Monthly Archives: January 2015

I had never been away from home by myself until Saturday, September 3, 2011. My parents left me. No, they didn’t abandon me. They helped me move into first-year residence and then they flew back home to Toronto. My dad was wearing sunglasses but I knew he was starting to well up. I kept my composure as I saw them drive away. But once I got back to my dorm I just cried. Ironically, one of the biggest reasons I chose UBC was because I didn’t want to stay at home! My grandparents and my parents basically did everything for me. They would drive me to school and pick me up from school even in Junior High when it was only eight minutes away by walking. They cooked for me, washed my clothes, and gave me money. So I knew that if I didn’t go away for university, I would be missing out on the opportunity to grow up and be independent. I think I was okay for the first couple of weeks but I felt alone.

Sunday, September 4, 2011. In Toronto, I knew some people from a church here in Vancouver because they came over for my church’s Summer Youth Conference. So on Sunday morning, I woke up and went to their church. The topic of the message was “The Solitude of Christian living”. The speaker really made me think about what it meant to be alone and to see it as a chance for me to grow as a Christian. In the end, I felt really comforted by the message because I knew that there was purpose to solitude.

Sunday, December 4, 2011. I actually wrote a tumblr blog post about home because I felt homesick even though I was so close to going home for the winter break. I talked about how I stayed in touch with my family by texting and MSN (now we Skype). But in a few weeks, I would get to go home and feel at home.

Today, as I’m telling you my story about my home, a lot of things have changed in my past four years in Vancouver. People always ask me, “do you like Toronto or Vancouver more?” My first two years here I always said Toronto. And now, I say “Well…. West Coast living is really nice.” I even think Vancouver winters are kind of cold now even though I survived the Icestorm of 2013 back in Toronto. It’s true, Vancouver feels more homey to me and that’s probably because I have grown and made a little home here. At the same time, I am still connected to my home in Toronto. So I guess you can say that I live in two places at once.

My faith is a huge part of what home is to me. Since we have a connection between the two meeting places in Vancouver and Toronto, people ask me how I like the fellowship in Vancouver. I say that it’s good because it feels like home. This doesn’t mean that the way I worship with brothers and sisters in Vancouver is exactly the same as in Toronto. It means that I feel at home and I feel that it’s a nurturing environment. Without making it sound like ritual, I know that I can connect to home through my faith because we are learning similar lessons and sharing in our belief.

Two years ago, I had a huge craving for beef tendon. My grandma makes it so well that the tendon melts in your mouth. So I called my grandma and she gave me the recipe. As silly as it sounds, whenever I make beef tendon, I always think about my grandma and all the delicious food at home. Even in the small things, I am reminded of home. On the other hand, when I am back in Toronto, I have taken the Vancouverite way of saying “thank you” to the bus driver even when exiting from the back doors. My friend also teases me for dressing like a West Coast girl with my TNA, Lululemon, skinny jeans, and TOMS. I laugh because it’s true. Vancouver has changed me even if sometimes I don’t like to admit it such as when I feel cold!

One sister from Toronto who married a brother from Vancouver told me “Don’t forget where home is!” before I left. Today, I acknowledge that I have a home in Vancouver and I have a home in Toronto because I am that home. My family, my friends, and my living situation are all a part of this home. It’s taken me a while to understand and accept this concept but I can say that I love my home, it feels good, and this is where I am.

Works Cited

Chen, Jasmine. “Home.” Tumblr. 4 Dec. 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

Kwok, Timothy. “The Solitude of Christian Living.” Vancouver Christian Assembly, 4 Sept. 2011. MP3.

I have a great story to tell you. I think it will explain a lot of things. A couple decades ago in a stuffy classroom, a bunch of educators gathered round and bemoaned the plight of “today’s generation”. “What are we going to do? Instead of enriching their minds with the classics, these children just park themselves in front of the television set and become dimwits”. Luckily, someone suggested that they should come up with new policies to ensure that students would fill their minds with good knowledge and become cultured citizens. Murmurs of agreement circled around the room.

Well these educators were on a mission. A mission to save the generation of youth from intellectual decay. So these erudite scholars pulled out their pieces of chalk, their pens and pencils, and brainstormed. After half an hour, they got back together and shared their profound ideas. One teacher-librarian suggested providing more funding to school libraries. “Too expensive” said one school trustee who just recently acquired a Mercedes-Benz. An English teacher suggested starting reading clubs in schools and providing a new book to each child every month. “A waste of resources” sneered a school board director who just booked a trip to Bora Bora for next week. Finally, the Minister of Education shared his idea. “The Guilt List“, he proudly proclaimed. A list of 194 works of literature that students would need to read before they graduate. The punishment for failing to read the entire list being that a student “has no right to joy!” “In addition,” the Minister bellowed, “a required reading list of ten books per semester — no double counting! — with at least one book by a Canadian author”. The poor English teachers’ cries of “not enough time!” were drowned out by the laughter and high-fiving of the more senior (wealthier) educators and policy makers.

