Connecting

                The blog topic for this time is how do I connect with others. I don’t really get the blog topic this time as it’s very broad. I’m not sure if it means how do I connect with others like Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or like social networking sites, or how I connect to others as mentally or emotionally. I think what the blog topic is trying to prompt me to write about is how do I make connections with people. I make connections with people with similar interests. I make connections by talking to people, and the more we talk, I find out about things in common then I connect. I don’t even know what connecting to someone means so I don’t really know what to write about this blog topic. It’s a really hard topic actually…

                                I’d say that I connect with others, when I talk to them a lot. The easiest way to connect with somebody in my opinion is to spend time and get to know each other. The way I see it, all human beings are alike in most ways. We are different in little ways, like what we want to eat or our favorite colors, or shows, or type of music we listen to. Those difference may seem big, but overall they are just tiny little differences in us. All humans share way more similarities. We have a sense of caring about certain people, like our family, or that we want what’s best for ourselves or our loved ones. We don’t like to do things that are difficult. All of us are the same in one way or another, but the thing is that some us don’t see beneath our petty surface differences. We need to look deeper and we can see that we are alike on the inside and those petty surface outside differences mean nothing. No matter if we’re white, or black, or Chinese, or Japanese, or Indian, or Korean, or Filipino, Italian, German, French, Russian, we are all the same on the inside in many ways. It’s just a part of being a human. This is why I think that spending time with people would let someone connect with others. It doesn’t matter if they are complete opposites on the outside, if they spend enough time and get to know each other better, they should probably be able to see that the outside differences mean nothing and that they are pretty much the same in what they want. They should see that no matter their different race, ethnicity, skin color, or age they are similar in so many ways that they can be able to connect.

                I find it really rare that people that spend so much time with each other can hate each other a lot. If someone spends time with another person a lot, I’d expect them to like each other because they see how similar they really are. Maybe they might not like each other, but at least respect one another and not dislike each other as they are both human beings and should understand each other. I didn’t really understand the blog topic so I just stated how I think people connect with each other. All I can say about myself is that the way I’ve come to connect to people is that I’ve talked to them a lot and spent a lot of time with them. I got to know them and see that we are alike in many ways, so I can understand why they do some things that other people who don’t know those people wouldn’t understand.

moving or staying

The blog topic for this time is if living in one place better, or moving around from place to place. Obviously both sides of this topic has its advantages and disadvantages and is probably a really controversial topic. For me though, I would like to live and stay in one particular place rather than having to keep moving around from place to place.

                Some advantages of moving around from place to place would be hat if you mess up or have a bad reputation in one place, its fine because you will go away and not be with those people anyways. You will be at another place with another group of people. You can keep starting over whenever you make a mistake in your life, that, to me is probably the biggest advantage of moving from place to place. Another advantage would be being able to meet so much more new and diverse people and to learn about different people in different areas. People in the city may be much clumsier and rushed and stuff like that, while people in the suburban or rural areas would be more relaxed, chill, and have a slower, easier life. A person moving all around would get to visit all these places and experience those places and learn all different things and how people live in all those different places. They would also make more friends and know people all around incase they need something. It would be really convenient to have friends all around the world so if something happens, you can ask for help. It’s just like having connections. Someone in New York might be able to help you do something, or an easier example since I live on Saipan, is shipping. Most places don’t ship to Saipan as they probably never even heard of the place. So how do I get the things I order from amazon, or ebay, or wal mart over here to the tiny island? Simple. I ship it to California where my sister, or some friends live and have them pick it up to forward it over here. Or if they ship to Guam, just mail it there and have someone pass or bring it back to this island. It’s very convenient to have friends all around.

                Some advantages of staying in one place though would be that the group of friends you have, or the people you hang out with would stay with out and you all would be really close, rather than if you had to move around and keep meeting new people. These friends would be really close to you since you’ve lived with them for so long. This is the main advantage of not always moving around from place to place. This is also why I prefer to live in one place. It’s also easier because you don’t have to keep leaving the things or people you care about. Even if everything is going wrong, and you want to get away, it will still be hard to leave certain things, like people who you’ve come to know and care about especially, or people who have helped you out.

                Those are some advantages of either staying living in one place or to keep moving around from place to place. There are probably an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages for both, but I still prefer staying in one place, especially so I don’t have to leave things that I’ve come to know and love. I am sentimental and leaving things would be kind of hard. What I believe though, is probably really different from what other people think, as once again I say, this is a very controversial topic. 

