Response to People with Disabilities

In Google Reader. one of the freshmen brought up the topic of people who are handicapped. This freshman,  Lhadze Bosiljevac, brought up important facts about how those who are handicapped are unfairly treated:

“Disability issues are common all over the world. People are born mentally & physically handicapped. Even if they can't walk or hold still it does not mean that they are not human. These people deserve all the rights everyone else. Because they have all the rights of normal people....How would you like to be in a wheel chair for the rest of your life? I mean we all dream to be on top, famous, or happy, but when we treat these people so rudely you don't how much we hurt them making them feel so much lower.  Next time think before you act. Don't insult the less fortunate cause that can be you tomorrow.”

I respect those who are handicapped because of the message Lhadze brings up at the end of her topic: “That can be you tomorrow”. At any moment, we could end up handicapped and how would it feel to be disadvantaged your whole life, keeping you from your dreams?

Like Lhadze, I’ve noticed many people do not respect those with disability issues with the respect they deserve. They never wanted to be in the position they are in and what they really need is more care instead of treating them with rudeness.

Unwind Response Part 3

FINALLY, winter break has come and we’re getting a much-needed three weeks off of school. There is no doubt that I will take advantage of this and sleep sleep sleep as much as I can. Other than that, we also completed our final discussion for the book which means this is going to be the final blog post dealing with the book Unwind by Neal Shusterman.

I’m not much of a reader and I have never read a book on my own yet. Every book I’ve read had to play a part in my grade. So when I was introduced to Unwind, I thought I was going to deal with another boring book that I am going to be forced to read. But this book was different. It was a book that I had interest in from start to finish and was glued to it until I reached the last page.

Something that was unique about Unwind is that it provided the reader with numerous foreshadowing throughout the book.  In the beginning when Connor attempted to run away and hide, he met a truck driver who was willing to help. This truck driver got into a truck accident and lost an arm. His arm was then replaced with a new one from an unwound and now, this arm has certain characteristics that that one person who got unwind used to have. As I read on, Connor eventually gets badly injured on his arm in an explosion at the chop shop and because he was unconscious, he was not given the option whether he wanted this arm to be replaced or not. Just like the truck driver who was in the accident, Connor eventually gets a transplant. The author does this in almost every part of the book, allowing the reader to connect the dots as they read on.

The book also ended off very unexpectedly. In my opinion, the book didn’t end off right. It kind of left the reader hanging but like we discussed in our groups today, the author Neal Shusterman might be preparing the book for a sequel.

Response to the Future

Shiyun Yang has been blogging about really simple topics lately but has been able to bring out a lot of meangful ideas behind these simple topics. So I chose once again, to respond to another of here awesome blogs. This time, the topic is the future:

“What does future mean? What is the future that awaits us all? I have been thinking about my future recently and thought that there is no answer to what that will await me. There is no way I would know what my future will be like, for I have to decide that myself. For every decision that I make in life, there will be a result to things. No one can really change what they have done or go back to the past and start over again. We will also have to look at the road ahead and make better decisions.”

I never really take the time to look into what the future awaits me. The thought of the future hasn’t really stayed in my mind for than few minutes. But after reading Shiyun’s post, I began to think. My mind started to linger around into a space I haven’t spent much time on: what the future awaits me. Just like Shiyun, I began asking myself questions as well. Where will I be in the future? How successful will I become? Will I become a failure? Will my hard work at ASTI really pay off?

Then, I began to realize why I don’t visit this area of thought in my mind. There is no reason to because sometime, thinking about the future will get in the way of what is going on in the present. But don’t get me wrong because it is good to look into the future to plan your life and plan on what career paths you want to follow. But focusing too long thinking about the future can sometimes ruin it because there are always going to be speed bumps and mistakes in the way that always lead to something we never thought of in our imaginary blueprints we have in our minds.  

Unwind Response Part 2

Upon reaching part two in reading and annotating the book “Unwind” by Neal Shusterman, a lot of surprises have popped out in the process. Lev, one of the main characters who almost led to an early unwinding for Risa and Connor, has reunited with them once again. They are now located in a unique warehouse that is used for airplane parts and unwanted airplanes. Another surprise is the person who is in charge of organizing all of this: a former admiral of the United States Army who instead of turning these runaway unwinds in, he has instead devoted his life to saving them until the age of eighteen, where they are free from unwinding.

