A Dinner With Cristiano Ronaldo

 

Santiago Bernabeu

Spanish food

Preamble

Cristiano Ronaldo is undoubtedly the most popular soccer player of this era. His fabulous skills and astonishing goal scoring records fascinate even those who do not have much interests in soccer. He has played for Real Madrid, a Spanish soccer club since he left Manchester United in 2009. In his former club, he played with Jisung Park who arranged a dinner appointment with a Korean guy for Cristiano. The name of this extremely lucky guy is Youngil and he fled to Spain right after news reached him. Cristiano invites Youngil to the VIP room of Santiago Bernabeu, the main stadium of his team. The stadium is empty for the new season is to come in a month. They order fabulous Spanish foods and their conversation starts now. The time setting for this meeting is the summer break before 2011~12 season.  

Youngil: Hello Ronaldo. I am extremely happy to meet you.

Cristiano: Hello Youngil. I am also glad to meet you. Just call me Cristiano. 

Youngil: Okay, Cristiano. First of all, I really appreciate you for meeting me before new season is only one month left. You must be pretty busy these days, to prepare for the new season. 

Cristiano: Yes. I am busy and my whole team members are busy. We lost the chance to win the league title to Barcelona again last season. We are scouting more players and trying to make the team more systematic. 

Youngil: Although the performance of your team was relatively bad compared to Barcelona, your performance was unbelievable. You broke the record of scoring the most in Primera Liga during one season. Congratulations!

Cristiano: Gracias! This is all because of my fellow players and fans of Real Madrid who always supported me to play better. I feel like I have said "Hala Madrid" in front of the home fans yesterday and there is this third season coming for me. 

Youngil: You know this meeting was arranged by Jisung Park who played with you in your former club, Manchester United. I was very sad to see you leaving Manchester after failing to win Barcelona in Champions League Final. Moreover, I was also sad to find that you are not going to play with Jisung Park anymore. 

Cristiano: I was also very sad to leave Manchester leaving all the friends behind. However, Real Madrid was always my dream club and the club waited for me for several years offering tons of money to Manchester United. I could not just give up the challenges I would meet in Spain. Plus, I wanted to stay close to my family in Portugal. 

Youngil: It sounds like you have special affinity for your family. How is your relationship with your family?

Cristiano: Well, I love my family just as others do. As you might know, my father died when I was quite young. My mother had to work to sustain my family. We did suffer when I was young and we had to stick together.

Youngil: You signed up Sporting Lisbon at the age of 12. Didn't you feel lonely to be parted away from your family at such an early age?

Cristiano: Of course I did. However, it was such a great chance for my life that I could not give it up. Signing up with Sporting Lisbon did help me consequently since Manchester United found me after its match with Lisbon.

Youngil: Let us get to some interesting parts. You played with Jisung Park in Manchester. How did you feel about him?

Cristiano: Okay. He is certainly a great player. He runs more than any other players on the ground and does not play for his own sake. He always participated eagerly in all the trainings. Still, he was not the greatest player like Rooney. He had no crucial impact to change a game entirely in a moment. His presence was beneficial to the team and that was it.

Youngil: I think that is pretty harsh comment. How did you find him as a person?

Cristiano: Like I said, he was always diligent. I was really surprised when he recovered from his injury only after 5 months when the doctors predicted it to take far more than that. Still, he seemed not to enjoy hanging with me. He prefered to stay hom while I like meeting with a lot of people.

Youngil: There comes another issue. Cristiano, I am sorry to say this but I will say the truth. Your image to many people is that of a genius soccer player who does not put much effort but still performs well because of his natural ability and physical. Do you want to refute to this claim?

Cristiano: Yes. I definitely want to argue against the alleged claim. It is not just right to defame me that I do not put efforts. I always practice a lot to improve myself. For example, I developed my unique freekick style while I was at Manchester United. It is not that I do not like to enjoy my life but that I do not want to be called a just lucky man who do not spare time for practice.