Quotes

The blog topic for this time is ten quotes that I live by. One quote that I live by is my wise old history teacher’s number one rule of sex. This wonderful rule is “Always use condoms.” This is the first quote that I live by. I mean, I haven’t used lived by this rule yet, but I will be sure to follow it then. Another quote that I live by is a good quote from a good friend of mine named Lynette. She would always say “Chow the balut!” I think she is saying this as a metaphor. The balut represents the essence of human life, because balut is a fertilized, unborn fetus of an chicken. We must chow the balut and feel the essence of human life to be happy. This is what I think the quote means, and Iive by this.

                Another quote that I live by is from the famous rapper Drake. His quote is “YOLO” This is abbreviated and actually means you only live once. This means to live every moment like it’s your last and you should live life without regrets. This is definitely a quote that I live by. Yolo, that’s the motto.

                Another quote that I live by is “The last man standing is the best” by Chris Park. I interpret it that it means in social Darwinism, evolution, humans get smarter, quicker, more intelligent, and better in every way as time goes on. Just like evolution, we get more and more advanced as time passes. The last man standing is the best, a good quote by Chris Park. One quote that I really like, but I can’t seem to live by is “Patience is a virtue.” This is a quote by the Chinese philosopher Confucius. This is a quote that I wish I could live by. It would be god to have patience, and I really wish I had patience, but I don’t, I am impatient and I can’t live by this quote.”

                Some great quotes though that I live by is part of the ten commandments. These are things that I definitely live by. Some of these are : “Thou shall not murder, thou shall not steal, and those commandments.” I am a Christian and I definitely like any other Christian, live by these commandments. These quotes are an important part of my life and I have to live by them.

Happiness

                Happiness is defined in many different ways and for different people, they see happiness in a different way as well. The ways people are happy are different in many cases. Some people in Africa may be happy with enough food to have a full belly and enough to drink to not be thirsty. For other people with higher standards of happiness, they would need a lot to be considered happy. They would have to get an education, and have their life be perfect and such in order to be happy. For me though, being happy is having a healthy family and a good close family. I would have to have no problems mentally, physically, emotionally, and in every other way. I should have enough food and everything and be full and not thirsty. The dictionary definition of happiness is “good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.”

                People are different in what makes them happy. To me, happiness is doing something you really love or enjoy to do. When you are doing whatever that is and you feel like nothing else worries right now, that is when someone is truly happy. If someone likes soccer so much that it is their life and is professional, plays extremely well, and makes a lot of money and is successful, famous and known all over the world but doesn’t enjoy playing soccer, then he isn’t happy. If he likes to play basketball rather than soccer, but has to play soccer for a living, even if it’s for a lot of money, he won’t be happy. If someone is really into cars and just enjoys driving and everything, he is probably happiest when he is speeding down a straight road with no traffic feeling the power of his car. If someone really enjoys music, he or she will be happy doing something that relates to music. He wouldn’t be happy running a large business even if it is extremely successful and profitable if he’s not into it and doesn’t enjoy it.

                The dictionary definition of happy is “Delighted, pleased, or glad, over a particular thing… characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy.” If you have pleasure and are delighted doing art, then go pick up a paintbrush and some paint and have fun with a blank canvas. Happiness is not the same for everyone. Something that makes me happy might not make the person next to me happy, or any other person happy. Soccer makes my friend happy, but it does not make me happy, I’m not into soccer as he is.

                Everyone is trying to be happy and their ultimate goal in life is to be happy, but then they don’t know what they are doing to try and achieve this happiness. This is the problem with a lot of people, they try to be happy without knowing how. I am happy however, when I run for leisure. Sometimes, I just get out and start running to loud music. I like to run along the road and the beach, but not on the sand. I’ll run and listen to music at full volume at a steady pace and I’m happy. I can unwind and forget about everything and just run to clear my head. It feels great and for me, that makes me happy. For other people though, running is terrible and would lead to unhappiness for them. This is just yet another example of how being happy is different for different people. 

Book I Learned From

                This blog topic is about what one book has benefited me the most. I don’t think that any book has really benefited me in a large way. I can’t think of any way that a book has benefited be besides the fact that it may have taught me some new vocabulary words I did not know before, or taught me different styles of writing or slang or something like that. It may have taught me grammar or about persuasive writing. It probably has taught me different methods of effective writing. No story in a book has really taught me about morals or a life lesson or anything really important. I learn those things outside of books in real life situations or from people, like my family.

