Van anh

How important is sugar to you and your life? Well, sugar is included in most of your meals and maybe your drinks.  Every time you drink a coke or eat a piece of cake, have you ever thought of how hard people have to work to be able to produce that sugar that you eat. And some of you haven’t thought about it because the sugar doesn’t affect your life as much as it affects 2.4 million children that must work 7 hours a day on sugar field in Philippine to earn $ 3.5 because  their lives depend on the field. The author of this week article, Kyung Lah has summarized the whole article in one sentence which is” Life not sweet for Philippines’ sugar cane child workers”

“We do not deny that child labor exists in our industry,” said Edith Villanueva, the president and COO of the Sugar Industry Foundation.”It’s a practice among families who are paid piecemeal for their work. They like to employ their children because there’s more income for the families.” While i was reading these quotes, I feel like this person was shrugging it off as a way of life because child labor is  so common in Philippines that she doesn’t really care about child labor anymore. And when I read the part where she was willing to pay more money to avoid child labor, I thought that this strategy wouldn’t work because these families are so desperate for money that they would beg the landowners to include their children to work. In my opinion, the way that Villanueva raised the money was just tempted and I think it might bring the opposite effect of avoiding child labor which means raising money bring even more children to work because now they have a better chance of earning more money. I’m not sure if this company raised to money on purpose to get more child to work or they really tried to avoid child labor like what they’ve said before. The main problem about this is that more children go to work and sentencing them to a future in the fields and graduate cutting sugar cane than kids that go to school and want to graduate from high school or university.

“If you don’t change family attitudes and their values, then you don’t change their way of life. There’s a long term solution and it’s really education.” And I think this quote is so true. According to Philippine government, they said that 75 % of child labor will decrease in 2015. I think that is a good news but i don’t think child labor will decrease if we are all waiting for the government to do it because we think it’s their responsibility. To me, 3 years is a long time to wait for a change. Moreover, by that time, even more kids will be old enough to move up to hazardous working place and cutting sugar cane so we should take action as soon as possible. Look at Kony and how much they’ve achieved, I just heard about the campaign about a month or two ago and now one of his top leader is arrested. If we all get involved then I think child labor in Philippine might end in less than 3 years. Only a small action such as using less sugar in our daily life and drink less coke can actually decrease the number of child labor.

How bad was the BP oil spill two years ago? It was a disaster!  BP thought they have cleaned up the mess but actually, they didn’t. However, they caused a worse problem when they used toxic to clean up the spill which is great for cleaning up but terrible for the environment and a large number of sea creatures that live in the Gulf.

“The Gulf of Mexico provides nearly half of the seafood caught in the US (40%).” I wonder how they handle with this shortage of seafood for the past few years since the need for seafood has been increased every single day. And of course they might have thought that it would be a waste to dump all these deformed sea creature away when it’s one of the main seafood resource for the US. I don’t know if this is happening right now but it’s just me imagining it in my head that restaurants are buying all these expose creatures. Why would they buy it? because they don’t care about our health, they only care about the money that they are going to take from us. The restaurants can easily take advantage out of this. First of all, they can buy it with a much lower price than other normal seafood which saved them a lot of money already. Second, customer might not care whether the shrimp or fish have eyes or not ; After cooking with the sauce or fried, they can’t even tell if the fish have large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills or not. Third, It’s obvious that these food brought illness but it doesn’t make you get sick right away like what happened to the shrimp and their grandchildren so they don’t have to be responsible for the long term of sickness.

“as safe now as it was before the accident.” This quote really annoyed me because they don’t have any evidence that it’s safe. How can they say that when the chemical they used to clean up is a powerful toxic that can dissolve oil and rubber and grease. Not only that but this toxic can cause pain in chest, vomiting, headaches and diarrhea to human but it also affects the fetus. This oil spill happened two years ago but the effect didn’t stop until now because the toxic passed on from generation to generation. Moreover, this will last longer and the situation might get worse  than they thought it would if they keep on blaming each other and do nothing about it.  We need someone to stand up and take care of this because we can’t let people keep on eating these deform seafood. One of the questions that I have is, how are they going to solve this problem? In my opinion, I think they should come up with medicine that can cure this sickness and deformation. But the big question here is, who is going to be responsible for this when BP is not taking the blame? Will the government step up and be responsible for this?