Wherever there is good occurring, there is always some bad as well. The bad that is occurring in these thankful acts of by the admiral in this case is a character named Ronald. Ronald, a selfish enemy to almost everyone to the warehouse, has been able to convince so many kids of any idea he wants them to think. This sort of reminded me of the movie Inception, where the whole point of the title “inception” is to implant an idea within another person’s mind.

If I were to make a prediction on what is going to occur in the final part of this book, I predict that Ronald will do something unthinkable and try and take control of the warehouse. I have this idea in mind because throughout the time Connor and Risa are at the warehouse, they have been noticing that he is trying to “incept” other refugees there that the admiral is not really there to help them and that he is actually using them, much like a slave trader. This would be a good suspicion except Connor eventually has a meeting with the admiral and gains his trust and knows for sure the admiral has no such plans of using these fellow unwinds. I also predict that, like Connor’s suspicions, Ronald was the one who take those five casualties who played as the admiral’s ears and mouths, keeping a lookout of the warehouse and keeping everything in order. Now that Connor has secretly become one of these lookouts for the admiral, he has to be careful because Ronald is looking for more casualties.

Response to "Jealousy"

Going through Google Docs, I found an awesome blog by Shiyun about the topic of jealousy:

“When we are jealous, we do some things that we would not normally do. I think that we should be more calm when this happens. We do not always have to have what others have. If we do, then doesn't it just make us all the same. I think we should just feel happy for what they have. Everyone is different and there are other problems that we have to worry about in life. We can't always face with these little problems that we have because if we don't learn how to over come them we can not face life problems that we have in life later on. We can not let the feeling of jealousy take over our minds and bother our everyday lives.”

Being jealous is a dangerous feeling in my opinion. It can lead to depression, angriness, and other unwanted feelings. Bringing up this topic, I can relate to it a lot. I have had a lot of experiences where I am jealous of certain people for having things that I don’t have. I am sure a lot of people go through this experience of jealousy but what we need to do is be thankful for what we have. A lot of people don’t take the time to even stop and think and realize how much they should be thankful for what they have. A person might be jealous of their friend having a bigger house than them and become sad or depressed but don’t take time to realize that there are people out there in this world who can’t afford to live under a roof. A person might be jealous of a certain someone at school having the latest clothes in fashion, when others are worrying about how to keep a plate of food on their tables for their families. So what we need to do when we become jealous is to take a step backwards. Then to take that step back forward in the right direction, away from jealousy, reaching out for those in need.

Unwind Response Part 1

In the book Unwind by Neal Shusterman, the world has been put on fast forward until we arrive in a time about three generations from where we are today. iPods and plasma screen TVs are a thing of the past and are mere antique shop items. The book is mainly about the action of unwinding, which is to kill teenagers between the ages of thirteen and eighteen to reserve their organs for those in need of them. Who decides this action are their very own parents. The book focuses on a specific three main characters: Connor, Risa, and Levi and all three are on the run for their lives from getting unwound.

All three of these main characters have come from different backgrounds. Connor was a bad kid always getting into trouble and disobeying his parents. Risa was a talented pianist and always doing the right thing. Lev was a kid who knew what his outcome was going to be once he turned thirteen and felt destined to be unwound. All of these characters eventually meet up in a crazy way and work with one another to keep themselves alive and avoid getting unwound.

In our discussion in class, one of my group members brought up an important question relating to the book: Why was it so easy of a decision for parents to have their kids unwound? That’s when I began to think, maybe we are headed such a society that Connor and Risa live in, where humankind is not seen as important as it once was.

Currently, there are people getting killing almost every single day but surprisingly, this isn’t a big deal. There are numerous wars being fought where thousands are killed but this has become a normal activity. As our population in the world increases, human life is not seen as importantly as it once was. Maybe this book is a foreshadowing of a world we are headed to. It might be the exact scenario as in Unwind where our own children’s lives can be chosen to be taken away by their own parents. But something similar and as heartless where human life has gone rock bottom.