Seeing over the obstacles

I'm finished with my Assignment 2, and I have to admit that I NOW THINK TO MUCH before writing anything. OK Assignment 3 here I come. This is what I wrote for my profile. I'd love feedback please.

Seeing over the obstacles.

Marisol Cano-Ordóñez is a Post Doctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital. When I started this interview, I thought I would write on "macular degeneration" which is Dr. Cano-Ordóñez’s research interest. However, as I sat and listened to Dr. Cano’s interview, I came to believe that there was something else to talk about.

In the summer of 2004, Marisol Cano-Ordóñez (“Dr. Cano”), just married, arrived in Baltimore from Venezuela by herself to complete a post doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Like many immigrants, she confronted the common obstacles of being alien or an “other.” She experienced loneliness and homesickness, missing her husband, family and friends. The language barriers and learning all the new technical language in English for medicine. It was and still is very difficult sometimes but she said she was ready to fight against them.

“It doesn’t really matter what country you are from, life is full of obstacles that defeat us at every turn” she said. "But every day, everything I do I give it my best. I always had hopes, I had dreams. I just knew that if you keep working hard, things are going to turn around your way. I had no doubt in myself".

At work she is always under pressure to complete materials, making experiments that are trying to find a cure for macular degeneration and finishing projects that can show great medical results. She feels that these environments have made her create and adopt a new attitude in her life and work that have helped her to confront the every day obstacles. “The challenge is to find the way for the solution. I will go around, under and over the problem. Been persistence and with determination will get you from where you are to where you want to be, or very close to it”.

Dr. Cano encouraged her husband and two-year old baby girl to take this idea as their motor, “You just take a leap of faith, knowing there's no safer bet than one on yourself. Care about trying".

Show+Tell: Campaign MAKE TRADE FAIR

Fair Trade is a growing, international movement which ensures that producers in poor countries get a fair deal. This means a fair price for their goods (one that covers the cost of production and guarantees a living income), long-term contracts which provide real security; and for many, support to gain the knowledge and skills that they need to develop their businesses and increase sales.

Make Trade Fair is a campaign organized by Oxfam International and many of the world's biggest stars have been dumped on in support of Oxfam's campaign. The objectives are the elimination of several trade practices:
Dumping, which occurs when highly subsized, surplus commodities from rich countries such as rice, cotton, corn, and sugar are sold at low prices and farmers from poor countries have difficulty competing. It is believed that this creates an uneven playing field where farmers in developing countries are unable to compete in the market with cheaper foreign produce and crops.Tariffs, where developed nations enforce high taxes on imported goods, restricting the sales of products from developing nations.Unbalanced labour rights for women, who often earn lower wages than their male counterparts.Stringent patent issues, that drive up the price of medication, drugs, and textbooks. Thus, such essential goods are often inaccessible to developing nations.

Antonio Banderas - actor
5 million farmers and their families are facing ruin because the US governments subsidises its corn farmers to over-produce and dump the surplus at rock-bottom prices in Mexico.

Alanis Morissette - singer
European wheat costs almost twice as much to produce as wheat from poor countries but – with the help of hand-outs from the European Union – it is dumped on poor countries at rock-bottom prices; pushing poor farmers out of business and into poverty.

Gael Garcia Bernal - actor
Ten million cotton farming families in Africa are being forced into poverty because of unfair trade, which benefits just a few hundred cotton farming companies in the US.

Colin Firth - actor
25 million growers face ruin because they don't get a decent price for their coffee – yet some of the world's biggest coffee companies continue to make big profits.

Think before you write

I sit down in the computer hoping to do the perfect job, I have the idea and the time, everything is perfect. Maybe the idea it’s vague at first, but I believe that I have a good chance and possibility this time.

I start constructing the body and becoming more convinced with every word that finally I'm into something. The emotion grows; my fingers are moving so fast across the keyboard. Happiness is my friend again, I'm saying exactly what I want to say. The ending is coming and I can only think this is perfect. Then the pause and I start to read what I’ve written. I feel a huge weight in my stomach, dizzy and scared. Why do I sound so disconnected, I read it again just in case. Yes is bad, to formal, mechanical and far too academic. What was I thinking? Now I have the answer, I was not thinking.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Show+Tell: cause and effect

The following two eye-catching print ads are from the World Wildlife Fund anti pollution campaign.

Show+Tell: Compare/Contrast

This could quite possibly be the first Mac vs. PC ad, found in a 1996 issue of MacAddict.

Project: Fun with Food

Compare
The mangosteen is the fruit of a tropical tree originating in Southeast Asia. The fragrant edible flesh is creamy and citrus with some peach flavor. Both Mangosteens and strawberries have a sweet flavor and can be eaten fresh with breakfast, as a dessert, or as juice.

The mangosteen and the strawberry are typically advertised and marketed as part of an emerging category of novel functional foods sometimes called “super fruits” presumed to have a combination of appealing subjective characteristics, such as taste, fragrance and visual qualities. They are also a sodium-free and fat-free food that could potentially lower the risk of brain and nerve disorders and other human diseases.

Both fruits are considered feminine in part because they come from flowers that once open become a fruit and also because they are both called the “Queen Fruit”. Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII had a strawberry shaped birthmark on her neck, which some claimed proved she was a witch. In Asia the mangosteen fruit is known as the "Queen of Fruits" because of a legend that Queen Victoria was offering a cash reward to anyone who could deliver to her the fabled fruit.

Contrast
The strawberry originates in North and South America, it grows both as a wild plant and as a cultivated plant unlike the mangosteen, which comes from the Southeast Asia and is a tropical tree that takes a lot of care and time to grow.

The flesh of the strawberry has yellow seeds piercing its surface, they are meant to be eaten along with the fruit which is not the case in the mangosteen where the seeds are in the inside of the flesh and die quickly when they dry. Strawberries have become increasingly available year-round and the peak of their season is from April through July when they are the most delicious and most abundant. Mangosteen on the other hand has an irregular season and the yield varies from tree to tree and from season to season.

The delicate heart-shaped berry has always connoted purity and passion. It has been used in literature and painting to symbolize perfection and righteousness. Medieval stone masons carved strawberry designs on altars in churches and cathedrals.

Mangosteen vs Strawberry

For thousands of years, the people of Southeast Asia have been quietly savoring the fruit of the mangosteen tree. Tough on the outside, juicy on the inside, the mangosteen is both a fruit and a healthy tradition.
In America is the Strawberry which serve more than just fulfilling the sweet tooth. It is packed with hordes of health benefits, making a nutritious fruit for mind and body.