Saturday 31 May 2008

Tibetans' Cultural Identity Crisis

Working Title: Young Tibetans’ Cultural Identity Crisis

Suggested Outlet: BBC Radio 4 Crossing Continents

Idea: Close-up of how today’s young Tibetans consider their culture identity in the environment of the feud between China and Tibetan government-in-exile.

Story

The feud between China and Tibet always attracts the world’s attention; along with Beijing being the host of the Olympic Games in August and the protests to free Tibet is crossing the continents.

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader has argued for Tibet’s autonomy, he also accused Beijing of committing “cultural genocide”.

What does this mean by cultural genocide? Is Tibetan culture being swept out by the Chinese?

How is China imposing its Han culture on Tibetan children at schools (both in Tibet and rest of China) – and how are they responding?

In the last two decades, a handful of new schools only for Tibetans were built up in the major cities in China.

I'd like to ask how these students' special experiences of studying outside of Tibet influence them later in life, especially regarding shaping their characters, religious belief and mentality?

Do they feel strong cultural conflict within themselves or is there a huge loss of their Tibetan cultural identity?

In the meantime, schools in Tibet have also implemented new syllabus.

I’d like to investigate in-depth of the school syllabus and its teaching methods, and find out how the changing system influence young Tibetans’ cultural identity.

Apart from school, what are families' attitude towards young Tibetans' cultural identity? What families have done about it?

Interviewee contributors

Chongqing Tibetan Secondary School, Chongqing, China.
Schools in Tibet, Tibet, http://www.tibetanms.cn/
A Tibetan family
Prof. T H Barrett, SOAS, http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff30627.ph,p
Prof. Xiaopu Wang, Uni. Peking, http://www.pku.edu.cn/academic/zggds/002/004.htm
School Syllabus Department for tibetan student, China, http://www.pep.com.cn/kcs/
Tibet Foundation, London, http://www.tibet-foundation.org/tf/index.php
Tibet Culture, Lhasa, http://www.tibetcul.com/

Treatment

At school: typing keyboard from computer, reading, taking part in activity etc
Daily life: shopping (shop background music)
Traditional Tibetan music

Friday 30 May 2008

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent is absolutely an amazing highly intellectual programme.

Critical Comment

Frankly speaking, it stands out among other current affairs programmes, because it truly relies on its very different approach of story telling – reflection of correspondents’ own personal experiences.

Many stories I found touchable, vivid and absolutely attractive, I realise that the triumph is due to correspondents’ frank revealing of their inner emotions and feeling – from their heart and soul.

I personally think it’s a huge breakthrough of traditional format of current affairs story telling. Personal reflection makes the hard news more interesting.

The programme is very creative and innovative. And brings listeners so much inspiration.

UN peace-keeper committed crime on children sexual abuse

It literally portrays the pictures and scenes through the elaborative and descriptive script, through presenter’s profound voice, which tends to create a kind of mysterious atmosphere.

For instance, when reporting in southern Sudan, I was shocked by the 10 Pakistani UN Peace-keepers committed crime on children sexual abuse, and I was convinced that hundreds, or maybe thousands children from the globe are suffering this unbelievable ordeal.

Who can save these vulnerable, innocent and powerless children? During the reporting, the UN department of peacekeeping operation in New York contacted the correspondent, saying this is intolerable and they will follow it up.

The world is shaking by these well-informed correspondents.

Criticism

The programme is purely voice and story details driven, sometimes I do hope a bit of background music, which could fade in to romance the atmosphere, and avoid the story becoming dry.

However, probably Tony Grant just desires this type of format and style, without any treatments, but sometimes I feel a bit of too much depressed.

Monday 26 May 2008

Gordon Brown Leadership Attacks

Followed by Labour was defeated in the byelection, the party was questioning is there any necessity to change the leadership within Labour itself? Does Gordon Brown is trustful enough to lead the party to be successful in the next general election?

No appetite to challenge Brown

Several labour MPs express their feeling towards Brown, they fully support his leadership, and appeal Labours should pull together to stand behind this man.

These MPs include Health Secretary Alan Johnson, Health Secretary Alan Johnson, Former deputy PM John Prescott, they all agree that suggesting Mr. Brown should step down is nonsense.

