Nathan Viennet WRIT 340 blog

  From the dawn of time, civilisation has thrived near waterways, Paris, Rome and the vast majority of the world’s most prosperous cities are built around waterways. Originally these were mainly rivers but with globalisation, direct access to the ocean is now the most important requirement. However, many of the poorest communities in the world do not have access to the ocean, the sea, or even rivers that could lead there. This leaves their regions dramatically underdeveloped.  Education is extremely important when dealing with inequalities, but if there is no opportunity for this education to be used, then it serves no purpose at all. Waterways are the cheapest mode of transportation in the world, but cannot be used by everyone. So we must turn to another technology, one that could be implemented virtually everywhere: trains. Railways are fast, cheap, ecologically friendly, can be built in most regions of the world easily, and would dynamise some of the most remote regions in ...

As opposed to most of my WRIT 340 classmates, I’m not even near my last year of college; however, much like most of my WRIT 340 classmates, in less than a month I’ll be gone from USC for good. In about 5 months I’ll be moving to Hong Kong which I'm incredibly excited for, but what I want to talk about is what is going to happen from now to then.  Everyone I’ve talked to strongly suggested doing “something” during freshmen summer, and I agree. I’ve been told : “do it for the resume”, “do it for the experience”, “it’ll help you figure things out”... And I guess I’m doing it for all these things (plus the salary).  As I’m sure you all know, getting an internship as a freshman is quite an endeavor. Generally the only way to get one without selling your soul is through your family connections. Now, I’m not a big fan of nepotism myself, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. So I’m going to be working where my dad works this summer, which I’m actually really excited about. I...

     When choosing to read Resilient: how to grow an unshakable core from Rick Hanson I was expecting insight. That is not what I gained. I think I gained something much more important from it or at least something that I at present value much more than insight.       I won’t go into detail but with my choice of college came another very complicated decision that I had to make. Although I’m confident I made the right decision, that does not mean it is any easier to cope with it. I was hoping that Resilient would bring many novel ways of understanding how I felt and how to deal with it. I wouldn’t say it disappointed in that sense because I believe that it actually would be tremendously insightful for many people. However (not to brag or anything) but I already figured out most of the stuff on my own in the past 6 months or so.       But this is not to say I found Resilient useless, quite the contrary. Even when I knew deep down that...

To: Clark Hansen  From: Nathan Viennet  Date : 03/08/2024 Subject : SmartFish investment proposal  This memorandum has the intention of putting forth a potential investment that could be highly beneficial to Anima Mundi. SmartFish is a Mexican based company that flawlessly embodies the triple bottom line that we value here at AMDP. The Smartfish group is composed of 2 entities, the SmartFish NGO and SmartFish Inc, both work in synergy with fishing cooperatives in Baja California (Mexico) to help them “earn more by fishing less”. The NGO trains the fishermen to  better practices while Smartfish Inc, which I believe we should invest in, buys their production for up to 400% the price they would get for it otherwise. These practices help protect the fishermen but also the environment in which they live, as their fishing practices are far less damaging to the environment.  Definitions :  Triple bottom line : “ The triple bottom line is a business concept that st...

  I chose to read resilient by Dr Rick Hanson, and I must admit to some extent it was because it got here faster on amazon. However this is not a completely random choice either and I do think I will get quite a lot from it. I have had a tough last 6 months emotionally and a lot of it has been spent thinking and trying to understand myself. So this book was naturally appealing and I wanted to see what matched and what differed between the way I handled it and how the book describes it.  If I’m being honest I’m not really into self improvement and such things I just try to solve my issues in the most pragmatic way possible and by not considering my emotions. To me this seems to work pretty well and it allows me to make good decisions. However these are usually quite emotionally taxing and often my choices are hard to take in even knowing they’re right. So I'm hoping to get maybe a second point of view from this work.  According to some of the comments the book also talks a...

  On every freewrite that we’ve had in class so far I’ve somehow written about food. You could argue that is because we have class right before lunch time but I do think food is one of my great passions so I might as well write about that.  Just to be clear when I say food I don’t mean eating, I like eating no doubt but I was thinking about cooking. I love cooking. For myself or for other people, pasta or steak, grandma recipes or fine dining all of it is fascinating to me. I have preferences of course and I think that cooking shines brightest through fine dining.  I’m no chef, I have very little training, most that I know I’ve learned through youtube, my father (who learned it from his mother), or through trial and error. I used to cook with my dad when I was very small, and then I realized that if I cooked I didn't have to do the dishes. There it was, I had to learn to cook. This was when I was about 14. At that point I knew how to make eggs, and that was pretty much it...