Dublin - Day 4

It's my fourth day in Dublin and I'm following my instinct that it's important to keep a travel journal. I did some research on travel journal videos posted on YouTube. I saw an interesting documentary about a group of guys from Canada travelling through India. I found it refreshing -- like I had the luxury of following them without having to deal with the challenges of the conditons, such as overcrowded train cars and finding places to sleep and food to eat.

In terms of my own journey, I haven't ventured off on my own through Dublin yet. I plan to do that soon -- gather more photos and post them to this blog.

Professor Feldman gave a lecture today which was very enlightening and intellectually stimulating. We learned about how he set up an ethnography site in South Africa during post-Apartheid hearings which tried to record the human rights abuses that had taken place in the past to be recorded as part of their history.

I began to reflect on the type of site that I would like to define -- I've been thinking of using the travel journal as the device, but I still need to come up with research questions. One question I'm interested in is the notion of cultural assimilation by immigrants. In Dublin, the similarities of fashion with New York City have become very apparent to me. I noticed three basic types of dress: blue jeans, corporate attire, and traditional attire. Blue jeans are usually accompanied by running shoes, though I saw some women walking to work in corporate attire with tennis shoes. What I consider "traditional" attire are things such as sweaters and pants (though not corporate).

I realize that I'm generalizing quite a bit here, but I wanted to get something down on "paper". I may revise my observations later on, but the point is just getting down my thoughts and reflections and probably also posting photos once I have them uploaded on the computer.