Tag Archives: Posiel

Sources of Happiness

Snow in Cantonese: 雪 [syut3]

It was the last day of Blackcomb and PEAK 2 PEAK Gondola yesterday, so my family friend took us to the PEAK 2 PEAK Gondola which I was two minutes late and missed it last time.

Some people dressed up as bunnies or unicorns jumpsuits, some children even added bunnies’ ears to their helmet to celebrate Easter. I managed to take a lot of photos of people smiling which makes me happy too. It’s heartwarming to see so many smiley faces that I don’t get to see so often in Hong Kong.

  • Showing her daughter how wonderful the nature is

Check out the other photos I took at Whistler here!

The post Sources of Happiness appeared first on lily in stripes.

Marine Wildlife at Stanley Park

Sea lion in Cantonese: 海[hoi2] 獅[si1]

Stanley Park is the place I would always want to go whenever the sun comes out. It’s my third time visiting Stanley Park since my arrival in December (fourth time in total because I paid a visit a few years ago). The first time I came for the sea wall, the second time I came for the cherry blossoms and the third time I came to show my father around.

It’s a sunny day and 420, I cannot think of other places to visit when downtown is filled with the smell of weed. Originally I wanted to show my father the cherry blossoms in Stanley Park so he can take photos, unfortunately, most of them have wilted already. I guessed the best time to visit was two weeks ago when all the flowers were in full bloom.

It was a bit disappointing not seeing the cherry blossoms in full bloom, so we just casually walked around the park and enjoyed the sunshine. While my father was taking photos of two ducks on the sea, I spotted a black smooth surface floating above the water and quickly dived again. We waited for several minutes and it appeared again. I immediately took some photos. Guess what is it?

It’s a sea lion!!!!!!

I have never seen a wild one before, I hope we’ll get to see more of them during our trip to Tofino in 4 days time! Let the travel marathon begin!

Click here for more photos taken today!

The post Marine Wildlife at Stanley Park appeared first on lily in stripes.

Cherry Blossom!

Cherry blossoms in Cantonese: 櫻[jing1] 花[faa1]

It has been raining all week except for Wednesday, so I went to Stanley Park to look for cherry blossoms! It wasn’t as pretty as I thought it’d be because when I see the photos on Instagram, they look very pink, but when I see them in real life, it is much whiter than what I saw on Instagram (looks like people have photoshopped too much!)

I was a bit disappointed, to be honest, so instead of taking pictures of the cherry blossoms, I took pictures of people who are taking photos of the cherry blossoms. At first, I noticed a lady who was sitting under the tree smiling. I took a photo of her. She later started walking around and I noticed that I accidentally took quite a lot of pictures of her, so I thought it’d be polite to send her the photos. It was my first time to walk to a stranger and tell her I secretly took pictures of her. Imagine if someone walks to you and says things like this… Luckily, she was very friendly and was happy that I took photos for her! She has never been a model and has people take photos for her because she never knows how to pose, which I have the same struggle. So I kept chatting with her while I press the shutter in order to capture her most natural look.

I am so happy that she likes my photos and I can make her feel special and confident! Maybe I should do that more often when I secretly took photos of strangers, that could be one way of making friends. Who knows?

More photos that I took on Weds here!

The post Cherry Blossom! appeared first on lily in stripes.

Essay 2: My Experience as an Online Publisher

I have never thought about creating my own blog and publishing things until I decided to join PUB101 and to be honest, it was a great learning experience. The reason I guess I have never tried or thought about doing it because I was not confident or educated on how to start my own site. But this course really pushed me to try new things and to experiment. Throughout my experience I have had many highs and lows with my blog. At the very start, I had many lows, trying to choose a theme, knowing the basics on how to publish a post, and trying to make things work when they were not. Deciding how I wanted to make my blog look and what content I want on it took a lot of time and effort. To this day, I still want to change a lot of things on my blog because I always feel like there is something to make better.

Publishing for my blog category was easier than the posiel category because I had many art pieces waiting to be posted. The academic part took on a lot more work. Due to the past Instagram posts I have made on artbynishita, it made it more convenient to post on my blog because I have experience blogging about my artwork. After publishing a few posts on my blog, I started to realize that it is becoming an art blog because I mainly focused on publishing my art pieces and discussing what some of them meant.

The peer reviews was really great because getting feedback from others is always helpful towards making room for improvement. When I would read the reviews, I took the feedback and created some changes on my site. After creating those changes, I saw how my blog started to look and become more aesthetically pleasing. One of my peer reviews also mentioned how I should post some of my poetry on my blog to have a wide range of people come visit my blog. Having different content may attract different groups of people, and so I added a poem. I also added some changes to my sidebar because it had a lot of empty space before.

I created my blog in a way to engage people with similar interests as me. Interests mainly include, art, poetry, and hip hop. My blog was meant for youth, young adults, and elders who are interested in visual art, hip hop and poetry. Although, it is targeted towards that audience, I like to encourage others to check out my blog because you never know if you will be interested or not until you see it yourself. When I see my google analytics, it shows that people have seen my site from eight different countries; Canada, United States, Jamaica, China, Austria, United Kingdom, Japan, and Philippines. Google Analytics is very useful and helpful because it gives you descriptive data on what activity is going on your website. To know specifically who my targeted audience is, I check on google analytics. I have attached screenshots of the graphs below from google analytics to show my overall results.

