Book Review: The Lost Symbol

On the first day it was published, books bought totalled one million. Consulting these statistics, I decided to buy the book. Dan Brown's thriller. "The Lost Symbol" is probably the most intriguing among the books I've read. The story revolves around a 12 hour timeline and Robert Langdon, the protagonist of the story is called upon by a mysterious stranger to decipher the hidden location of the Ancient Mysteries. He flies to Washington D.C. and arrives at the U.S. Capitol Building to give a supposed "lecture" but ends up discovering a secret miles underneath his foot. Finding out that the mysterious stranger has kidnapped his old friend, Peter Solomon, he seeks to decipher the secret location inscribed on a pyramid that his friend, a Freemason, has been assigned to protect. It turns out that the small package Peter Solomon gave him about a decade ago contains the secret to deciphering the code on the Mason's Pyramid. The mysterious stranger turns out to be Peter's estranged son, a escaped prisoner from Turkey, who at first thought that wealth was the only thing that he needed. This revelation brings about a series of twists in the story which I will leave it to you to read. That's all for now.

Sonnets

In this post, I shall be talking about sonnets. What are sonnets exactly? Firstly, the word "sonnet" is derived from the Italian word "sonetto" which means "little song". It originated from Europe. Sonnets are a poetic form of writing and by the thirteenth century, it was used to refer to a poem which consists of fourteen lines and consists of a strict rhyme scheme. The best known sonneteer is William Shakespeare, the greatest writer known in English literature. Sonnets are known for their ability to force the poet to use simple language in a lyrical structure. The form's limitations, instead of being seen as a disadvantage, should be seen as an opportunity to refine and deepen thoughts. During the early Renaissance, it was used as an expression of love for another party and by the late Renaissance, it had transformed to encompass religious, philosophical and political ideas. This form of writing allows the poet more opportunities to develop different viewpoints in the poem. It allows the poet to develop a position or mood in the first eight lines and then shift to a different mood or position in the last part of the poem. This is also known as a "volta".

Next up is the structure of a sonnet. Different forms of poetic writings have different structures and this is what makes them unique. Basically, a sonnet consists of 14 lines, an iambic pentameter and a static rhyme scheme. You will definitely be asking what an iambic pantameter is. I will explain those terms now, starting with iambic pentameter. An iambic pentameter is actually very commonly used in the lines of a poem. This term describes the certain rhythm present within the words in a single line. William Shakespeare employed this in both his plays and poem. The rhyming sequence in a typical Shakespearean sonnet is in this format: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

There are different forms of sonnets. In this post, we shall be concentrating on English sonnets, also known as Shakespearean sonnets. Not long after the introduction of Italian sonnets, English poets started developing a completely native form of sonnet. English sonnets were introduced by Thomas Wyatt although the first English sonnets were mainly translations from French poet, Pierre de Ronsard and Italian poet, Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey gave it a rhyming meter, and a structural division into quatrains that now characterizes the typical "English" sonnet. Over the years, the works of English poets developed the base of English sonnets which consisted of a volta and a usual rhyming scheme. Let us enjoy a sonnet, courtesy of Shakespeare.

Death In Small Doses


Each day I must face, death in small doses.
Your parting has taken, kindness in life.
I long for the end, when it all closes.
For lost are the days, I call you my wife.
Wish for the peace and want of the feeling -
until my heart stills and frees me from you.
Left forsaken, no comfort, no healing -
shut out my mind and forget what I knew.
And when it shall come, time of my dying -
release of the burden, shall not reveal,
no cheek for my tears, my woes, my crying -
denying my fate, attempts to conceal.
Come hold me my lord, please hear my last plea.
For, death in small doses won't set me free.

Notice the rhyming scheme and how Shakespeare employs a "volta" by changing his viewpoint in the poem.

Due to the birth of a free verse, sonnets are considered as old-fashioned in our modern world and not used anymore, except for a few individuals. The New Formalism movement has also contributed to the contemporary in sonnets. Let’s end this post with another sonnet, this time a modern poem.