So it was decided. The English teachers did their best to teach ten books in four months. Obviously, Atwood’s “Cat’s Eye” was selected for Canadian content in every classroom and quickly skimmed through. The students hardly had any time to learn anything else, what with their reading list. Their backs hunched over and their eyes turned glazy. There was no joy. Only evil. And the thought of defeating the evil by burning all their books at the end of the semester.

I told this story to my mother and then to my friend. The story stayed pretty much the same when I told it both times. However, I found myself being a lot snarkier when telling the story to my mother because she would understand a reference I made about a real-life school board director. It took her a while to equate my story with evil. She remarked that evil sprung out from a good and noble intention to contribute to society. However, the suggestion was unreasonable and misguided and thus ironically led to evil coming into existence.

However, I read Dr. Paterson’s blog before telling the story to my friend. She reminded us to “be careful about the stories [we] tell … because once a story is told it can never be taken back.” As I mentioned, I made a direct reference to the school board director and something he had allegedly done and thus had to resign. When I thought about it, I realized that though I was trying to be clever, this story about evil coming into existence should not drag a person through the mud. Unfortunately, the story has already been told. Therefore, I decided to change what the school board director did in my story and focus more on the evil that was created when I told the story to my friend. Neither my friend or I read “Cat’s Eye” although some classmates in high school did have to. So I emphasized this reference rather than the original one about the school director. He thought it was a pretty funny story and could picture the “evil money makers” laughing at their cleverness while the teachers suffered.

Personally, I enjoyed telling the story and changing what I emphasized to my audience. The medium of telling my story also changed. I called my mother in Toronto since my parents do not use Skype. Thus, my storytelling depended more on the inflections in my voice. On the other hand, I video called my friend on Skype and so he could see my body language which included a lot of eye-rolling. It was great to make up my own story and relate it to our course.

Have you ever felt a sort of evil lurking when facing a required reading list?

Works Cited

“Impact of Media Use on Children and Youth.” Paediatrics & Child Health 8.5 (2003): 301–306. Web. 24. Jan. 2015.

“The Guilt List.” English and Comparative Literature Department. San José State University. 12 Jul. 2013. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

If oral cultures are “praised for their naturalness and naïveté” while “writing … marked an evolutionary advance” (Chamberlin 19), it is easy to forget that literature begins with a story. As Chamberlin says, “This kind of thinking … encourages people to treat other societies with a blend of condescension and contempt while celebrating the sophistication of their own” (19). This type of thinking is also a contradiction. All cultures involve oral and written forms. Social media is an example of where the two intersect to blur the division between story and literature.

Social media allows people to interact with story and literature in innovative ways. In Lesson 1:2, it is said that a listener has more power over a story than a text that is read, because written words are permanent. If a reader wants to change a story then they must become writers themselves. However, through social media today, this does not have to be the case. If “We live our lives as a tale that is told” (Chamberlin 124), then all of us have a story to tell.

I discovered that Wattpad is a good example of rethinking the divide between story and literature. Wattpad offers “Storytelling Redefined” by being a social platform where readers and writers can interact with one another. Writers can publish their story for free (without a conventional publisher) and readers can read these stories for free. Furthermore, readers do have the power to change the story by leaving their comments and feedback for writers. Writers then can also change the way their story is told, just as how storytellers may not always tell their story in the same way. This video presents some of the challenges Wattpad faces as a business, but it also brings a fresh perspective on how social media enables the intersection of story and literature. Even orature is part of Wattpad. In the Philippines, Wattpad releases users’ stories in the form of a TV episode. The structure of storytelling is almost cyclical; a story turns into a book, and then turns into another story form through a TV episode. In this paper, the authors suggest social media as a way for publishers to reduce the risk for readers when making a potential buying decision (Lis 202). With Wattpad, because all the books are free, the risk for the consumer is minimal and the return is unmeasurable.

Reading on Wattpad, or through any other form of hypertext, allows the reader to go beyond just the one story in front of them. Hypertext allows the reader to choose where they want to go or not. Thus it means that readers may never stumble upon a certain story unless the hyperlink catches their attention. For example, if I tell you to click here for a story, you might not care unless I told you it’s the #1 New York Times bestseller! So while the hypertext is not a text until you click, you might be persuaded to go to that text in some cases more than others even though there is no risk.

Certain stories that may not be picked up by publishing companies can find a way to readers through social platforms like Wattpad. But those in charge of laying out the hypertext should also be wary that they are part of the storytelling process too; they can lead people to stories or dissuade people from them. The benefit of social media is that it allows the sharing of stories on common ground and it helps us rethink story and literature in an innovative setting.

Works Cited

“About Us.” Wattpad. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

“All the Light We Cannot See.” Goodreads. n.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2015.

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Vintage Canada. Toronto. 2004. Print.

Lis, Bettina. “Using Social Media for Branding in Publishing”. Online journal of communication and media technologies 1.4 (2011): 193-213. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.

The Verge. “Can Wattpad’s DIY writing empire survive Amazon?” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 18 Apr. 2014. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.