I have created my blog in a way for my viewer to get a some sort of understanding of my personality, for example, for the header image, I decided to use a picture of me standing by this huge brick wall of graffiti. This gives a sense of who I am to my viewers. When I had gotten peer reviews, they also mention how the layout, and image I use for my header gives an understanding of who and what the blog is about. I tried my best to publish my online self similar to how I am in person so my personalities match in both worlds. I have done that in my blog category because the stuff I publish is personalized and the language is casual. I show my passion of art and hip hop through my posts, for example, some of my works is built around hip hop artist portraits. My main focus on my blog category was my artwork and I feel that if my viewers enjoy what they see, they will come back to my site or scroll through my Instagram link that is attached and maybe follow me.

I do plan on keeping my website but changing few things. I want to design my website in a way that just focuses on my artwork. I want to create more awareness with my work as I already started on Instagram. I am going to change my URL to artbynishita.com because that is the name I go by on my Instagram. I want to keep things unified. My goal is to have people more aware of “artbynishita” and have more viewers on my site. I want to change it up a bit to mainly focus on my art and to have it similar to my art page on Instagram. Hopefully, I will get more well known through my website.

New York City in Spring

My only class on Wednesday was cancelled, so I had five day-offs last week. I decided to visit New York City to visit my father who was having a business trip there.

It is my third time visiting New York City but the first time to visit in Spring. I think it’s the perfect season to walk around in NYC when compared to summer, which is too hot and smelly.

Here are some of the tourist spots I visited, and I highly recommend to all of you:

  1. Central Park – You can rent a boat at the Loeb Boathouse, it costs only $15 per hour and you can row your way to enjoy the most breathtaking view.
    We made a reservation for lunch at the Tavern on the Green – a restaurant at the Central Park. The Tavern has a historical exterior and is enclosed in a glass cube overlooking the park. The sunlight that seeps through the glass windows provides perfect lighting for taking photos.
    p.s. the young couple next to us just got engaged there! They were low-key until they spilt the champagne on the floor and the waitress came over to congratulate them!
  2. New York Public Library – a historical and iconic building that’s open to visitors and New Yorkers to read, study and do some research. The gift shop is also a great place to buy souvenirs for your families and friends. If you hate touristy postcards like me, pay a visit to the gift store in New York Public Library, it will not disappoint you!
  3. Hudson’s Yard and the Vessel – the instagrammable spot was open to the public on March 15, 2019. Visitors are supposed to get tickets to get into the Vessel, it is for the staffs to control the flow and avoid being overcrowded. Fortunately, there were staffs handing out free tickets to us that day. We entered the Vessel at 7pm, which is the perfect timing because we can see the sunset as we walk up.
  4. Flushing – locals called it the new Chinatown. To me, it doesn’t feel like first-tier cities in China such as Shanghai and Beijing, it is more of rural China. I bet we are the only tourists going there because everyone stared at us when we take our cameras out. But it is a lively and vibrant place to visit.

Even though it’s my third time in New York, I am not sick of it yet! There’s always something new every time I go and I am just obsessed with how lively this city is (despite the horrible traffic). See you soon NYC!

The post New York City in Spring appeared first on lily in stripes.

Process Post 11: Online Shaming

In Week 11’s class, we discussed online comments and online shaming, featuring Justine Sacco’s twitter post. It read: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” It went outrageous on the internet after her flight took off to Cape Town.

When we comment online, we usually don’t think much before posting. Unlike person-to-person dialogues, it doesn’t require immediate reaction. You can think about the perfect response or how to defend. It is unfortunate for Justine that she doesn’t even have the chance to defend herself as she was on a flight when her post spread like fire on Twitter. Her life was torn immediately; she lost her job, online shamed by other users. People who retweeted barely know Justine in person, but they can ruin her life in just several seconds with a click on the internet. This is how powerful social media can be.

We are afraid to make comments in real life, worrying that it may hurt the person’s feeling, not knowing what to react to others’ criticisms. However, when you see other users posting similar comments like yours in the online community, you feel like your opinion is backed. You can also post anonymously which seems you don’t have to take that much responsibility. Therefore, netizens teamed up and created a hashtag – #HasJustineLandedYet and online shamed Justine’s reckless tweet.

I then start to reflect my online behaviour. I think I’ve never online shamed anyone because I rarely comment on any social media platform. I know how fast words can spread on the internet and I didn’t want to online shame anyone or be online shamed, so I’ve always been kind of passive when coming to online activities. I am afraid to voice out any opinion online because I’m afraid people against my stance would judge me. I think the online community would only be more harmonious if people can learn how to respect others’ opinions even if they’re against you. Also, online users should think twice before making a comment, the impact could be more viral than you think.

The post Process Post 11: Online Shaming appeared first on lily in stripes.

Essay 2: Not the end!

Last April, I have created my first website with Wix.com. It serves as a portfolio to showcase my photography work to others, especially to the employers when I am applying for jobs. I did not intend to write and post other content on the website because I feel self-conscious when people read what I wrote.

I haven’t updated the website for months as I was too busy at school. But when I receive my acceptance letter as an exchange student in SFU, I thought it’ll be a great opportunity to reactivate my website to post so I can document my journey in Canada. I am glad that I took PUB101, which “forces” me to post on a regular basis. It was frustrating at first when we have so much freedom in this course and I was still adjusting to the new learning environment here, jet lag and everything. I remember I couldn’t think of a name for my domain until I was unpacking my clothes from my luggage, then I realised how many stripes clothes I have. That’s how lilyinstripes was born.