Lament: A Modern Sonnet
First glance, I see your beautiful brown eyes.
I fall immediately under your spell.
Slipping into a dream, I hear love's sighs
The dream turns out to be a living Hell.
When you said you loved me, did you mean it?
Your lie is poisionous as blackened sin.
Your beauty cannot hide your soul, the pit.
Release the demon that has lain within.
I've looked into your eyes to find your soul
Wherever it has gone, I do not know.
Your mind controls the 'shell' it plays the role.
Your love is ice, as you know how to show.
Though you have proved the demon, played the role
I find all beauty in your broken soul.

Photo Montage

Below is my photo montage which was done by me and Xavier Neo (19) from 1A1.

Conflict is one of the themes in many stories we came across in our LA lessons, like “The Scarlet Ibis”, the internal conflicts of the protagonist and the conflicts of the protagonist and Doodle, “Animal Farm”, the conflicts between Snowball and Napoleon, Federick and Pilkington, the animals and the humans, the internal conflicts of Charlie and between Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur in “Flowers for Algernon”. The various types of conflicts here are: internal conflict, conflicts with others and opposition in views.

The first picture over here is Keng Jin doing his assessment book. The conflicts depicted here is internal conflict, conflicts going on in his mind, all the solving and analyzing and all that. This may also be considered conflict with homework, probably because of the contradiction of thoughts in his mind.

The second picture shows a big plant and several other small plants growing extremely close together. The conflict here is the conflict between these plants to obtain enough sunlight, nutrients and water to survive.

The third picture shows Wei Loon about to smash me with his knee. The conflict here is the fight between these two people, the bigger and taller one, Wei Loon, bullying the smaller person which is myself.

The fourth picture depicts me angry with myself for failing his test. The conflict here is the internal conflict in me, the anger with himself for achieving such an undesirable grade.

The fifth picture shows two “dinosaurs” fighting, the Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Triceratops. The conflict shown here is the battle between these two dinosaurs, just like the conflict depicted in the third picture with Wei Loon and me. We initially wanted to take real animals, but we were unable to make our pets pose. We wanted to portray the aggressiveness conflicts between two beings which cannot express themselves with speech.

The last picture shows a cane. When we refer to caning, we are talking about judicial caning, the punishment some criminals suffer from for committing crimes like theft or vandalism. There are different views towards this subject. Some feel that this violate human rights and is cruel, while others feel that this physical punishment is necessary to lower crime rates. Such opposition in views is defined as value conflict. It is when two oppositions argue whether something is right or wrong.

The photos are arranged in this manner because conflict is defined as an opposition of needs and interests. It can also be used to refer to wars or revolutions, like the Rebellion in Animal Farm, where the furious animals chased Jones and his men out of the farm. In this case, chaos usually exists. By placing our pictures in a disorganized way, we hope to portray the chaos during conflicts.

Thank you for your time. Do give your comments!

Memoir of the World Cup

Yes, the World Cup may have ended but scenes of those electrifying moments still linger within our minds every time someone mentions "football". We do have to thank South Africa for their hospitality which they have shown while hosting this exquisite game of football. Despite South Africa's high crime rate and looking at the number of rapes committed every year, South Africa did not let any get in their way in hosting the FIFA World Cup. There's no doubt whether another football fiesta should be held on that continent again. Africa have indeed showed the world what they are capable of. South Africa has always been under the opression of foreign countries. Looking back at South Africa's history, the whites have always triumphed over the blacks. Take apartheid as an example. It was a system of legal racial segregation and many blacks suffered under the rule of the whites. There was, however, a brave man who stood up for his country, Nelson Mandela, who succeeded in freeing his fellow countrymen from the clutches of the whites with the African National Congress. Back to the future, look at how the Africans were supporting teams during the tournament. From annoying vuvuzelas to painted faces, they were treating others as their own kind, even the Dutch, who were the colonialists of the Cape Town area. This has been the best World Cup I've ever watched. Even Sepp Blatter agrees, giving South Africa 9 out of 10. Now, another four years till we go to Brazil.

Emergency IT Lesson 2 Analyzing & Composing poem

Hello to all. This is my first attempt at writing a poem. Do comment on it.

Memories of School

Remembered the time,
When I got my new bag.
It was black and ever gleaming.
This was the start of my journey.

