Feedback Thoughts

Source: The Blue Diamond

Feedback is probably one of the biggest things that can make or break something that can become a success or a failure in the matter of seconds. My view of feedback is that it is a good thing if it is done correctly and if all parties that are involved will use it. The reason that I value feedback especially in college is because of subject matter that I am studying. In aviation you can read about how to do something a hundred times but its not till you get out there in the cockpit and takeoff and do the thing that you finally realize what you supposed to be doing. This is where feedback is a really good tool because now that you read about it and went out and did the thing, how do you know that you really did it right or is there something that you can do better next time. So, in the aviation world we really rely on our flight instructors to give us feedback and talk over what happened and where we can train more on.

So, by taking what I just talked about and relating it to the speech that John Cleese, “The Importance of Mistakes”. You find that with every mistake that the missile made it learned from it and eventually got to where it was supposed to go. So, in the aviation world with every hour that you log of flight time you are just gaining that much more knowledge of how to correct what was previously done and how to deal with different things when they present themselves again.

The other thing that I read was “6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism”, I find this interesting and somewhat relatable. The first few things that were talked about in this article I found to be interesting especially when talking about procrastination. Procrastination is something that I struggle with all the time and have since high school. I would like to say that I am some version of a perfectionist and my family would agree with that. So, when looking at how procrastination is found in perfectionist because of the struggle of having everything line up correctly is interesting to me. I find this interesting because I see this in myself a lot, there are countless times where I will push something off because the task that I was doing before hand took five minutes longer than it should have. Even when I am at work and a task takes longer than it should have or it took longer than the time goal that I set for myself, I get this feeling of not being able to accomplish anything and it just starts a downhill approach for the rest of the day.

Epics of India: Topic Brainstorming

Food

Like previously stated in one of my blog posts I found an interest in the storybooks that pertained to food. So, one of the topics that I found of interest is the topic of food. It would be interesting to investigate the different foods that are of popular means to India and how they may have originated and what types of foods are of sacred value to them. For instance, I have always associated that mangoes are of a Mexican culture and that they must have originated from there; however, mangoes started in India and I was kind of surprised from that when I first found that out.

A little history about the mango: https://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/mango.html

Music

The second thing that I find of interest is the topic of music that is associated with the India culture. I find this interesting because you can honestly tell a lot about a culture through the music that they play and the meanings behind the music. You can find a lot about the symbolism about what the song means by when they play the song and where the song is played at. I think this kind of sticks out to me because I grew up in a small town here in Oklahoma that has a pretty rich native American culture and they have a strong music background that has a cultural significance to them to keep their culture alive.

I added the link to the YouTube playlist, because I feel it’s the best way to quickly learn about the different types of music and then do more research once you find one that interests you. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sita+rama+kirtan

Traveling

The third topic is, the traveling of India, this is for sure a topic that I find of interest only because I hope in the future that my career will allow me to travel to many places. So this topic would allow me to research about different places in India and then be able to form a knowledge of what there is in India. Then maybe in the future if I ever get chance to go then I will have already done some digging on the best places to be and also if it is a good time of the year to go.

Travel guide for navigating India for the first time: https://www.asherfergusson.com/2012/11/100-tips-to-survive-travel-through-india-fun-facts-culture-temples-pictures-more/

Festivals

The fourth topic that I chose is looking into the different festivals and holidays that are celebrated in India. Just in doing the little bit of research to be able to write this blog post I have found that they have a really rich culture full of festivals and celebrations for different things. The biggest topic I think I have found that is celebrated the most is there is pretty much a celebration for every god or god like figure that we will be reading about for this class. So, I think in picking this topic it will help me dive a little deeper into the different characters backgrounds as we progress through this course.

Here is a link to the festival that stuck out to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navaratri

Dance at the Festival of Navaratri
Source: WikiMedia

Week 2 Story: Pumpkin Spice Queen

Brooke the queen of fall and everything pumpkin spice, was laying in bed one hot Oklahoma morning rolling over and checking her phone to open it to the first post that was there.

OMG! OMG! OMG!

Were the sounds you heard down the hallway as Brooke took off from her bedroom to wake everyone up in the house to tell them of the news she saw. Steven one of the roommates came out of his room trying to figure out what happening, making sure that the house was still standing.

All Brooke said as she passed Steven’s bedroom was, “we have to leave now, no time to discuss just we need to leave now”. Not knowing what is going on and just having the hype of seeing someone run down the hallway and screaming that we must go, the only thing you know to do is follow in pursuit.