It took me a whole night to complete the setup of the blog, from purchasing the domain and picking the theme that best matches my content. As these 12 weeks progresses, I am proud of the content I created and the positive feedbacks that I received from peers and friends from around the world.  It has resulted in a reduction in bounce rate to 61.67% and an increase in session duration to 2 minutes 13 seconds compared to the last 30 days. Google Analytics is by far one of the most useful and important tools that I’ve mastered in this course. The analytics provides me with insights to create intriguing content that will allow users to stay longer on my blog.

According to Patel (2019), bounce rate refers to the “bounce” that someone visits your website and leaves without interacting further with your site. As of the statistics by Google Benchmarks 2017, the bounce rate in the arts & entertainment industry is 58.69% (Ritwick, 2018), which is three per cent below mine. I will continue to post when the semester ends, aiming to reach through this three per cent difference by including more engaging content. When I look at the pages that my users most frequently visit, I notice that more people visit the photography page rather than the portfolio page. I think they may have expected to see more of my photography work under “photography” while I put them under “portfolio”. To avoid confusion, I will remove the photography category and use portfolio instead, so people can easily access to my photos.

When I started my first blog, I asked myself “How should I differ from other travel or photography blogs?” I knew exchange or studying abroad may seem interesting to my audiences, so I thought it’ll be a good idea to share Hong Kong culture to my Canadian friends and also allow my family and friends in Hong Kong to know what I’ve been up to in Canada. Tobi Cheung, one of the classmates who did a peer review on my blog said the Cantonese characters and pronunciations in each blog posts adds a personal touch and connection to my audience (Cheung, 2019)[, which is exactly what I wanted to achieve. Even though Cantonese is not a very common language to most Westerners, I hope to connect with my audiences by showing Hong Kong’s language so my users can understand my background and the place where I grow up in better. I see language as a way to connect with others. I realise most Westerners cannot tell the difference between Hong Kong and China (that’s the most frequently asked question by Uber and taxi drivers), we share similar language, similar characters but they are not the SAME. Therefore, I’ve decided to always include a Chinese keyword in traditional Chinese characters and its Cantonese pronunciation, so it tells more about what’s special about Hong Kong. As Adam wrote in the peer review, “One of humanity’s defining features is its ability to communicate with language.” (Schmidt, 2019). I hope my audience can get an overview and know more about Cantonese and Hong Kong culture when they read through my blog posts.

Looking back at the blog posts I’ve written, I realized how much I’ve grown and experienced in the past couple of months. First time blogging, first time studying abroad, first time skiing, first time seeing aurora and of course, my first solo trips. I am glad I stepped out of my comfort zone and experienced so many new things here! I will keep on posting when the semester finishes. I will be doing lots of travelling before I head back to Hong Kong, hopefully, there’ll be more photos coming up! Also, stay tuned to my blog if you’re interested in my life in Hong Kong! The support from all of you is the greatest motivation to keep my blog running.

This is by far the most rewarding class I’ve taken in university. Thank you all for making the first half of 2019 extra special and memorable!

References:



The post Essay 2: Not the end! appeared first on lily in stripes.

Week 11

This week I got to read about public shaming and what happens when it gets too far. Frankly, it is not surprising to me at all. it is sad but true to say that online shaming and cyber bullying has been part of our generations for quite some time. There are all kinds of movies and tv shows being made that talk about this topic. And unfortunately, real life is just as cruel as the fiction.

In Jon Ronson’s ted talk, he talks about Justine’s tweet and the public shaming that followed with it. Her life was fully destroyed because of one tweet. And in his opinion, it was taken too far. No one deserved what she got, even for one badly landed joke. He talks about how social media used to be a democracy, a place where the voiceless gets a voice. But it has turned into a monster. It has become a surveillance society. Everyone is watching, and everyone is trying dig up deep dark secrets of others. This is such a scary thought to process. I would like to believe that social media has done more good than bad, but unfortunately the negativity that it creates is undeniable. A lot of people change their behaviours online because of dissociative anonymity and invisibility. They think that because no one can trace back to what they are saying, and no one knows where and who they are, they can do whatever they want. It is a naive thought since no one can hide away from the data we create. But people use these excuses to hurt and shame others, which then get taken too far sometimes.

I then think about my own behaviour online. I don’t think I have ever participated in a part of a online shaming. But I am still affected by the fear of that happening to myself. Since my instagram is public, I’m always so careful with everything I post and share. I am so afraid of the possibility of online shaming that a lot times I would rather be silent than to voice my opinion about certain things. I am aware that it is a very passive way of handling things, but unfortunately in this day and age, it is sometimes the only way.

The post Week 11 appeared first on Heyy, Jessie.

Essay 2

The past few months has been life-changing for me in all aspect of life. And one of the best things that has happened is that I’ve finally built my own blog. Having a blog has been a dream of mine for quite a while. I have tried multiple times to start one, but always ended up forgetting about it, and giving up. But this time, with the help of PUB 101, I was finally able to keep up with my blog. Frankly, I’m quite proud of what I’ve built in the past three months. And through this process, I’ve also learnt a thing or two about myself, my blog, website design, and more.

