The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

For the upcoming lesson, we were assigned to read the autobiography of Nelson Mandela and answer some questions on the topic of autobiography. The title of the autobiography is “The Long Walk to Freedom”. After I read it, I sympathize him for the way he was treated while in prison. His passion for other’s equality even though he was in prison impressed me. This reflects his responsibility as politician and especially the president of Africa. Well, some may say that this autobiography is unreliable because it was written from the point of view of the author. So, we cannot sure whether such writers really write the truth or exaggerate to make their story more dramatic. However, I feel that there is a sense of truth in his story because as Kuo Wei said, he managed to describe events in detail and when I read it, I feel that his story was real. On the contrary, I feel dissatisfied because I have limited time to search for reference on the Internet regarding Nelson Mandela. I admit that I know nothing about him except that he was the president of Africa. So, I feel that if I have some extra knowledge about him and his contributions, I will be able to decide whether this autobiography is reliable or not.

Malaysian Celebrations

On 14/2/08, Dr. Edwin’s class was quite different from any other classes. When we entered the class, suddenly he asked us to list down Malaysian Celebrations. It was quite interesting but I still have no idea what he was going to teach because in the previous lesson, he asked us to answer some questions about autobiography. So, I thought, he will start his lesson by looking at our answers but he said he would do that after we discussed about Malaysian Celebrations. At first, we were asked to list down these celebrations on a piece of paper. So, I have listed about 15 celebrations.
Then, Dr. Edwin asked a few of my friends to write their answers on board and classify the celebrations according to groups. It can either be race, religion or culture. To me, this activity is very interesting and informational because it exposes us to many kinds of celebrations. Thus, I am grateful and admit how unique living in Malaysia because we are able to see different festivals, celebrations and cultures around us. Only after that Dr. Edwin claimed his purpose of this activity. He said he wanted to publish a book on it about Malaysian Celebrations. I also feel proud because we contributed on his project even though our contribution is only a little. By the end of the lesson, he gave us a task which is to identify any information/ pictures regarding the celebration that we are assigned to do. In my case, I was given the event ‘Awal Muharam’ and my group members are Adibah and Rhodhila.

Finding Topic for Research Paper

Finding topic for research paper is harder than what I think. It’s not that easy compared to position paper. I think it’s because this time, we need to compare two texts. Therefore, our focus will be wider. However, for this assignment we can also put our references that we use in order to complete this assignment. Therefore, it helps to make this assignment longer and KUKUH. Actually, I have been thinking about the topic all the time but I still cannot find the suitable one. I asked a few of my friends to see what story they have chosen. Some of them did Educating Rita and Pygmalion, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Kate Chopin’s short stories, and many more.

For this assignment, I will be supervised by Dr. Nooreen Noordin. Before the break, she had a meeting with us to see our progress. After the meeting, I had a quite clear picture about some of her requirements; we can focus on one topic if we want as long as we make a deep research about it and the step to come out with a research paper is similar to position paper. The first thing that we must do is to write a thesis statement that will sum up everything about our research. Up to this point, I still haven’t chosen my topic because I am torn between these two poets; Wilfred Owen and William Blake. Well, Wilfred Owen is one of my choices because he was known as war poets. All his poems deal with issues of war. His poems are special and different from other poets because he wrote these poems based on his experiences going to war. So, this is why his poems are all about the futility of war and even though his choice of words is quite difficult to understand sometimes, it motivates me to keep on reading to get the underlying messages. On the contrary, I’m also interested to do a research on William Blake regarding his poem, “The Chimney Sweeper”. This poem deals with issue of child labour which is also attracts my attention. I hope by the end of this week, I can make a decision on which story should I go for.