A page off Atticus' diary

Intrapersonal question: Write a diary entry for a major character of the novel.

For this really interesting question I chose Atticus Finch as the character's diary entry I wanted to write. This is set just after Tom Robinson's trial

Dear Diary,

I lost. Just like I had predicted the moment Judge Taylor gave me the case, I lost. Tom Robinson was convicted guilty of a crime he had not even dared to think about. All these months I’ve slogged to get evidence and link them all up into a flawless flow of events in front of the jury to at least give Tom that flicker of hope, God know I’ve tried. That wasn’t much I had to do, it was so obvious from the start. The shrivelled arm, wounds on the wrong places, not to mention the lousy lies Mayella presented the trial. The solid evidence was all there, but Gilmer and the jury treated them like they were transparent.

I have been so selfish for the past few months, sacrificing the happiness of my children, and the reputation of the Finches all for my personal principles. I pretend to be blind towards the suffering they endured, and will endure for the rest of their lives. Maycomb’s an old town, where generations of lies and prejudice have been circulating since the formation of this town. My act will only be added to the top of the list, a white man protecting a black man, never before seen in Maycomb. The children will have a tough time ahead of them, children of “nigger lovers” tend not to do so well in this unjust society. I can only hope, that my attempts on teaching them about true courage and the true meaning of the word “equal” were at least slightly successful., and pass on my teachings to their children and let there be at least one tribe in maycomb that is not racist.

But I will definitely not give up here. I will once again take up the task to return Tom his pride and freedom, and will appeal to the court. In the trial, the jury had taken much longer to convict a black man than usual. It’s not much of an improvement, but it’s still one. As long as I keep fighting, I know one day, maybe not in my lifetime, or not in my children’s’ lifetime, that the white man and the black man will be treated equally.

Stay strong Tom.

God Bless us all,

Atticus Finch

Interview with master lotus root soup

Interpersonal question: Conduct an interview with a friend(not from HCI) or a family member. Find out from their point of view about prejudice and discrimination. Either record the interview or write out the interview transcript.

Okay guys I KNOW in the previous post that I said I wanted to do the linguistic and intrapersonal questions, but very luckily my uncle managed to drop by at my grandma's house for dinner, and since it was only 1 block away I managed to conduct an interview with him, and decided to use that for the assignment instead, so I'm dropping the linguistic question since I felt that the interview was more interesting.

So I interviewed my uncle (who didn't want me disclosing his charming name). He is in his mid 30s and works at CASIO.

Me: So erm.. Good Evening uncle, and thank you for participating in this interview.

Uncle: Wah…so courteous ah. Anyway what is this about ah?

Me: Oh, its part of my English assignment, so may I ask what are your views about prejudice and discrimination?

Uncle: Well… prejudice is when someone is treating you very unfairly, and this affects their ability to make fair judgements in situations.

Me: Could you give me any examples on displays of prejudice?

Uncle: Of course, the more you see of life, the more prejudice you see. Recently my company is bringing in many foreign workers like Chinese or Philippines workers.

Me: And how does this lead to prejudice?

Uncle: Well I’ve seen and heard a lot of my colleagues making a lot of prejudiced comments about the foreign workers, like how all china workers speak poor English and are lazy. However I have seen the Chinese workers work and I find them very hardworking and courteous, and many have , on their own, went for outside English classes.

Me: Hmmm very interesting. Recently I’ve been seeing more and more foreign workers working at the shopping centre in my neighbourhood.

Uncle: Yeah lah, many of the foreign workers are more hardworking and courteous than our local workers, and they are also willing to accept lower pay, of course employers want to hire them lah.

Me: Yeah it does make sense, many Singaporeans have been criticised of poor work attitude. So anyway about discrimination, do you think that a lot of it exists in Singapore?

Uncle: Of course. Humans fear the unknown and this leads to discrimination. Even though we’re a multi-racial community and there have not been racial riots in a long time, I’m sure you and I both know that racial discrimination still exists.

Me: Well…yes, I’ve seen some racist comments popping out in blogs and online forum.

Uncle: It’s impossible to have totally 0% discrimination and prejudice in society, but we should always try our best to be as unbiased and just as possible. Now erm.. could we leave the interview as this because your grandma made my favourite lotus root soup for dinner and talk about prejudice does work up an appetite.

Me: Of course, thank you very much for your participation, and enjoy your erm.. lotus root soup.

Uncle: Thank You.

Multiple Intelligence Test Results.....Drum roll please

TA-DA! Above are the results of the multiple intelligence test I took as part of the English e-learning exercise.

As you guys can probably see the results are rather vauge. Of course the Intrapersonal score dominates, but after that there appears to be some sort of a three-way tie between the Interpersonal, Linguistic and Kinaesthetic scores. So in the next few paragraphs I'm gonna TRY to explain what the heck happened that caused the test results to be as such.

So just to let you guys know I've actually previously taken a couple of multiple intelligence tests on my own, but for the purpose of standardization for the assignment I took it again. In the previous tests the linguistic and intrapersonal scores have always been dominant, interpersonal always around 2nd or 3rd.. but Kinaesthetic? This really came as a surprise to me as I kind of suck at any sport that requires the coordination of two or more limbs at any one time. Except swimming and cycling and other elementary sports like jogging.

Anyway I think multiple intelligence tests aren't very accurate, as this is actually the 2nd time I'm taking the test, and the results differed by quite a margin, with my logical score being relatively higher than this one. So that's about it and I'm going to do the linguistic and intrapersonal questions. Stay tuned.