Sometimes, I wonder how much effort does it take to be perfect
The answer is “infinity”
If you ask me, do I want to be perfect
The answer is always “ I do”
If you ask me, will I change or try to be perfect for you
The answer is “never”  because you can’t ask for it

You should accept me for who I am
I’m sorry that I’m not perfect
But I’m not going to change
Because my life is amazing itself
Maybe, I enjoy being unperfect

Tell me I’m a screwed up messed?
Tell me that I’m not perfect?
Tell me anything you want
But it won’t make a difference
Even though your words cut like knives.

I only have one life to live
So I’m just going to have fun
And make the best I could out of it
It’s okay if nothing goes right
It’s not the end of the world if you are not perfect

There are meanings in the word perfect that no one understands
It’s worth trying to be perfect and you will be better
It keeps you working until you achieve your dreams
Motivation that might lead you to the perfect path
It’s called the unknown because no one has been there.

Perfection is a motivation in life
You must achieve life with happiness
The door to perfection is locked,
If you can’t find the key for it
You better keep away

You might be successful
But you can never be perfect
Because nobody is perfect
So don’t try to be perfect.
It’s unreachable.

Is there a line between respect the law and the poor people?  In this week article, the government crashed down thousands of illegal houses and structures in Dhaka slum. The slum dweller was furious about what happened to them. They said that many people were injured and a girl was crushed under that bulldozer. What a heart broken right?

“We are left under the open sky without food, water or toilets,” said  Islam’s wife. “They lied to us,” said Islam  ”I lost everything I had — my stock, my house and household belongings. There was no time to move anything. We tried to talk to the magistrate in charge, but the riot police drove us back.” I could picture tears falling down their faces while they were saying this. When I was reading all these quotes in the articles, they just gave me rage because that is no different than taking everything away from the citizen. The government might not notice but that little house is actually everything to the family. I think it’s so unfair how the government just told them to move and how the bulldozer just came and took down houses, unaware of how many families and lives were depend on their houses.  This is so not how the government should treat the citizens. They built illegal houses because they are poor and they might not know it was illegal.

Let me tell you why every country should have government. Mainly is to protect their citizen. But what the government did to the Dhaka slum just showed me that they don’t deserve to be the leader. A true leader wouldn’t do such an irresponsible thing. I understand that they want to have less traffic jam so they needed to open up bigger road. Did they ever thought about how miserable the citizens are going to be when their homes are destroyed? Did they think of how this will lead to more poverty? I guess they didn’t think the about the consequence. I wonder if the government give the citizens anything in return? If I’m the government, I would give all the families that lived in the slum an apartment or houses and find jobs for them so they can have a stable income. Also, I would let the kids that lived in the slum go to school for free.That way, it would decrease the number of poverty and robbery. If the government say they don’t have the ability to pay? I will ask them, where do all the taxes go to? I know Bangladesh isn’t a rich and high class country but I believe that they have enough money to pay for these citizens. Hopefully, the government will be more responsible for this so it won’t ever happen again.

Would you let strangers, your enemies abuse a female relative as recompense for what you have caused? In this week article, an 8 years old girl, Atia was handed over to the family to replace for the dead family member that her brother murdered.

“For girls like Atia, their life becomes one of servitude and abuse, as the new families often harbor bitterness, taking revenge upon the girls they are given.” This is exactly what I thought about how  the new family will treat her badly and taking revenge on her when I first saw the title of the article. When I was reading I kept on asking myself, a bunch of questions. But the same question that actually came up many times in my head was, “ Why is it have to be girl?” In this story, she was 8, not even a teenager yet ! Leave her alone! What happened is not only invaded  women’s right but it’s also children labor. Just reading this week article, and I already feel irritated about how the men commit crimes, knowing full well that they will never be held accountable for their crime. And how a young girl had to take load of consequences burden on her shoulder instead of her brother. While her brother free himself by victimizing his innocent, little sister. We as human shouldn’t let  these selfish, worthless, and gutless guys keep on committing crime and ruining women’s future.

“Amos Gudo, an elder chief who presides over a traditional court in an Eastern Equatoria village called Kiyala, says the practice of giving away girls must continue, as a way of solving conflicts between community members.” I think what they said doesn’t make any sense at all because how is giving away girls going to solve conflict when the new family is taking revenge on her; They must think about the long term of resentment between the family because it doesn’t just end when the girl is given to the new family. “I tried to kill myself twice,” says Atia, now 14 and still living in servitude. Things get even worst, when a teenager  thinks about death.In my opinion, I think these people should move on with the death, forget about the past and think about the future which I mean, Atia’s future.