Comparing to the beginning of the year, I’ve gotten to know my online self a bit better through PUB101 and the blogging process. I’ve noticed my behaviour changes when I’m on different media platforms. When I am on instagram, which is where all my friends are active, I am very cautious with my every move. From the perspective of the Online Disinhibition Effect, I treat my Instagram account as the “true self”. It is supposed to represent who I am in real life. And especially since my account is an business account, I HAVE to be on my best behaviour on Instagram. In my mind, everyone is closely watching and judging me on Instagram, which is why I always overthink and analyze everything I post and share. What ends up happening is that I would not post anything for weeks, sometimes even months, because I don’t consider anything being good ENOUGH for my feed.  But when I am on my blog, I behave very differently. I am affected by “You Don’t Know Me dissociative anonymity)” and “You Can’t See Me (invisibility)“. I feel much more carefree when I’m posting on my site. Yes, my blog still has my name on it, but people who visit my website are not necessary people that I encounter with in real life. I don’t feel that my audience has an existing expectation of me, and I don’t need to be actively matching that exception. I feel that I could post whatever I’d like, and no one could judge me or define me over it. That is why I did not promote my blog to anyone on Instagram for quite a while. I wanted to keep my blog as a safe space, away from all the opinions from people that I care too much about. It has been quite an interesting journey seeing the different sides of my online self, and slowing learning to understand and accept that they are all me, and I don’t need to shy away from certain things or hide certain parts of me.

Not only have I started to understand my online self, I’ve also realized what my blog is really about. In the beginning of the semester, I envisioned my blog being a lifestyle/personal blog. I wanted to write about fashion, dance, travel, life. I wanted to share my stories, advices, and thoughts about everything that I’m interested in. Now thinking back, this plan was a bit unrealistic, unorganized and lack of focus. Going through all my post, I realize that I never ended up posting anything about dance or travel. I have mainly been focusing on posting some of my projects in fashion and photography, and as well as in the topic of wellness. Learning and researching about different types of blog and their definitions has helped me re-define my blog. I’ve learnt that lifestyle blog covers a variety of topics and it is mainly advices and suggestion based. And personal blog is more about the author of the blog and her/his personal stories, experience, and daily life. Now, I consider my blog more as a personal blog, with a focus on wellness and personal growth plus a part of my portfolio. Wellness and personal growth is something that I’ve been focusing in my own life for quite some time now, and posting about it has been very beneficial for myself. So I’d love to continue on that path and see where it would take me and my blog.

Through building my blog, I’ve also gained some knowledge and experiences in website design. I’ve spend hours and hours on WordPress trying to build my site into what I wanted it to look like. One of the biggest challenges was selecting a theme that fits my every need, which has been proven absolutely impossible. This problem is mentioned in the reading of “Design machines” .These website building services don’t care about the content or the individuality of the websites. Design machine’s example is squarespace, and how “its entire business model relies on the fact that you can paste any ’ol passage of slop into their system and it will look acceptable.” But thanks to the restriction of themes, I was able to dive into the learning of plugins and more design rules.Through class and readings, I have learnt about things like whitespaces, balance, rhythm, and more. It has also help me realize how much I’d like to master this skill, and I am planning on taking a few graphic or website design classes in the future.

Overall, this has been one of the most relevant, beneficial, and fun classes that I’ve ever taken at SFU. I’ve really enjoyed learning about my online self through the process of building a blog. I am definitely going to keep this blog going, starting with an re-design of the whole site, since I’m now more clear about the direction of my blog. And once my upgraded site is finished and running, I am planning on incorporate more content between my Instagram and the blog. I would like to show a more 3D and true version of myself to people in my life through my online presence.

 

Reference

 

The Online Disinhibition Effect

Design Machines: How to survive the digital apocalypse

Revealed: Which are the Most Popular Types of Blogs?

 

The post Essay 2 appeared first on Heyy, Jessie.

A Night To Remember & More: The Great Gatsby!

After a year of hard work, my sorority comes together for a night of celebrations: our annual formal!

This year the theme was “The Great Gatsby” and was planned by my two beautiful sisters, Caterina and Henna! They put in so much hard work and everything looked so beautiful. The gold wine bottles with the feathers were perfection!

I was very excited for this years formal because last years, which was my first one, was so beautiful. I do not remember most of it… for reasons… but I looked great, the food was great, and the venue/decorations were stunning. That’s all that matters! I do remember getting on a yellow bus after the dinner portion… it was a moment.

A side story to go along with this formal themed post is I LITERALLY have the worst luck with formals. Ever since grade 11 it has just been quite the journey. That’s a story to tell another day, perhaps on a podcast, but let’s focus on the positive! Shout out to my bae, Natasha, for always pulling through and being the best date I could ever dream of!

credit to: eonline and celebrity gossip

I found this beautiful silver dress on prettylittlething.com and after a lot of money and alterations later, it was ready to be worn. I was personally inspired by Lady Gaga’s 2019 Grammy’s dress and Lauren Burnham’s limo exit dress on season 22 of The Bachelor.

Since I spent so much on my dress, I had to be boujee on a budget. I wore my high school graduation heels and my friend Lauren’s elegant and sparkly earrings. All that was needed for a sparkling look! As you can tell, I love sparkly things.

After months of preparation, shopping with my other sisters, sharing each others looks, and gathering advice, the night finally arrived…

Our formal was held at the Sandman Hotel Vancouver City Centre in their ballroom. My sisters and I decided to stay in a hotel room so then we can get ready and be prepared for anything that may happen in the night. I personally live very far, so this was my best option.

My sister, Ryley, and I decided to decorate our hotel room as much as we could before we got ready. We blew up balloons and I even brought a disco light for the nighttime. We really wanted to make the most of it as we expected a lot of people were going to use our room as the “pre-game” room.

After frantically getting ready and me still being indecisive about what I need to wear, we finally arrived down to the ballroom (in a very slow and crowded elevator).

