Weekly Instagram Diary: Mid-November Treats // PUB 101 Peer Review

Last Friday, I managed to check out the Hastings Warehouse, a pub that boasts a menu of food items costing no more than $4.95. As my friend and I were curious about how good the fare would be, we decided to have lunch there after our class in downtown Vancouver had ended. I ordered this delicious Mazatlan Garlic Prawns dish, which featured mildly spiced prawns and garlic bread with avocado-- yum! I definitely recommend all students who are on a budget to try it out.  

One of the most exciting developments for the blog recently has been the arrival of this amazing 50mm f1.8 lens for my Canon EOS 20D. After drooling over it for the last few months, I finally took the plunge when I saw it on sale at Future Shop for $109! My only regret is that I didn't buy this lens sooner-- the difference has been so evident and has made picture-taking for my blog posts a much pleasanter experience! 

According to Starbucks (and every mall), it's already the holiday season and therefore means that it's time to break out the red cups and snowman cookies! When I look back on how many Starbucks pictures I've been taking lately, I'm quite ashamed of how much I've bought into these corporate shenanigans (darn them for being so cute!). 

Best or worst tutor ever? I constantly spoil the two twin girls that I tutor weekly for English and Math with goodies and impromptu Monopoly game sessions. But I swear that I actually do teach them a lot of good stuff! I am one of those random people who ingested too many documentaries and non-fiction books on nature/animals/insects/anything fascinating when I was younger; as a result, I have amassed a plethora of random information on things that would interest a couple of 9-year-olds ("did you know that the world's biggest spider is the Goliath tarantula and it eats birds?"). 

On a recent shopping trip with Luvania, I bought too many items for me to carry around with me as I was heading downtown for class afterwards. Luckily, Luv was kind enough to carry this calendar of vintage New York architecture and life ($1 at Target) and these python print booties that I bought for $10 at Bluenotes. As well, she was awesome enough to buy my Becca Ever-Matte Poreless Priming Perfector (is that name long enough already?) and Sephora liquid liner using her V.I.B. discount. And only for a porter fee of $0.50! ;)

Last Saturday, we attended the birthday party of one of the bf's oldest friends at the Olympic Village's newest spot for beer: Craft Beer Market. According to our friends holding the buzzer (which would tell us when it was our turn), we were in line for a table for about five hours! While the hype most certainly was a bit over the top just because it was such a new establishment, I did greatly enjoy my Pyramids Audacious Apricot Ale. Also, the place has over a hundred and forty beers on tap! 

On Wednesday night, the bf took me for a spa date at My Spa in Yaletown, where we enjoyed hour-long facial and body exfoliation packages. It was certainly bliss after a long and terrible day full of technical difficulties and project deadlines. 

Yet another Starbucks picture: the Peppermint Mocha holiday drink.

After a workout at the downtown location of Club 16, I was struck by the beauty and quietness of the waterfront area. Isn't this city gorgeous??

Thanks for reading this week's Instagram Diary! After the jump, I will be reviewing one of my fellow PUB 101 classmate's essay-- feel free to take a look if you wish!

PUB 101: Peer Review for Essay #1

For this peer review, I will once again be assessing the work of the lovely Nadine on her blog Cheery Chapters. Her essay, entitled "Publishing in Today's Electronic Society," wishes to prove that bloggers can indeed be regarded as publishers as our age of digital re-imaginings has greatly changed the traditional landscape of publishing. Nadine begins with several points working towards the notion that blogging is in fact publishing; for instance, she points out that since we live in an "electronic society," it is only logical that publishers would be turning toward electronic means (via blogs) to be publishing their content. While this introduction did very well to begin her paper, I felt that it could have been improved with a stronger, stand-alone thesis statement that contained an argument that she could defend within her paper. As well, the introductory paragraph could have been strengthened if Nadine had briefly included the main points that she would be discussing throughout the paper in order to give her readers the bare bones of the paper they would soon be reading (ex. "electronic publishing has easier to access and use than traditional means of publishing").

Throughout her paper, I felt that Nadine did a wonderful job of finding and using sources in order to prove her points. For instance, she used a statistic from Scholastic Media Room about the increasing percentage of children reading e-books in order to emphasis her contention that online publication has become more appealing for younger audiences. Another source that I felt was a creative way of accentuating her argument was the inclusion of Erik Germ's article "6 Places You'll Recognize from the Background of Every Movie," which according to the this paper has garnered "more than 4.5 million views." Nadine ingeniously used this fun online post to demonstrate how online publishing (aka blogging) has the ability to attract a much larger reading audience than the traditional means of print publication due to the greater ease of accessibility for readers, regardless of their economic status (as opposed to the past in which the wealthier elite class would be more likely to have access to books than their poorer, less educated counterparts).

In addition, I felt that Nadine also made good use of her sources to discuss the changing definition of publishing in today's digital age. For example, she compares the traditional definition of "publishing" from the Merriam Webster dictionary, which focuses on the production and selling of physical objects such as books, to the "most simplistic, essential form" of publishing as stated by Matthew Stadler and Michael Warner. Stadler was more inclined to define publishing as the "creation of a public space or community" while Warner claimed that "a public is brought into being by the circulation of ideas" (rather than the physical production of books, magazines, etc.). As a result, Nadine does a tremendous job in establishing her point that bloggers can indeed be publishers as they certainly circulate ideas and create online communities with their published content.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed reading Nadine's paper as it was well-written and included a wide variety of well-integrated sources that did much to prove her argument that blogging is equal to publishing. I agreed with many, if not all, of her points, including the fact that online publishing is not merely the act of print publications being transferred online-- it is a completely new breed of creature that breathes and behaves differently from its past predecessor. The numerous methods with which a readership can engage with online material through comment forms and social media platforms has vastly expanded the way in which we can interact with publications. As a result of reviewing this work, I believe that Nadine has found the right industry for her writing and critiquing talents as she seems more than capable of tackling this brave new world of publishing both fearlessly and cheerfully. ;)