Nguyen,+Hong+Linh

= **__Assumption__** =

Assumption is just another term for a double-sided knife. (//interesting analogy)//As a matter of fact, it is made and used everyday in a person’s life. Some may help us figure out things more quickly, without any hesitations; whereas some can lead to misinterpretation or/and probably separation between people. As for myself, I have once, accidentally ruined my friendship with a friend of mine, who I met in grade 5, since I was still in a Vietnamese local school. His name was Kien and even though I did not own a standard height, his was nowhere near my ears. He had got spiky hair and a round-shaped face. All of his family members were Christians, which made them a religious family. Everything was cool. He and I were best buddies. Then, things start to deform a year later. Having met him online through Yahoo Messenger, I began talking about how school was going, as well as our social lives. Things were still in control within the first five minutes, but had gone insane in the next minute or two. It was all started by me judging that Kien had become another person now; a person, who could be called an idiot; a person, whose mind mostly contained love for those that flattered him and hate for those that were being true and honest about his weaknesses; and most importantly someone, who had nothing in common at all with the old Kien I knew. The reason that I had come up with those thoughts about him was because most of what he talked about, was related to him, bullying new students in his school. Furthermore, he sounded as if he felt great about it. Totally disgusted about him, I assumed that he was a completely different person and started talking to him like he was some stranger. Obviously, he got mad and “fortunately” he told me what really happened when we were chatting. He told me that it was his brother, who was talking and I was still on my anger, which had made me not to believe him and from that moment, we were like the moon and the Sun, neither he, nor I talked to each other ever since then. That night, I still thought that I did the right thing since what I had in mind was that Kien was just making that up so that I did not hate him. However, before I went to bed on the second day after the argument, instead of counting sheep, I had taken a few minutes to think back about what happened two days ago and noticed that it was too soon for me to make that rough assumption about him being a different person. At that time, I started to feel like nothing, but a criminal. After all, I think that it is always right to take a moment, to think back about things, do not make quick assumptions, especially when you get angry about a particular problem because that may also be when you realize that you may have been the one causing the problem, not the other side.

//Linh, it seems as if you've learned a great deal from this experince. You're right that assumptions often lead to mistakes and heartaches as we'll see in our next text. Thank you for writing such an honest reflection//

=__How did Mr. Birling react when he saw the photograph and how do you think he should react?__= Mr. Birling's reaction towards the fact that he is reminded about Eva Smith and shown to the photograph, is quite normal. He does not quite "freak out", in fact all he does is just expressing a simple look on his face, meaning that he is not quite surprised and that it is not quite unexpected for him. This turns out to be two possible probabilities of how Mr. Birling will/should react. Firstly, in which we will just say that he is the killer. In this case, he would probably react severely after the photograph is shown or, he would not only just stay quiet in anxiety (face expressions), but also would wait until everything is dealt with by others and the subject is changed, then begin speaking. On the other hand, in which we predict that he is not the killer, he might be shocked or and just staying sad (face), not worried.