Youngil: I understand you. Your freekick is just so fabulous. You mentioned that you like to play with girls and at the same time, you are a father to a baby. Why did you not marry his mom? Was it because you did not want to give up your freedom?

Cristiano: I admit that many people oppose to the idea that I only raise my child and not marry the  mother. Also, I admit that I did not want to marry the woman. Let's say she was not my soulmate. One day, after meeting with dozens of other girls, I might find a perfect match that I would want to marry Still, I could not give up my baby. That is why I paid a lot to earn the right to raise him.

Youngil: That is reasonable. Also many of your fans feel that you are too young and attractive to be possessed by one woman. Now let me ask you how you are planning to live your future.

Cristiano: I have not yet planned my future out neatly. I am currently focusing my everything on winning as many cups as possible with my team. In the future, I might still be working related to soccer or might not be. However whatever I do, I will try to remain in contact with a lot of my fans who always supported me.

Youngil: That is a wonderful plan Cristiano. Maybe it's time to end our dinner.

Cristiano: It was a great pleasure to meet you and have conversation about me haha.

Youngil: I thank you one more time for meeting with me today. I wish you the greatest luck for the upcoming season. Adios!

Cristiano: Adios.

Brainstorming: A Dinner With Cristiano Ronaldo

Who: Cristiano Ronaldo

When: Before 2011~12 season starts, that is going to be a month past from now.

Where: Cristiano and I will have lunch at the VIP room of the Santiago Bernabeu the stadium of Real Madrid. We will eat fabulous Spanish foods.

What I will ask:
1. How was your youth and how did it impact your later life?
2. How was Jisung Park as your partner in Manchester United?
3. What do you think of Messi and how does the rivalry between him and you affect your performance?
4. Why is Barcelona so hostile to your team and what do you think of El Clasico?
5. Why do you think you perform worse when you meet strong teams such as Barcelona?
6. What is your role in your team as a player who received number 7 from Raul Gonzales?
7. You are currently raising a baby and still did not marry the baby's mom. Are you deliberately avoiding marriage to meet more women?
8. Your image is a genius who does not put much effort but still plays well because of your physical and natural ability. Do you want to refute to this claim?
9. What is your plan for your career? What do you want to achieve more?
10. What is your plan after retirement as a soccer player?

     Both the class discussion and Mr. Garrioch's comments on his blog were focused on the genuineness of this documentary, Catfish. It does not make sense that a good-looking man with a job that gives him frequent chances of meeting attractive woman in real life falls into love with a woman on-line. Also, considering the year this documentary was filmed, no use of web-cameras between the couple is unusual. 
     However, I do not think that finding out whether this documentary was filmed in a genuine way from the beginning to the end does not have much importance. I think, the filmmakers, Nev Schulman and his brothers could have distorted their movie to make it more interesting and adventurous, thus to make more profit out of it. We can criticize him for claiming 100 percent truthfulness. However, this movie is still valuable since it brought up the topic of social network system to international wide. 
     The most realistic part of this documentary, as Mr. Garrioch said, would me Angela. She even came up in a TV show to talk about her doings. Angela first contacted Nev for the purpose of getting more connections. She wanted customers for her art work. And then, she found this young man attractive and started to develop relationship with him. She had given herself an imaginary persona called Megan Faccio and supported her new identity with photos she found and new 15 Facebook accounts, imaginary friends of Megan. She even had phone calls with a little change in her intonations. Her doings are, frankly said, creepy. 
      My topic of this critical response is somewhat related to what I wrote previously. I said that women's prevalence in social media does not mean that women will get more power in real life situations because many consider it trivial and even negative. Angela can be a good example of abuse of social network system. It is very true that social network system has made our lives more convenient. We do not have to worry about losing contacts with friends in the past and we can now inform about our lives to a greater number of people in a shorter time. However, there are also problems in social network system. 
     In the past, the most significant on-line problem was the malicious comments due to the anonymity. SNS naturally removed the problem since sharing personal informations is a very important part of it. However, the problem still exists and even developed into more complicated status. "No one cannot verify the identity of a person." Catfish reminded me a movie called '김씨 표류기' in Korean and 'Castaway on the moon'.

