Entry #11

             Hello world, I hope you all are doing well with your lives. I want to say that this might be my last blog. I want to be honest and say that I did blogging because it was part of my English class grade. I much rather speak than write. Give me an hour, two , five , a day and I still can keep up a conversation.

How did I push myself to do blogs ?

             Whenever I put my hands on the keyboard to write a blog, I close my eyes for a second and imagine that there is an audience in front of me. When I have that picture in my mind, ideas start poping out, because now I am not thinking about writing but speaking my ideas out.That was the only way to convince myself to write blogs. It also helped me to take every single blog seriously.

         
              I have to admit that Through blogging my knowledge was expanded. Before blogging, I never knew what capitalism was, but now I know after writing my blog about capitalism. There was no way I could make up something I didn't know about so I had to make a little research about it.

              I can never deny the fact that doing blogs gave me more creativity with my topics, and how to present them to my audience. My blog about tigons and ligers is a really good example of how much I became creative with my topics.

                Although I did blogging for the purposes of getting a grade in my English class, I still strongly recommend that Professor Chris my English teacher keep assigning blogs for the up coming classes. I believe assigning blogs is better than assigning boring homework from the textbook. We all get bored when we go through the same routine over and over again, therefor we should try something new.

              I also would like to add that writing something down and knowing that you will have an audience that will read it should be more exciting and challenging. It will definitely improve the students rhetoric. The student will think critically to present a good idea to the audience unless he/she wants the audience to "throw tomatoes" at him/her.

              Therefore prof Nielson, you should definitely keep assigning blogs for the up coming classes. Don't ever think about going back to the old routine which is assigning homework from the textbook. Because the blogging idea is definitely way more better and I much rather doing blogging as homework than doing homework from the textbook.

Entry #10 Jumping Off a Cliff

            Back when I was a junior in high school, I used to be a member in one of the most amazing clubs in my high school. The club name was the Adventure Club. Through the club, I made a lot of friends, and I had the opportunity to experience the real meaning of nature. Hiking, rock climbing, surfing the ocean, river drafting and jumping of cliffs; this is what the Adventure Club was all about. We get away from our families and enjoy ourselves with nature. In this story I want inform you about overcoming one of my biggest fears that I did not know about.

It was the Sunday of August, 2010. My iPod alert finally freed me from my bed. I woke up to that morning filled with energy and excitement and Why not? It was my first trip with the Adventure Club. I have already finished packing since the night before the trip, and all I had to do is get dressed for my first episode with Adventure club. What a beautiful symphony the birds were playing that day. Deep inside me I can hear the nature calling me. I was a little bit anxious though, just like a little baby who is about to get introduced to something new he have never seen before. I was hustling with my shower, breakfast and dress up. Even though I still had enough time, I felt as if I were going to be left behind. In a bullet speed my dad got me to school, the place where the Adventure Club meet. My cousins and I were the first ones to show up. Impatiently, I was waiting next to the schools vans going back and forth. At 7:50 AM.., every one showed up. Tapping with my toes, I was waiting for the teacher to finish talking. At 8:00 AM. The van added 6 friends to my friend list. With all the activities I had with my van mates, somewhere in my mind I am thinking about where I am going. Clear creek, this is where I and the adventure club were heading to.  What is a cliff look like? How High is it? , Am I going to be able to survive after I jump into the water? Somehow I found out deep inside me I had small fear from jumping off a cliff without even trying it.

            Arriving at the destination, I was getting my back pack ready for the two and a half miles hike. I remember how burning the sun was, that I can feel my body getting sweaty already before the hike. Completing the first mile I was melting already, and I can even see the mirage coming out of the ground like small lake. Beginning from the second half of the hike, I started to see the small waterfalls and I can feel the weathers breakdown. Finally I can hear the nature singing for me.

            Finally, it is the moment I have waited so long to see. We break into one of the paths and all I see is red rocks all over the place and I look at myself standing on one of them. “Mohammed, here we are buddy you are standing on a cliff” said Mr. Sing, my teacher and the leader of the Adventure Club. Suddenly I see everybody jumping into the “black water lake”. Looking at the water from the edge of the cliff, I just realized my legs were shaking to the point that I could not stop them. All I thought about was how high the cliff was and I kept on backing of the cliff. Half an hour passed. I realized I and some other mates have not jumped yet. I guess we shared the same feelings. I did not want to go back saying that I have not done it so I took the courage and stood back again at the edge of the cliff. My legs were automatically shaking again. Each time I looked down to the lake, my heart started pounding as if it’s going to explode out of my chest. I felt like I almost ran out of oxygen. I did not know if I should cry myself out or just yell for no reason. While I was drowning in one of my must fearful moments, “Mohammed you can do it, take a couple of steps back then run without thinking about it and jump” Mr. Sing pull my hand out of the fear I was drowning in. Then everybody started cheering and calling my name out loud. Just like what Mr. Sing said I started counting five steps to the back. Without thinking, I broke through that fear and ran to the edge without thinking and jumped as far as I could. In one second I realized I am in the black lake swimming. Yes, at the end of the day I jumped and overcame one of my biggest fears and it makes me so proud of myself.