Economy crisis

Brown's leadership attack due to several reasons, 10p income tax rate ban do affect Brown's symbolic figure, afterwards during the byelection, people from Crewe and Nantwich were voted for Conservative candidate Edward Timpson.

As Brown himself said after the election, people are concerned about the food prices going up, fuel prices going up, and worried about their income tax increasing.

China Earthquake Devastation

Tens of thousands people died in the Sichuan earthquake, up to 26th of May, 62,664 people are dead; 358,816 are injured; and 23,775 are still missing. these figures clearly conveyed how brutal the natural disaster is.

Earthquake Aftermath

The Earthquake happened in Sichuan province, south west of china. Wenchuan, Beichuan are the most affected cities from the disaster.

Aftermath, the whole country's implementing different facilities to aid victims, President Hujing tao went to the forefront to pray for Sichuan people, and encourage rescue workers.

International aid under UN is also access to China and provide civilian assistance.

China 2008

This year's china's going through a very difficult time.

Earlier this year March, tibetant demonstration under Dalai Lama's so called "genuine antonomy", but to what extend the spiritual leader really wants for the true autonomy? And Chinese government's very much concerned about his motive.

Later on, world Olympic torch relay was disrupted in the western world. Paris, London, San Francisco these major cities were surrounded by Pro-tibet protestors. They were arguing about human rights records in China, and use this opportunity to raise issues towards host country.

Middle of May, followed by this catastrophe of earthquake, thousands of people were dead,injured and missing. Undoubtedly, Chinese government were experiencing extremely pressure just head of Olympics games.

However, numerous news programmes recently from Britain were talking about China is changing, and does it mean to change towards democracy the western world wants? Let's be objective, listen and watch.

Sunday 25 May 2008

The Apprentice

An amazing programme from BBC iPlayer -- The Apprentice illustrates how cruel the competition it is within the business world.

The story is literally ture, a handful of experienced business men/women are competing for a 6 figure salary job from one of the business giant corporation within UK. Their stories are followed by media industry and reveal to ordinary people.

Tissue competition

Yesterday's story is to pitch tissue branding/marketing strategy during the meeting with the most influencial British business boss sir Alan.

Raef, the guy who was fired later on is the project manager of the failed team.

No one is thinking "I love my tissue" is the failed team, I'm a bit shocked that "Atishu" finally won the competition.

"I love my tissue"'s real problem

the real problem from Raef's team is they tends to be very artistic, very much emphasized for the imaginative image of producing the tele adv.

The bloody hell is no any indication of tissue and anti-bacteria which sir Alan is expecting from their product!

On the contrary, "Atishu" produces horrible box design, unprofessional presentation, but they won, because in their tele adv, the actor and actress mentioned tissue, mentioned anti-backteria at least 3 times, and consumer will remember oh, ok, this is for advertising tissue.

What I learn

In fact, I was wondering my website during watching the Apprentice, at end of the day, my web will be examined by my client, and do I need to be more business driven and less artistic?

Make it clear what I'm going to tell/sell to people from my website is crucial, and go straight to the point is key.

Eurovison '08



Eurovision Song Contest is considered as the most famous entertaining event cross European Continent every year. Not because how good quality the songs are. On the contrary, critics says that Eurovision famous for its questionable songs, bizzare performance, and political voting.

Along with the increasly joint new members, such as Israel, Ukraine, non-EU members play important roles in this year Eurovision Song Contest.

Eastern block ranked on the top

Unbelievable, these countries are just vote for their labours, vote for their allies, and some countries even not take it seriously, for example, like spain.

Seems making fun of Eurovision is quite common.

This year's Eurovision winner went to Russia, and then followed by Ukraine, in fact, for some time, Ukrain was competing with Greece (Who was ranked on the top from the very beginning) for the 2nd place.

However, no doubt that some of the eastern block countries voted for Ukraine and speed up her pace to ranked as the 2nd.

The point I can't understand that why Malta, the traditional meditteranean country, gave 10 points to Ukrain first, then gave 12 points to Sweden? I was hoping information literally coming from Valletta.