It started off with a loudspeaker,
Right into my ears.
I returned home bruised and bloody,
With a scratch to my lips.

Exams were never easy,
Usually just pulled through.
I got caught in the web,
Got glued to the screen.

This habits were never easy,
To get them away from you.
One after another,
They always seem too tempting.

I wanted to make up ground,
For the lost knowledge I did not gain.
Walking down the lost path,
Was never easy for me.

Alas I had reached my destination,
My knowledge returned to me.
Working hard to gain my stand,
I topped the class at last.

The memories of school,
Are fondly remembered.
It was because of them,
Which crafted my strong will.

That's all for today, folks! Do give your thoughts!

Emergency IT Lesson 1 Figurative Language

It's time to walk down that old dusty lane of ours to remind ourselves of our innocence. I've chosen a poem from an poet(of course!) - Walt Whitman - to tell us about his perspective of school. So just take a look at it. Seriously, it is meaningful to read.

Old Man's Thought of School

An old man’s thought of School;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot.

Now only do I know you!
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass!

And these I see—these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning—these young lives,
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships—immortal ships!
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the Soul’s voyage.

Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a Public School?

Ah more—infinitely more;
(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and
mortar—these dead floors, windows, rails—you call the church?
Why this is not the church at all—the Church is living, ever living Souls.”)

And you, America,
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future—good or evil?
To girlhood, boyhood look—the Teacher and the School.

To the boring part, figuring out the figurative language encompassed in this confusing poem. Figurative language IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY.
As you know, this poem generally tells us about school from an "old man"'s view. It could be that Walt Whitman is really an octogenarian or he is just using a hyperbole (it's pronounced as hy-per-ber-ly) which is another word for exaggeration.
Another trait of this poem is the usage of similies. Why? The children are compared to "immortal ships" which require "building" and "equipping" with a keyword - "like". Similies make use of the word "like" or "as". Without this, the sentence will be a metaphor. When Walt Whitman exclaims "And you, America", he is regarding America as a person without using "like" or "as". Thus, it is a metaphor. It probably suggests that children require knowledge and skills which will be achieved when they "sail out over the measureless seas", which suggests their learning journey. In this whole stanza, symbolism is achieved by using a representative figure to carry additional meaning.
Personification is a method to give human traits to something. In this poem, personification is achieved when Walt Whitman claims that he finally "know(s) you(school)". Walt Whitman is giving human traits to the school by expressing that he finally knows the school.

Although this poem did not carry much meaning to me when I first read it, after thorough analysis of the poem, I started developing an interest for it. Why do I like it? Firstly, it brings to me the impression when I first entered school: “Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes”. The poet does have the perspective of a child’s. Next, I like how the poet combined ships with children. He used different methods of figurative language, similes, metaphors and symbolism, all grouped into a stanza which brings a meaningful effect. Lastly, it emphasizes on a strong message that education is important for our future.

A Writeup on Joseph Stalin

In Animal Farm, Napoleon is parallel to Joseph Stalin in reality. Who is Joseph Stalin then? In this post, I shall do a writeup on Joseph Stalin.

Birth and Early Life
Joseph Stalin was born in Georgia in 1878. He encountered many unfortunate accidents. A horse carriage accident permanently damaged his left arm while small pox scarred his face. At the age of ten, he attended church school where the Georgian children were forced to speak Russian. He rebelled against the imperialist and religious order at the age of sixteen when he received a scholarship to the Georgian Orthodox seminary. However, he was expelled shortly because of failure in taking his final exams. Soon after, he discovered Lenin's writings and became determined to become a Marxist revolutionary, eventually joining Lenin's Bolsheviks. He became a full-time revolutionary after being marked by the Tsar's secret police. He rose in rank rapidly and became a chief operative in Caucasus, a mountainous region on the border of Asia and Europe. Through many atrocities such as bank robberies and kidnap, he tried to raise funds. In 1906, he married Ekaterina Svanidze who gave birth to his first child. He temporarily resigned from his party due to the banning of bank robberies. However, he masterminded a raid on a bank shipment which caused the deaths of 40 people. He then fled to the capital of Azerbaijan where his wife died of typhus. He claimed that "with her died any human feeling in him" at her funeral. In Azerbaijan, Stalin organised Muslims in partisan activities, including the murder of many of the Tsar's supporters. On many occasions, he was captured and sent to exile but escaped. After one of his escapes, he returned to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) to create the party newspaper Pravda from from which he got his pen name Stalin which means steel in Russian. During his last exile, he was conscripted to join the Russian army to fight in World War I but was deemed unfit due to his damaged left arm.