The ballroom had dim lighting which was hard for pictures but really set the tone of the night. The black and gold accents on the seating chart, the round tables with the black table cloth and gold wine bottle with the feather, and everyone looking divine, it was a magical night.

My fellow sister, Caterina, sure came through with the country slow tunes until my date, Natasha, grabbed the aux.

flex

I won two awards (Most Improved Academics and Helping Hand) and received a shoutout for my hard work as our Guardian this semester. Caterina and Henna played a slideshow of everything we have done this past year and it was the cutest!

I have to admit, I did not take many photos solely based on: my dress being annoying to walk in, I am lazy, and other people took the photos whom I do not remember so I barely have any on my phone. But the ones I do have are truly iconic!

The dinner portion included a buffet with many options and we were all truly blessed.

After the night ended, we all quickly got changed and ran to The Pint to make guest list.

The jams were playing, the drinks were flowing, we busted it down, and there were so many people I met that I could not keep up. It was super fun. Especially stopping at McDonalds on the way home.

After finally returning home at 2 A.M., it was time to settle down and truly reminisce on the night.

This past year in my sorority has been super special to me. I got a position, a little, made some amazing memories, made so many new sisters, grew closer to sisters, and will be entering the next year as the new Vice President (following the steps of my grand-big and big!). I cannot wait for what this new year holds.

I can truly say that being in a sorority has made me the happiest I have been in a while. My sisters have been there for me through so many transitions in my life, especially these past few months. I am so sad to be saying goodbye to some of them this year, but know that we will stay connected for life. I mean, 7 of us have matching tattoos, so we on that next level love!

The post A Night To Remember & More: The Great Gatsby! appeared first on Starlight Adventures.

The end of a chapter but the beginning of a book

The end of a chapter but the beginning of a book

For as long as I can remember, my camera has always been my side-kick.  Something about being able to capture a moment, an emotion, or a light in turn captured me.  From the beginning of the semester I knew I wanted to create an online space for my photography. In reality, it was the reason I enrolled in PUB 101; while I didn’t lack initiative, I lacked the knowledge and tools to create and curate a platform for my photography.  Finding a domain name and aesthetic was the first challenge.  It was important to have a very visual, professional, and clean blog – a space where images could stand out. Eventually, after much thought, I settled on One More Klick.

One More Klick features a blend of photography, travel, and the outdoors. “Klick” is another word for kilometre, which was very fitting with both the outdoor and travel aspects of tis blog, marking the distance traveled, in addition to klick also being the phonetic sounds of a camera’s shutter.  Since traveling, photography, and the outdoors are a passion of mine, I aspire to always challenge myself by going further, reaching higher, and persevering through the fear of the unknown.  For these reasons, there will always be one more klick – whether it be one more photograph, or one more kilometre.

With the help of photographs taken during various travels and adventures, my blog aims to share the stories behind photos, and provide context.  While some posts feature more personal stories, they still hold some informative content – whether it be in the form of tips and tricks, political context, or specific photography settings to achieve a photograph.

Star BodiesStar Bodies
Flowers on Boat squareFlowers on Boat square
sunrisesunrise

Currently, the majority of the audience reading One More Klick consists of direct family and friends, with some page views coming from countries outside of North America. Some of the perks of traveling abroad include creating friendships and connections across the globe.  Maintaining these friendships are even easier in light of the digital age.  According to the 2018 Digital Media Report, there are over 4 billion active internet users across the globe, and there has been a 13% increase in active social media users since January 2017.  The internet allows for greater connectivity, breaking the barriers of time and space.  In just the touch of a finger, users can connect with anyone, anywhere.  This immediacy has allowed me to connect with people from around the globe in little to no time.  For example, I reached out to Hasham to ask for his permission to post his photograph for the Friends in Foreign Places blog post.  Despite residing in Qatar at the time, within a few hours I received a response and we were connected once again.

This is especially useful for this blog, as I hope to expand the audience internationally.  Already, this blog has most of its’ international traffic coming from the United States, with other countries including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Croatia, Ireland, and Luxembourg to name a few.  

It’s possible that some of the page views from the countries above are just bots, which are basically software that run automated tasks over the internet.  This would become more apparent when cross referencing with the amount of time spent on the page and the bounce rate.  Because I don’t know of anyone personally in Kenya, Sri Lanka, or Russia, I would assume that they aren’t actually real people reading my blog.  If you’re reading this and you are currently in Kenya, Sri Lanka, or Russia, let me know!

With the goal of eventually creating a stronger following and international audience, having a strong social media presence would be a huge asset.  Currently, Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram hold the podium for most popular social networking sites:

2018 Digital Media Report, page 68

“Let’s face it: we have entered an era of media convergence that makes the flow of content across multiple media channels almost inevitable.”

Henry Jenkins, 2003

In his article Transmedia Storytelling, Jenkins (2003) highlights the importance of using a multitude of different social media platforms as opposed to restricting your content to just one.  The advantage here is not only more exposure, but also meeting your audience where they are.  With this is mind, I have created a Facebook page to share my blog posts.  Having a separate page for One More Klick that is independent from my personal page means traffic won’t be restricted by my own personal privacy settings.  Eventually, I will create an Instagram page which will feature different photographs linking them to their blog posts.  If it weren’t for social media, very few people would know about my blog and even fewer would be reading it. 