Loads of countries were voting for each other which is the famous joke, such as the Nodic countires, Norway voted for Sweden, then in aother way around, Sweden voted for Norway.

The backers were gently enough staying quite behind, UK was on the bottom line, France, Germany were all left behind, and spain's points was just so so.

Personally, I just love Greece, unfortunately she ranked only the 3rd.

What the fun Eurovision Song Contest is!

Friday 23 May 2008

Dalai Lama's Visit to Britain

The Tibet spiritual leader Dalai Lama has a 10 day visit to UK, Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed him in the Lambeth Palace instead of Downing Street.

The packed press conference are arguing Gordon Brown's decision is to appease Beijing.


Dalai's pursuit of antonomy

According to BBC news and the Gurdian, Dalai Lama appreciated PM's invitation for his 10 days trip to UK, he expressed his view that persistence for Tibet antonomy rather than independence from China.

He said he agreed with Tibet's governed by Chinese government in terms of foreign affairs and defence, however, other issues such education, environment, religious work should be handled by Tibentans themselves.

He emphazised that Tibet's independance from China is not his concern, is out of question.

Dalai Lama's view towards Beijing Olympics and torch relay

Dalai Lama said from the very beginning, he made his attitude clear that he's fully supporting Beijing Olympics, and he appealled pro-tibetant shouln't disrupt torch relay, since it's part of Olympics, and should be protected and respected.

He also mentioned that he hasn't heard any invitation from Beijing for the August's Olympics. he'll wait for the talk in June with Chinese government, if the talk has a breakthrough and be constructive, he is willing to be in Beijing in August.

Lang dispute between Dailai Lama and central government

While Chinese government condemning Dalai Lama's independence attempt, he accused China's human right abuses.

Monday 19 May 2008

New Design for the Web







Content System Management

Last wednesday, we had a first practical session at Marylebone High Street with our online course leader, the interesting point is he explains us about the Content Management System.

During David's class, he mentioned this jargon before, I remembered I asked him as well, but still have no idea at all, until last Wednesday, I got some ideas finally.

Content System Management

It's a system that most of the news agencies updating their stories, for instance, Paul introduced to us that in BBC itself, there're more than 20 management systems already, because I was asking does each news agency in UK possesses its own content management system, in order to help their staffs update stories.

Paul showed us how to update pictures, how to insert texts, how to put article titles etc, I found out that it was so easy for them to work in this kind of system rather than the html in Dreamweaver.

It's just like the simple website that you need to click the icon, then you insert what you need to update, basically similar as using the blogger.

There's no need for them to check code, or write any code. Paul also showed us update picture, how to use photoshop to crop the picture and set the correct image size.

Sunday 11 May 2008

BBC Step Up Session -- Pitch Your Story!

It's a very interesting session I attended last Wednesday afternoon, Hazel, a broadcaster from BBC Scotland gives us a fantastic pitch session. I love the way she guides us into the session, particularly her opening film.

What makes a bad pitch?

I found out the film is so attractive, because normally people will talking about what makes a good pitch. However, instead of talking about what makes a good pitch she started to talk to us what makes a bad pitch.

1. No confidence, a man appearing on the scream with pale face and looks so nervous
2. Ridiculous concept, the idea should be reasonable, otherwise commissioning officer won't appreciate the ideas.
3. Poor appearance, when go to pitch your idea, of course you need to be careful with your dress, should be formal and serious about your story.
4. No head for figures. You have to understand that how much you're going to spend to make your story, and how much profits you will gain from the story making, keep economic concept in your mind.
5. No exclusivity
6. Props that let you down. This is a most funny thing, more mean technique stuffs, so always check before pitching with commissioning officer, otherwise could turn out that you can't show your work because technical reason.

What else Hazel talked about pitching a story?

We need to be very passionate about our story, confident of our ideas, and make sure we know what we're going to ask, who we're going to ask for during the story making.

Hook is a kind of question, the main thing we have to be very much clear what's the idea, mostly utilise one or two sentences to describe the idea, this I learnt from David.

We need to estimate that do people care? why should people care? then we know how many people will watch it.

Aa a story maker, we also need to understand that the commissioning officers are willing to know what they will watch from the screen, what they will hear from the radio, so the question will through to us how am I going to make the story?