“Some of these areas in Eastern Equatoria are so isolated, they have continued the tradition for generations without anyone ever questioning it,” Really? No questions at all ? So nobody stood up against this cruel traditional problem? Is it because they are scared that they don’t follow the tradition? What are other options besides this?  Here’s I don’t mean they have to literally fight physically but they can give speech like other heroes that changed the world. If have an extremely strong feeling about what’s happening then there’s nothing that can stop them.

Did this traditional start because they didn’t want to pay money for jail? Is there a line between respect the culture and respect human rights? In my opinion, I don’t think so. But here’s a brilliant idea, so instead of asking the UN for help, why don’t we make the criminal pay the price themselves by labor and suffering ! This way, they would understand what girls had to go through for them when they commit crime.

“Award” what does it mean? Let me define it for you, it’s something awarded, such as a prize or medal. What’ is the meaning behind them? Yes, I understand clearly that it’s to award someone. But is it necessary that we need to have those wards? I think if that artist is truly talented and excellent, his or her fans already gave them awards in their hearts. In my opinion, I don’t think we should have award in music because it’s the fact that everyone has their own taste in music, so maybe a song might sound good to a person but not good to the other. Things like that could happen but it doesn’t mean that artist doesn’t have any talent. Have you ever thought of other artists’ feeling when they didn’t win? I think award just makes others that didn’t get the award feel ashamed or bad themselves. Sometimes, it’s just that maybe they didn’t find a song that suit them yet. So it doesn’t mean they are all worse than the person that got the award. While it’s music is all about entertainment, we shouldn’t let things like that get into our music, being music is about having fun and being able to express ourselves.We should let all artist be able to do the best without us judging them. I think less judgement and stress from the audience can help them to work better.

What is the first thing that come to your mind when you read the quote “ Focusing on music”? Right away, I think about how awards make artists and fans lose track of music, even myself. About artists, I think many of them tend to use fashion and other stuff to get people to love them instead of using the music and their own voice. Here, i’m not saying that it’s bad to use fashion because fashion is something we called art too. However, they shouldn’t take  too much advantage of fashion is because that way, it’s not called focusing on the music anymore. Sometimes, it’s just you, your voice and maybe the guitar and you still own the stage like nobody could. About clothing, jeans and a t-shirt is good enough, don’t have to be fancy because if you’ve got real talent then that’s all you really need.

I’ve read an article about how today people tend to put more bad words in their songs. I’m not sure but I think  they are doing this just to attract to teenagers so more teenagers would vote for them and it’s easier for them to get the award; Because now mostly teenagers are the one that have time for things like this.  Here is when people really lose track of music because  it’s not how music goes, it’s not about putting bad words into it to get people to love your music.  In the graph i’ve seen in the article , bad word seemed to appear in songs now more than ever.

Again, focusing on the music is exactly what we need in the entertainment now! We need music! Not award or the celebirites personal life.As a music lover, I think music is inspiring and we  shouldn’d pay too much attention to whether what they are wearing, their fashion or judge their singing. Sometimes people like listening to that artist’s personal life that have absolutely nothing to do with them more than listening to their music. We should all focus on the music because every artists try their best to entertain all of us.If you are a person who really understand and know music, you would pay attention only on the music.

At first, I didn’t really know how to start the writing my deceleration. So, I read the student declaration example that was posted on Moddle and the declaration of independence so I can have an idea of how to write my letter. Furthermore, I searched for break up letters on Google and read them to get some ideas.  The biggest problem that I had was to make the letter sound persuasive and being able to imitate the examples, without exactly copying words to words, but have a little of my writing style in it. As a writer, my strengths is that I have lots of strong ideas to put into the writing. Also, I’m able to find major and minor ideas to put into the writing to make all the ideas connect. Moreover, I know how to organize my ideas so my writing would flow well and the readers wouldn’t get confused. However, I struggled a little bit with verb and nouns agreement, and using pronouns at the right place.

If I have a chance to do this writing again, I would change my list of grievances. In my opinion, I think my list is a little short and I need to add more ideas to be more persuasive. I think I need to be specific, so instead of using” you guys” I should have use ” teachers” and ” parents.” Also, I would check my punctuation and grammar more carefully before turning the writing in so I wouldn’t have points taken off because of very minor mistakes.

PREAMBLE
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for students  to separate from teachers and have our own independence. You don’t recognize this, but I’m a grown up now and not a little kid anymore. Now it’s the point where you need to believe  that I’m wise enough to stand on my own, and I‘m responsible for my education. As a student, I declare separation, and this letter will tell the whole world why we deserve to be independent.