The woman and the man have separate stories but I would like to talk about the woman. This woman has a social disability due to  experiences at school. She does not get out of her room and her social life is limited on the social network system called 'Cyworld'. She also has inferiority in her face so she uses other pretty woman's pictures as hers. She has had popularity on-line but suddenly her popularity turns to numerous bad comments when people found out about her real identity. Later, she finds happiness from him and finally gets out of her room. 




Deceiving one's identity in SNS cannot be said to have intentions to harm others. However, people who built relationships with faked identity would feel deep disappointment and tend to disbelieve others on SNS. Although it might give a chance to live a different life for people with inferiority complex, I do not think it should be allowed to fake their identities in SNS.

 Debate Motions

1) THW strengthen the registering process of the SNS. 
2) THBT people who have deceitful accounts in SNS should be punished.




 

Social media and the end of gender

     The TED video "Johana Blakley; social media and the end of gender" claims that the wide use of social media will lead to the end of sexual discrimination. 
     However, I think the claim of the video is not plausible. It is very true that much more women use the new social media such as Facebook and they lead the trend inside it. However, the important thing is that many people consider the usage of social media very trivial and sometimes even negative.
     Although the speaker said that people actively gather according to their interests inside the social media, many social media users usually take advantage of it as a way to keep in touch with people they either knew and met at the past or know now. This is why more women are participating in the trend of the new social media boom. Still, many people find this sort of social activity time-wasting. They even blame the others who do that. Especially in Korea, there is a kind of a perception that people who play an active part online while doing nothing offline, are considered strange and socially disabled.
      Moreover, many of the people who do not use the online social media even think of it negatively. In social media, there is a high possibility that one's private life and information exposed to the mass. For example, there was an announcer who wrote in the social media about her break up with her boyfriend. Although she claimed (before she killed herself) that the articles were not written by her, this information which included some inappropriate contents was all spread to the mass and she suddenly became the target of blame from the netizens. She eventually killed herself by throwing herself from 19th floor of her apartment building. This is just the happening of yesterday.
     The explanations given in the video are very sweet and ideal. However, the social media may have earned popularity of many but not all.

Debate motions

1) THW require the social media to impose much heavier privacy protection regulation.
2) THB more people should be educated with internet manner.

The TED video by Patricia Ryan, an English teacher in Dubai, has a claim that governance of English is killing the variety of langauges all over the world. According to the video, only 600 languages will remain in 90 years from that of 6000 nowadays. She gives the benefits of various languages for mankind that man can learn so much more from them not only in cultural aspects but also in academic areas. She gave an example of a German scientist who solved the problem of two English scientists who used different terms for the same thing.

I did not understad much about the use of language as a tool for more learning. However, I agreed to the basic idea that many people are spending too much time and expenses to study English. The TED video reminded me of myself preparing for TOEFL exam. The motive of our school to check the TOEFL scores of students is understandable since decent English ability is necessary in this school. However, the strategies that private institutions use to raise the scores of students are not recommendable. In those institutions, I did not learn English but learned skills to solve the problems in the TOEFL. If I had read English books or practiced writing essays instead of increasing my skills for the test, my real English ability would be much better.

I think the test-based English education system is the problem. Due to those tests, students and private institutions began to focus on raising scores not the true ability in English. One of the reasons I like my school is that I can achieve better English through reading and writing.