           

           

Entry #9(The Media)

             Hello world. Today I want to discuss with you a term that had already introduced itself to us whether we were aware of it or not. It always finds a way to encounter with us. Something that we can not avoid. Ladies and Gentlemen I present you the media. 

             Since the day I came to the U.S.,  I've always viewed the media as something negative. Whenever I used to hear the word media, the first thing that came to my mind was the "evil" news people. I've always thought that they are the reason for the negative stereotypes. For example, I thought they were the reason why middle easterns are called terrorists. 

Of course I still believe  they play a role in that but I realized there was a lot more into it. I did not know that the media had more than one face.There is that one face that the media always shows up with and it has a lot of power on the way I view myself and others. Yes, it is Social media, one of the faces that the media shows up with every single day. It is probably the right hand of the media. Social media puts a lot of pressure on us. As an example of that, is when we look at a magazine paper and we see a picture of a handsome guy or an attractive woman,

 we might think "hmm.., maybe this is how I should look" or "hmm.... this is how my love should look", now the magazine can be one of the media's faces but it will not process through unless the help of the social media. Some people, it might be you or me or anyone might start to think that part of beauty is to be like the person on the magazine, which then creates a big network of people who believe in that idea. Where is that going to lead to ? Of course some people are going to feel peer pressured, because they start believing the idea as well.   

                   The same thing when we come to the idea of terrorism. The news want to show something that gives them benefits and exciting at the same time, something with action. Since the idea of terrorism was always linked to the middle east, so all they need to focus on is something that has to do with people getting killed and link it to the middle east. However the one that completes the idea is the social media. One negative opinion of person can change others opinions; it could be through school, social websites, people that we encounter in the streets, or our families.  All that peer pressure can change our thoughts and opinions. 

               

                Focus on that dot on the above picture. You start realizing that the dark shade is vanishing and the only thing that is left is the dot. That is how the media take our attention. If we did not put all the focus on that dot, the dark shade would have not vanished. Be careful, do not let that dot take your attention and let the rest vanish.

Entry #8 (Returning back to the Gym)

                    It was almost the end of my spring 2014 school break. The sun was settling down. My young brother and I were heading back  home from my aunts house. It was so much fun staying up all night with my cousins. While I was trying to concentrate on the road, I noticed that my brother was giving me some serious looks. "What's up?, why you look so pissed of ?", I asked. " man, do you want to stay like that ?" he asked. "What you mean?!"I responded with a little anger. "Dude, you didn't used to be like this two years ago. Do you realize how much weight you gained? look at you ! you have a belly! Go hit the gym back bro, go back to what you used to be! I do not want to see you suffer weight problems just like me". I was so moved by the respond I got back from him to the point I unconsciously had some tears going down. After getting home, I walked quickly to my room so no one can notice me. I was so mad and angry at myself. After I started college, my number one excuse for not reaching the gym was "I have a lot of homework, I got no time for that". Somewhere inside me I knew I was making up that excuse, and I always had time for the gym. Since the day I left the gym, I never felt healthy nor comfortable with the way I walk, eat, sit, sleep, I can't even count them. I knew I hated my life because if it. While I was in the middle of my thoughts staring at the wall on my right side, someone opened the rooms door. When I turned my head back o look behind me, it was my brother. For a couple of seconds we starred at each other and finally his lips move. "Look! we both are going to the gym, OK?" with a sharp look on his eyes he stares at me waiting for an answer. That is when I made the decision to go back to the gym, but this time not only for myself but to my brother. I want to be a good role model for him. I do not want to show him that his older brother gives up easily. Next day, we both went to the LAfittness center and signed up. I had been attending the gym for a month and through that month I struggled a lot to get my body used to the workout, but I know that will totally pay of at the end. Thank you brother for awakening the beast inside me, we will do it both together.

