Update on Research + Reading Details

Getting back to the gist of school is overwhelming me right now, but topping it off with this research project isn't really motivating me to keep myself concentrated in my work. The good thing about the project is that I can actually relate to my topic. As I already have some knowledge about it, supplying my paper with support from actual sources and references will be the only challenging part. My project is slowly moving forward - I have found some really helpful sources that give me valuable information. However, most of it is stuff that I already know, like the story about the immigrants coming over to America on boats (as my father had also been a boat person who traveled on the Pacific Ocean to America), and their lifestyles in America in comparison to Vietnam. I always hear stories from my family about how the Vietnamese culture has been shaped and molded, having more Western elements as Westerners have a big impact on Vietnamese people. 

The one surprising thing that I found this week from research was an article about Vietnamese teenagers forming street gangs in California. I knew before that Vietnamese kids were involved in gangs, but not subject to Vietnamese gang members alone - there were different races in the gangs as well. However, this article talks about how gangs with only Vietnamese youths are influenced from their cultural rejection. This is really eye-opening for me, as I did not know about this. This article did not mention anything about what the gangs have done, no crimes or actions. I'm really curious to know more about this, but it doesn't say whether the gangs have actually been violent or are in gangs just because they have similar outlooks about their culture.

Reading details: 

Brian Wansink, Mindless Eating

1/14/13: 10 min., 1/16/13: 10 min., 1/17/13: 10 min. pp. 126-173

1/16/13: found, read, annotated 3 sources: 180 min.

1/17/13: found, read, annotated 2 sources: 120 min.

Total time: 310 min.