DECLARATION OF STUDENT RIGHTS
We hold these truths to be straightforward, that all students are born to be equal, and you are not allowed to take our rights away from us. For example, you should let us pursue our happiness and have our freedom. Moreover, we should be able to do whatever we want without you forbidding us or telling us what to do. We can’t take you down for little and temporary things, but what you are doing is different and I believe that it’s not temporary. In this case, this permanent abuse against us students, it proved that you only want to take control over our lives and torture us. It’s our responsibility to get rid of the control that teachers have have over us by walking away from you to gain our independence.

List of Grievances
Until this time, we endured our teachers’ endless torture. We students can’t take this any longer because God has created every human in this world with limited endurability. With such a history of injustice and mistreatment, it’s necessary that we bring these truths to the light and show the world what students actually have to go through everyday.

• They have given us piles of homework and expected us to finish it all in a short amount of time.
• They have given us too many tests with high expectation that we should all get As on them
• They have shortened our break time; now it seems like we only have five minutes for our break.
• They have  made unfair and default laws.

Statements of Prior Attempts to Redress Grievances
We’ve been patiently waiting for our teacher’s attention. Not only that, we‘ve tried to appeal to you with concerns; we’ve also sent you emails and asked for help. We’ve tried every way we could, but  our words and complaints have seemed to fall onto deaf ears. The way you completely ignore us makes us feel like you don’t have any respect for students, so we are breaking up. You and I never  promised each other  a happy ever after so what happened is nesscessary. We know we have been through lots of things together, but with the long term of mistreatment and unfairness, it just leave us wounded. Also, we don’t know what the future might bring or what else you might do to us in the future if we continue this relationship, so we shall declare that we are no longer friends; we are officially separate. This is the way that we think is best and will benefit both of us.  It’s time to bring these truths to the light and show it to the world, because we can’t just leave things behind and  let this go on forever.

Resolution of Independence

We are now on the edge of glory and we won’t let you bring us down or get our way. From now on, we don’t have to obey or listen to you anymore. We understand clearly that we are now on our own and it’s a heavy duty that we need to handle, but we are sure we can do it. Also, we are all responsible to find a new and more effective way to learn new materials without doing as much homework. For the support of this declaration, we are willing to give up our electronic devices for our independence and liberty in return.

As a writer, I think my strength  is that I am able to describe my personification writing with details. Also, I could find many examples to support it. I think I got my some of my  ideas from the songs and lyric which I was listening to while I was writing. At first, I just write down lines or lyrics but then later it somehow fit my writing so I decided to put it into my writing.

She’s an angel, in a glorious way. Whenever Beauty enters a room, everybody would turn their head and stare for a while. She’s skilled at grabbing attention and spotlight. It’s just feel like the sun is shining on her wherever she goes, yes, just her. On the radio, people would interview her with the same questions over and over again, “How would she get the shine so bright? Or how would you get to look like that?” However, she can never find an answer for it. If you compliment her, she wouldn’t believe you, she would shrug sweetly ,a shy smile would spread on her lips and she would reply that everyone is beautiful in their own way. It is as if she doesn’t know she’s beautiful, but some people think that’s what makes her beautiful. She never notice how she has that signature style of confidence. It’s everything about her that makes her more than just an average girl, she can be glamorous, she can be totally simple. She doesn’t need makeup to cover up. Moreover, she would looks stunning and rocks any outfits that’s on her, even a dark grey T-SHIRT or her uniform. She’s beautiful just the way she is and we can all see it in every photo of hers. From the hair to the face, there’s nothing anybody would want to change. That’s why her fan kept on wonder, why is Beauty being insecure for? Her hair flip makes hearts race and overwhelm. Her eyes are so heavenly, it makes the stars look like they are not shining. Beauty is a girl that can bring the corner of your frown all the way up, even when you don’t want to. She got a smile that can take you to another planet.

She’s passionate about dancing, she could dance forever. Every time she dances, she can really related to the music and being able to express her feeling through the movement. Everybody can see it, except for her because she completely ignore what ever is happening in the world when she dances. Beauty never afraid to hide her talent, she’s willing to dance with anyone that is brave enough to ask her. Every move she makes, everything she says is right. When you have a chance to spend time with her, it feels like no one can ever light up the world the way she does. The line she speaks, the word she says, always sound like poetry and melody.She tend to see beauty everywhere, even though others might think it look like a mess. Unlike others, Beauty view life as flowers.