personal reflection 4                 

                                                                    Silk

Silk - the most beautiful of all textile fibers is acclaimed as the queen of textiles. It comes from the cocoon of the silk worm and requires a great deal of handling and processing, which makes it one of the most expensive fibers also. Today China is the leading silk producer of the world. Other major silk producing countries include Japan, India and Italy. Also in our country we do produce original silk and do use it in weaving Turkmen carpets and traditional ‘keteni’ cloth

The Silk Worm

How silk is made???

 Production of Silk from Cocoon to Factory

Sericulture: The production of cocoon for their filament is called sericulture. The species Bombyx mori is usually cultivated and is raised under controlled condition of environment and nutrition. The life cycle of silk worm encircle in the four stages. The egg, the silk worm, the pupa and the moth. The silk worm which feeds on mulberry leaves forms a covering around it by secreting a protein like substance through its head.

This stage is called cocoon, the desirable stage for the silk producers.

Filature operations: The cocoons raised by the farmer are delivered to the factory, called a filature, where the silk is unwound from the cocoons and the strands are collected into skeins. Some cocoons are scientifically bred in such factories. The filature operations consist of the following stages.



a) Sorting cocoons :
The cocoons are sorted according to the color, size, shape and texture as these affect the final quality of the silk. Cocoons may range from white and yellow to grayish.

b) Softening the Sericin : Silk filament is a double strand of fibroin, which is held together by a gummy substance called sericin or silk gum. After the cocoon has been sorted, they are put through a series of hot and cold immersions, as the sericin must be softened to permit the unwinding of the filament as one continuous thread.

c) Reeling the filament : Reeling is the process of unwinding the silk filaments from the cocoon and combining them together to make a thread of raw silk. As the filament of the cocoon is too fine for commercial use, three to ten strands are usually reeled at a time to produce the desired diameter of raw silk which is known as "reeled silk". The useable length of reeled filament is 300 to 600 m.

d) Bailing : The silk filament is reeled into skeins, which are packed in a small bundles called books, weighting 2 to 4.5 kg. These books are put into bales weighing about 60 kg. In this form raw silk is shipped to silk mills all over the world.

Characteristics of Silk

Silk is very strong in terms of tensile strength, meaning it can withstand a lot of pulling type pressure without breaking. This should not, however, be confused with wear ability or abrasion resistance. Silk will not stand up to the heavy wear that other fibers will.

Silk can take on many different appearances. A raw silk fabric may fool you into thinking that it is cotton or synthetic. The more refined the silk and the smaller the yarn, the more it resembles the look and feel that we know as silky.

Silk is a protein fiber like wool. This gives it many of its characteristics. It is sensitive to a range of chemical situations and cannot withstand prolonged exposure to either high alkalinity or to acid or oily soils. It will become brittle with age and exposure to sunlight.

Identifying Silk

The burn test is the best way to be sure. Burning silk will leave a powdery ash and will extinguish itself when the flame is removed, just like wool. The easy way to tell silk and wool apart in the burn test is the smell. Where wool will have the smell of burning hair, the silk will have a much more disagreeable smell.

personal reflection 3

When I came to Turkey I really loved this country, its climate, nature, buildings, and universities except its cousin. I remember the days when I was just eating pastry foods and 'mercimek' soup consistently, since I was not used to Turkish meals. I feel that some of them were terribly hot and some are terribly salty, sour and some of them were excessive sweet and then I come up with the idea that in Turkish cousin each meal is very hot, extremely salty very sour or extra sweet. At that time I was not able to eat neither baklava nor kebabs. However now I am great fan of these meals. Let me describe you one of my favorite kebabs from Turkish cousin, which is Ali Nazik. I have delighted it for the first time several months ago, when one of my friend cook it for us. It was delicious. When I heard its name for the first time I received it very strange as it has masculine name, but after the dinner I decided that it is really PRETTY. Since I have found the meal,s name very interesting I have searched on it and found the following story about it.  ‘Ali Nazik’, one of the symbols of Gaziantep cuisine. The original "Nazik Ala" comes from. In Arabic, "ala" nice, "nazik" to say the meal. There is also a history of the extending this dish to Ottoman Imperators. Yavuz Sultan Selim, 16 Antep century, when the ceremony was met by a magnificent gentle as Ali had offered between meals. Very arrogant and "What kind hand made ​​this?" He said. From there this wonderful meals name becomes Ali Nazik.

Personl reflection 2

 

‘The Orientalism’ of Edward W. Said was published in 1978. The main focus of the book is on cultural discrimination between eastern and western parts of the World. The term "Orientalism” refers to a manner in which generally Western attitude patronizes towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African nations. The derivation history of the term "Orientalism” consist of the following, after connecting less developed countries of the east as colonies, Europeans invented a new terminology, which is orientalism. It was a tool for them to differentiate themselves from other nationalities. They found themselves as civilized personalities and put their culture in a top position. Europeans were named as Occident and the others as Orient. Furthermore, Occidents get the responsibility that it is their duty to civilize the uncivilized part of the World. Similarly, Europeans have created a huge bias about the population of the eastern part of the World. In this book Edward Said evaluates and critiques the set of beliefs known as Orientalism forms an important background for postcolonial studies. In addition, he supports his work through a wide variety of assumptions and questions and various paradigms of individual, academic, and political thoughts. Furthermore, Edward Said explains the impact of the Orientalist idea through dividing it earlier Orientalism and contemporary Orientalism. The book also insists on the fact that Orient is an idea that has a history and tradition of though, imagery and vocabulary that have given in reality and presence in and for the West. Do these two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other? In my opinion, not hey do not since eastern countries were a tool for presenting western countries and its culture to the World as an idol. Finally, I have chosen this topic as it is an important and controversial theory –issue- which should be known by each individual in the world.