Revolution and Wars
In 1917, Stalin played a huge role in the Russian Revolution. He started the Revolution after ousting his editors in the Pravda newspaper. He then took a position in supporting the Russian provisional government. However, after Lenin won at the April 1917 Party Conference, Stalin and Pravda supported the overthrowing of the provisional government. At the conference, Stalin was elected to be the Bolshevik Central Commitee. After Lenin took part in an attempted revolution, Stalin helped him to evade capture and eventually ordered the Bolsheviks to surrender to avoid a slaughter. Stalin and Lenin eventually escaped to Finland where they drafted up plans of another revolution. Lenin also became the leader of the Bolsheviks. When the October Revolution happened, Kerensky, the head of the Russian provisional government was at the German front to rally Russian soldiers. By November, the Winter Palace had been stormed and Kerensky's cabinet was arrested.

Stalin also engineered the 1921 Invasion of Georgia and he adopted a set of centralist policies towards them. This created a rift between Lenin and Stalin as Lenin believed that all Soviet states should stand equal. However, Lenin still regarded Stalin as a loyal ally. Stalin suffered a stroke in 1922 and he went into semi-retirement. Stalin visited him often so that he could keep in touch with the outside world. However, they quarrelled and their relationship deteoriated. During Lenin's semi-retirement, Stalin forged an alliance with Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev against Trotsky. This signals the start of a power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky. When Lenin died in 1924, the disputes between Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky intensified to the extent that they ejected from the Central Committee and then from the Party itself. Kamenev and Zinoviev were later readmitted while Trotsky was expelled from the country. As Stalin pushed for industrialisation and control of the economy, he contravened Lenin's New Economy Policy. In 1927, a critical fall in grain supplies prompted Stalin to seize farmer's crops.

Changes under Stalin's Rule
Under Stalin's rule, he increased the scope and power of the intelligence and secret police. Soviet intelligence forces began to set up networks in major locations worldwide. The effectiveness of this can be seen from the fact that Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico by the intelligence.
Other than the intelligence, Stalin also tried to purge leaders in the Bolsheviks who won the majority of the crowd. One example of this was Sergei Kirov. He received much less negative votes than Stalin and he was assassinated. Many trials, including the Moscow trials, were held and that started the cycle of public persecution and abuse. Besides the purges, he promoted atheism through education in schools as he thought it was easier to create a perfect communist society without the presence of another idea. By the 1930s, it was considered dangerous to be involved with religion. Many priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Much of Russia's religious buildings were demolished. About 3 to 60 million people were killed before the Soviet Union dissolved.

World War II
Before World War II, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany after failed attempts to sign anti-German military alliance with England and France. This divided the whole of East Europe into spheres of Soviet and German influences. In 1939, German forces and Bolsheviks invaded Poland and this started World War II. The Soviet Union was given part of Poland. The Tripartite Pact was signed by the Axis Powers. In 1941, however, Hitler breaks the pact with the Soviet Union, initiating Operation Barbarossa which saw the German Invasion of Soviet Union territories. By the end of 1941, German forces had advanced deep into the Soviet Union and there were many casualties in the Soviet Army. With the help of Britain and the United States, the Soviet Union succeeded in pushing back the German army, eventually defeating Germany which initiated the suicide of German leader Adolf Hilter.

Death
In 1953, after an all-night dinner, Stalin was found unconcious in his room, probably after suffering a stroke which rendered him unable to move. 4 days later, he died at the age of 74. The cause of his death was listed as cerebral haemorrhage. However, it had been suggested that he had been assassinated. His body was preserved in Lenin's Mausoleum until 1961, when his body was removed and buried next to the Kremlin walls as a process of de-Stalinization.

I hope this post has been enriching and would give you ample knowledge in the reading of Animal Farm. Thank you.