                If I had to choose one book though that has benefitted me the most, besides from books I read inside of school, I would choose my favorite book, which is entitled Small Steps. This book is the less-known sequel to the book and movie Holes. This is a really well known story of a group of kids that have committed crimes and have been sent to a camp in the middle of the desert to dig holes and build character. These delinquent children dug holes everyday, unknowingly searching for a treasure that was left there many years ago. The sequel of the book holes, which is Small Steps, my favorite book, is about some of the kids that have finally gotten out of the camp and are trying to rebuild their lives one step at a time. It is specifically about a boy nicknamed “Armpit” as he tries to do good and get an education for all the years he missed out on while he was digging holes in camp. He tries to stay out of trouble in every way, and have a nice normal life at home, but then an old friend from camp is also out, but not trying to rebuild his life as well as Armpit. He is not really trying to stay out of trouble and finds a business in illegally scalping tickets and selling them for a lot of quick cash. This boy, named nicknamed X-Ray drags Armpit into his business and gets him in trouble too. Armpit didn’t want to join and help him, but eventually because he was greedy and needed money, got dragged and involved in the whole mess. His efforts of rebuilding his life hit some hard obstacles but eventually, at the end of the book he succeeds in this.

                This book has taught me to be like Armpit and slowly go up step by step. To be successful in life, is to take small steps toward a set goal and to not be greedy. If you are greedy you might take too big of a step and slip and fall down, getting pushed down back to the bottom of the river. This is just like when Armpit got greedy for some cash and got dragged into the business and all the way back down the river. In the book, there is the metaphor of taking small steps up a river and taking small steps in life. Find stable rocks and foundations to step on that aren’t too far away (goals) and go for them, step by step. Plan your every move before you do it so you don’t fall. And to get to the top, you can’t take big risky steps to loose rocks, like in real life. You can’t take such big, risky steps if you can’t afford to fail and start over. 

Looks Vs. Ideas

The blog topic for this week is: The looks and clothing of a person are more important than having good ideas to succeed.  Do I agree or disagree?

I definitely disagree. The looks and clothing of a person don’t define a person success at all. There are some ugly people who don’t know how to dress that have made it very far in the world. They are a huge success, make lots of money, are very well know, but yet they still wear polka dot shorts and crocs. Having good looks and good clothing and having a sense of fashion may help people out in the real world a little bit by attracting other people, possible people that could help with what they’re doing and such, but having great ideas is definitely more important. Having good looks might attract more people and let you make more connections that would help you out in for example, a business, but having great ideas would get you a lot of attention as well and help you make connections based on your work, not your physical looks.

If someone had no great ideas, were dumb as can be, but looked great and had great clothes as well as a good sense of fashion, they would still not be successful. It does not matter how many people they know, or how many connections in the real world they have made, because they can’t really do much else other than modeling and just looking good. They cant think what is better for them and would be controlled by someone their entire life.              Someone who is smart and has great ideas can soar above the rest making innovations, and being creative doing things people have not done before. Some great innovative creative thinkers with great ideas are the most successful, rich, and well known people out in the world today. Steve Jobs for example, he just passed away about a year ago, but he was not a very handsome man. He was a great smart creative thinker. That is what made him so successful, his creativity and innovation that created all these different types of gadgets like the iPhones, and   and the macbook laptops, and all these different things. He created the macintosh operating system! Okay well he didn’t create it, he wasn’t that smart, but he did get the idea and create it in his mind, which the then was able to hire programmers to do it for him, but the idea still started from him.

Another great successful person with great ideas is Bill Gates. This man I’m sure everyone here has heard of. He is arguably the most successful person in America. He is if not the richest, one of the richest people in the United States now. He created the windows operating system and he gets so much money, that he gains over $1000 per minute. That is how much money he has. This all started with the great idea of windows operating system. Now it’s so widely used everywhere. This blog itself is typed on a windows 7 laptop.

These successful, rich, and incredibly well known people didn’t get to where they are now by having good looks and wearing nice clothes. They got that after they became rich and could afford nice clothes and plastic surgery. These people got to where they are because of their knowledge and creativity and good ideas. Good ideas are way more important than having good looks or wearing nice clothes to become successful for sure.