With blog posts being shared on social media, it was increasingly important for my blog to be responsive and mobile friendly. In Design Machines: How to survive in the digital Apocalypse, Travis Gertz (2015) criticizes the homogeneity of basic website designs. While I was trying to create a unique and customized aesthetic for my website, I ran into some serious challenged. While the desktop version worked perfectly, the layout didn’t translate well for mobile devices. As the majority of internet users access websites on their mobile devices, it was extremely important for my website to be responsive and mobile-friendly.

Social media allowed for networking and collaborations with other artists.  My first essay 21st Century Nudes covered the topic of censorship of artistic nudity on social media platforms. This essay was inspired by Vince Hemingson, a photographer, filmmaker, and bestselling author based out of Vancouver, who’s beautiful photographs routinely encounter censorship.  In wanting to share my essay on social media, I reached out to Vince for permission to tag him.  Not only did he agree and share my article with his network, he commended my work and asked for my feedback and comments on his Artist’s Statement for his Nude in the Landscape series.

Already, creating this blog has allowed me to build concrete skills by learning how to use WordPress and Google Analytics, along with broadening my artistic and professional network. This blog acts as a live document, changing and improving as I continue to learn and create. I plan on continuing this blog alongside my adventures, and hope that one day it might flourish into something larger.

References

Gertz, T. (2015). Design Machines. How to survive in the digital Apocalypse. July 2015. Retrieved from https://louderthanten.com/articles/story/design-machines

Hemingson, V. n.d. Artist’s Statement: The Nude in the Landscape. n.d. Retrieved from http://hemingsonphotography.com/fine-art/nude-in-the-landscape/

Jenkins, H. (2003). Transmedia Storytelling. January 15 2003. Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401760/transmedia-storytelling/

Kemp, S. (2018). We are social – Digital report 2018. Retrieved from https://digitalreport.wearesocial.com/

Product of the Month

The product of the month that I have chosen is fashion related instead of beauty related. If you guys haven’t read my other ‘Product of the Month’ posts then let me give you a short explanation. This is an area where I share my favourite product of the month that I have been wearing or trying out. All of the products I have chosen so far have been beauty related so now I’m going to show you guys a fashion favourite for March.

This months product is the ‘Levi Ribcage Straight Jeans’. These jeans are some of my favourites for many reasons. They are very comfortable and they fit very true to size. They haven’t stretched out on me yet and I’m not sure they will. The bow on them makes this jean super different because I’ve never seen a pair of jeans with a denim bow attached, but the good thing about these jeans is if you aren’t into the bow, it is also detachable. I love these jeans because they are long enough and aren’t cropped looking at me. I am tall enough for normal lengthed jeans to look cropped on me and it is one of the most annoying things.

Hope you guys like these jeans and find them comfortable. Definitely go and try them!

xx

Essay #2

This is the end of my PUB 101 class, but it’s just the start to my blog. In these few months, I gained a lot of experience blogging and also learning about myself. I always wanted to start my own blog but I never actually did until I took PUB 101. It allowed me to focus on the things I enjoyed the most and share them with others. I focused on fashion and lifestyle because it was something that I looked for on social media and the internet. My online self completely changed in this period of time. I learned a lot about the blogging process through Google Analytics, design, and audience.

During my blogging process, I discovered Google Analytics. It’s a great way to find out how people use your website. It’s fascinating to see how my number of audiences translate into online engagement. We can also see in the overview report on Google Analytics the site-wide bounce rate. The bounce rate shows the percentage of visitors who bounce off my website without interacting further with it. My bounce rate is 47.17%. The lower the bounce rate, the better. People averagely spend around 3 minutes on my site. My blog is very visual, and that’s why people don’t have to spend a lot of time reading it. The other interesting thing to see through my analytics was where my audience are located. Most of my viewers are from Canada and the USA. I have a few visitors from Malaysia, Belgium, Germany, UK, and India. It’s exciting to see that people from other countries visited my blog. Google Analytics is essential to understand what people enjoy reading and what posts are the most popular. I really enjoyed using Google Analytics and learned a lot from it.

I also learned about blogging design through PUB 101. At the start, I spent the most time on trying to pick the theme that perfectly matched my blog content. I tried so many different ones, and I chose the Minimal Grid one. It’s immaculate, modern, and pure. This theme is visually-appealing and has a clear post listing layout. I prefer the simplistic design that prioritizes the content. My blog is mainly focused on the visuals. In my opinion, images are a compelling element that helps connect the users to the article before actually reading it. Creating the content of the blog and being able to present it clearly can be very challenging. This theme allowed me to create a better first impression of my site and make everything matches perfectly. I really enjoyed customizing every part of my blog.

Blogging has quickly become one of the most popular ways of communicating and spreading information and news. And I always wanted to create my own blog to share my interests with the world. Learning about fashion really inspired me. I mainly focused my blog content on fashion and the latest trends. My blog helped me to understand myself better. The most important part of my blog is staying true to myself. My audience should know that I care about what I share with them. Being original and speaking my own voice is also another skill I gained through PUB101. It can be hard sometimes since I am reading so many blogs and what I read gets embedded into my brain. It’s also very important in keeping up with my blog. I’ve been posting every week for every section of my blog while taking PUB101. After the course is over, I am planning on posting every two weeks. Later, I am hoping to connect with more people who are interested in the same things as me. I am hoping to share more content which would help my blog grow automatically and engage with others.

I am very grateful that my school provides a course as PUB101 and gives the opportunity to share my interests through the blog. PUB101 taught me a lot about the online culture. I would like to thank Suzanne and Ellen for teaching me about the process of publications. It has been a great experience setting up my own blog. I am for sure planning on continuing my blogging journey and creating some interesting content in the future.