There was one other person that was in the house and her name was Karen, Karen was in the living room sitting with the dogs when all the started to go down. Brooke and Steven come running into the living room and Brooke grabs Karen by the arms and says, “we have to go and don’t ask any questions we just have to go”. Steven and Karen run after Brooke as she gets into her car and has it in reverse before the other even had time to open their doors to get in.

Steven and Karen got into the car and Brooke took off down the road as fast as she could, even almost taking off the bottom of her car by hitting the speed humps in the neighborhood at full speed. Steven and Karen hit the roof of the car since they didn’t have any time to put their seat belts on.

Latte Art taken from Pixabay

Brooke makes a turn onto a street that Steven and Karen are all to familiar with, the road that leads to the coffee shop that all millennial's know all to well. Steven and Karen looked at each other in complete confusion, “Brooke why the heck did you come barreling out of the room just because you wanted Starbucks”. There was no response from Brooke to Karen and Stevens comment just a hard stomp on the brakes making Karen slam into the dashboard of the car.

Brooke took off out the car and running into Starbucks with Steven and Karen in tow. Only to get into the store and find Brooke standing in the corner shaking with sadness. Karen walks up to Brooke and asks, “what is wrong with and why are you about to cry”, Brooke says “because I saw a picture of the new fall cup on Facebook and wanted to get here before they sell out”. Karen and Steven look around and can’t find a new cup anywhere in the store.

One of the Starbucks workers walks up to Brooke and says, “the new cup won’t be released for sell until tomorrow”. Karen and Steven just look at her with eyes that just fill Brooke full of guilt. Steven walks over to Brooke, “Brooke you owe me the biggest iced coffee they have for dragging me out of the house for nothing”.

Karen standing in line with Brooke as she orders us all coffee for dragging us all out of the house for nothing, looks at her over her glasses as an old wise grandma and says, “how many times do I have to tell you not everything on Facebook is the truth”.

The logo we all know taken from Flickr

Authors Note: For this week’s story I used, “The Foolish, Timid Rabbit” to rewrite into my own story. I used this story because it was the one that really stuck to me because I related it to the story about Chicken Little. I thought about rewriting this story using chickens but thought that wouldn’t be to original. This story just goes to show in today’s world how we take information that is right in front of us and not fact check it. Also, it shows that in the heat of the moment we just follow what everyone else is doing without stopping and thinking about it.

Bibliography: “The Foolish, Timid Rabbit” from Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt, Web Source. 

Reading Notes: Week 2 Anthology

The Foolish, Timid Rabbit

The story that kept popping back into my mind the whole time I was reading these stories was about the rabbit. The reason I think this is so is because the rabbit reminded me of the story about Chicken Little that kept running around saying, "the sky is falling". 

• The story about the rabbit has six animals- three rabbits, one deer, one fox, and a lion
• Story begins with rabbit sleeping and thinking about the earth breaking 
• Coconut drops from tree and scares rabbit 
• Rabbit starts running like chicken little and yelling that the earth is breaking 
• All the other animals run in tow with the rabbit 
• Lion is wise and brave and goes and finds out what really happened

Family of Animals. Source

Bibliography: Ellen C. Babbitt, "The Foolish, Timid Rabbit", Source.  

Week 2 Reading Overview

Ramayana Book Decision 

The version that I have chose to use for the course work is the R.K. Narayan's version. I picked to use this copy because it is composed of only one persons writing style and I think for something that is unknown to me this will be the best option for me to be able to dive into the material. 

Comic Books 

The first comic book that I picked is "Thanjavur: City of Brihadeeswara". Then the second comic book talks about the same gods and characters but in slightly different story and that comic book is "Shiva Paravati: A Story of Divine Love". I picked these two because because they seemed to have a story line that just in the overview I was able to follow and the Story of Divine Love has a decent story line that has a little bit of action and deception within it. Then I found the Thanjavur comic and noticed that it had the same characters and also if you read together you can get a broader picture of Shiva one of the gods.

Videos 

The first video that I picked is the "Stages of Life" where is goes through the timeline of the Hindu ways of the way of life. The video goes into detail about the four ashramas of life and how they progress. It is very interesting to watch this video and see that the person goes through life to basically give it all up in the end and gives himself up to God. 

The next video is, "Harry Potter Meets Hindu Mythology", this video really just stuck out to me because I am a Harry Potter fan and so what better than to find something that I am familiar with and add to what I am trying to learn about. In this video it takes the Hindu myth and relates to the story line of Harry Potter to tell the story and it was really easy to follow. 

Image used from Indian Epics: Images and PDE Epics

Image depicts two of the characters from the comic books I chose.