I’d like to take a moment to put a spotlight on a project that Hannah and I have been working on over this past month: Uberessay.com. Uberessay.com is a student resource and writing community that was founded by Hannah and I on the basis of promoting students to share their well-written papers and essays, as well as becoming a resource that students can refer to when writing their own papers for quality, insightful papers.

Although I’m no English and/or writing-based major at my school, I’ve always been sort of in love with writing… Okay, so I may sound quite nerdy, but it’s the truth. Somehow, when I’m writing an essay or paper, I will always find a way to be inspired or be somewhat excited about what I’m writing: in doing so, I allow myself to become fully enwrapped by whichever topic or subject I’m writing about, and thus actually learn something from writing. I may not have the best writing skills, and maybe I do kind of suck at citing correctly and using MLA-format the right way, but at least I still enjoy writing!

And that’s really just the point of Uberessay.com. Personally, when Hannah approached me with the idea, I definitely and instantly agreed to help co-found it, because it’s something that I hope everyone who wants to be apart of can become a member of. My hopes for Uberessay are to foster a community that promotes discussion and fosters learning for all contributors and readers, as well as to develop a reliable and decent resource that we can all (in the future, hopefully) refer to when writing our own papers.

So, if you’ve written a great essay this past year – and anytime in your college career – please consider submitting it! And, if you have any feedback, please let me know. I would love to hear it!

The Berkeley Hunger & Homelessness Conference 2009 is an event that I’ve been working to put on, along with other student organizations on campus, for a while now. Although I must admit that throughout the planning process I was never extremely ecstatic nor optimistic about the turnout and the event itself, I think I’ve began to raise my expectations for this conference on Thursday. It seems like (or I hope that) there will be quite a few attendees, and we have a pretty good variety and range of speakers.

A group of students on campus have also made a short student documentary on homelessness in Berkeley. We previewed the documentary yesterday at our meeting, and I must say – it looks fantastic, and I hope that those attending our event will enjoy it as well. The short documentary can be viewed here: it includes interviews with UC Berkeley students, a UC Berkeley professor, formerly and currently homeless individuals, and volunteers at homeless shelters.

My hope is that this conference will encourage dialogue and discussion about just what “homelessness” means, and hopefully address and dispel stereotypes and the stigma around homelessness. Furthermore, I hope that the conference will increase awareness about the food insecurity that exists in West Oakland (53 liquor stores, 0 grocery stores), discuss the inextricable linkage between hunger and homelessness, and address “sustainability” also as an overarching topic –

1. How does the lack of grocery stores in West Oakland affect our local food distribution?
2. Why is “homelessness” as an issue in Berkeley unsustainable?
3. How do we address these issues on a local level so as to become a more sustainable city?

And, most importantly, discuss what students and the community could do to alleviate hunger and homelessness. Although I feel that there are larger issues and steps that must be taken to truly address hunger and homelessness, the first step is awareness and education about these issues, and hopefully this conference will do just that.

As Obama said himself from The Huffington Post article,

“Part of the change in attitudes that I want to see here in Washington and all across the country,” [he said], “is a belief that it is not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

I will update here after the actual conference with (hopefully) positive thoughts and reactions. Until then!

The conference definitely exceeded my expectations. We had over 120 participants, and a diverse crowd. I really enjoyed hearing Osha Neumann speak about the stigma that surrounds “homelessness”: the way people refer to those who do not have houses “the homeless”, even though we don’t refer to people who do have houses “the housed.” I noticed that there was a lot of discussion about being “politically correct”, if you may call it that – otherwise, I guess we can just say our sensitivity, in referring to those without houses “homeless” or categorizing the “problem” as “homelessness.” I can now say that I do feel self-conscious whenever I say “the homess”, and yet I don’t know whether saying “those who are homeless” is any better. I’ve never really been good at being PC…regardless of the term.