Entry#7(Micheal Moore : Love Story, Capitalism) 

                                              
               Hello world, today I want to discuss with you a movie my ENG 102 teacher showed in my English class. The movie name is Love Story, by Michael Moor. It is about capitalism. I honestly didn't know anything about capitalism until I encountered with this movie. I had to know which system I support. If you take a glance at the movie trailer above you might get an idea that Mr. Moor is against capitalism in this movie. It looks like he is leaning more to communism. First of all, what is capitalism and what is communism ? Capitalism is more of a system where the country trades and industries are owned by private ownership for its own profits, while communism is a system where everything is owned by the government and  the profit is divided equally based on an individual abilities and needs. In communism it doesn't matter what degree you have, as long as you can provide for the country. Imagine yourself working hard for a degree, like a  degree in computer science, or in civil engineering, or a doctor or a dentist or and or and or...... That degree you worked hard for all day and all night is compared to a guy who works at a fast food restaurant ?You get about the same profit he gets? Is that fair ? Ladies and gentlemen, I present you communism. There is apart from the movie that really appealed to my emotions. It was at the beginning of the movie and he is showing this family being kicked out of their house. I thought to myself, this is not fair ! why are they kicking them outside of their house ? But, first of all who is kicking them out and why ? They were kicked out by the bank because the bank was the owner of that house. They haven't payed back the money they owe to the bank so the bank asked them to leave. There is nothing unfair in this. Imagine you sold a house to someone who promised you to pay back the money in a certain time, however he never did, what is your reaction to that ?
Don't you want your house back ? Micheal Moore presented it as if it was capitalism fault because that bank has its own business and if that was communism that would have not happen. As I mentioned, in communism everything is owned by the government, so you live in a house but it is not yours, How does that make you feel ? For me, I want my own property and my own business. I also want to be payed for what I worked hard for.  how about you ?don't you want the same? Or remember, you work hard and get payed the same a guy who works in a fast food restaurant ?

Ligers and Tigons

            

     

           Hello world, this blog will be about two interesting animals, ligers and tigers. Ligers and tigons are both hybrid animals. They both have similarities and contrasts. Aliger comes out from the mating of a male lion and a female tiger. They are more known than tigons because the mating process is easier. They usually are organish/golden color. Ligers havespotted bellies and striped backs. This animal gain his strength from both its parents. On their hind legs, they stand approximately 12 feet tall. They weigh 1000-1600 pounds. They are capable of eating more than 100 pounds of meat. Ligers makes both sounds of tiger and lion,

more into lion roar. This animal can achieve a maximum speed of 50-60 miles per hour.Now one the other hand we have tigons. These hybrid animals come from the mating of male tiger and female lion. Not many people know about tigons because not many of them exist in modern world and it is really hard to mate a male tiger with a female lion.  These animals do not reach the same impressive size as the liger. The normaly weigh about 352-392 lbs. They look more like tigers. Tigons have varying stripes and spots. They are organish in color. Tigons are not nearly as large as tigons, infact they are often times smaller than both its parents. It isvery sad to know that both of these animals do not live long because they are prone to cancers and other illnesses.  

Entry#5(Clip: Human dystopia) 

           
                Hello World, today I want to discuss with you a clip my English teacher professor Chris Nielson had shared with me. I have not seen the movie from this clip, but I can assure  you that by watching this clip I had a lot of thoughts floating inside my mind.
               The first time I watched this clip, I made sure I did not read the title because I wanted to figure it out through watching the clip. As I was going through this clip, I felt depression spreading through all my body my body parts. I started questioning myself, is that where our human race is going to be at in the future? Are we going to be a bunch of lazy fat people ?
              Something that I noticed in this clip is it seems like we made a big progress with technology, but the opposite with ourselves.
              I am afraid that there is a good possibility this day might come and  in fact I believe we are heading toward it. I also believe that technology is pushing us toward that day. We are misusing technology. For example, I remember back in Iraq, when I was 5 years old, the TV we had did not have a remote, so if you needed to change the channel you had to get up and walk to that TV to change it. Today, you can use a remote control to change the channels. We could have definitely made all modern TVs without a remote control to prevent that from happening.
               We must do something to stop it now before it progresses. We must look at the dark side before the bright side of each inversion that is going to be part of out technology or I believe that day where we all are going to be lazy and fat will come to us.

