about the battle strategies in particular, two storefronts war.

To sum it all up, I think I can say the movie is very well written, and filmed, just not my favorite pick.

Christmas poem

I’ve crossed out my calendar every day

Black crosses are all I see

What is close, seems far away

I am as excited as one can be

Dusty boxes brought up at last

Sparkling treasures put out

Memories awakened from the past

I’m happy and want to shout

I lay awake in bed

Outside the snow is falling

The day that comes ahead

Will see Santa comes a calling