One example that Osha Neumann gave that was just so telling of how unequal, corrupt, and fundamentally messed up about our society: someone who was chased, arrested, and jailed for stealing $6.50 worth of food/etc. from a store, versus those on Wall Street that stole millions and billions of dollars and there was so much debate over how to “punish” these people. This is what we call a double standard, and in this case, it should NOT exist! When he put it that way, it was just so dumbfounding and absurd to me…

I also enjoyed hearing Robert Ratner, Housing Administrator of Behavioral Health Care Services in Alameda County, speak about EveryOne Home. I’m not going to lie – I don’t know much about housing policy and legislative policies both regionally and nationally over the years, so I don’t have much commentary about this. However, I do have a description of EveryOne Home’s mission:

EveryOne Home envisions a system of care in Alameda County that by 2020, ensures all extremely low-income residents have a safe, supportive and permanent place to call home with services available to help them stay housed and improve the quality of their lives.

I think that the conference overall was a success: it brought together many different student groups (even more than the three – Cal Habitat for Humanity, The Suitcase Clinic, and CalPIRG - that had planned the conference), people from the community – both “the housed” and “the homeless” (trying to avoid having to be PC when mentioning these “two groups”..blah I don’t know how), and people of all ages. I hope it was helpful, informational, and maybe even inspirational for those who attended… This conference could become an annual event. But we’ll have to see about that.

Until then, please enjoy the new theme I installed, NOT (obviously) made by me. I like what they call a “Life Stream” — it’s like a newsfeed of (almost) everything in my social media life!

Yayyy I added a wordpress plugin for my virtual library of books I’ve read/am reading/want to read. View it here!

I didn’t add all the books I’ve read recently but I added the ones I could..they’re mainly from the past half a year to a year.

(I got internet again, can you tell?? )

I’m taking a philosophy class this semester in which we discuss great “works of art.” The philosophy course itself is rooted in the belief that something in our modern world has gone wrong. Thus, we study great “works of art” and try to understand the multiplicity of worlds in hopes of fixing or even realizing what is wrong with our world. Because, according to my professor, maybe there isn’t even a “world” in modern times.

This course might just be my favorite course I’ve taken at Berkeley thus far…it reminds me so much of AP Literature, my high school senior year’s English class. The discussions and content of the courses are quite similar, although my current course covers more complicated topics and subjects, which is pretty normal considering this is a college course… But anyhow, we finished reading The Odyssey.

In my discussion section today, we discussed just what it is that Homer is trying to teach us. Here are some lessons we (meaning my section and my GSI) came up with –

1. We should stop trying to climb the ladder and just be good and comfortable in our roles.
2. All possible good lives have to take account of man’s limitation. You can’t be whatever you want to be.
3. Be more committed. Learn how to be passionate to one mood. Throw away the “whatever” attitude, the indifference.
4. Stop trying to calculate and deliberate things in our lives, and allow ourselves to be swept away by mood.
5. In some sense, Odysseus is like us. Like him, we live in cross-worlds. Odysseus can teach us how to be  across-world being and find meaning. The difference between Odysseus and us is that his worlds are interconnected. In our world, we come home from work and we want to forget about it. We come back from a day of school and don’t want to think about it. The meaning of each world in our lives are not connected. We need to have unity in our lives, just like Odysseus’ life consisted of unity despite the many roles he played, including father, king, wanderer, and warrior, all of which fit together.
6. The good of one world is deeply, fundamentally connected with the good of another world.

What is it about the Greek world that is all deeply connected?

It’s the work of art. In our world, we lack this work of art.

The Greek’s lives and society as portrayed by Homer is quite different from our lives and our society… It’s almost admirable to be able to throw away all the plans we seem to have and instead just let ourselves be taken over by instinct, by moods, and be okay with whatever that happens. But it’s not practical. How can we live that way, when there are rules and requirements we must abide by and fulfill? It almost seems like the kind of lives we lead are pointless, but then again are they really? Who defines what is pointless and what isn’t, what’s good and what is not good, what is admirable and what is not admirable?

And then in the end I realize that it really doesn’t matter, because the meaning I find in my life is derived by me and what’s around me, and at the end of the day, that’s enough for me. Regardless of what I believe, though, it’s so interesting and mind-opening to me to study these cultures and societies, attempting to understand the beliefs and thoughts behind such worlds… I am definitely looking forward to reading more of the books for this class and discussing them.

[Site update] — Also, new header image, inspired by this post. Haha. It was time for a change anyway! Also, I’ve added some new favorite quotes.