True Friends

The blog topic for this time is what three qualities of a true friend are. Three qualities that a true friend should have. Everyone has friend, many friends, but only a few of them are really true friends. One thing to me that really makes a friend a true friend is their loyalty. They should be loyal to you and be your friend forever. I don’t mean being loyal to you as in serving you, but be loyal as in they will stick with you through hard times and good times. They should always be there for you no matter what happens. This is what loyalty is. This is probably one of the most important qualities of a true friend. This is hard to find in most people.

Another quality that a true friend must have is that they should be able to sacrifice some things and give up certain opportunities to help the other person when they need it. A true friend should be able to give up something that they may want so that the other person can benefit. A true friend should be able to help the other person by doing something that might benefit them even if they don’t want to. They should be considerate enough to not care about their own needs as much as their friend’s needs.

Another quality that a true friend should have is that they are caring as well as loving. They should be loving enough as though if this friend of theirs disappeared or went away they would be sad and hurt. If anything happened to them, they would feel just as bad as if it happened to them. If they got hurt in any way, the true friend should be there ready to help out in any way they can. If they fell off a bike or something and got a cut, they would laugh at them and make fun of them. This is only because it’s not a serious injury or anything that hurt them badly, just a scrape, or a cut, or a little bit of bleeding. If it was a serious injury or something serious that hurt their friend, like cancer hitting them, or getting hit by a car, or being in a car crash. Those are serious injuries and most likely life threatening. This is where a true friend comes in to help them through it and recover from whatever it is that happened.

The difference between a friend and a true friend is that a true friend can tell their friend bad stuff about them and not worry about hurting their feelings. They can say, you’re hairstyle is ugly and your sense of clothing is terrible and their crocs don’t make it any better. A friend might be able to say that but would offend the other person. A normal friend probably would not say something like that though because they aren’t close enough to the person and should be afraid of hurting their feelings or offending them. True friends know that they aren’t doing that to offend them or be mean, just telling them to make fun of them and have some fun.

Those are three qualities I think should be in a true friend and the difference between a true friend and just a friend. It's hard to leave and difficult to forget about a true friend that was always there for you. 

Human Strength

The blog topic for this time is what I think the strongest thing about humans is. This may sound cliché, but in my opinion, the strongest thing about us humans is our tongues. I know this isn’t a strong muscle physically, and definitely not even close to that. The tongue is probably one of the weakest muscles in the entire physical human body. It is inferior to the biceps, triceps, and all the other muscles in the body physically, but the way it is stronger is that it can hurt other people much more then a kick in the face, or a punch in the groin area. Obviously this is not true for everyone because some people don’t have feelings and don’t care what people say about them, and in my opinion these people are the strongest types of people. Some people however, are hurt way more buy words and emotions rather than being punched or kicked. People may get physical scars from stitches of a flesh wound, but an emotional scar is much harder to heal on all levels. Not only is it so much harder to heal, it is concealed on the inside and it keeps damaging that particular person more and more. It isn’t a visible wound everyone can see and help them with, like bring them to the hospital when they need, but a scar and pain on the inside is hard and even invisible to most people, and this makes it so that it is hard for people to help out like find a therapist or something.

Another strength of the human tongue is that it gives us humans the great ability to talk and to speak and to communicate so much easier. We can make an endless number of different sounds meaning different things. Some examples are a tsk tsk sound meaning disapproval, or different types of whistling that could mean many things, or clicking our tongue to indicate something. Obviously, the greatest method of communicating with human tongues is speaking. We are given the ability to speak and thus can communicate and work with other people much more efficiently. We can talk and share ideas and share thoughts and work together as a group much more easily. This is probably the greatest strength of the humankind. We were able to build civilizations rather than other animals in the world most likely because other animals could not speak and communicate properly and work together. We humans, on the other hand have it much better. We can speak and say words to make things go faster. We share our ideas and take the good ones, and discard the bad ideas. We can make rules and talk and do so many different things with our tongues.

Our tongues also give us pleasure. Ofcourse in many different ways, one obviously being the ability to taste delicious foods with our tastebuds. This is great, it makes life so much nicer. We are able to enjoy our food like ice cream, chips, cookies, and all that delicious junk food. They are unhealthy, but our tongue and tastebuds make it so enjoyable. Another maybe not so obvious pleasure of the tongue is kissing! That’s probably better than eating delicious foods, maybe.

So the greatest strength of the human being is that we have a tongue. The tongue gives us the ability to speak, to communicate, and to trade ideas and has made human civilization so successful as it is today. The tongue also lets us taste our food and gives us pleasures!