Other thing such as be clear of the idea which has already been mentioned above, what's the big idea? what's the purpose?How will it works? what's in it for audience? close -- should be a very strong statement, and reflect something, because story maker need to convince audience what they're thinking about exactly.

The ending from Hezel's session is wonderful, she says a good pitch tells an engaging story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

BBC Digital Oympics Project 2012

I grabbed a very nice opportunity to talk about video online, multimedia, blogging etc from a student perspective, on the open-source ideas session from BBC Digital Olympics 2012 last Thursday afternoon at Media Centre, Lords Cricket Ground.

As a student contribute my own online experience

Today's journalism is more flexible in terms of using video as the story telling tool, and people are no longer attracted only by printed words, they prefer to watch more, listen more online, web is as a newly developed platform to combine video/audio/images/words together, and it's a tool to integrate different media outlets.

Technically to be active online, journalist needs to be familiar with new technology, such as Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, ImageReady etc, it's a creative concept to require journalists understand (at least have basic understanding) all of these graphic design tools, and then contribute to the web.

However, of course it's not an easy task to be familiar with all of these tools, it requires lots of learning and dedicated attitude, takes long time and patience to learn it.

What's BBC digital olympics all about?

People who're attending Digital Olympics Project are all full-time staffs from different sectors of BBC, for me it's really an eye-opener since I literally watch how professional works -- how them come up with different thoughts and finally pitch their ideas.

Regarding pitch an idea, I have learnt from my Uni course, as well as just learnt from BBC Step Up Training course, I could say I think I understand what does pitch means, how to pitch my ideas. Thursday's session is a chance for me to understand how professional work on their pitch.

An interesting thing I found that during the discussion, all the group members talked about an technical word, UGC which stands for users generated content, however, almost all the group members found this word ridiculous, they argue that here we're brain storming to find a friendly way to encourage ordinary people get themselves involved into supporting London Olympics 2012.

Imagine if someone is not working for BBC, how shall we ask them to contribute their sources into BBC platform, it's ridiculous because that person is simply not working for us, so how shall we use UGC to reflect these content? as well the questions will be do people literally contribute their sources to us?

Other point they're making is most of the Youtube videos're rubbish, and how shall BBC keep the quality if let general public to contribute their sources?

Struggling With My Homepage Design


I spent 8 days struggling with my home page design, honesly I have no design backgroud, and have no painting background.

So am I confident to produce such a crafted work?

Initial experiment

After doing theoretical research from library, I feel I literally need to apply what I have learnt to practice.

If I just imagine in my mind, and never playing around of Photoshop, ImageReady, I will never see my work.

Initially, I want to use dark-red colour as my site background, a colour that frequently appears in the old painting from 17th or 18th century.

I want to delivery a kind of serious feeling since the site is about classical piano music.

Then I tried the colour I want, but I feel it's so dull, and lack of living smell, and I just feel it's so heavy.

As well, the pictures I put there for giving kind of idea looks so unprofessional, the whole page seems childish, and I just hate it.

More experiments

Later on, I feel my home page should be more lighter and more elegant, simplicity is the key, then I decide just using black and white as the main colour.

Surprisingly, it works very well the background colour as black and white, I know the fonts might cause problems, because as david said such as Verdana, is good for online writing.

But obviously these normal fonts won't work in my site, as the main theme is classical piano music.

Ultimately I decide to use more artistic fonts.

Monday 5 May 2008

Web 2.0 New Understanding

1st semester we did a lot of session with David about web 2.0, at that point of time, my understanding of web 2.0 is awaring that it's more interactive with browers, and more friendly with browsers.

But in a more concerte way, I won't say I understand much.

New understanding

Until yesterday I was searching in library for my final project, a book nemed web design -- a complete introduction.

There is 2 pages talking about web 2.0, I did have a look, and feel myself understand more of the concept after such a long time learning online.

The web as the platform

Many websites such as Flickr, slide.com, are providing browsers opportunities to store their photos, documents etc such datas, so browsers no need to install certain programmes on their own PC.