Process Post #11: Online Shaming.

During this week’s lecture, we discussed online comments and online shaming. Online shaming has a huge impact in the digital world. Many stopped having constructive conversations online and instead started to use public shaming to shift the beliefs. People can shame each other by using different sources- online, through Twitter, Facebook, and email.

Being the victim of a public shaming has the potential to ruin someone’s life—financially, emotionally, and physically. We’ve seen through time how young people took their own lives and adults lost their livelihoods. People should understand that they can’t change something through online shaming, it would just create noise.

In the online world, everyone is a public figure and everyone is a target. The emotional impact of digital shaming can be overwhelming. Everyone should control their actions towards other people.

Essay 2_ Not the end, but a new beginning.

Everyone has his or her dream job, so do I. When I first gain the access to the online platforms, I was amazed by the beauty bloggers and YouTubers. Undoubtedly, being a social influencer such as beauty blogger and YouTuber has become my dream job. In the past, I always thought that these online social influencers are the “easy profitable jobs.” To emphasize, they can make money very easily just by writing posts and filming videos via the internet. However, I totally change these stereotype on social influencers when I start writing my personal blog. In other words, I know now that being a blogger is not as simple as it seems. Today, I will discuss my personal experience of being a startup blogger.

First of all, the progress from 0 to 100 is extremely difficult, especially as an new blogger. To emphasize, blogging is not the hardest part for me throughout this experience. Creating a website from bare bone, for example creating menus, categories ,and tags, is a challenge for me as I am not as tech-savvy as the other people. However, once I persevere, it is a joyride from then on. In this case, let’s start with my original intention and goal of my blog. Before creating the blog, I am already familiar with buying and trying many different types of beauty products. Also, I really like to share my personal reviews of these products with my family and friends. As a result, beauty products are the main focused topic that I would like to share with my audiences. In these circumstances, “Maggie Loves to Share” is the first slogan that pops up in my mind when I start my personal blog. Hence, I set this line of sentence on the top of my website. In my opinion, this slogan not only clearly express my desire to share but also easy understood by my audiences. In addition, I choose pink as the main colour for my website. With this design, just like Emma- my peer reviewing partner states, the baby pink accent that I used represents a very charming appearance which is clear that my website is very girly and attractive (Emma, 2019.) Following on the setting and design of my personal website, I hope that my audiences are able to have a better understanding of products that they interested after reading my reviews and sharing information that I have provided throughout my posts. Moreover, to attract more readers and to find out more interesting topics are my first challenge. There are thousands of beauty bloggers around the world; yet, I have to figure out ways to stand out from the cloud. At this point, I decide to apply the concepts of “know [my] audiences” and “[build] the connection” that I have learned from the publishing class. Linking back to these process posts that I wrote within this semester, I believe that my family and friends are my main readers. In the case, I then ask them to help me to develop the connections to other younger females who may also like my blog. Thus, I have more chances to create diverse topics for my readers from these connections.

Furthermore, most importantly, there are many new lessons that I have learned since I start my personal blog. Significantly, in my opinion, Google Analytics is the most useful tool that I learned when I start writing blog. Even though I have never used Google Analytics before, being the online publisher, this new tool has helped me easily track various datas about my blog. In this circumstance, Google Analytics gives me the overview of my audiences’ reactions towards to my website. For instance, I personally think that bounce rate that is calculated on Google Analytics is one of the most important data that I should track. According to Shivar, bounce rate represents the number of people who land on a page of your site… and then immediately leave (2018.) Although Shivar has also mentioned not too focused on the numbers, from my understanding, the lower bounce rate tend to present the better performance for a startup blogger. To indicate, as an new online publisher, I want my audiences to stay longer on my website to explore around. In other word, the less people immediately leave my website, the more sense of accomplishment I will get. Myself as an example, the bounce rate has dropped from 56.25% to 50% via the last two weeks. From this outcome, I believe that there are more people actually spend time on visiting my blog. Additionally, Google Analytics has also informed its users about what page their audiences visit the most. With this valuable information, I can easily recognize what topics I should share with my audiences more in the future. For example, my “What’s in my causal bag?” recently has the highest views throughout my blog. Following on the result, I have created the collection of “What’s in My Bag?” on my website to attract more audiences. Despite of bounce rate and page views, Google Analytics eventually has delivered useful functions to the online publishers. Therefore, I will continuing to use this tool to improve my blog.

Ultimately, I really treasure that I finally have chance to achieve my dream-being a blogger. Looking back to the past thirteen weeks, I would conclude that it really required a lot of effort to be an online influencer from my experience. To emphasize, writing a perfect blog requires tons of time to complete it. In my case, it is really hard to come up different and creative topics to share with my audiences. Afterwards, I have to choose the best way to present my posts. However, the most difficult challenge that I have faced is my writing skills. I am not a professional English writer; thus, sometimes I am afraid that my readers will not continuously visiting my blog because of constant grammatical error. Although there are many challenges occurred since I start my first blog, I am proud of what i have done so far. I have never imagined that I am able to upload posts weekly not even to mention in my second language. Lastly, if you ask me: “will you continue to blog?” I would say, YES! Yet, I will consider to blog in my first language so I can express myself more comfortably and confidently. In short, “Maggie Loves to Share” is my first milestone in my online publishing life. I hope and I am looking forward for my next milestone.