My first Experience at a Church(Entry #4)

Hello world, in this blog I will share with you the story of my first experience at a church. First of all, I want you to know that the story is going to be from a Muslim's point of view. Almost two years had passed since that incident. What was interesting is it was not planed out. I remember it was an afternoon time when I and my high school adventure club were heading home. Suddenly my teacher Mr. Sing made an unexpected exist in the freeway. He said that we were heading to one of the historic churches in Arizona. At that time, I was not sure how to react. I was in a big confusion and anxiety. Each time we are getting near the destination, my heart pounded faster. Mr. Sing was one of the teachers that I highly respected and I did not wanted to disappoint him by rejecting to get inside the Church. On the other hand, I was thinking what if my religion prohibited me from getting inside a place of worship other than the Mosque and what would happen to me if I did. My thoughts were having a war between each other while we were walking to the church. I was praying to God on what to do. I felt like I was going to step into hell. Standing at the door of the church, I realized my legs were a little shaky and I had no clue how to stop them. All of my friends where inside already, while I was the only one outside the door not knowing what to do.  However, not too long when curiosity started taking over my mind and I started wondering, aren't they what we Muslims call “People of the book”?  I don't see why I can't get inside their place of worship. Where is the crime in stepping inside a church? My religion always encouraged people to learn and be educated so why not?  I started questioning myself just to find an excuse to get inside. At the end I decided to get inside not for Mr. Sing but for myself. Anxiously, I got inside, and it was so quiet and peaceful. I saw people smiling at me peacefully, while I was heading to my seat. The only person who was speaking was the priest. By the time I sat down, peace overcame all over my fears and anxieties. I was amazed by how similar a priest spoke compared to a sheikh (Muslim Clergy). He was speaking about love, piece and honesty. All the advises that were given by the priest never disagreed with Islamic teachings. After coming out of the church that day, I felt shame on how negative my old community viewed Christianity and its followers. Why Muslims in my community viewed Christianity in a negative way? The answer was, my people focused on their own world and enforced their beliefs from their fathers, grandfathers and ancestors, there for they never thought about experiencing the world themselves. I myself could not understand Christianity until I experienced their environment. I learned that this world is like the universe and my culture is a galaxy out of a countless numbers of galaxies and I am only one star that belongs to one galaxy and I function according to the galaxy I belong to. I need to be aware that there are other galaxies that function differently to keep their systems running.     

The Oculus Rift (Entry #3)

                 Hello world, today I want to discuss with you a  about a new technology that is still being developed and I believe those who are video game fans will love it. Ladies and gentlemen I present you the oculus rift. It is a headset video gaming virtual reality device. This technology will bring new experience to the eyes of all videogamers. For example,  Normally a PC videogamer  would use a normal display screen to play a first person game like Dead Island; however, with the oculus rift a person would experience a 3D-world where he/she can play the game from their point of view(if we are talking about first person games). What is interesting about the oculus rift is instead of using a mouse or a joystick analog stick to to look around your game, you can use your head to look around. Imagine yourself playing a game like Dead Island which is a zombie game and you are in a scenario where you are running from the zombies and you can look turn your had to the back while running and actually see the running behind you. 

                I have another reason why I really wanted to share this technology with you people in general not just videogamers. By watching the video above, you can realize that the oculus rift can be used for other advantages. Since we are talking about a virtual reality device, which is something that can give us an experience near to reality, where else and how are we gonna use it for different purposes other than gaming?

I believe a device like this one can help us over come phobias like being afraid of heights . We can use the oculus rift on a simulator that puts you on position where you are standing on an object that is higher than the ground and training your brain to get used to that position. Lately, a lot of driving school simulators had been coming out, the oculus rift will definitely help those who are new to driving and even help those who have fear of driving. I believe that the oculus rift is not meant for gamers only but for other purposes too that can belong to our advantages. 

My Facebook addiction 

Hello world! I hope you all doing well.
For this blog I want to share with you my Facebook addiction story, and I believe some of you will relate to some of the stuff I'm going to talk about.






It all started back in 2010, when I was a sophomore at Central High School in phoenix, Arizona. It was one of my Iraqi friends who introduced me to Facebook. He suggested to me that I create my own account since everybody is doing it in the high school we both attend. So I did what my friend told me, because I thought that way I am gonna be "cool" just like the other. I want to put a note that back in 2010, I had only completed about two years in the U.S., so I didn't really have any friends beside my Iraqi friends, because of my poor English back then. Anybody who had many friend in my high school was considered "cool", so, I thought, "wait a minute, if I can add friends from my high school, I can be cool too" And so guess who did not sleep the whole night ?

