Message from ptalreja

[Anonymous]

Thanks Matt for giving us the opportunity to share and learn again from our classmates.

My dad got back from a business trip from Japan the same day I got home so we were talking about doing business in Japan and the dress code. He brought up that this was the first time in 20 years of business travel to Japan that the Japan office shared with him that he didn't have to wear a tie and jacket to work. They told him that in order to conserve power, and to decrease the air conditioning they have modified their dress code for the months of June, July and August. Apparently, when he returns in October he will be expected to wear the tie and jacket again. I told him that we had talked about this in one of our lectures in class and I had a lot more background knowledge to his experience.

My dad is leaving for S.Korea next week for another business trip (he is in the semiconductor industry so now I understand, from the lecture, why he goes there so often). I told him about the amazing Korean pop culture, told him the architectural reason why he gets such great high speed internet when he goes there, and shared with him how involved people are in their civic duty to protest. I also talked a lot of about RAIN, :-). I gave him a list of Korean pop CDs I now want from Korea.

I also made my boyfriend watch the stuff on Colbert Report again with me and showed him the music video of the Big Mama's Breakaway. I have been thinking more about how that video is a great video to show high school students about the body image obsession that spans the entire world. Students do a research project on world problems in my class and that can be incorporated into the discussion while exposing them to amazing Korean pop.

After watching the Chinese gymnastics team win the gold metal last night my sister and I had a really interesting discussion about human rights in China and the expectations that the Chinese government has of its people (I had also read an interesting article on Yahoo News that is asking Yao to finally say No to the Chinese government which had us thinking about what the Chinese have done to some of their people in the name of winning). Though my sister loves Chinese people she said she was really upset at China right now and is nervous about living in a world dominated by China because of its influence on everyone's ideology specifically how the government treats the individual. Because of the information we studied the last two weeks I was able to bring up some of the historical reasons why China makes some of the decisions it does today. I also explained that the population of China creates challenges and they have been trying for hundreds of years to solve. They have had to try very different ways than the Americans and Japanese to become efficient and developed. I also drew upon Korea's change from a dictatorship to a democracy to show that if China is going to change it does not have to go through the violent upheaval that France went through. I don't know how to solve the problems of the world but my bit of exposure to East Asian History has given me a better understanding of how to develop the discussion, which is the first step.