And browsers also could access these informations(photos, documents) anywhere in the world as long as the accessed computer got an Internet on it, therefore, you could literally store and access these data remotely.

Sunday 4 May 2008

Boris Johnson -- the Newly Elected London Mayor

Boris Johnson successfully take the post of London Mayor after 1 May's election, Labour has lost 331 seats in local elections in England and Walsh, seems the abolition of 10p income tax ban did let labour to suffer their local loss.

Boris' manifesto

During attending Sikh's new year festival in Trafalgar Square, Boris pledged to be a "Mayor for all London", and he said "I am going to be a mayor for all London and work to unite communities.

He also emphasized that one of the most wonderful things in London is fantasitic diversity -- having got whole world in London.

The Newly elected mayor said he will tackle severe issues such as violent crime, which is extremely important to grip, as well as the scourge of so-called minor crime and disoder on public transport.

The violence among young people is also put into Boris' concern, he wished better education and health activities will reduce teenager violence.

Labour's loss

Gordown Brown's 10p income tax not only badly influences labour party as a whole, but also reflects in Ken Livingstone's mayor election loss.

Though he did ultimately admit his wrong decision to axe the 10p tax rate.

Last Sunday, Brown also admits that he does understand voters' worries about rising petrol, food prices and utility bills.

From Boris point of view, the best opition for Labour to recover is to quietly remove Gordon Brown, however, himself doesn't think Labour will to do so.

Many Labour MPs claim that they were and are still think Mr. Brown is the best person to lead the party and the whole country.

Ken Livingstone said he cannot be a mayor for 8 years and then if he can't be a third therm say it was somebody's fault.

Visual Design Principle

These days I'm doing some research of visual design, because of my final project to create a web site, and what makes a site to stand out?

Grid Layout

Last Thursday me, yin, ying met David for discussing visual design, we go through different site and discuss why this site looks better than others?

He supervise us to find some common features that makes these sites stands out, from the research I did, the grid layout is important for a web design, how many grids a web page should possesses is an essential question web designer should ask us.

If looking at BBC website, the Timesonline, it's undoubtedly these branding possess quite similar traits, both of them only have three or four grids layout, in the meantime, they all can owe quite a lot of information.

David's viewmagazine also have three grids layout, and it's clean, tidy, and attractive.

Remembered on Monday afternoon I asked him about design issue, he drew me two pictures, one only have few grids columns and the other have a handful of grids columns.

He confirmed me that the few one is much better than the handful one.

Inverse L

Most web designers are puting important things on the top left, such as logo, titles etc, the navigation bar are on the left, and the jargon named "Inverse L".

This concept is related with first above the fold, which is term from Newspaper publication, as well related with first read or first impression.

According to the Design of Sites, 2nd edition, by Douglas k. vAN dUYNE, James A. Landay, Jason I. Hong, the first read is one technique that brings order to your web pages, think of it as an overall first impression, a gestalt feeling that sets the theme for the entire web page.

The usual mistake is some web designer put unimportant things on the top left place, so loose the chance to introduce most important thing to browsers.

Saturday 3 May 2008

Bridgend Suicide -- TV Docomentary Pitch

The last test left is my TV documentary pitch, imaging if I'm working as a TV programme producer, I need to sell my idea to Commissioning officer,so that is the reason David and Rob acted as our Pitch judge

Paul's death to Bridgend suicide

It's a nice story, well presented and well researched, after finishing my description, david commented.

However, the problem is I won't be able to make it, david and rob think the story idea is too ambitious, at least on this stage, they think I won't be able to make it.

Bridgend suicide is a very sensitive topic, even experienced journalists find it difficult to access the story.

Bridgend is in south Welsh borough, this area is considered to be relatively economic deprivation, and lack of social cohesion, which is the main reason why suicide rate always higher than other regions.

Teenagers hanged themselvs at home or other places, local media released information frequently.

On the contrary, parents are blaming media that it will badly influence these death's peers, which seems quite epidemic idea to kill himself/herself when facing difficulty in life.

These people are kind of cult, and they leave people who are aliving in guilt, and the actions is quite irresponsible.

the Inspiration

The inspiration comes from radio 4 programme taking the stand, the dead teenager named Paul, which I blogged in January this year.