30 days of not rejecting any requests

     I brought this out after I felt pleasure doing a favor for my fiends. They requested me to buy some doughnuts in the way I came back to school. I did as they requested they appreciated and their facial expressions showed their happiness.
     Here's how this program will run. First, I would like to select a high school student whose name is notorious for selfishness. As he program starts, he is not allowed to reject any requests from people around him. If he does reject one, he will have to do service work for an hour per one rejection. Someone might request him things that he cannot or should not. For example, he may be asked to give money out or to showthe exam paper to others. These kinds of requests will be advised by the programmer that the person will be able to reject those requests.
     The person will be very unhappy to do every single favor he gets for the first days. He might reject series of requests that he might have to go to service at maybe an orphanage for several hours in weekends. His apparent and the only feeling would be anger. Being furious, he would not be able to notify any difference in his emotions.
     As days go, he will start to perceive his condition as natural or as his duties. It might be just giving up and following the rule. Whatever the reason might be, he would stop his expression of anger. He will calmly accept the requests. As he has changed to a person who do favors for others, the people around him would start requesting more things that include requests that can only be made between intimate relationships such as 'please evaluate my essay' not just 'can I borrow your eraser'. As he does those kinds of favors he will start feeling good of doing favors.
     After 30 days, he would have discovered the pleasure of doing favor. However, this is totally based on my predictions and indeed the result would be different from what I expected. 

Public Education killing Creativity? What are parents doing?

     I had been studying the US history just before I watched Sir Ken Robinson's TED speech and the video did inspire me to throw out the textbook.

     I was always curious why Korean residents in the US accomplish more especially in the areas of arts and sports. To name some of those people, there are Hines Ward who received the honor of MVP in Super Bowl 2006, a golf genius Michelle Wie and a world-famous violinist Sarah Chang. Moreover, stories that say a family went to US for better academic education for the children and there, they found a special gift and developed it further, are quite common. Since I had never experienced the education system in the United States and never thought about the reason why, I simply concluded that American education system is just superior.

     However, after I watched the two videos, I realized that American education system is not as admirable as I thought before. The speaker was criticizing it for the same reasons that Korean system also possesses. I would say there is a difference in the level of badness. Public education in Korea started during the Japanese colonial time. Japanese rulers wanted to grow students in a way that they will live in submission without revolts. The teachers at school forced students to wear uniforms that look like a military uniform, to keep hair as short as possible and teachers had always carried a gun or knife during classes. Still now, most highschool students are not allowed to have a hair style they want and many teachers and most teachers in Korea allowed to impose physical punishment to students. Also, student groups reaching 40 are filled in a small classroom unable to leave the room during the school hours.

     I do not want to deny the fact that our public education. As a student who had experienced the public education for 9 years, it is bad for majority of students. First, it is too much restricted. Young aged children and juvenile should stay seated for straight 6 to 8 hours a day without meaningful breaks. What is even worse is that most students do not consider the classes valuable. They rather sleep or do some other works such as homeworks from private institutions.

     However, the current public education system is the finest way in which everyone can receive certain amount of education. The primary goal of public education is to provide everyone enough amount of education to live as a democratic citizen in the society. The aspects of public schools such as restriction on hair style or physical punishment can be criticized. However, I believe it should not be criticized for its incapability of giving students chances to find their own interest or develop creativity. There is no certain way or method to develop creativity. If there were one, public schools would have already adopted it. Moreover, the quality of lectures may vary according to students' preparation or intelligence because the lectures are settled on the average students based on the basic principle.

     I believe the creativity part of education is based on the parents' role. Recently, issue of an elementary school student president election came up in conversation between people in Korea. One of the candidates won the election after he had pledged to provide a fishbowl to every single class with several kinds of fish with his own money. This event if not epitomize, gives an example of parents who are too eager in their children that they unintentionally teach the principle that only the result is important and the process does not matter if the result is good. Public education cannot care every single students as parents can because of lack of human power since governments cannot hire billions of teachers. In contrast, parents can take time to watch their children and find out what they want, like and excel.

     However, what many parents only care about is their children's scores and entrance to good schools in a more broader way. This overheated passion of parents is the actual cause of students' lack of creativity. If parents want their children to be a unique and valuable person, they will have to consider the other way around.