^
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This Guy

lol, why do I look like I am proud of it on this picture? It is like if I am saying "who cares, "YOLO" " 

I spent the night adding as much friends as I can, because I wanted to be "cool". The good news was, I started having people liking and commenting on my pictures. People started chatting with me, "hey, I've seen you in Central, we should hang out some time", "hey, you are cute", "Hey budd! I figured out we have the same classes together, we should talk", "hey ! can you teach me Arabic", "Teach me how to curs in Arabic". After all these messages, I felt  like I was born again. I was definitely brought back to life.  Next Monday I go to school and many people know me. I felt "cool". Starting the week after I joined Facebook, I started skipping my class assignments and instead I Facebooked . Low grades started showing on my grade report and I never bat an eye. 

However, that did not last for too long. It was about three weeks before the end of the first semester of my sophomore year and I remember I was sitting in my advisory class when my adviser called out for me, "You know that you are going to fail your classes this semester, right?" my adviser said. I remember at that time, I felt like I am lonely in a dark place and something was pressing on my chest really hard. I did not know if I should cry, or rip my clothes maybe and shout out a curs word. I never failed a class in my entire life at that point, I was so shocked that all my body was frozen.

For three days, I was not eating well, and all I was thinking about is how can I pass my classes. If you ask me about Facebook at that time, I would tell you "what is that?" Facebook was out of my mind. 

Thanks to God and to my teachers back then, they helped me to bring my grade back up. They kept in touch with me. I had to sacrifice my weekends and I did not really care, I was telling myself I deserve it. By the end of the semester I managed to pass my classes. I would consider myself lucky, because not all teachers would've done the same.  

By the beginning of the fall break of 2010, I started Facebooking again; However, I tried to the time I am on it.

Up till now, Facebook been part of my life. Through it, I feel like I am connected to the world. 

Right now I have Facebook on my smart phone, and whenever I am free, I get on it. Sometimes I take peeks when I am doing my homework. 

I am to that point where I automatically take out my phone and view Facebook. 

I am practicing on eliminating that habit.

So this is my Facebook Addiction story, and again, I am pretty sure some of you guys can relate to this story. 

Please be safe.

Blog exploring 

Hello World ! I hope you are all doing well. For my second blog, I was exploring other people's blog's. I really wanted to have a feel of what blogs are and what you really can do with them. I was not disappointed. It is look like you can post anything in there weather it is an opinion you want to share, a fact or something personal. I believe all the people I explored their blogs are so creative with their topics, weather I liked their topic or not. Not all blogs seem interesting to me. The reason for that is because, and many of you will agree with me, we like to read or hear about what we is interesting to us. For example, I am a guy who do not like politics, I would not want to read about it, because I do not understand it. What I mean by that is, I don't understand its language, vocabulary, humor. Weather it was in English or Arabic which is my own language,  no matter how much you try to explain political stuff for me, I would not understand. One of the blogs was trying to mix occupying wall street with the Superbowl, I was reading through the whole article without having any clue about what is the author's purpose on that blog. However, I found some blogs absolutely interesting. Since I am a video gamer, I would love to read anything that has to do with video games. Luckily, today I saw a guy who posted in his blog a video about a game called Skyrim and I am pretty sure many video gamers know about this game. So they are using a virtual reality machine, to play the game as if you are inside the world. I really want you to have a look at it. It is just so amazing where we have gotten with out technology(specially when involving video games :) )



So I really want to see what you guys think of this. Specially my gamers, isn't it great?
I found other videos using this machine to test other games.

So I will let you watch the video and I hope you learned a little more about me from this blog.
Be safe.

Hello World !

           Hello world ! I am Mohammed Hussein. I am from Iraq. I've been in the U.S. for five years and I finally had taken the citizenship test and I passed it. I am currently attending Glendale Community College in Phoenix , Arizona. I am working toward transferring to Arizona State University and pursue a bachelors degree in computer science. I want to be a computer programmer. College requires a lot of work and time. However, I believe if you work hard, you play hard. I love communicating with people and it does not matter to me where they are from or what color they are, I would love to learn about where they came from, what culture they belong to, what religion they practice ? I believe the more  I learn about people, the  more successful  I get. I love to play basketball and soccer, these are my favorite sports. I also love to draw, if I had free time, I would draw. I am also a video gamer, however because I became busier once I started college, I do not know if I should call myself a "video gamer" anymore. I will update this blog as days come in, but for now, I really want share with you why my blog is named "Hello World". The first programming language I've learnt was java. The first program that was made on java language was a black screen that said "Hello World!" on it. Java was the first programming language I had learnt (and still improving on it), "Hello World" program was the first program my computer science teacher had assigned to me, so it means a lot to me as a programmer. Before I linked it to the programming language, I though this word is really welcoming and it shows how much I am open to everyone; so there you have it. Please be safe people.