Personal reflection 1

First of all what is body language? Body language is a language through which a person reflects his or her ideas and feelings without any verbal signals. I have chosen this topic for my personal reflection since I am interested in body language and furthermore I believe that body language is not just kind of a language  instead it is  a treasure trove full of useful information. As scientists have proven that from 65% to 93% of messages in face-to-face communication are sent through our body language.  Thereby, our body is more than bones and blood vessels rather it is reliable source for everyone, everywhere and every time.  In addition, as most of the experts tries to do, the main success is to detect signals received from ones nonverbal language. To do so, first of all one should pay attention to send messages with every single detail and then to combine all gestures together to absorb the purpose or intention of the person because as in verbal language there are homonyms, gestures in body language may have different  meaning.  For example, if a person’s pupils are dilated during the conversation we could not decide that he or she is lying since pupils can also dilate when the person is shy or desire something. Moreover, we cannot guess what is said in a sentence by reading just a word. Traditionally it is so in body language. In order to catch what is going on human’s brain from his or her body language the whole action with all gestures, signs and expressions should be followed. Consequently, we should not make snap decisions while detecting body language signals. Here I would like to share one of my experiences. Last year when I was supposed to write an essay on the topic related to body language, I was continuously searching on the topic. As a result, I become so influenced by the information I have found that most of the time I was suspicious about whether people are lying or not, which was a complete bias against people.

Reflection 3 on AT HOME WITH MAMMA

 

In this article, the author explains the main reasons of mammonis stay with family during adulthood supporting by interview results. In other words, findings of the Italian National Statistics Institute on mama boy’s perspectives about stay at home are debated. Interestingly, the research revealed two significant reasons of it as economical, psychological factors and cultural roots. I totally support the assumptions of the research however; I think that the psychological matters are the manipulating factor of staying at home until late 40^th.  Moreover, these reasons are either obsessive affection as mentioned in the article or lack of confidence or it may be other reasons relying on Froid’s theory. For example, mother excessively loving their boys may consistently want to look after their sons and express their love, which is not of course refused by their sons. In addition, Lidia Eggman, 32, who works for an export consortium in the northern town of Cuneo, states that the Italian mother is part of the problem. This problem partially arises the second one, which is lack of confidence. To illustrate, mothers who are eager to do the job for their sons and do not allowing them to decide problems independently, unconsciously push their children to feel useless and so prevent them to perform their own ideas and attitudes.  Also psychological traumas such as child abuse and violence at home are the main causes of lack of confidence and so stay at home in late 40^th. Overall, the domains of mammonis stay with family in Italy that are economic issues, psychological factors and cultural roots, are also valid for the whole world.

Reflection 2 on

PAPA, THE PHILOSOPHER

 I have chosen this article because its topic is about relationship between the father and the son from Italy living in America, in other words it mainly focus on main character’s experience as an emigrant. In the beginning, the boy’s innocent view to the life is described. Then it turns to frustration on life and his origins, when he grew to adolescence.  At that, time he feels distressed even from his name and his classmates’ discrimination and underestimation was the main reason of his eruption. Next turning point of his life happened in the bathroom, where his father explains realities of the life and his son’s role in it. The father there asks to his son very simple question whether he wants to be as rude as the ones who have hurt him morally by laughing and swearing. I found his father’s question very meaningful because sometimes we desire to resemble to others without knowing who they are in reality. To illustrate, most of the teenagers nowadays want to dress like, seem like their favorites, however most of them are not aware of the fact that they are concealing their personality under it.  What is more, being an emigrant should not make one isolated or underestimated to me since it has much more advantages rather than disadvantages. For example, the one has an advantage to become bilingual of at least two languages as the father mentioned in the article to his son that his son is not just real Italian similarly he is an American. Finally, I liked the topic of the article, which the author named as “papa, the philosopher”. From here, I can come up with two main ideas, first that his father a philosopher and second that he feels enough confident to call his father as “papa” in Italian.

Reflection 1 on HOW TO GET THE MOST OF YOURSELF
According to Alan Loy McGinnis nobody is born as an unlucky person rather he argues that everybody can change his or her self-perception through the main steps released in the article. Besides, he has mentioned significance of self-confidence in achieving our goals. I totally agree with his statements due to several reasons. First, I could not imagine someone who has refined his or her dreams; if it were so then it would be success achieving you rather you achieving it. For example, we will name a person who has won lottery ticket as a lucky man instead of confidence, while a person who has received a good position in his or her profession, and field will be described as a confidence individual.  Furthermore, the steps and remedies he has posed, which are consist of following to focus on your potentials rather than your limitations, to devote yourself something you do well, to see yourself as a successful, to break away from others expectations and to build a network of supportive relationships, are very beneficial to me. The key in being successful I guess is one’s positive viewpoint about yourself, the world and others since as it is mentioned in the article “somewhere under the stars God has a job for you to do, and nobody else can do it.” Thereby, we need to refine our potentials and skills in order to complete our task in this world by supporting each other in best and worst days.