Finally, I would like to thank Suzanne and Ellen for the wonderful semester. Also, much appreciation goes to my peer review partners- Emily, Helen and Emma for the very helpful feedbacks and insight on my posts. Most importantly, I thank my audiences for visiting my blog. I really appreciate for everything that you have done for me. Thank you!

References:

Adams, E. (2019, March 14). Sharing Is Caring. Retrieved from http://emmasworkingonit.com/assignments/sharing-is-caring/

Shivar, N. (2018, September 28). What is Bounce Rate & How should you use it?. Retrieved from https://www.shivarweb.com/1168/what-is-the-bounce-rate-and-why-you-should-care/

Su, M. (2019, February 25). Process Post_6 Know your audiences. Retrieved from http://mlovetoshare.com/poisel/process-post_6-know-your-audiences/

Su, M. (2019, March 11). Process Post_8 Connection. Retrieved from http://mlovetoshare.com/poisel/process-post_8-connection/


Community Guidelines

Leave it better than you found it

Hello, and welcome to One More Klick!

A common saying in the outdoors community is “leave it better than you found it”.  While this often relates to trail conservation, it also relates to this community.  Do not comment anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read.

In other words:
  • There is zero tolerance for disrespecting or degrading any race, religion, culture, sexual orientation, gender, identity, etc..
  • Any hateful, disrespectful, or derogatory comments will not be approved.
Stay on the trail:
  • Promotional and spam-like content will not be allowed.
Look, but don’t take:
  • All of the artwork and writing should not be copied, used, or taken without explicit permission granted by the owner of these works.
  • All writing, photography, videography, and other artworks are made by me, unless specified otherwise in their caption. If you are wanting to use any of the footage, art, photography, and/or quotes, please reach out.
Join the community:
  • You are welcomed and encouraged to ask questions, share your experiences and suggestions.
  • This is a safe space for travellers, artists, adventurers, outdoor enthusiasts and the like to share thoughts, experiences, and tips. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Thank you for respecting these simple rules, and happy klicking!

Sincerely,

Magali Bureau

Process Post_11 Online Shaming

People often think that the internet has provided lots of advantages for their daily purposes. However, in my opinion, the issues of cyberbullying occur more and more often within the current society. This week, we are assigned to watch a TED Talk, “When online shaming goes too far,” by Jon Ronson. Throughout the presentation, Ronson uses a real story on Twitter to represent how cyberbullying can actually affect one’s life. To illustrate, Justine Sacco who unintentionally posts the funny little acerbic joke- “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” on Twitter. Sacco was just a PR woman from New York with 170 Twitter followers before making this post; however, all the sudden she was targeted on the cyberspace. Afterwards, people who saw and share Sacco’s post tend to start making jokes-very despicable ones at her. In this case, even her job and her employers were as well affected by this cyberbullying. In addition, according to Jon, [Justine Sacco] was Googled 1,220,000 times. Also, Google made somewhere between 120,000 dollars and 468,000 dollars from Justine’s annihilation (Ronson, 2015.) In other words, Sacco’s life was changed in a really bad way just because of this unintentional joke. Nonetheless, people who shame Sacco behind their electronic devices got nothing. At this point, even though Sacco should look before she leap the acerbic joke online, people should also think from different point view before they make the comments. As we know, there are more and more people take others’ comments very serious on the internet. In this circumstance, these sharp comments sometimes will cause the tragedy that cannot be undone. To indicate, there are many celebrities tend to be mental illness after reading the comments on social media. For example, Cindy Yang, one of the social influencer in Taiwan who suicided in 2015 because of cyberbullying. After understanding of these two cases- Sacco and Yang, I personally believe that cyberbullying does significantly affect human’s life. Therefore, people should really think deeply before taking these “shaming actions” towards each other via the internet since they do not know when these actions will lead to the unrecoverable tragedies. In short, cyberbullying no doubt is one of the serious problem that needs to be solved in this generation.

Process post_10 Multi-channel Marketing

Choosing and applying the best marketing strategy is the most important concept to introduce a product into the market. However, living in this “improved technology” generation, single channel marketing is no longer the best and only marketing strategy anymore. This week in class, we have Darren and Sarah from Capulet Communication to discuss about the importance of multi-channel marketing with us. Personally, I believe that the multi-channel marketing strategy does successfully help a company to bring its brand and product to its customers.

Myself as an example, I voluntarily work in my brother’s company to help them to hold the concerts- mainly singers from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in Vancouver. Yet, although there are many Asians in Vancouver, actually the tickets are really hard to sell if we do not apply the multi-channel strategy. To indicate, we have to apply different marketing strategy towards different targeting customers. For instance, we have to place many posters in different areas to inform about our shows; such as Asian markets and restaurants for people who do not usually use the internet and schools that have more younger Asians who might be interested in the concerts. Also, social media significantly are the main channels for us to promote the shows. For example, Instagram and Facebook help us to spread out the propagandas via the internet. To illustrate, whoever see our posts on the social media will share the information to their family and friends and so on. As the result, there will be more and more people know about our shows. Moreover, the one-by-one conversation is the most required service that we have provided to our customers. In this case, it is not only easier for our customers but also for ourselves to answer the questions regard to the concerts. Therefore, throughout these multiple channels to promote the concerts, we have successfully nailed the SOLD OUT show.

Ultimately, I have more understood the importance of the multi-channel marketing strategy after rethinking the process of holding the concerts. According to Darren and Sarah, if we want to favourably reach different audiences, achieve different marketing goals, we have to tell [our] story in different ways. In short, these multi-channels really help many companies to promote their businesses in this new improved technology generation.