Blog Post 6

The entire news clip, “Sucked into the Tunnels between Las Vegas” is very odd to me.  Even though it explains why O’Brian continues to go down into the drains under the Las Vegas strip, it still raising some questions in my opinion.  Why would he consider ever doing this in the first place?  How was it that he got to be so close to the people that lived down there?  If I were to be living in a sewer I do not believe that I would be very welcome to outsiders.  This brings me to my point.  I thought that O’Brian’s friend or acquaintance, Steven, was a very unusual and interesting character.  When first hearing that there is a man dressed in a button down and slacks in the sewer, one might think that he is there to help, sort of like how O’Brian is.  There is no such thing as a normal voice or way of speaking, but Steven seemed to sound as if he was a very average person.  I began to wonder why someone with his attributes would be living in a sewer, but when he mentioned his gambling problem and his drug addiction, it was easy to assume that those were factors of why he was down there.  The next item that I thought was very interesting about Steven was his “occupation” or lack of.  It’s weird for me to believe that Steven can manage to stay alive by silver mining, or taking the credits from an unoccupied slot machine.  One might think that the casinos would catch on since you have to look the part.  Steven says, “A lot depends on how I look because those are two very hard places (casinos) if you don’t look right they’ll stop you or watch you.”  But then we soon learn that in his quarters of cardboard boxes, he has a queen size bed, a dresser, and even a shower.  I would not guess that Steven would choose to live like this, but for someone living in a sewer, he sounds like he is happy and doing alright.    

Speech Recap

For my speech on Thursday over my ethnographic choice, I thought I did a fairly average job.  There were some things that I felt like I did somewhat well but also there were things that I will need to improve on in the future.  For the most part I felt like I was comfortable up in front of the class.  I didn’t feel as nervous as I thought that I was going to.  I also felt like I knew my topic pretty well which gave me a great deal of confidence when it came time to give the speech.  I think that I did a good job getting my point across to the audience and making a good amount of eye contact with each of my classmates.  However there definitely were some things that I saw that I didn’t do as well as I should have.  I felt like I had good posture standing up strait but I was kind of stiff.  I didn’t really move around very much and I felt that while giving my speech and could really tell once I watched it.  While I believe I spoke loud enough for the audience to hear me clearly, I did a very poor job of putting any emotion or passion into what I was presenting.  Another thing that I realized after the speech was that I left out what I was going to do for my future plans.  Seeing myself do my speech will definitely help me out for speeches in the future.